Posted on Wednesday 30 November 2005
As I was reading this article about the legal aspects of US interrogation tactics (the whole article is worth reading), I was struck by this sentence:
The basic Army doctrine on interrogations is the Golden Rule: Before using a tactic, interrogators should ask themselves whether they think it would be permitted if used by an enemy against American prisoners of war.
This made me think, what if the US captured an associate of some Timothy McVeigh-like terrorist that claimed they were doing the will of God? Would our society be OK with allegations of desecrating a Bible or other Christian symbols in order to obtain “ticking timebomb” intel (I know that reports of Koran desecration are inconclusive, but there were plenty of people who thought it was fine when first reported)? I think that plenty of Christian leaders would be much more vocal speaking out against reports of Holy Books being flushed down the toilet if it was a KJV instead of a Koran, regardless of what intel was being obtained.
A separate thought I had on torture is: What happens when the meta-intelligence that leads to the interrogation is wrong? It is always assumed in the “ticking timebomb” scenario that the bomb exists with 100% certainty…what if we’re only 10% certain a bomb exists (there’s always a non-zero probability that a bomb is currently ticking in any given city)? What if the lead is obtained by torture that is potentially unreliable…couldn’t the error easily propagate to multiple torture sessions? Hypothetically, say that Iraqis were “interrogated” US-style to divulge locations of WMDs in Iraq? Would this be justified even though the intelligence that indicated the existence of WMDs has since weakened greatly?
Tags: interrogation, News and Politics, torture
One thing I’d point out is that Muslims regard the Koran pretty differently from how Christians view the Bible. My understanding is that Christians consider the Bible to be like a copy of God’s words – not that the book itself is necessarily holy, but that the concepts conveyed within are holy. I believe that the Koran is regarded as actually being holy. Like the book itself that you might hold in your hand. This is also why they do not consider a translation to be the real thing (you have to learn Arabic to really read the Koran – anything else is just reading “about” the Koran). So, I might be annoyed if someone throws a Bible on the ground, but a devout Muslim will be horrified if someone throws a Koran on the ground.
(All of this without having been a Muslim, but having looked into such issues)
Interesting…I was not aware of all this.
I would consider the descration of a Bible in order to retrieve information out of an American soldier to be the equivilent of the enemy calling him “Mr. Poopypants” and making “your mama” jokes. Pretty ineffective, and speaks more about the mentality of the interrogator than anything. As you stated, the Koran thing was overblown in the media, much to the detriment of our soldiers who’s lives are at stake. The Muslim’s who were outraged by the claims were likely just looking for more ammo to throw at us anyways and were handed that by the MSM. I think most Christian Americans would prefer the desecration of a Bible over the harming of our soldiers for the reasons DC stated.
You bring up an interesting point about interogating to gather information which simply doesn’t exist. I suppose in that condition I trust that the American military’s interrogators are well trained enough to know when information is there and when it is not. That trust may be ill placed, but I still prefer to err on the side of the safety of the American public rather than the comfort of a suspected (or more likely known) terrorist.