Guantanamo Bay

Guantanamo Bay is a basically a place where the Americans can play out their fantasies of revenge for the 11.09.2001 attacks. By humiliating a few hundred men they think they are humiliating all the muslims. That is the essence of what is going on.

There has not come out any important information from Guantanamo, as almost all of the prisoners are either footsoldiers ignorant of any plans their superiors have, or they are innocent. In the few cases where there has been in what could be called as local militant operatives impronised in Guantanamo, the Americans seem not to have found them out.

Torture and humiliation don´t work. The reason why torture was abandoned in judicial procedures had far more to do with the fact that it didn´t work than any humane reason. Already in the 16th century surviving judicial records from Europe torture is losing ground. Not because officials of the time would have been more humane than their predecessors, but because it didn´t work in something like 90% of the cases where it was used and where the result is known. The movement to abolish the use of torture in judicial procedures came only later, in most countries during the 18th century.

Of course, eventually you can torture most people to confess anything you want them to confess. But getting useful information out of them is totally another matter. And this the modern propagandists of torture don´t seem to understand. Somehow, they believe that torturing people will force them to tell the truth. In reality, it makes them to tell stories they think the torturer will believe and which will then bring an end to the torture they are enduring.
The innocents have no hidden truths to tell.