An article on Guantanimo

[conuly]

One detainee bluntly informed his panel that he lies to interrogators and that others do as well.

"Why do you feel you have the right to lie to the interrogators?" a surprised panel member asked the detainee, Abdennour Sameur, an Algerian who was a resident of Britain.

Answer? Lying gets him better treatment, in the form of necessary medicine.

Well, duh.

Comments

[brownkitty.livejournal.com]

"Why do you feel you have the right to lie to the interrogators?"

::boggles:: I'm not going to read the article yet, I'm just going to sit here and wait for my head to quit spinning. That a supposedly rational adult would ask a question like that...

[cumaeansibyl.livejournal.com]

I'm sort of baffled by the concept of "the right to lie." I mean, people who've committed mundane crimes lie about it all the time -- if you go into a prison and ask the inmates whether they're guilty, a whole lot of them will say "no" whether they are or not. Do they have the "right" to do that? That's sort of a moot question, because it's impossible to prevent someone from lying if he/she really, really wants to. It's like saying "you have a right to your opinion." Yes, that's one way of putting it, but the reality is that you can't keep someone from having an opinion no matter how much you don't like it.

You might as well ask why we feel we have the right to expect full and enthusiastic cooperation from people who (terrorists or not) mostly don't have any reason to like us, and quite a few reasons to hate us for the treatment we've subjected them to.

[erinlin.livejournal.com]

Oh my God, how stupid are these people? Of course they're going to lie!

See, this is why torture is such an ineffective technique. Sure, you can get a person to "crack" and start talking to you- but there is no way to make him tell you the truth.

[conuly]

That's why I used that quote. The rest of it ain't much better.

[conuly]

Exactly.

[brownkitty.livejournal.com]

"Why do you feel you have the right to lie to the interrogators?"

::boggles:: I'm not going to read the article yet, I'm just going to sit here and wait for my head to quit spinning. That a supposedly rational adult would ask a question like that...

[cumaeansibyl.livejournal.com]

I'm sort of baffled by the concept of "the right to lie." I mean, people who've committed mundane crimes lie about it all the time -- if you go into a prison and ask the inmates whether they're guilty, a whole lot of them will say "no" whether they are or not. Do they have the "right" to do that? That's sort of a moot question, because it's impossible to prevent someone from lying if he/she really, really wants to. It's like saying "you have a right to your opinion." Yes, that's one way of putting it, but the reality is that you can't keep someone from having an opinion no matter how much you don't like it.

You might as well ask why we feel we have the right to expect full and enthusiastic cooperation from people who (terrorists or not) mostly don't have any reason to like us, and quite a few reasons to hate us for the treatment we've subjected them to.

[erinlin.livejournal.com]

Oh my God, how stupid are these people? Of course they're going to lie!

See, this is why torture is such an ineffective technique. Sure, you can get a person to "crack" and start talking to you- but there is no way to make him tell you the truth.

[conuly]

That's why I used that quote. The rest of it ain't much better.

[conuly]

Exactly.