Torture has been in the news a lot lately. Well, less so now that Bush & Cheney are no longer in the oval office, but certainly what I would consider a great deal. What defines torture, who has given torture the nod and who just turns the other cheek while rendering a prisoner somewhere that will surely result in torture? People are up in arms about whether or not their government would ever contemplate (let alone carry out) such a heinous act as torture and when can they justify letting some other country do their dirty work in order to keep their hands clean? What about those tortured who were later cleared of all charges or never even charged at all? “Oops! Sorry about that. Don’t worry though, the shaking and nightmares will stop eventually.” The big question; When is torture appropriate?
Guess what gang, the answer is never. Ever heard of a little thing called the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service has stated that they will act on tips that were a result of torture because- and I quote-
“It happens rarely in the exchange of information that we have.”
“The recipient of that information doesn’t know how that information was obtained”
-CSIS adviser Geoffrey O’Brian
Correct me if I’m wrong here, but doesn’t that just sound like a slightly more “hands off” and politically correct version of rendition?
