Detainment & Torture

After 9/11, many citizens, who had long believed in the value of civil rights questioned whether these rights could not be suspended in order to protect our country. This debate turned into a national scandal when reports of prisoner torture and dubious detainment of "enemy combatants" became common. Are the techniques practiced by military interrogators, many of which violate either the Geneva Conventions and American law, creating a new generation of terrorists or protecting our country from another attack?

Symposium on Terror in the Balance

ERIC POSNER - Defending their book Terror in the Balance, Eric A. Posner and Adrian Vermeule maintain that freedoms are not absolute and that restriction of civil liberties by the executive branch in states of emergency is justifiable. The events of 9/11, they argue, constituted an emergency that altered the Constitution indefinitely, offering much broader powers to the executive until the threat of terrorism is drastically reduced. In their opinion, the benefits of a strong executive in a time of crisis outweigh the potential for abuse of these powers. ...

Law and Ethics for Non-Persons in U.S. Gulag

INVICTUS - Valtin laments the DC Court of Appeals’ rejection of a suit filed by three British subjects formerly detained at Guantanamo. He balks at the ruling, which effectively sanctions the use of torture at Guantanamo’s Camp Delta and declares that Guantanamo detainees are not legally persons. He also takes the American Psychological Association to task for cooperating with interrogators at Guantanamo, arguing that their participation in such ethically questionable activities undermines their professional integrity. ...

Culture & Torture

JUSTWATCH - The blog JustWatch discusses the cultural and artistic manifestations of America's ongoing moral dilemma about torture. The post describes the function of art in times of crisis, and points to examples such as the TV show 24 and the new movie, Taxi to the Dark Side. The post concludes by discussing the consequences of the artistic representations of torture, both good and bad. ...

1.26.08

08:15 PM -

I used to believe in Torture

endless - I used to think that it could be used responsibly. Of course you are going to use torture if it can help save a thousand lives. What kind of reason is there against that? And of course our government will only use it responsibly. Ahhh how naiive I was.

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