US can fight terrorism without torturing POWs
Published: 14 May, 2009, 15:41
A peace activist dressed as an Abu Ghraib prisoner poses at a protest camp (AFP Photo / Mandel Ngan)
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President Barack Obama has reversed his decision to release photographs of prisoner abuse by US personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Around 2,000 images were to be made public at the end of this month, as ordered by a federal court, but having seen them, the President now says their release could cost the lives of American soldiers overseas.
This decision comes just three weeks after the Obama administration said that it would release those photographs. Allegedly it was due to top military commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan that advised Barack Obama against this. If the photographs are released it will harm the troops and make them more prone to attacks, particularly in the Muslim world including Iraq and Afghanistan where US troops are struggling right now.
The memories about the media storm that occurred when the Abu Ghraib photos were released forced Obama to think twice and take the US troops into consideration before making any decisions.
The photographs issue became a topic of very much heated debate on many American TV shows. Liberals, Obama’s main support base, are none-too-thrilled with his turnaround. They want to see the people who committed the acts of torture held accountable for the crimes they committed, and by not releasing those photographs it is slowing down the process.
“These photos that were requested in this case are not particularly sensational, especially compared to the painful images we remember from Abu Ghraib,” Obama said.
One argument that has arisen is that he has already released the CIA memos that detailed the abuse of detainees, so what is the point in releasing the photographs?
In addition, discussions about whether the enhanced methods of interrogation work or not, or if they even provide the US with the intelligence they need, are not likely to start in American society any time soon. This is something the US policy and law makers are going to argue about for a long time to come.
“For several years our government has been fighting terrorism without using these extreme methods, I can comment on that both worldwide and in Iraq,” reported Philip Zelikow, legal council to the ex-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Many analysts strongly believe that torture techniques do not work and the US can do perfectly fight terrorism without them.
14.05.2009, 13:52
3 comments
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i have a very simple solution........ just dont torture people!!!! for gods sake be humane to your fellow humans!!! act as is you have a heart!! cant we all just get along?
This is ridiculous. The US has not used enhanced interrogation techniques since 2003. When it did use them, they used them on a minuscule number of people high in AL Qaeda's command hierarchy; people they had NEW had information to save lives. In fact, information that was obtained through water boarding stopped a terrorist plot called "Second Wave", an attempt to have 17 Chinese Muslims fly a plane into the library tower in LA. All the top brass of the CIA say that the vast majority of the information they have about Al Qaeda they have, as a direct result of the EIT's. And by the way, these are not "POW's", they are "enemy combatants". They are not fighting for a country, they are just blood thirsty thugs. They complain about the way we treat them when they are captured. How do they treat us? They cut off our heads...literally. This title of this story should be "The US has been fighting the war on terror without using EIT's for 5 years; can they continue to do so?"
Michael, well said, they even try to change the words, in a western media rewrite - but the good thing, the whole world knows the US is a torturer, and that is what counts. The plain simple truth!