[Intelforum] Intelligence & Interrogation Derived by the Lawful State

Fri Apr 21 20:47:18 EDT 2006

" The question then becomes, how are intelligence services of the
nation-state to be utilized in such a war?"

Indeed. Hopefully not to non-lethally torture me or someone I love because
of someone anonymously phoning in a convincingly fictitious slander of me
being an imminent threat, or because of a intel/bureaucratic snafu, or
simply because a future radical statist administration is emboldened by
well-meaning people like yourself who helped them lay their legal foundation
and my thoughts are someday no longer correct.

These are wartime options, you might rightly say.  But this war, according
to the administration and many of its proponents themselves, is probably
going to go on longer than I will live. So what is really being championed
here is a PERMANENT state of emergency and an accompanying permanent state
of legal torture.

I think the real question then becomes, how are intelligence services of a
nation-state to be utilized in such a war while ensuring the civil and human
rights of every innocent?

Guess what, that is something impossible to ensure.  Where does it end, Mr.
Farmer?
Where does this legalized torture framework end?  What are its limits?
Since the act is of necessity to take form under a shroud of secrecy in
times of emergency, where can such limits be defined or even enforced?

Greg Nicholson

Side note:

I was tired and frustrated with the Amnesty International re: rendition
thread, and this new one seems its qualitative and ideological fraternal to
my thinking, but seeing as you are intent on discussing this in here, I will
bite.  And after all, we are talking about intelligence agencies, at least
tangentially anyway, so I suppose "it counts".  Yes, there is some sarcasm
evident, but I truly mean no disrespect. You are cogent and erudite in your
posts, I simply don't agree with what seems to me the main thrust of your
premise.

On 4/20/06, IntelForum Mailing List <intelforum at lists101.his.com> wrote:
>
> From: "Christopher Farmer" <antiluminous at msn.com>
> To: intelforum at lists101.his.com
> Subject: RE: Intelligence & Interrogation Derived by the Lawful State
> Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2006 15:59:12 -0400
>
> Why would a modern nation-state consider using torture against combatants
> in lawful war to begin with? That appears to be the question that
> institutions of the state responsible for national security are tackling.
> Given the current circumstances in the War on Terrorism, I can understand
> why governments around the world are researching law regarding interrogation
> and torture.
>
> First, unlike wars that occur between flagged armies representing
> nation-states that declare war against other nation-states in the
> international community, terrorist organizations and the nation-states that
> sponsor them make no such declarations of war, they do not approach the
> targeted nation-state with flagged armies to do battle in a traditional way,
> and they concentrate their resources and war planning upon unsuspecting
> civilian populations that are clearly non-combatants.
>
> Second, terrorist organizations and the nation-state sponsors that train
> and equip those forces conduct war operations against civilians without any
> just restraint, whereas the professional flagged armies that are deployed to
> counter them are constantly monitoring their own self-restraint in this war.
>
> Third, the terrorist organizations and their shadowy sponsors are
> demanding the liquidation of the United States, the State of Israel, and the
> return of all irredentist lands in Europe in history to create a global
> caliphate in return for 'peace'.
>
> Fourth, large segments of the terrorist cells operating transnationally
> express mass-suicide delusions as proven through the almost daily use of
> Shahid suicide vests, the taping of the suicide bomber pre-attack videos
> proclaiming their loyalty to the afterlife and their stated mission, and the
> denial of the international community to agree to a very basic definition of
> terrorism which purposefully restricts the United States from interdicting
> terrorism.
>
> Fifth, it is conceivable given the evidence that the suicide pathology of
> fundamentalist identity Islam will not hesitate to use weapons of weapons of
> mass destruction against civilians and there exists a large pool of
> frustrated individuals demanding a global theocratic Caliphate to carry out
> such operations.
>
> Sixth, that terrorist planning and operations are increasingly being
> organized and commanded from mosques themselves, giving identity Islam a
> transnational footprint to conduct war in facilities that are otherwise
> protected from traditional warfare due to United Nations agreements
> protecting religious sites.
>
> Seventh, that democratic governments internationally are ill-equipped to
> combat terrorist operations weighed against them.
>
> Lastly, that the above facts may cause lawful governments to consider the
> use of non-lethal torture practices to proactively detect and prevent
> further mass-casualty terrorist attacks upon unsuspecting civilian
> populations.
>
> The question then becomes, how are intelligence services of the
> nation-state to be utilized in such a war? We know that in western
> democracies that individuals expressing suicidal pathology are removed from
> society to protect them and society at large from harm. As identity Islam
> recruits suicide bombers for suicide missions against civilian targets,
> those individuals preemptively create videos proclaiming their loyalty to
> the afterlife and to the objective of identity Islam to create a global
> theocracy based upon the Islamic theory of the Caliphate.
>
> Since such operations are being conducted without any just restraint
> against unarmed civilian non-combatants in many targeted nation-states,
> should western governments consider using non-traditional interrogation
> methods to detect and shore up security to prevent such attacks, or should
> large numbers of unsuspecting civilians be sacrificed in terrorist attacks?
> I say that because to not interrogate terrorist suspects shelters their
> operational planning and gives them unnatural rights to commit crimes
> against humanity.
>
> The civilian victims of terrorist attacks lose their human rights when
> they are killed by terrorists acting without any just restraint under the
> theory of lawful war. The non-combatant victims of terrorist attacks cannot
> approach government for a redress of grievances because acts of terrorism
> are no different than direct military operations conducted against courts
> themselves where the intent of the terrorist is that none shall survive the
> attack and casualties must be maximized. Law cannot hope to function in such
> an environment and this creates deteriorations in the nation-state, and yet
> the 'state' does not have the right to interdict such activity because it
> would violate human rights to do so?
>
> Mr. Erskine, one key concept that was derived from Pol Pot's dictatorship
> was his restructuring of Cambodia into a cult of personality so as to get
> all Cambodian citizens to confess to imaginary crimes. This was known as The
> Policy of One Mind. I am of the opinion that the United States is being
> asked to confess to such a crime, the imaginary crime of simply defending
> our country from terrorism. The most recent application of The Policy of One
> Mind was seen last week when Mr. Secretary Rumsfeld was asked to resign
> simply because he recognizes the threat that the United States faces and
> made the correct decision to reconstitute certain U.S. military forces
> into Units of Action.
>
> It's troubling when the state begins to consume its producers and those
> that recognize what must be done because there are confusions about obscure
> laws related to crimes against humanity and international image as the state
> engages in lawful war. Knowing the facts as they relate to the terrorist
> question, one of the methods of a nation-state's interdiction of terrorism
> must be the pure and lawful utilization of direct and forceful applications
> of interrogation. I draw that conclusion because the nation-state fails if
> it cannot guarantee its citizens a state construct under the nation-state's
> written or unwritten constitution. Terrorists and terrorist organizations
> and every entity associated with those groups are foreign to civilization,
> they seek to destroy the nation-state and kill civilian non-combatants in
> spectacular mass-casualty attacks where civilians are unsuspecting and
> defenseless. These truths require direct applications of force in
> interdiction, and those performing that difficult task should have the full
> blessings of the people.
>
> "Wisdom after the event being cheaply bought, popular opinion is often too
> severe on soldierly conservatism. For it is a military leader's business to
> take only calculated risks, and nations would perish if every inventor's
> dream were welcomed in an uncritical spirit."
>
> -- Lynn Montross, War Through the Ages
>  Christopher Farmer
>
> _______________________________________________
> IntelForum mailing list
> IntelForum at lists101.his.com
> http://lists101.his.com/mailman/listinfo/intelforum
> -
>
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists101.his.com/pipermail/intelforum/attachments/20060421/f076f452/attachment.html 