During a war is it common to torture the prissioners of the war?

Question

certain wars i'd like feedback on would be tortures during the revolutionary war

Answer 1

I cant speak for to days war, or even WW2, but in Nam, when we had a prize, we would use sleep deprivation, psych ops, and mess with their heads, but the people I know who did this, never beat or used physical pain to get information.

Think of it, people who are being put thru pain, like electric shock, will admit to anything to stop the pain. Keep them awake with noise and light for 24, 36 or even 48 hours and see their defenses drop and their mouths run wild.

We know from reports that in the North, the NVA regularly beat and tortured our people just for fun. Germany, several accounts of torture and beatings, along with out and out murder of POW's.

Japanese, Bataan Death march.

No, the media wants to portray America as animals, we are far, far from that and we do treat people better than other countries. We may push the envelope, but we do not stoop to such things as other nations have done in the past.

Answer 2

It is against all regulations, and punishable by court marshal and/or charges. The US follows the Geneva Convention (and it seems we're the only ones besides the UK and Germany) but the reason for all the controversy nowadays is because of a major loophole that countries have been exploiting since day 1.

The only people that apply to the GC are military personnel that are legal combatants with a name, rank and serial number. Civilians, mercenaries and terrorists do not fall under this category, so they can be legally "tortured" as you put it.

Civilians have no affiliation with the military.
Mercenaries are military-sponsored and may have a rank, but not a legit serial number. Terrorists have no legal rank nor a serial number, so we could do whatever we darn well want with them.

There's a "interrogation" method we use, mainly within agencies that involves holding a cloth over the person's mouth and nose while pouring long dumps of water over them to create a shockingly realistic sensation of drowning, even though it is not potentially lethal. The libs, because they want us to lose the war, have been campaigning against the use of this method even though it has led us directly to a lot of our successes in Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries.

Other countries, especially Russia and China, have a history of torturing prisoners very badly, and Japan used to execute low-ranking prisoners they caught during WWII. The South Koreans in the Korean War were extremely harsh on the NKA and Chinese too. Terrorists very rarely don't kill their prisoners, provided they even take them in the first place.

So yes, it's common practice, but not by America or its closest allies (besides Israel- don't know) but in some cases, it's actually a legit practice, such as those two examples above.

In the Revolutionary War, the Geneva Convention hadn't been devised yet, but for the most part, torturing was out of the question for the British- it went straight to a firing squad or a noose. We... I'm not really sure what we did, because you don't hear about prisoners, so maybe we didn't take survivors?

Answer 3

The American military has always been held back, in my opinion, by the Geneva Conventions. Every enemy we've had since WWII has paid no heed to them whatsoever. The Japanese tortured POWs in WWII, the North Koreans and Chinese tortured POWs in Korea, and the North Vietnamese tortured POWs during Vietnam. We've always tried to fight war on a "civilized" system of rules that everyone else simply ignores. I go along with General William T. Sherman who believed "War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over."

He also said, "This war differs from other wars, in this particular. We are not fighting armies but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war." This applies as much today as it did during the Civil War.

Answer 4

Let’s put it this way, most and I mean “MOST” of the police in this country (USA) have evolved into a civilized deterrent against some pretty violent criminals. So does this mean we should start losing that freedom also and be tortured every time someone in a position of authority wants information from you? When we start acting like the bad guy’s we are the bad guy’s. Trying to rationalize it’s good for one person and not the other just won’t cut it. And hiding behind the idea that the liberals or Democrats don’t understand war is only showing your ability to try and say doing something morally wrong is right providing your way justifies your perceived results. Torturing is wrong no mater what the results. We in this country have made lots of mistakes and usually learn from them, some people just need a little longer to realize what’s right is right but what’s wrong is wrong.

Answer 5

initially, the jap soldier wasn't even attempting to interrogate the prisoner. He develop into merely torturing them for the relaxing of it. yet previous that what he develop into doing does not even evaluate to what human beings have finished to 3 (!) prisoners right now after 911. the jap "version" of waterboarding coated forcing a tube down the prisoner's throat, then pouring buckets of water down the tube. If the prisoner did no longer drown from that section, they then bumped off the tube and positioned a board around the prisoners abdomen. they might the two leap on the board or violently slam some thing on that board inflicting the tummy to burst. The prisoner might the two die from hemorrhage or peritonitis. Our version of waterboarding develop right into a walk interior the park while in comparison with that and it develop into basically finished to those 3 prisoners because of the fact the government develop into very in touch that we've been going to be attacked returned like 911.

Answer 6

Look at it this way :: if by aggressively interrogating (..what some pie-in-the-sky bleeding hearts call torture..) some islamic terrorist coughs up some critical information that would prevent some other islamic scum from blowing himself up and taking 20 or so innocents with him, or stops another islamic slime from planting an IED that would have taken out a bunch of American troops, which would you choose, to 'torture' or not..??????

Get it through your head...we're at war with crazed, fanatical things bent on forcing their religion on every man, woman and child on this planet. They think nothing of slaughtering 3,000 people in a single morning, or of hacking the heads off their own living prisoners with a butcher knife.

Any measures..repeat, ANY MEASURES..that will defeat these things is justifiable..!

Answer 7

If you could get information out of them, torture has been used in past wars. I don't necessarily support torture, but "aggressive questioning" is necessary. If our government did not use aggressive methods (water boarding included) they would not be doing their job.

In response to coragryph.....in terms of the Geneva Conventions, our soldiers are not protected by them. When have terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda ever abided by the Geneva Conventions?

Answer 8

War is torture, and yes it is common, despite what the Geneva convention rules are.

Answer 9

Not allowed under the Geneva Convention. Of course not all countries follow it.

Answer 10

Torture is illegal. Americans do not torture contrary to press reports.