adrian_turtle (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
adrian_turtle) wrote2003-11-24 10:25 pm
adrian_turtle) wrote2003-11-24 10:25 pm
news story or "urban" legend?
I should know better than to discuss politics with my mother. Sometimes I think I should know better than to discuss anything with my mother, at all. But, well, maybe Iraq is a safer topic of conversation than anything that could relate more directly to her or me. So I grabbed for it as a diversion, rather than risk talking about my weight, or her desire for grandchildren (which she isn't going to get), or any of the friends that are so dear to me for reasons I don't want her to even suspect.
She told me a story of a US military officer who recently had to interrogate someone captured in the heat of battle in Iraq. This was apparently a textbook case of an obvious enemy, with many lives depending on extracting some particular bit of information from him in time. My mother believes that it doesn't count as "torture" if no physical damage is done, so the officer must not have tortured the prisoner. But he did apply more coercive pressure than he was authorized to use, including sleep deprivation and firing a gun next to his head. The prisoner broke, and the officer acted on the information acquired. The officer is facing court martial, near the end of his military career, for exceeding his authority in this matter. My mother is outraged, appalled, furious, that this officer (whose actions she believes to have been altogether admirable) might lose his pension.
I usually don't try to follow every detail of the war on terrorism, or the war on Iraq. So I found myself totally unfamiliar with this story, when my mother told it to me. My only referrent was that a very similar story seems to turn up in almost every debate about banning torture..."What if you need to get time-critical, life-saving, information from an enemy and the only way to get it is with torture? Nevermind that, I mean reliable information! But the *only* way to get the information is with torture. It would be so wrong to make people die for the sake of a rule." (And it all comes round again.) Anyhow, I'm wondering if my mother was telling me about something that really happened recently, or if she was referring to the classic hypothetical. Dressing up the classic with that human touch of the poor heroic officer approaching retirement and about to lose his pension would be a stroke of brilliance, if someone had made it up to target her soft spots. If it really happened, I'd appreciate pointers to news reports.
It's also pretty disturbing to realize that my mother is so gung-ho in favor of torture. This is harder for me to justify ^H^H^H accept that I'm related to than the fact that she has such blind faith in both Bush and Ashcroft. She used to be an intelligent, liberal, reasonably enlightened woman. I don't know what happened. It grieves me. I want to make a contribution to Amnesty International, in her memory.
She told me a story of a US military officer who recently had to interrogate someone captured in the heat of battle in Iraq. This was apparently a textbook case of an obvious enemy, with many lives depending on extracting some particular bit of information from him in time. My mother believes that it doesn't count as "torture" if no physical damage is done, so the officer must not have tortured the prisoner. But he did apply more coercive pressure than he was authorized to use, including sleep deprivation and firing a gun next to his head. The prisoner broke, and the officer acted on the information acquired. The officer is facing court martial, near the end of his military career, for exceeding his authority in this matter. My mother is outraged, appalled, furious, that this officer (whose actions she believes to have been altogether admirable) might lose his pension.
I usually don't try to follow every detail of the war on terrorism, or the war on Iraq. So I found myself totally unfamiliar with this story, when my mother told it to me. My only referrent was that a very similar story seems to turn up in almost every debate about banning torture..."What if you need to get time-critical, life-saving, information from an enemy and the only way to get it is with torture? Nevermind that, I mean reliable information! But the *only* way to get the information is with torture. It would be so wrong to make people die for the sake of a rule." (And it all comes round again.) Anyhow, I'm wondering if my mother was telling me about something that really happened recently, or if she was referring to the classic hypothetical. Dressing up the classic with that human touch of the poor heroic officer approaching retirement and about to lose his pension would be a stroke of brilliance, if someone had made it up to target her soft spots. If it really happened, I'd appreciate pointers to news reports.
It's also pretty disturbing to realize that my mother is so gung-ho in favor of torture. This is harder for me to justify ^H^H^H accept that I'm related to than the fact that she has such blind faith in both Bush and Ashcroft. She used to be an intelligent, liberal, reasonably enlightened woman. I don't know what happened. It grieves me. I want to make a contribution to Amnesty International, in her memory.