What If a Nuke Was Set To Explode Tomorrow ?

[HereWeGoAgain]

A US pilot has just firebombed a city hitting a hospital, a school, civilian residences and has killed tens of thousands

His plane is shot down and he is captured

His captors consider him a war criminal and want to torture him to find information that can prevent future bombings

Are they justified?
It will save lives

I look at torture like this. If you're fighting for a standing army that recognizes the Geneva convention and follow it I dont believe in torture.
If you're a terrorist using asymmetrical warfare you no longer have protections under the Geneva convention and all bets are off and you should be prepared for the jumper cables to the nards....

OK ....so what about that US Pilot who just firebombed a city?

His captors consider him a war criminal and an angry public demands his head

Why isn’t torture acceptable given that his own country uses the same techniques ?

You'll have to be a little more specific than some pilot who fire bombed some city.

All you need to know

Are they justified in torturing him given his own countries use of torture?

No thats not all I need to know.
Is the enemy part of a standing army with uniforms or are the practitioners of asymmetrical warfare?

 

[rightwinger]

A US pilot has just firebombed a city hitting a hospital, a school, civilian residences and has killed tens of thousands

His plane is shot down and he is captured

His captors consider him a war criminal and want to torture him to find information that can prevent future bombings

Are they justified?
It will save lives

I look at torture like this. If you're fighting for a standing army that recognizes the Geneva convention and follow it I dont believe in torture.
If you're a terrorist using asymmetrical warfare you no longer have protections under the Geneva convention and all bets are off and you should be prepared for the jumper cables to the nards....

OK ....so what about that US Pilot who just firebombed a city?

His captors consider him a war criminal and an angry public demands his head

Why isn’t torture acceptable given that his own country uses the same techniques ?

You'll have to be a little more specific than some pilot who fire bombed some city.

All you need to know

Are they justified in torturing him given his own countries use of torture?

No thats not all I need to know.
Is the enemy part of a standing army with uniforms or are the practitioners of asymmetrical warfare?

So wearing a uniform exempts you from war crimes?

Torture is an insult to humanity. A uniform is not a shield

 

[HereWeGoAgain]

I look at torture like this. If you're fighting for a standing army that recognizes the Geneva convention and follow it I dont believe in torture.
If you're a terrorist using asymmetrical warfare you no longer have protections under the Geneva convention and all bets are off and you should be prepared for the jumper cables to the nards....

OK ....so what about that US Pilot who just firebombed a city?

His captors consider him a war criminal and an angry public demands his head

Why isn’t torture acceptable given that his own country uses the same techniques ?

You'll have to be a little more specific than some pilot who fire bombed some city.

All you need to know

Are they justified in torturing him given his own countries use of torture?

No thats not all I need to know.
Is the enemy part of a standing army with uniforms or are the practitioners of asymmetrical warfare?

So wearing a uniform exempts you from war crimes?

Torture is an insult to humanity. A uniform is not a shield

Go read the Geneva convention.

 

[rightwinger]

OK ....so what about that US Pilot who just firebombed a city?

His captors consider him a war criminal and an angry public demands his head

Why isn’t torture acceptable given that his own country uses the same techniques ?

You'll have to be a little more specific than some pilot who fire bombed some city.

All you need to know

Are they justified in torturing him given his own countries use of torture?

No thats not all I need to know.
Is the enemy part of a standing army with uniforms or are the practitioners of asymmetrical warfare?

So wearing a uniform exempts you from war crimes?

Torture is an insult to humanity. A uniform is not a shield

Go read the Geneva convention.

War is hell

A nation that sees civilians savagely burned and killed can draw their own conclusions

What justifies a nation with uniforms from torturing those who don’t

 

[HereWeGoAgain]

You'll have to be a little more specific than some pilot who fire bombed some city.

All you need to know

Are they justified in torturing him given his own countries use of torture?

No thats not all I need to know.
Is the enemy part of a standing army with uniforms or are the practitioners of asymmetrical warfare?

So wearing a uniform exempts you from war crimes?

Torture is an insult to humanity. A uniform is not a shield

Go read the Geneva convention.

War is hell

A nation that sees civilians savagely burned and killed can draw their own conclusions

What justifies a nation with uniforms from torturing those who don’t

Your depth of thought is right around that of whale shit.

 

[SavannahMann]

OK ....so what about that US Pilot who just firebombed a city?

His captors consider him a war criminal and an angry public demands his head

Why isn’t torture acceptable given that his own country uses the same techniques ?

You'll have to be a little more specific than some pilot who fire bombed some city.

All you need to know

Are they justified in torturing him given his own countries use of torture?

No thats not all I need to know.
Is the enemy part of a standing army with uniforms or are the practitioners of asymmetrical warfare?

So wearing a uniform exempts you from war crimes?

Torture is an insult to humanity. A uniform is not a shield

Go read the Geneva convention.

Um. I’ve read it. If a person does not fall under the protections as a legal combatant, then they are entitled to judicial action of the host country. In fact, all of this was settled not that long ago when the United States decided that the people they were capturing were unlawful combatants.

Unlawful combatant - Wikipedia

The Supreme Court ruled that the prisoners were entitled to lawyers, and a proper jury trial. Oddly enough, there was no evidence against those people once that decision was made. Because some jackass like you decided that they could rough up the people, and deny them the rights of a prisoner of war since they weren’t.

All the evidence gathered was thus inadmissible. You can’t use it in a trial, and you can’t use a military tribuneral to render judgement. So once you start torturing the guy, you are left with two choices. Either commit murder, which the last time I checked was illegal. Or turn them loose. Which is what we’ve been doing since the Supreme Court ruled that we couldn’t try them with some half assed are they guilty yet nonsense.

Good move, and nicely done. If we had left them in the country where we had captured them, they could have been tried there. If we had given them their rights once they set foot on US soil, which Guantanamo was and is, then we could have tried them here. Instead, we get to turn them loose. I suppose this is the part where I am supposed to laugh at you, but hey, it’s too stupid to laugh at.

 

[HereWeGoAgain]

You'll have to be a little more specific than some pilot who fire bombed some city.

All you need to know

Are they justified in torturing him given his own countries use of torture?

No thats not all I need to know.
Is the enemy part of a standing army with uniforms or are the practitioners of asymmetrical warfare?

So wearing a uniform exempts you from war crimes?

Torture is an insult to humanity. A uniform is not a shield

Go read the Geneva convention.

Um. I’ve read it. If a person does not fall under the protections as a legal combatant, then they are entitled to judicial action of the host country. In fact, all of this was settled not that long ago when the United States decided that the people they were capturing were unlawful combatants.

Unlawful combatant - Wikipedia

The Supreme Court ruled that the prisoners were entitled to lawyers, and a proper jury trial. Oddly enough, there was no evidence against those people once that decision was made. Because some jackass like you decided that they could rough up the people, and deny them the rights of a prisoner of war since they weren’t.

All the evidence gathered was thus inadmissible. You can’t use it in a trial, and you can’t use a military tribuneral to render judgement. So once you start torturing the guy, you are left with two choices. Either commit murder, which the last time I checked was illegal. Or turn them loose. Which is what we’ve been doing since the Supreme Court ruled that we couldn’t try them with some half assed are they guilty yet nonsense.

Good move, and nicely done. If we had left them in the country where we had captured them, they could have been tried there. If we had given them their rights once they set foot on US soil, which Guantanamo was and is, then we could have tried them here. Instead, we get to turn them loose. I suppose this is the part where I am supposed to laugh at you, but hey, it’s too stupid to laugh at.

I'll just STUTFU with a few words........
If you aren't wearing a uniform in a foreign war you can be executed as a spy.

 

[rightwinger]

All you need to know

Are they justified in torturing him given his own countries use of torture?

No thats not all I need to know.
Is the enemy part of a standing army with uniforms or are the practitioners of asymmetrical warfare?

So wearing a uniform exempts you from war crimes?

Torture is an insult to humanity. A uniform is not a shield

Go read the Geneva convention.

War is hell

A nation that sees civilians savagely burned and killed can draw their own conclusions

What justifies a nation with uniforms from torturing those who don’t

Your depth of thought is right around that of whale shit.

Nice try Skippy

 

[rightwinger]

You'll have to be a little more specific than some pilot who fire bombed some city.

All you need to know

Are they justified in torturing him given his own countries use of torture?

No thats not all I need to know.
Is the enemy part of a standing army with uniforms or are the practitioners of asymmetrical warfare?

So wearing a uniform exempts you from war crimes?

Torture is an insult to humanity. A uniform is not a shield

Go read the Geneva convention.

Um. I’ve read it. If a person does not fall under the protections as a legal combatant, then they are entitled to judicial action of the host country. In fact, all of this was settled not that long ago when the United States decided that the people they were capturing were unlawful combatants.

Unlawful combatant - Wikipedia

The Supreme Court ruled that the prisoners were entitled to lawyers, and a proper jury trial. Oddly enough, there was no evidence against those people once that decision was made. Because some jackass like you decided that they could rough up the people, and deny them the rights of a prisoner of war since they weren’t.

All the evidence gathered was thus inadmissible. You can’t use it in a trial, and you can’t use a military tribuneral to render judgement. So once you start torturing the guy, you are left with two choices. Either commit murder, which the last time I checked was illegal. Or turn them loose. Which is what we’ve been doing since the Supreme Court ruled that we couldn’t try them with some half assed are they guilty yet nonsense.

Good move, and nicely done. If we had left them in the country where we had captured them, they could have been tried there. If we had given them their rights once they set foot on US soil, which Guantanamo was and is, then we could have tried them here. Instead, we get to turn them loose. I suppose this is the part where I am supposed to laugh at you, but hey, it’s too stupid to laugh at.

We have created a class of a man without a country
Where it is convenient to treat them as enemy combatants, we do so.
When it is convenient to treat them as criminals, we do so

Meanwhile, there are no charges, no trials
Just unlawful confinement

 

[SavannahMann]

All you need to know

Are they justified in torturing him given his own countries use of torture?

No thats not all I need to know.
Is the enemy part of a standing army with uniforms or are the practitioners of asymmetrical warfare?

So wearing a uniform exempts you from war crimes?

Torture is an insult to humanity. A uniform is not a shield

Go read the Geneva convention.

Um. I’ve read it. If a person does not fall under the protections as a legal combatant, then they are entitled to judicial action of the host country. In fact, all of this was settled not that long ago when the United States decided that the people they were capturing were unlawful combatants.

Unlawful combatant - Wikipedia

The Supreme Court ruled that the prisoners were entitled to lawyers, and a proper jury trial. Oddly enough, there was no evidence against those people once that decision was made. Because some jackass like you decided that they could rough up the people, and deny them the rights of a prisoner of war since they weren’t.

All the evidence gathered was thus inadmissible. You can’t use it in a trial, and you can’t use a military tribuneral to render judgement. So once you start torturing the guy, you are left with two choices. Either commit murder, which the last time I checked was illegal. Or turn them loose. Which is what we’ve been doing since the Supreme Court ruled that we couldn’t try them with some half assed are they guilty yet nonsense.

Good move, and nicely done. If we had left them in the country where we had captured them, they could have been tried there. If we had given them their rights once they set foot on US soil, which Guantanamo was and is, then we could have tried them here. Instead, we get to turn them loose. I suppose this is the part where I am supposed to laugh at you, but hey, it’s too stupid to laugh at.

I'll just STUTFU with a few words........
If you aren't wearing a uniform in a foreign war you can be executed as a spy.

Really? You have a link for that? Because the Geneva Convention doesn’t actually say that. The Laws of war in fact, do not say that. In fact, the Military Tribunerals Act only authorized the detention of “illegal combatants” not the summary execution.

So where did you get this idea? I’m sure you have a link to the appropriate section of the Geneva Conventions. Article 30 of The Hague Conventions (1907) says that the person can be declared a spy only after a trial, which means that you can’t really shoot them on the battlefield. But I’m sure you have something other than a comic book to back up your assertions.

 

[HereWeGoAgain]

No thats not all I need to know.
Is the enemy part of a standing army with uniforms or are the practitioners of asymmetrical warfare?

So wearing a uniform exempts you from war crimes?

Torture is an insult to humanity. A uniform is not a shield

Go read the Geneva convention.

Um. I’ve read it. If a person does not fall under the protections as a legal combatant, then they are entitled to judicial action of the host country. In fact, all of this was settled not that long ago when the United States decided that the people they were capturing were unlawful combatants.

Unlawful combatant - Wikipedia

The Supreme Court ruled that the prisoners were entitled to lawyers, and a proper jury trial. Oddly enough, there was no evidence against those people once that decision was made. Because some jackass like you decided that they could rough up the people, and deny them the rights of a prisoner of war since they weren’t.

All the evidence gathered was thus inadmissible. You can’t use it in a trial, and you can’t use a military tribuneral to render judgement. So once you start torturing the guy, you are left with two choices. Either commit murder, which the last time I checked was illegal. Or turn them loose. Which is what we’ve been doing since the Supreme Court ruled that we couldn’t try them with some half assed are they guilty yet nonsense.

Good move, and nicely done. If we had left them in the country where we had captured them, they could have been tried there. If we had given them their rights once they set foot on US soil, which Guantanamo was and is, then we could have tried them here. Instead, we get to turn them loose. I suppose this is the part where I am supposed to laugh at you, but hey, it’s too stupid to laugh at.

I'll just STUTFU with a few words........
If you aren't wearing a uniform in a foreign war you can be executed as a spy.

Really? You have a link for that? Because the Geneva Convention doesn’t actually say that. The Laws of war in fact, do not say that. In fact, the Military Tribunerals Act only authorized the detention of “illegal combatants” not the summary execution.

So where did you get this idea? I’m sure you have a link to the appropriate section of the Geneva Conventions. Article 30 of The Hague Conventions (1907) says that the person can be declared a spy only after a trial, which means that you can’t really shoot them on the battlefield. But I’m sure you have something other than a comic book to back up your assertions.

The penalties are pretty clear...
If a soldier is not in uniform, there is no specific penalty for that, so long as it is not undertaken as an act of "perfidy" in which someone passes themselves off as a civilian in order to treacherously kill the enemy, which is prohibited by the GC. This is for obvious reasons: if an army is continually attacked by "civilians," they may begin to treat all civilians as combatants. A case like a soldier dressing as a civilian to collect intelligence is not a war crime, but that person may be punished as the country may direct in accordance with an actual judicial procedure (as required by Common Article 3).

So, if captured out of uniform, the service member might not be entitled to POW protections. The Geneva Conventions would require that the soldier captured out of uniform be afforded certain basic rights, such as not to be murdered or tortured, not to be subject to inhuman or degrading punishment, and to be afforded medical care if sick or wounded.

 

[protectionist]

Please keep in mind the TOPIC. The question in the OP, requesting a YES or NO, along with the post.

 

[protectionist]

This IS the topic
When is it proper to torture?
I say never

Because if you are justified to torture that terrorist over a nuke, others are JUST AS JUSTIFIED to torture our pilots who napalm civilians, firebomb cities, bomb hospitals, carpet bomb civilian neighborhoods, destroy dams

I do not want our pilots, soldiers and sailors TORTURED

NO. That's not the topic. that is your distortion of the topic. The topic is the question asked in the OP.

But you did answer that by saying "never".. So your answer is YES, that you would allow millions of Americans to die violently, when they could have been saved.

Another example of just how detached liberal lunacy is in America, and why we must do everything to defeat it.

PS - stopping a terrorist from nuking a huge city and killing millions, does not give enemies license to torture a relatively few Americans. The enemies would probably say >> "I would have done the same thing."​

 

[protectionist]

Of course there will always be bad and undesirable consequences in ANY war! Even if the victims are mostly people you don't like or aspire against you, it's not a good thing. So what are you saying then, your yes/no choice really has no choice at all? I'm saying that if a nuke was blown in NYC, most of the people affected by it would ironically be the very people who mostly voted against the means of having caught and stopped the terrorists making the bomb in the first place. THE POINT BEING the unintended consequences of making decisions which on the surface might seem right at the time but really weren't.

As Dick Cheney might say: never tie your own hands in a battle against an enemy. Dreamy idealism might feel noble in saying there can be no justification to water-boarding, but I bet all those hypothetical people in NYC voting that way would all suddenly find "torture" perfectly sensible and change their minds as the seconds count down to find the nuke about to blow them up.

I'm saying, and have been saying all along, that the terrorist should be tortured to get the information, and save millions of lives.

 

[protectionist]

No.

First, as what was clearly demonstrated with Allan West, the person being tortured will tell you anything to stop the torture. So any information you got would be at best suspect, and at worst, a misdirection. Then what do you do? You’ve wasted hours, and you’re no closer to the bomb than you were. Now what? Do you return and continue torturing them?

In the Army, when I was going through training regarding being captured, we were told that if we could hold out for 24 hours, then any information we had was obsolete. As soldiers we did not have strategic information, only tactical. That information was already history by the time we would be broken.

Now, your scenario is asinine. First if you did capture a terrorist who had planted a bomb, the last thing he is going to tell you is that he planted a bomb. Stop pretending that they are dumb, or that they haven’t spent weeks or months training for this day.

9-11 should have taught you that. If not the Boston Marathon bombings would have proven the point. Pfui. They aren’t going to stop because you try and frighten them.

Finally, man portable nukes have timers. But nobody thinks the timers really work. If a target is important enough to warrant the use of a nuke, it is too important to allow someone to discover the bomb and deactivate it. The bomb would go off when the timer was activated.

You must have a reading comprehension deficiency.

Your answer (NO) does not correlate with what you said. Again the question was > Would you allow millions of people to die in a nuclear explosion ? By answering "No" that means you would choose to torture the terrorist.

Then you go on to say everything that contradicts your answer to the question, speaking against torturing the terrorist.

That being said, you also show you haven't read the thread. I already answered your question ("Then what do you do? Now what? Do you return and continue torturing them? "). Now I have to go through the work of going back and digging out the answer, and copy/pasting it for you, or typing it all over again, because you're too lazy to read the thread, and instead pop in here late, and ignorant of what's been covered already.

1. In Post # 49, I said this >> "EARTH TO DRL: I promise you that if the terrorist was lowered bare feet first into an electric wood chipper, he will do some real fast talking. And if he's wrong, he'll be back in that wood chipper again, while told this time, it'll be his whole legs. My money is he tells the truth."

"And even in worst case scenario. Suppose the (very unlikely) event that he doesn't tell the truth. >> You're willing to gamble the lives of millions of Americans, to preserve the rights of one terrorist ? There's another question for you. YES or NO."
​

2. I was in the Army too. The Army experience does not correlate with this scenario.

3. I said nothing about the terrorist being interrogated, being the bomb planter. The OP says ANOTHER person is the bomb planter, but the interrogatee knows who and where the bomb planter is.

4. How long the terrorist spent training is not relevant. However, you may think the scenario I presented is, it IS the scenario. Timers and other stuff you're bringing into this, are not the scenario. You are twisting the GIVEN scenario conditions of the OP, into other scenarios. This is a hypothetical case that is to be assessed as it is stated , not how you, or anyone else, reinvents it, into something else. The idea is to see how far some people will go to preserve a basic right of just one person (a terrorist no less), while how much they would allow national security to be breached, not whether this might actually happen or not, which is another subject/topic that you are changing it into. Start your own thread.

5. Please read the OP (slowly), and the thread posts, before posting.

 

[protectionist]

Good question...where were OUR POW camps? How did we treat our Vietnamese POWs? How come we never hear about that?

We didn't need to hear about it. The whole war against people who never attacked us, or even threatened us, was highly improper and stupid.

 

[protectionist]

NO

The target is NYC.

What's not to like about instant urban renewal?

OK, so it's not California but nobody ruled out a second bomb.......

Of course the answer is NO. To allow millions of people to die, to protect the rights of one person (terrorist no less) is idiocy.

 

[protectionist]

The asinine scenario presupposes that the terrorist tells you when he is captured that he planted a bomb. Pfui.

He is in a city that is about to be vaporized, and you know he know. But his fear will motivate him? Pfui.

All he has to do is hold out for a day and he is a martyr for his cause. If it is Islam, then he believes paradise is one day away. Pfui.

Why would somebody outside of Hollywood put a timer on a nuke? Doesn’t that just let the writers save the day with one second left? In real life, the bomb is detonated right away. If they use timers, like in Boston, it is for a few minutes, not a few hours, or a full day. Pfui

Hey birdbrain. Take a reading comprehension course, instead of telling the other posters here how you wrongly grasped the OP's content, and then talking about a scenario that has NOTHING TO DO WITH what was presented in the OP.

If you can't handle, getting words right, while posting in a thread, don't do it.

 

[protectionist]

A US pilot has just firebombed a city hitting a hospital, a school, civilian residences and has killed tens of thousands

His plane is shot down and he is captured

His captors consider him a war criminal and want to torture him to find information that can prevent future bombings

Are they justified?
It will save lives

Start you own thread, Mr Off Topic.

 

[protectionist]

OK ....so what about that US Pilot who just firebombed a city?

His captors consider him a war criminal and an angry public demands his head

Why isn’t torture acceptable given that his own country uses the same techniques ?