Dianne Abbot came first on that poll for me, with Big Balls a very close 2nd.

Abbott was first for me too... although I'm wary of VoteMatch after a survey I took there during the election told me inexpicably I'm most suited to UKIP... wtf?!

The Guardian claims they have proof that David Miliband sanctioned torture of terrorism suspects:

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2010/sep/21/...-interrogations

 

If this is true, it really shows how UNBELIEVABLY selfish he is to be running for the leadership, considering that, when the official inquiry reports, if David is found guilty he'll probably have to resign as leader and cause the party damage.

The Guardian claims they have proof that David Miliband sanctioned torture of terrorism suspects:

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2010/sep/21/...-interrogations

 

If this is true, it really shows how UNBELIEVABLY selfish he is to be running for the leadership, considering that, when the official inquiry reports, if David is found guilty he'll probably have to resign as leader and cause the party damage.

 

Torture is a necessary evil when dealing with unsavoury people, the torture of Sheikh Khalid Mohammed at Guantanamo resulted in information that saved probably thousands of lives and resulted in several plots being foiled around the world.

 

Torture is necessary to gain important information and if Milliband authorised it in certain cases he has gone up in my estimation as it will have saved lives.

 

"Here is a nice cup of tea Abdul, now please tell me about the terrorist plots you know about" just doesn't work

Edited September 22, 201014 yr by I ❤ JustinBieber

I don't think he would have to resign over something like this, I think the general public by and large understand that torture is a necessary means of dealing with incredibly dangerous people and the popularity of Jack Bauer who used torture I think has educated the public that torture on terrorist suspects is better than bombs going off and innocents ending up dead.

 

I would rather have a terrorist subjected to torture than see people blown up when that could have been avoided had torture been used so I don't think Milliband would or should have to resign

Edited September 22, 201014 yr by I ❤ JustinBieber

So much for you apparently caring about civil liberties. You realise that I'm talking about torture of terrorist SUSPECTS: i.e. people who have not been proven to be guilty.

So much for you apparently caring about civil liberties. You realise that I'm talking about torture of terrorist SUSPECTS: i.e. people who have not been proven to be guilty.

 

Even Sheikh Mohammed is a suspect still, not been convicted of any offence, everyone that has been arrested as enemy combatants around the world are effectively suspects, Mohammed thanks to waterboarding gave incedibly valuable information including the plot to blow up several airliners over the Atlantic, the information would never have come to light without Mohammed being waterboarded.

 

I don't think teeth being pulled out, drills being put through shoulders etc is necessary but stuff like waterboarding, mock executions, exceptionally loud music 24/7, other forms of psychological torture are fine in my book if they deliver results and they clearly have

Oh good grief. Yesterday saw the funeral of Eileen Nearne. She was a spy working for the Special Operations Executive in WWII. She was captured in France and tortured but gave nothing away. The likes of Al Qaida will simply look for people like her and train them in withstanding torture. Your average Jo(e) on the other hand will have no such training. (S)he will be likely to say anything to stop the torture. That may lead to hundreds of hours being wasted following up completely false information.

Oh good grief. Yesterday saw the funeral of Eileen Nearne. She was a spy working for the Special Operations Executive in WWII. She was captured in France and tortured but gave nothing away. The likes of Al Qaida will simply look for people like her and train them in withstanding torture. Your average Jo(e) on the other hand will have no such training. (S)he will be likely to say anything to stop the torture. That may lead to hundreds of hours being wasted following up completely false information.

 

No system is perfect but I would rather see 100 people tortured and lives saved from information from 1 of them than no one tortured and a massacre taking place.

 

The number of lives that were saved by foiling the Atlantic bombings was around 3000 plus the knock on effect on the aviation and tourism industry would have been horrendous, thanks to waterboarding it never happened, even if 99 lots of information given to the CIA were useless (which we don't know)

No system is perfect but I would rather see 100 people tortured and lives saved from information from 1 of them than no one tortured and a massacre taking place.

 

The number of lives that were saved by foiling the Atlantic bombings was around 3000 plus the knock on effect on the aviation and tourism industry would have been horrendous, thanks to waterboarding it never happened, even if 99 lots of information given to the CIA were useless (which we don't know)

Is there actually a source for that waterboarding saving us all claim for the Atlantic bombings, or is that just a rumour?

 

Article from 2008:

 

So what will be left of the Republican Party after next week's US election? The answer lies in the sands of Florida, where the sunshine-state Republicans have nominated an unrepentant torturer as their candidate for Congress. They view his readiness to torture an innocent Iraqi not as a source of shame, but as his prime qualification for office. This is American conservatism in the dying days of Bush – and it points out the direction that Sarah Palin would like to take it in 2012.

 

In August 2003, Colonel Allen West – commanding a US unit in Baghdad – heard a rumour that one of the Iraqi policeman he was working with was a secret insurgent. He ordered his officers to go and seize Yehiya Hamoodi, a thin, bespectacled 31-year-old, from his home. They dragged him into a Humvee, beat him, and then handcuffed, shackled and blindfolded him. In a dank interrogation room, they told him he had better start talking.

 

Perplexed and terrified, Yehiya explained he didn't know what they were talking about: why was he here? So West was called in. He told Yehiya he was going to be killed. While his men beat him again, he explained he had one last chance to save his life – by talking.

 

Yehiya protested: I am innocent! What are you talking about? So West took him outside, had him pinned down, and began to shoot. First he fired into the air. Then he ordered his men to ram Yehiya's head into a barrel used for cleaning weapons – and fired right next to his head. Then he began to count down from five. Finally Yehiya began to scream out names – any name he could think of, just to make it stop.

 

The men he named were seized and roughed up in turn. No evidence was found of any plot, and after another 45 days of terror, Yehiya was released. Today, he is severely traumatised, and collapses when he sees a Humvee approaching. The story only came to light after one of West's soldiers began to protest against these practices, and the Pentagon launched an investigation. At a pre-trial hearing, West was fined $5,000, and now concedes grudgingly: "It's possible I was wrong about Mr Hamoodi." But he says he would do it again, and again, and again.

 

West has even taken to joking about it, gaining applause for telling Republican audiences: "It wasn't torture. Seeing Rosie O'Donnell naked would be torture." But the 1994 Convention Against Torture, to which the US is a signatory, is explicit: "Threat of imminent death" is the third form of torture it outlaws. There are reams of studies showing it can traumatise a person for life.

 

Yet the Republican Party has rallied to the defence of this torturer, and of torture in general. The Bush administration has ordered the simulated drowning of "high-value" suspects, and set up secret black ops sites across the world where it is practiced. After Afghan detainees were hanged from the ceiling and beaten to death, the officers responsible were merely given a "letter of reprimand".

 

West's "toughness" is fawned over; one leading conservative magazine has even named him its Man of the Year. And Sarah Palin, the Party's darling, mocks Barack Obama's opposition to torture. She complains: "Al-Qaida terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America [and]he's worried that someone won't read them their rights." Palin is fond of saying that she "won't blink when it comes to terror", but if you don't blink, your corneas dry out, and you go blind.

 

At first, the rise of John McCain looked like a repudiation of torture. McCain was tortured by the Viet Cong for three years, and the beatings were so vicious that even today he can't raise his arms to brush his own hair. For a time, he was a loud, proud opponent of torture – but then he caved. In February 2008, he voted to allow the CIA to be excluded from the ban on torture – when he knows the CIA who are the prime American torturers today.

 

Then, when the Supreme Court ruled that Guantanamo detainees have basic habeas corpus rights, McCain called it "one of the worst decisions in the history of the country." If McCain will compromise on this, he will compromise on anything. He has tried to flip-flop back, saying he would ban torture after all, but if he tried now, he would face mass rebellion from his own party and Vice-President. It is unthinkable he would permit war crimes tribunals of the Party colleagues who ordered this torture.

The advocates of torture love to wheel out the ticking bomb scenario served up every week on 24. But think about what it requires. You have to A: be certain you have captured a bomber in the very brief window between him planting a bomb and it blowing up, yet B: have no idea where the bomb is. This has never happened, anywhere in the world, ever.

 

No: what happens in reality is Yehiya Hamoodi. You get a man you kinda-sorta suspect; you torture him; and you get junk intelligence leading you up wrong paths. What would you confess to if I put a gun to your head and started counting down from five?

 

Once you start to torture it doesn't just stay in the neat mind-experiments favoured by philosophers. After the Israeli supreme court approved torture in very limited circumstances, soldiers were soon torturing two thirds of the Palestinians they held captive. Professor David Luban explains: "Escalation is the rule, not the aberration. Abu Ghraib is the fully predictable image of what a torture culture looks like."

 

There are no recorded instances of getting useable intelligence from torture – but even if in some freak instance after you have tortured a thousand Yahiyas you finally did, would it outweigh the damage of handing al Qaeda a thousand new recruits, vindicating Bin Laden's hate-talk and breaching the most basic moral codes?

 

The gap between the Republican and Democratic Parties is too narrow, but on this issue it is hefty. The Republicans have curdled into the Party of Torture, bullying their torture-victim nominee into backing their barbarism, and proudly picking a torturer as their candidate for Congress. That sound of screaming from inside the Palin-drome isn't just from fawning Republicans – it's from men like Yehiya.

Indeed. Eileen Nearne also suffered for the rest of her life as a result of the trauma of being tortured. After the war she never worked again. A psychiatric report said she was suffering headaches, depression, sleeplessness, palpitations and a sense of unreality.

 

Hmm, a sense of unreality. I wonder if perhaps Craig has been tortured.

The CIA admitted that information given by Sheikh Khalid prevented the airline bombings over the Atlantic, a plot to blow up 2 major bridges and a plot to blow up the Panama canal

 

If 1 plot is foiled through waterboarding then it has been for the greater good that people be waterboarded

Indeed. Eileen Nearne also suffered for the rest of her life as a result of the trauma of being tortured. After the war she never worked again. A psychiatric report said she was suffering headaches, depression, sleeplessness, palpitations and a sense of unreality.

 

Hmm, a sense of unreality. I wonder if perhaps Craig has been tortured.

 

Sometimes things are necessary for the greater good maybe even very unpleasant things

 

When 2 Israeli soldiers were kidnapped by Palestinians the Israelis found out the identity of the leader, cut his wife's wedding ring finger off complete with ring and told the leader that they would be mailing bits of her to him every day until the soldiers were released, needless to say they were released that same day, an example of things being necessary however unpleasant if it is for the greater good

Indeed. Eileen Nearne also suffered for the rest of her life as a result of the trauma of being tortured. After the war she never worked again. A psychiatric report said she was suffering headaches, depression, sleeplessness, palpitations and a sense of unreality.

 

Hmm, a sense of unreality. I wonder if perhaps Craig has been tortured.

 

I have never seen a shrink in my life never needed to unlikely to ever to ;)

 

I have also never been tortured, well maybe via S+M but let's not go there :kink:

 

I still think what happened out there was justified, the guy was innocent but suppose he hadn't been, he could have given valuable information to insurgents that would have put everyone at risk so while his torture was unfortunate I can see why it was done

Sometimes things are necessary for the greater good maybe even very unpleasant things

 

When 2 Israeli soldiers were kidnapped by Palestinians the Israelis found out the identity of the leader, cut his wife's wedding ring finger off complete with ring and told the leader that they would be mailing bits of her to him every day until the soldiers were released, needless to say they were released that same day, an example of things being necessary however unpleasant if it is for the greater good

Right. Two Israeli soldiers that are oppressing the Palestinians (NO value judgement there, but you can't deny it regardless of what reasoning there is for it) is a greater good than the liberties of a civilian who has committed no crime of her own?

Right. Two Israeli soldiers that are oppressing the Palestinians (NO value judgement there, but you can't deny it regardless of what reasoning there is for it) is a greater good than the liberties of a civilian who has committed no crime of her own?

 

She was guilty by association by being the wife of a kidnapper and bomber, it is highly likely she will have known about his activities or at least suspected so in these circumstances I think what the Israelis did (it was some 25 years ago so I am assuming it was Ariel Sharon that was the military commander) was justified in order to save lives, they successfully scared the guy into submission and the soldiers were released unharmed.

Edited September 22, 201014 yr by I ❤ JustinBieber

She was guilty by association by being the wife of a kidnapper and bomber, it is highly likely she will have known about his activities or at least suspected so in these circumstances I think what the Israelis did (it was some 25 years ago so I am assuming it was Ariel Sharon that was the military commander) was justified in order to save lives, they successfully scared the guy into submission and the soldiers were released unharmed.

Guilty by association? Love is a complex thing, and it's rare that somebody will be able to completely divorce themselves from it. What did you want her to do? Even if she'd left him because of that the Israelis would've probably still used her.

Guilty by association? Love is a complex thing, and it's rare that somebody will be able to completely divorce themselves from it. What did you want her to do? Even if she'd left him because of that the Israelis would've probably still used her.

 

It was more a psychological thing to scare the $h!t out of her husband more than anything else and it worked, regardless of whether the soldiers involved were oppressing the Palestinians or not they were just doing their job, most soldiers out there are young conscripts who have little or no say and just follow orders from above (politicians>field commander>colonel) so the ordinary soldier is just doing his job.

 

I thought the 'they were just doing their job' schtick went out of fashion with the Nuremburg Trials, but there we go!

I thought the 'they were just doing their job' schtick went out of fashion with the Nuremburg Trials, but there we go!

 

I have some sympathy with the ordinary nazi soldier, most in essence were doing their job and following orders and were not in a position to question, if they hadn't followed orders they would have been shot so my issue with the nazis were the leadership, those way higher up the chain than the ordinary footsoldier, likewise in Palestine, if the field commander gets orders from the defence secretary what is the ordinary private on the ground meant to do ? he can't exactly defy orders unless he wants 10 years in jail or a bullet in him