Thursday, June 17, 2010

Torture, What Torture?

Apparently not only does the US not torture people, we don't even hear cases about torture. Does anyone remember that Canadian guy, who was kidnapped in the US, turned over to Syria, and tortured for 10 months? And then it turned out that he was completely innocent? His court case was rejected by the Supreme Court. And Obama's White House wanted it that way, because otherwise it might somehow impact national security.

This is completely ridiculous. It's an obvious screw-up that led to a man being tortured for almost a year, for absolutely no reason. The Canadians have already 'fessed up and made reparations to the guy. Now, they're investigating the US, because the US won't even hear the court case. Slate has a great article about the implications of the case (my first link, above).

I think the best definition of when torture should be allowable comes from an analyst on ABC News. I think he's a retired general, and I think this was just after the Abu Ghraib scandal started. He said (paraphrased): If a nuclear bomb is going to explode in Grand Central Station (NYC) in 5 minutes, and you've got the man with the codes to deactivate it, then it's okay to torture him.

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