It's being reported that the recent terror plot by the islamic facists to plow-up American bound flights in mid-air were foiled based on information obtained by "ways entirely unacceptable here." Read torture saved lives. From what I've read it seems that the the terror attacks were imminent, so in this case torture saved lives.
I'm against torture on principal, but I can't say I'm against it in practice if it's the only thing standing in the way of saving a life, or in this case, thousands of lives.
Posted by Amanecer (Member # 4068) on :
That is very interesting and I'm not sure what I think about it right now. I am certain that principles we don't put into practice are meaningless.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
Why is it as soon as somebody is shown to have information about the vile plans of evil man they immedietly scream that they were tortured and therefore they deserve our sympathy?
I am unsure whether Pakistan actually used torture as a means to extract this information, they may have, but they were not the only ones with information. According to the police in Britain a muslim man in the community of the terrorists tipped off the police about a group of men conducting shady activities. This information combined with what they got from Pakistan gave the Bobbies the opportunity to swoop down and make arrests en mass.
Suspicion of torture proves nothing, but we would do well to make an enquiry as to how Pakistan extracted that information. Most critics of torture make the arguement that information extracted from torture is usually not good, i.e, the person confessed to get the torturer to stop not because he/she was guilty. In this case Pakistan did something to get crucial information that saved lives.
I am witholding judgement until I am sure about the details. As much as I detest torture, I only slightly detest less the vermin that had this information and had to be coerced into communicating it.
Posted by Tatiana (Member # 6776) on :
What are the terrorists doing but using the evil done by some as a justification for maiming and killing others? Do you think they tell themselves "let's kill some innocent people today"? Surely they say instead "they are not innocent, they are complicit in evil x, y, z". That's exactly what we are doing when we justify torture.
Is this a struggle of evil against evil to see which evil is more powerful? If so, then it doesn't matter if we win, we still will perish.
If we don't stand for something, for some principles of fairness, decency, and freedom, then why even fight? So one gang of thugs can win over another gang? I have no interest in furthering that end.
Torturers don't torture just the guilty. They torture whomever they suspect of being against them (and they tend to define "them" pretty narrowly). One day the person they suspect might become you. We do NOT want to sanction torture, or encourage torturers in our midst. Period. To do so would be a bad, bad mistake.
Posted by human_2.0 (Member # 6006) on :
Torture doesn't work. Real interrogators know that.
Posted by quidscribis (Member # 5124) on :
I say let Jack at 'em. He knows how to get the job done. Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote:I'm against torture on principle, but I can't say I'm against it in practice if it's the only thing standing in the way of saving a life, or in this case, thousands of lives.
I think this means that you aren't against torture on principle. Or, you are cheap with your principles. Or, and this is more likely, your principles aren't what you think they are.
Posted by Troubadour (Member # 83) on :
According to this source, the British police have been aware of the plot and its participants for quite some time, but succumbed to pressure from the US to sweep down and inconvenience travellers uneccessarily.
Posted by Juxtapose (Member # 8837) on :
In what way was the inconvenience unnecessary?
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
It's being reported that the recent terror plot by the islamic facists to plow-up American bound flights in mid-air were foiled based on information obtained by "ways entirely unacceptable here." Read torture saved lives. From what I've read it seems that the the terror attacks were imminent, so in this case torture saved lives.
I'm against torture on principal, but I can't say I'm against it in practice if it's the only thing standing in the way of saving a life, or in this case, thousands of lives.
If you're against torture in principle, then you are against it in practice. If you are against something you are against it. Yes, torture is VERY effective, at getting information out of a person who has it, however that does not a sound policy make. Setting aside the obvious moral problem, torture is a violation of the Geneva convention, an agreement which has saved the lives of countless people in the past. If we throw that away, we throw more lives away, and that's only the most obvious consequence.
Torture (hello?)= wrong. There is something that we should keep in mind at ALL times.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
I find it frightening that people see this as justification for torture. Have they considered a clear alternative interpretation.
There is currently massive media hype and airport security crack downs because of a "terrorist plot". What evidence is there that such a plot really existed. No bombs have been found. There were no airplane tickets purchased. Most of the arrested individuals didn't even have passports. Which means that the plot wasn't exactly emminant since it takes a couple months to get a passport processed though the inefficient UK bureaucracy.
So now its revealed this entire thing is based on information obtained in Pakistan from a very questionable witness who was being tortured and some vague things said in internet chat rooms?
Am I the only one whose noticed that these "terror alerts" always happen strategically timed around upcoming elections.
Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
My big problem is that in the long run we're going to find out that Pakistan is as bad an ally as Saddam Hussein. We go for these things out of expediency and then later find ourselves wondering how this little speck of a country got so much military equipment to use against us...
It's perpetuating a policy that has been demonstrated time and again to be flawed.
Posted by Stasia (Member # 9122) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tatiana: Is this a struggle of evil against evil to see which evil is more powerful? If so, then it doesn't matter if we win, we still will perish.
If we don't stand for something, for some principles of fairness, decency, and freedom, then why even fight? So one gang of thugs can win over another gang? I have no interest in furthering that end.
Tatiana, I thought that was a good way of putting it. I think this is what makes me so uneasy with the idea that the good guys would resort to torture to catch the bad guys. We're not really the good guys if we start to act like the bad guys.
I can't help but wonder how many innocent people were tortured until they found one who knew something. Eventually, you'd stumble across somebody who knew something if you tortured enough people.
Posted by Mig (Member # 9284) on :
quote:Originally posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong:
quote:I'm against torture on principle, but I can't say I'm against it in practice if it's the only thing standing in the way of saving a life, or in this case, thousands of lives.
I think this means that you aren't against torture on principle. Or, you are cheap with your principles. Or, and this is more likely, your principles aren't what you think they are.
I understand that this is a sticky moral situation, but I don't want the people charged with protecting my life hamstrung by some ivory tower ethics debate about whether or not to sacrifice principals to save lives. Some of us are always cautioning against imposing our morality or principals on others, I especially don't want to do that at the risk of not avoiding mass murder. Sure torture doesn't always produce reliable results, but considering the stakes, sometimes it may be worth the risk. Like BlackBlade so eliquently stated earlier in this post, to paraphrase: As much as I detest torture, I detest more the vermin that had this information and had to be coerced into communicating it.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:I don't want the people charged with protecting my life hamstrung by some ivory tower ethics debate about whether or not to sacrifice principals to save lives.
I do. My life is not worth my principles; my country is not worth its principles.
quote:As much as I detest torture, I detest more the vermin that had this information and had to be coerced into communicating it.
I submit that this means you don't actually detest torture. You just detest torturing good people.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
quote:Originally posted by human_2.0: Torture doesn't work. Real interrogators know that.
I really wonder how they can know this.
Have they actually done studies? If so, how were they able to do so without torturing people? Is it based on anecdotal evidence from actual torturers? Or is is more the case that people really want this to be true, so they claim that it is?
This isn't a snark -- I really do wonder these things.
Posted by Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy (Member # 9384) on :
quote:Am I the only one whose noticed that these "terror alerts" always happen strategically timed around upcoming elections.
Or previous elections. This "terror plot" story broke the day after Lieberman lost his primary.
Posted by Mig (Member # 9284) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mig: I don't want the people charged with protecting my life hamstrung by some ivory tower ethics debate about whether or not to sacrifice principals to save lives.
Posted byTomDavidson:
quote:I do. My life is not worth my principles; my country is not worth its principles.
I surely hope that the people charged with protecting my life and your's are not so self centered that they think the sanctitiy of their principals is more important than someone else's life, including yours and mine.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
Tom: For some reason you misquoted me, I submit that I said, "As much as I detest torture, I only slightly detest less the vermin that had this information and had to be coerced into communicating it."
You will find there is no edit to my original post.
Also people seem to be complaining about an opposition that is not as formidable as they are saying. Only one person reservedly said they were for torture in order to save lives.
I myself for example said I would like to see proof of torture before I pass judgement. In this case Pakistan DID glean useful information from the men they arrested, either they just happen to get lucky and torture the right guy, (which is not good) or they tried something else.
Would people be opposed to say propegating the PERCEPTION of torture? As in the person who is being interogated is made to actually believe that he will be tortured if he resists?
Edit: Mig: Would you say there are NO principles worth more than one person's life?
quote:Am I the only one whose noticed that these "terror alerts" always happen strategically timed around upcoming elections.
Many MANY times terrorist acts are planned around upcoming political events, in order to cause people to lose confidence in their leaders, and to throw things into trumoil.
I have another question, is there a word that is the opposite of confidence, but is just a prefix attached to "fidence?" like perhaps "nonfidence" or "afidence?"
edited for spelling/grammar
[ August 16, 2006, 12:20 PM: Message edited by: BlackBlade ]
Posted by docmagik (Member # 1131) on :
quote:
quote:As much as I detest torture, I detest more the vermin that had this information and had to be coerced into communicating it.
I submit that this means you don't actually detest torture. You just detest torturing good people.
To borrow an analogy from another thread, let's say this had gone like this:
Idea: As much as I detest throwing up, I detest more the idea of retaining poison in my stomach that will kill me.
Retort: I submit that this means you don't actually detest throwing up. You just detest throwing up good food.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Originally posted by docmagik:
quote:
quote:As much as I detest torture, I detest more the vermin that had this information and had to be coerced into communicating it.
I submit that this means you don't actually detest torture. You just detest torturing good people.
To borrow an analogy from another thread, let's say this had gone like this:
Idea: As much as I detest throwing up, I detest more the idea of retaining poison in my stomach that will kill me.
Retort: I submit that this means you don't actually detest throwing up. You just detest throwing up good food.
There is not much point commenting on a comment about a sentence that was not actually said.
Posted by Dan_raven (Member # 3383) on :
At first this sound reasonable.
We torture one person and gain the info to save an unknown number. Lets guess high, 3,000 lives were saved.
And all we did was allow the Pakistani police to inflict pain on one terrorist.
But the Pakistani police did not just torture one person. They torture many people, most of whom are not terrorists, not guilty, or do not have information that will save 3000 lives.
So how many people would they have to torture before this reasonable idea begins to sound less reasonable? 100? 1000? 10,000? If we torture 6000 people over 3 years so 3000 people can live is that still reasonable?
I think many here are willing to believe its reasonable because they personally are less likely to be a victim of a Pakistani torturer than a victim of a terrorist.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Originally posted by human_2.0: Torture doesn't work. Real interrogators know that.
If the facts of this case are as this thread seems to be assuming (and I'd like to point out that we don't know there's been any real torture involved) then it seems to me that your assertion is directly contradicted by experimental evidence. To wit, torture did work, in this case.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_raven: At first this sound reasonable.
We torture one person and gain the info to save an unknown number. Lets guess high, 3,000 lives were saved.
And all we did was allow the Pakistani police to inflict pain on one terrorist.
But the Pakistani police did not just torture one person. They torture many people, most of whom are not terrorists, not guilty, or do not have information that will save 3000 lives.
So how many people would they have to torture before this reasonable idea begins to sound less reasonable? 100? 1000? 10,000? If we torture 6000 people over 3 years so 3000 people can live is that still reasonable?
I think many here are willing to believe its reasonable because they personally are less likely to be a victim of a Pakistani torturer than a victim of a terrorist.
Dan: If by some wierd circumstance you had to be tortured as a means to extract information (your friend is a terrorist who could not stand to see you take the rap for his actions) that would save the lives of say 3000 civilians. Would you submit to the torture?
Posted by human_2.0 (Member # 6006) on :
quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head:
quote:Originally posted by human_2.0: Torture doesn't work. Real interrogators know that.
I really wonder how they can know this.
Have they actually done studies? If so, how were they able to do so without torturing people? Is it based on anecdotal evidence from actual torturers? Or is is more the case that people really want this to be true, so they claim that it is?
This isn't a snark -- I really do wonder these things.
Look at how they use to train US soilders. I'm sure they have ample information.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
quote:I'm sure they have ample information.
The fact that U.S. soldiers are trained to resist torture doesn't mean that torture is never effective. In fact, it would seem to indicate that, at least in some situations, it is effect, or why would it need to be resisted?
Posted by human_2.0 (Member # 6006) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men:
quote:Originally posted by human_2.0: Torture doesn't work. Real interrogators know that.
If the facts of this case are as this thread seems to be assuming (and I'd like to point out that we don't know there's been any real torture involved) then it seems to me that your assertion is directly contradicted by experimental evidence. To wit, torture did work, in this case.
I wouldn't be surprised if information was obtained by torture that the whole thing turns out to be an over reaction. That is one of the weaknesses of torture: very inaccurate information.
Posted by human_2.0 (Member # 6006) on :
quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head:
quote:I'm sure they have ample information.
The fact that U.S. soldiers are trained to resist torture doesn't mean that torture is never effective. In fact, it would seem to indicate that, at least in some situations, it is effect, or why would it need to be resisted?
Good point. I don't know either way though. I just got my info from a little reading when the whole torture thing really hit the news.
Posted by Mig (Member # 9284) on :
BlackBlade aske:
quote:Mig: Would you say there are NO principles worth more than one person's life?
I don't know the answer to that question. But I don't think that the principle that torture is wrong is one of them. Sometimes principles conflict. For example, on principle I'm think wars and killing people is bad, and western liberties are good. But, despite the first principle I support going to war to defend western liberties, be it against the nazis, the communists, the serb under Slobodan Milosevich, and, someday soon, Iran. Another example: On principle I'm against violence, but I think I'd use violence to defend myself or my loved ones.
I think that torture is wrong but I also think that not doing everything you can to save a life is also wrong, especially if you can save a life (or lives) by not taking a life. Both, I think are valid principles. However, sometimes a country or person just has to decide which principle is best for its survival.
Which raises the question: Will Western Values let us win the war against the islamic Facists? You can't say that we must lead by example because our example hasn't done much to disuade them from wanting to kill us. In fact, I think they view some of our values as a weakness to exploit.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
quote:That is one of the weaknesses of torture: very inaccurate information.
I keep hearing people say things like this as though of course they are true, but so far I haven't seen anything to convince me that they actually are.
Again, I'm not saying that I think they are false -- I'm saying that I haven't seen any convincing evidence. Or, for that, any evidence beyond people having opinions.
Posted by Dan_raven (Member # 3383) on :
Would I endure pain so that others could live? Yes.
Would I inflict pain so that others could live? Pause. Yes.
Would I inflict pain on the hopes that maybe by doing that, others might possibly live? No.
The argurment that 3000 Civilian lives are worth 10,000 terrorists being tortured is interesting, but not the case here. Pakistan police do not just torture the guilty. Far more innocent people have found their way into the political torture dungeons in Pakistan than would have been killed during a 10 Plane mass bombing.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
quote:Would I inflict pain so that others could live? Pause. Yes.
Would I inflict pain on the hopes that maybe by doing that, others might possibly live? No.
So for you, torture is OK if you have magical precognition, but not otherwise?
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
mr_porteiro_head: be fair, you can't assume Dan would not be SURE before agreeing to inflict pain on others. Judge the validity of what constitutes, "SURE" somewhere else.
Mig: In the US if a child is sick and could die but the parents refuse medical assistance because they believe "God will heal the child if it is his will" the hospital has the right to seize the child and treat him/her.
So I guess in that circumstance a principle is worth less then the right to live.
How about this Mig, if a doctor has 3 patient wheeled into the ER, one needs a liver, one needs a kidney, and one needs a heart. The 3 people need these organs as fast as possible or they will all die, the doctor does not have the organs and sees a drunk street drifter walk into the hospital.
Would it be more ethical for the doctor to A: Conceded defeat and let all 3 patients die, or B: make the call that hopefully nobody will miss the drunk street drifter (a pretty likely situation) and to take his organs so as to save more lives?
Posted by Dan_raven (Member # 3383) on :
Yes.
If I know that the inflicting of disabling pain would stop further pain, then fine.
If I don't know, but am only guessing, then I am most likely increasing pain in the world. I become the problem.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
quote:If I don't know, but am only guessing, then I am most likely increasing pain in the world. I become the problem.
This is only true if, when you guess, you usually guess wrong.
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
quote: That is one of the weaknesses of torture: very inaccurate information.
Torture is effective. That's why it's used.
Yes, people will admit ot anything, but every account that I've read of people who do it for a living indicated that that's not what the torture was for. That is, the purpose of the torture was accurate information. So, what they did was that they would write things down as the torture progressed and ask questions different ways to see if they get the same response. They would further cross-check this information against other information they had that they knew was true.
Am I advocating torture? No, not at all.
Does what I say lend weight to some who advocate for torture? Sure.
However, the argument against torture shouldn't be that it usually isn't effective in getting information when used properly so much as that you're opening the door to a practice that can be abused very easilly. It's easy, I think, to go from torture is right to stop mass casualties, to torture is right to save one person, to just plain, ol' 'criminals' have a right to be tortured because it's what they deserve.
Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
Blackblade, Tom and docmagick didn't misquote you, they quoted Mig's paraphrase of your sentence.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Tom: For some reason you misquoted me, I submit that I said, "As much as I detest torture, I only slightly detest less the vermin that had this information and had to be coerced into communicating it."
I wasn't quoting you at all, BB. I was quoting Mig, who was responding to you.
---------
quote:On principle I'm against violence, but I think I'd use violence to defend myself or my loved ones.
You know, Mig, I don't think "on principle" is really what you mean. If it is what you mean, you're not a very principled person.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Originally posted by Morbo: Blackblade, Tom and docmagick didn't misquote you, they quoted Mig's paraphrase of your sentence.
oh I did not see that.
Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
quote:Originally posted by Storm Saxon: However, the argument against torture shouldn't be that it usually isn't effective in getting information when used properly so much as that you're opening the door to a practice that can be abused very easilly. It's easy, I think, to go from torture is right to stop mass casualties, to torture is right to save one person, to just plain, ol' 'criminals' have a right to be tortured because it's what they deserve.
This is the key reason to abhore torture. Ticking bomb scenarios can be compelling and hard to argue against, but condoning torture inevitably leads to a steep and slippery slope. Also, it's not just criminals who would be tortured, but also accused criminals who are innocent.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Originally posted by Morbo:
quote:Originally posted by Storm Saxon: However, the argument against torture shouldn't be that it usually isn't effective in getting information when used properly so much as that you're opening the door to a practice that can be abused very easilly. It's easy, I think, to go from torture is right to stop mass casualties, to torture is right to save one person, to just plain, ol' 'criminals' have a right to be tortured because it's what they deserve.
This is the key reason to abhore torture. Ticking bomb scenarios can be compelling and hard to argue against, but condoning torture inevitably leads to a steep and slippery slope. Also, it's not just criminals who would be tortured, but also accused criminals who are innocent.
I'd be wary about saying that something is categorically wrong. We make allowances for dishonesty, theft, and even murder. Should torture be beyond the bounds of justification?
Posted by Mig (Member # 9284) on :
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Mig: In the US if a child is sick and could die but the parents refuse medical assistance because they believe "God will heal the child if it is his will" the hospital has the right to seize the child and treat him/her.
So I guess in that circumstance a principle is worth less then the right to live.
How about this Mig, if a doctor has 3 patient wheeled into the ER, one needs a liver, one needs a kidney, and one needs a heart. The 3 people need these organs as fast as possible or they will all die, the doctor does not have the organs and sees a drunk street drifter walk into the hospital.
Would it be more ethical for the doctor to A: Conceded defeat and let all 3 patients die, or B: make the call that hopefully nobody will miss the drunk street drifter (a pretty likely situation) and to take his organs so as to save more lives?
You need to clarify this scenario. It's not clear to me what principles you think are in conflict. (BTW, I hate hypotheticals.)
I don't think that a drunk street drifter's life is of less value than anyone else's life. Or that one sick person's life is more valuable than that of another. There's not much of a moral delemma in the idea of killing one innocent person to save the lives of three people with whom he shares no factual relation. If the drunk were a terrorist whose explosive device led to the condition of the three people in need of the transplant, then I can see a moral issue on whether to kill the terrorsit to save the lives of his victims.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:In the US if a child is sick and could die but the parents refuse medical assistance because they believe "God will heal the child if it is his will" the hospital has the right to seize the child and treat him/her.
Can you cite this? I know there are cases where it's happened, but can you cite that this is a general principle, especially the part about the hospital seizing the child?
quote:Forty-four states have had religious exemption laws in force since the mid-1970's. (In 1990 South Dakota became the first state to repeal its religious exemptions from health care requirements for sick children.)
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dagonee:
quote:In the US if a child is sick and could die but the parents refuse medical assistance because they believe "God will heal the child if it is his will" the hospital has the right to seize the child and treat him/her.
Can you cite this? I know there are cases where it's happened, but can you cite that this is a general principle, especially the part about the hospital seizing the child?
Ill get on it, I had it in my criminal justice book and I just threw it away not 2 days ago Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
In 1974, the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare first required states to have clauses in their child abuse and neglect legislation that permits exemptions on religious grounds. If a state refused, they would not receive federal child abuse protection grants. By 1999, 40 (one source says 41) states had complied. Parents who choose prayer in place of medical care for a sick or injured child cannot be prosecuted in those jurisdictions. This federal regulation no longer exists, but most the state laws remain on the books. In only 4 states have these laws been overturned by the courts on constitutional grounds: HI, MA, MD & SD as the other two.
By 2002, 38 states have laws that permit parents to reject medical treatment for their children in favor of faith healing. However, in most of those states, the law specifies that if a child's condition is life-threatening, then a physician must be consulted. -----
I was mistaken that its a general rule in the US: In 1993, Douglass Lundman sued his ex-wife and various Christian Science groups due over the death of his 11 year old son in 1989. He had juvenile diabetes - a potentially fatal disorder which is routinely treated with insulin, diet and exercise. While under the care of his Christian Science mother, he had fallen into a diabetic coma and died. The jury found that the mother, Kathleen McKown, her new husband, the Christian Science practitioner, the Christian Science nursing home that provided his nurse, the local representative of the Committee on Publication and the Church itself shared responsibility for the death. Lundman was awarded compensatory damages of over 5 million dollars; the Church was assessed an additional 9 million in punitive damages. The former were reduced to 1.5 million on appeal, but the church's punitive damages were not lowered. The case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. By refusing to review the case, the court let the judgment stand. Stephen Carter criticized this decision of the Supreme Court in the New York Times. He feels that religious freedom is jeopardized when faith groups are punished for non-mainstream beliefs. "...the Justices have left the door open to all sorts of mischief."
----
I am fairly confident of cases existing where the hospital ceized the child, but I need to look deeper, Ill post later.
Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
My uncle is a judge in Florida, and I know he has ordered medical care for children against the wishes of religious parents. He said cases like that were some of the most emotionally wrenching he decided. I don't know any details, like if the kids were "seized."
Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: I'd be wary about saying that something is categorically wrong. We make allowances for dishonesty, theft, and even murder. Should torture be beyond the bounds of justification?
If you go down that road, couldn't you rationalize terrorism? There has to be a line somewhere. Is the line at murder, torture, terrorism? Mass murder? Genocide?
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
I'm aware of various prosecutions for failure to obtain medical care and of judges ordering medical care for children. It's the idea that hospitals can seize children I'm particularly interested in.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
Dag: This is the best instance I could find
PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - A Philadelphia couple whose son nearly died of cancer because they chose to treat his condition with faith healing instead of medicine were sentenced Thursday to 14 months probation. Daniel and Anne Foster will not get custody of their 3-year-old son, Patrick, who has been living with his paternal aunt and uncle since last year. A judge also ordered the pair to put two other children into the care of a licensed pediatrician. The couple, members of the Faith Tabernacle Congregation church, were convicted in May of child endangerment and criminal conspiracy after refusing to get life-saving medical care for their son in 1997 because of their religious beliefs. Prosecutors said the boy, then 2, was only hours from death when social workers took him to a hospital. See http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2556249027-f58
The link doesnt work but: http://www.rickross.com/reference/foc/foc3.html more or less outlines what happened. I am trying to find an official news link to the story but Reuters sucks at letting me search their archives
edit: Perhaps I am using "sieze" in the wrong way. I do not think the hospital staff are actually dispatched to take custody of the child from the parents, I imagine the police can do that just fine.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
quote:Originally posted by Morbo:
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: I'd be wary about saying that something is categorically wrong. We make allowances for dishonesty, theft, and even murder. Should torture be beyond the bounds of justification?
If you go down that road, couldn't you rationalize terrorism? There has to be a line somewhere. Is the line at murder, torture, terrorism? Mass murder? Genocide?
Well, it depends on what which you think is worse -- killing somone or torturing them. If you think torture is worse, then it is an upgrade, and perhaps you could continue rationalize worse things, like genocide, in the same way.
If you believe that killing them is worse, then it's a downgrade from state-sanctioned killing to state-sanctioned torture, and the same arguments just can't work for genocide.
Posted by JLM (Member # 7800) on :
Oh, good grief! One aspect of the investigation that prooved highly effective, that is not acceptable here in the US is how they broke into the suspects homes where they were out, snooped around and then left things as they were. Big deal.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
My sarcasto-meter is deficient, JLM. I can't tell if you're saying that it is OK for police to break into a suspect's homes without a warrant or if it's not OK.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote:And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
The funny thing about the Declaration of Independence is that it could easily read as a suicide pact. I guess the question is whether our national resolve is as strong in revulsion to torture as it is regarding taxes.
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
quote: but also accused criminals who are innocent.
*nod* I forgot to acknowledge Dan_Raven's point that quite often, in getting to the one person with information, a lot of innocent people are tortured who know nothing. That's a definite drawback, too.
Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_raven: I think many here are willing to believe its reasonable because they personally are less likely to be a victim of a Pakistani torturer than a victim of a terrorist.
Very true. I'm sure apologists would not be so eager to have torture be a part of police skill sets and toolkits, if those police were patroling down their own streets.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
I think that it is important that we not be satsified with faulty, unproven, or transient reasons for why we are against torture.
It's too much like trying to dissuade a child from premature sex by telling them that they'll get AIDS and pregnant from kissing . If that's the only reason they have, then they'll have no reason once they discover that you're a liar.
If we only don't torture because it's not terribly effective, then it instantly becomes acceptable the moment someone develops a useful form of torture.
Posted by Flaming Toad on a Stick (Member # 9302) on :
quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head: I think that it is important that we not be satsified with faulty, unproven, or transient reasons for why we are against torture.
It's too much like trying to dissuade a child from premature sex by telling them that they'll get AIDS and pregnant from kissing . If that's the only reason they have, then they'll have no reason once they discover that you're a liar.
If we only don't torture because it's not terribly effective, then it instantly becomes acceptable the moment someone develops an effective form of torture.
I agree with you 100%
Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
I do not think that torture should be completely removed from our possible tools.
However, I do think it should remain illegal. If an extreme, "24" style situation arises and torture is deemed the only way to get information needed in a small amount of time, there needs to be a named person or persons held responsible for telling the torturer "go ahead."
No secret prisons. No torture allowed under vague and look-the-other-way, we'll-blame-it-on-youthful-hijinks rules. No shipping them off to let other countries do it for us. If we are pushed to perform extreme measures, we need to do them with as much honor and integrity and regret as possible.
Posted by orlox (Member # 2392) on :
The Secretary of Torture and Unabashed Illegal Detention
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:However, I do think it should remain illegal. If an extreme, "24" style situation arises and torture is deemed the only way to get information needed in a small amount of time, there needs to be a named person or persons held responsible for telling the torturer "go ahead."
The paradigm case for allowing it is to determine the location of the ticking nuclear bomb in the city. Verifiable, urgent, and imminent consequences of undeniable seriousness.
I agree. We use the criminal justice system to determine if killing was necessary. The same system can be used for determining if torture is justified.
And none of this crying about the authorizing person being "persecuted" if he's tried. I hate that when it comes to self-defense cases, and would be just as inappropriate concerning torture.
Sometimes a prosecutor should decide for himself that a killing was self defense and therefore shouldn't be tried. But I don't think it's "persecution" to decided that the determination should be made by a jury. Especially when it's a government authority figure as defendant.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Torture is effective. That's why it's used.
Yeah, that's what the Soviets said. Torture was so effective for them that they could get people to confess in court to crimes that were impossible, logistically or otherwise, for them to have committed.
What better basis for a system of extracting actionable information, eh?
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
Samprimary, the ineffectiveness of torture to obtain one type of information does not mean it is ineffective at obtaining all types of information.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
Samprimary, you're assuming that the Soviets were trying to discover who commited the crime, and not trying to obtain confessions from those they wanted convicted.
Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
I would think that torture would be very effective if your victim had the information and very ineffective if your victim didn't.
I know that if I were tortured I would spew everything I knew before the first needle, hacksaw or electrode touched my body.
But if I didn't know anything I would make up whatever I had to to make the torture stop.
Posted by Gwen (Member # 9551) on :
quote:Torture doesn't work. Real interrogators know that.
quote:If the facts of this case are as this thread seems to be assuming (and I'd like to point out that we don't know there's been any real torture involved) then it seems to me that your assertion is directly contradicted by experimental evidence. To wit, torture did work, in this case.
How about, real interrogators know that torture is less effective as a means of extracting truthful information from an unwilling participant than other techniques, in general.
The exception being the ticking-time-bomb cases.
There was a lot of interesting stuff about this in a comments thread over at Electrolite when discussing Abu Ghraib. A U.S. military interrogator named Terry explained how exactly he does his job (without resorting to torture).
Excerpts:
quote:In the past 11 years I've seen a lot of people who have, shall we say odd, ideas about what makes for useful interrogation methods. I've also spent no small part of those 11 years (where have they gone?) teaching interrogation. In the past two-years I've also seen a lot of that being tossed away. My personal philosophy (backed by years of experience, and tradition) is that torture (and my definitions of torture are far broader than most, but then I suppose I am more aware of it, intimate with it; if you will, than most) does't work. I also think the torturer is affected more than the tortured. In support of the latter contention I offer the photos in the reports on the prison in Iraq. Those guys are said to be smiling, as they display people being mocked and shamed. I suspect that, had they been asked before they left about such things, they'd have been apalled. Now... To make a basic interrogator takes almost four months (it used to be less, but they have added a bunch of secondary things to the instruction). When I went through the course it was nine weeks, five of those spent, "in the booth," trying (and usually failing) to perform a successful interrogation. Teaching it helped, but I don't think I was really up to speed for about a year after I left the school. Think about that. Four hours a day, for five weeks, in the booth, and another four-six hours of classes and dissection. Then there are the study halls, and the conversations with instructors. I doubt the contractors get that much training. The CIA, well they have different problems, and interrogation isn't high on the list of thigs they do (they tend to call on the Army, and use guys who've been to the Strategic Debriefing course). They are more prone to the, "field expedient" method of, "quick and dirty," information extraction. They tend to operate on the, "ticking bomb," idea. Which leads to bad information on the scale we're looking at. One of the more troubling things is the report that one of the people who got this ball of wax going was from Gitmo. What I've heard from there (and from Afghanistan) worries me. Lots of stuff which is borderline (or past) is being done there, and lots of people who are not specifically trained in interrogation (counter-intelligence agents, in particular) are being tasked to the job. They think the borderline stuff works better (because it's faster, and time is not my friend) and is takes less effort. They are wrong (IMO) and it is a slow cancer, becuase they are getting various forms of positive reinforcement. As for the contractors... the most worrisome thing I've seen is the comments that they contracts they have exempt them from the Army/DoD's jurisdiction, as well as the local law. The only recourse the U.S. has (it is, actually, an obligation) is to take advantage of being th detaining power, and legally responsible for the health and welfare of the prisoners/people, in our control, and charge them with breaking the Geneva Conventions, which are (insofar as we've signed them) the law of the land. If we wanted to do it right, we'd turn them over to the Hague, but I ain't holding my breath. ... Whimsey, before the meat of it, there are pretty much four standard responses to people finding out I'm an interrogator: Disbelief (usually in the interrogative assertive, "No, really...?) "So what kinds of torture do you use?" "That sounds really interesting." And the scary one: [eyes wide, breathless] "Reallly...?!?" [with undertones of sexual tension.] That one used to unsettle me, now it gets filed under, "it takes all kinds." This is why I have railed against Gitmo, and the (specious) unlawful combatants category. It sets people up for this. ...I know there are people in my line of work who step out of bounds. For years I've tried to teach those bounds, and now I see the nation telling us to forget those bounds. It goes with the profiling, the deep-sixing of people like Padilla, the detentions at Gitmo, the use of non-military interrogators (some of who are former members of the Army... they disgust me... somehow they manage to sully my uniform, while no longer wearing it). I am saddened, saddened that so much has gone so wrong, that the principles of Hans Scharff have been cast aside, after some 50 years of trying to inculcate them, but we (interrogation) have no institutional memory... our sole repository of the rights and wrongs, the tricks of gentle coercion, and knowing where to draw the lines lives only in the people who are in service. And I am angry. Angry in a way I hope none of you can understand. I can't describe it. It is part white hot rage, and cold fury. Dispassionate wrath and frenzied hate. I want to disgrace all of the people who were involved, and I don't think it would be safe to let me in the same room with them. I also feel incapable of expressing my shame, incoherent in my attempts to distance myself. I know I didn't put out, but who will believe the protestations of the painted lady? ... The main trick of interrogation is to get the subject talking. The prime difference between military and police interrogation is intent. The cop is asking questions to which he thinks he has the answer. He also has the club of punishment to wave at the subject. I don't have those. In a classic war, the guy across the table is going to be here until he is exchanged, or the war ends. Gives me very little leverage. So we use a bit of head game. Take advantage of the shock of capture, the silence he's been kept in, the segregation he's undergone, and the sense of loss, shame, helplessness, and fear that go with it. We look for clues, his attitude, his rank, the condition of his gear; his uniform, how much ammo he had (and how much it was, relative to the rest of the dead and the captured) how many people were killed and wounded in the fight, his pocket trash (which includes things like letters and photos). We then make nice, offer him a cup of coffee, a cigarette. Engage in chit-chat. Feel him out. Ride the clues. Is he an officer? Did his unit get stomped? is he acting proud anyway? Then maybe I belittle him, tell him a trained chimp could've done better, get him angry enough to blurt out information. Maybe his unit was stomped, but he seems at a loss... ashamed. Then I tell him no one could've stopped it, build him up. Get him to tell me why I'm right. The trick (and it's the only trick we really need) is to get them talking and, to not make them think we want anything other than a truthful answer. Once they start to talk, I will get everything he knows, or at least everything my commander wants. I may offer him things... like the chance to write a letter home the instant we get done talking. This is half a lie. He gets to write home when I let him out... well no. He gets to write a given number of letters a month, and I might, were I inclined to be cruel see to it that he had to wait three weeks to do so, but easier to promise him things he's entitled to, because most people are not trained in what their rights are, as a POW. Once he starts to talk I'll use what I already know (order of battle information, previously fond information, weather/road conditions) to verify the things he says. That's called, "using control questions," and it's one of the hardest things to teach a new interrogator. He says he's in an armored unit, and the patch on his sleeve matches that... OK. Half a control. He says they have tanks, I ask what kind. He says T-72s. I know (or check) that unit has that type of tank. That's a better control question. I ask how many and he says his platoon has five... DING alarm bells go off, because the Order of Battle for his army has four tanks in a platoon. I ask how long they've had four tanks. He says one week. I ask why they have four tanks, and he says the Company Commander attached himself to the unit. It all makes a certain amount of sense, so I write up the change in the OB, and go on. Later I ask him questions about the Company Commander and when they match what he said before, I consider that to be a repeat question. I'll ask any number of questions, to which I have an expectation of answer, based on what I've been told, by the subject. Consistency (and I'm taking notes) is a sign of honest recall by the prisoner. He may be wrong, but it is as he remembers it, and that's what matters. If he tries to tell lies, I'm going to spot the discrepancies, esp. if I'm doing a complete OB interrogation. The lowliest of privates takes about two and-a-half hours to give up everything a full OB takes. An officer can take a couple of days, and when one gets to COL and above, it becomes a serious project. Before I go into the booth I get a briefing from the OB NCO (which was the job I did in the box). He is responsible for keeping track of the battlefield, as best it is known at the time. What booth time I got in Iraq was to get some fast controls in, when the interrogators (we used two, with an MP for guard) weren't sure about the guys story. It was easier for me to go in and ask the questions, than it was to try and brief them enough (they hadn't been keeping up with events as well as I, but then I spent about four hours a day tracking things, so...) to get the answers. There are other types of interrogations, ones which are faster, because rather than try to get everything he knows, we are only interested in certain types of information. We also had a larger repetoire of inducements to talk. Because we had so many who were no more than farmers, who got swept up my nervous MPs we could tell them that, barring some evidence they were just farmers, the MPs would take them to Talil, or Basra. Talil was the nearest and that was something like 100 miles away. I recall one interrogation where the source wasn't talking. Which is a pain, because we were pretty sure he was nothing more than a tomato farmer, and if he continued to stonewall, the MPs were going to take him to Talil, and he's be there for a couple of days, and then left to make his own way home. The lead interrogator drew a stick figure of a man, and of a woman, in the dust on the table. They were holding hands. He then said, if you don't talk to us... and rubbed out the connected hands. The man started to cry, and then to talk. We sent him home four hours later. On the down side... there were guys who liked to make the sources cry, who worked at it. And we did keep them isolated, until after we'd talked to them, which was a problem when we had a lot of them, because (as I said last April, in Making Light) we didn't have enough shade. Done right, it's effective, and doesn't need torture, because if the subject is willing to talk to me, about anything... I can eventually get him to start talking about the army, and then I can get everything. In for a penny, in for a pound. The only defense is to answer nothing but the big four. Name Rank Date of birth Service Number. If you talk about anything else... you'll talk about everything else. And that's why the situation at Abu Ghraib bothers me. These were not that time sensitive, these guys didn't need to go off the reservation. If they had as many prisoners as they say they did (and this is just in April, when the fighting in Falluja was the primary thing on the agenda) they could afford to take the extra hour or so it might have taken to get a guy talking. And before April... they had all the time in the world, because the more prisoners one has to work with, the easier it is to get them to talk. You can play on fears. I come to talk to A: Ten minutes later I come to talk to B:, along about the time I get to G, he will be afraid, because A-F have not been seen since. He's probably been told we will torture, and then kill, him. He's convinced himself this is happening. When all I want to do is ask questions, he tells all he knows, because in his mind he's saving his life. On the flip side, if I start to hit him, he resists, because that is what he's been trained to do, avoid giving up information in exchange for pain. And we know this doesn't work. If you think torture is useful in breaking people, and thus garnering information, talk to John McCain, or anyone else who had a room at the Hanoi Hilton. I guess that'll do for now. ... So, I head into the trenches here, as I have wandered, to and fro in the world for the past ten years, talking about it, telling people (even the ones who make the scary responses) what it really is. Sometimes, if I like them, and trust them, and don't think they'll run away, I do a small demonstration. That last is usually an eye-opener, because the exchanges aren't conversational. A lot of the relationship is expressed in tone of voice. There is an almost callous dispassion to the collection of information. To many little boxes have to be checked and the questions are what we call, "Single subject, requiring a narrative response." ... Dave: re terrorists/those trained to resist interrogation. They are a tough problem. I can say that non-torture is effective, but transient. Here's the rub. There is no good way to tag team the questioning. The trick is to get the guy to break. Everyone will break. Where the trained resistance comes in is 1: knowing the shelf life of the information one has, and holding out that long. 2: Understanding that because one broke yesterday, doesn't mean one has to stay broken today. What I've heard from Gitmo, and Bagrham is that the actual terrorists are doing that. take four-five hours and get him to break. talkto him for four-five hours. Start all over again tomorrow. What got him yesterday, won't get him today. To make it worse, there is no way to completely seperate them, and he will tell everyone he can what broke him, and it won't work on anyone else. Why do people talk?: Because they need to feel good about themselves. Watch NYPD Blue. The interrogations they do are actually pretty good (I started watching it as a homework assignment, while I was at Ft. Huachuca). They use a much more limited repetoire of approaches (the techniques of psychological manipulation to get a source to break) and they have a much more adversarial relationship with the subject than is healthy for a miltary interrogator, but the things they show work. Remember the maxim, "No one is a villian in their own eyes." It gives the interrogator leverage, the trick is to find what the subject needs to prove to other people to redeem himself. Cops tend to play on guilt, "Come clean, get it off your chest and find forgivness." I don't get that, usually. But I have a slew of oher things I can play on. Love of comrades, or family (and the flip side, some people feel they've been betrayed, they want to get even). Fear (being a prisoner is very unsettling, one hears rumors, imagines all sorts of horrors, and until they are confirmed, or dispelled, the anxiety is a powerful motivator. One can play on that, finding out one is not going to be tortured can lead to gratitude, and a desire to please). As for why they keep talking. We say we own them, once they start talking. There are two ways to do this. One is to not let them know they've given anything up. Great, if one has the time to set it up. Anecdote, from Scharff. He was asked to find out what a stream of white tracers meant. He spent a week talking to a pilot. Nothing relevant. He took him for a walk, they talked. He took him for another walk, and pointed at an anthill, made comparisons to industry, and observed that the Americans must be having supply problems, because they had a shortage of red tracers, and were using only white ones. The kid, full of pride said "Hell no, we got all the tracers we need, but some of us put in a dozen or so near the end of the belt so we know when we're out of ammo." Never knew he'd given it up. The other way is that they feel guilty about betraying their side, they are afraid that it will come out that they gave aid and comfort to the enemy. They decide to keep talking so the captor will remain happy with them, and not tell anyone they talked.
Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
That's a fascinating look at a military interrogator's job, Gwen.
Posted by ssasse (Member # 9516) on :
Thanks, Gwen.
Posted by human_2.0 (Member # 6006) on :
Thanks Gwen, that is exactly the type of thing I read when Abu Ghraib happened too. I even looked it up in the online manuals (and the Reid method website) and that is how they do it.
That is just my practical argument. The moral argument against torture is exactly what the guy said: it affects the torturers more than the tortured. Condoning torture and imagining that it will not affect us is fallacy.
There is a difference between a vigilante and a cop who is sworn in. The structure of rules and being sworn in is a stabilizing force that keeps the cop sane even though he may kill someone today [there was a high speed chase this morning that passed my house--cops flying everywhere]. The vigilante has no such structure and he is forced to deal with the day's muck on his own.
Torture, being against the Geneva conventions and the US laws, will destroy the person doing the torturing because there is no structure to wick the guilt of hurting another person away. Even if a torturer actually saves 1000 people, the torture still has hurt another human being and saving 1000 people isn't going to take that away. Without a structure to wick away the guilt of hurting another person, the torturer's soul will buckle under the pressure.
I think that is one thing missing from the 24 TV series. Nobody feels bad for torturing others. But nobody feels bad for killing others in any TV show, so I'm not really faulting 24. It is a cool show. I just don't let it dictate my views on torture (well, I did at first, but then Abu Ghraib happened and I read a real interrogators' response).
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
Instead of using the word torture, how about rape? It's the same principle. Would we be so casual about state-sponsored rape, for the good of the Union? Kind of like Hart's Hope.
[ August 17, 2006, 01:51 AM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by human_2.0 (Member # 6006) on :
[sarcastic]But if rape will save 1000 lives and the person being raped is guilty, then it is ok![/sarcastic]
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Samprimary, the ineffectiveness of torture to obtain one type of information does not mean it is ineffective at obtaining all types of information.
The fundamental elements of torture-extracted confession make it such a gamble that I can't believe that people in ostensibly civilized societies make such an issue about wanting the government to be able to use it in hypothetical Last Minute Jack Bauer Power Hour situations. The soviets had it good, since they didn't have to care whether or not the information procured from tortured individuals was actually useful beyond being able to entertain themselves while sentencing dissidents to death. For any situation where apologists want to 'legitimize' the use of 'civilized' torture, however, it has to have a utilitarian function involving the thwarting of crime and/or terror. It HAS to be better than Option #2, which is "Not allowing torture."
This is hindered by the fact that torture has demonstrated itself to be, by and large, a useless art to practice. Wait, 'useless' implies that it has no effect, like a placebo. I need stronger words to use against it, since it actually produces more trouble than it could ever conceivably be worth.
We'll talk about John McCain, a man who was himself tortured, and now legislates against it. In this audio interview, he talks about the 'usefulness' of torture. I listened to this interview right after I'd read three articles from other sources. I originally picked them up out of our state newspaper; one after another, after another.
The first mentioned Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, an al-Qaeda captive who had been outsourced to the Egyptians by the United States. This was for the purpose that he could be tortured while the CIA monitored and periodically questioned, while keeping their hands technically 'clean.' This is a practice known as extraordinary rendition. In 2001, he gave a torture-extracted confession to the CIA that Saddam Hussein had trained al-Qaeda to use WMDs. Apparently, it now appears that this one confession (which al-Libi recanted in 2004) was the sole piece of information that the administration was relying upon to support the late-2002 claim that 'credible evidence' existed for terrorist ties between the two organizations.
(this claim and conclusion came from the administration, despite the fact that even the CIA interrogators themselves reported that al-Libi's statements were unreliable.)
Whoops!
al-Libi has since disappeared into classified U.S. detention. He's a human being in cold storage.
The second story was the outrage over Manadel al-Jamadi, an Iraq citizen who had been deemed a 'high value' target by the CIA. Long story short, he was pulled from the streets, he was beaten severely, and he died of the injuries sustained. The abuse gave him several broken ribs before he ended up being subjected to a Palestinian Hanging. His death became public in November of 2003, when pictures went public of Americans giving the thumbs up over his bruised corpse.
Then another story, number three: I read about a British detainee being tortured at Guantanamo Bay by being subject to the 'strappado,' a method apparently common in unsavory Latin American dictatorships. He was suspended from a bar with handcuffs, until they cut into his wrists. Apparently, this was punishment for reciting from the Koran.
There was some more involving allegations of continued abuse at Guantanamo, and then something about the further legitimacy of secret CIA prisons in Places Abroad, but they all start to mesh into the same old story. They made for me, that day, the perfect conclusion to McCain's points, especially considering that these few stories were merely a microcosm of sentiment in a short timeframe, and I was getting them all in a barrage in one day as a barometer of the image situation we faced, then and now.
McCain's points were learned, and elegant.
Torture isn't reliable, it isn't effective. He talks about war heroes and generals and long-time military associates, his friends, people who knew what they were talking about and who would talk about how it wasn't worthwhile or acceptable to torture people. People who still, in this civilized day and age, make armchair arguments to support the use of torture? They have to twist and contort to come up with hypothetical situations where torture is assumed to be effective, much less tolerable in principle. McCain, himself, talks about those Soviet tortures that led to prisoners condemning themselves to death in court, admitting to crimes that were simply impossible for them to have committed. He talks about how he, as a prisoner in Vietnam, would be tortured into naming names, simply to get the torture to stop. Interestingly, the names he gave were the names of the starting lineup of the Green Bay packers.
He mentions a quote he got from a long-time military friend of his, General Jack Vessey:
"Any information that could be gained as a result of cruel, inhumane treatment or torture could never counterbalance the damage done to the United States of America when we do these things."
He says he agrees fully with this statement. Our present situation acts as a perfect example of the consequence of torture. The credibility of the administration continues to reach ridiculous low points as they attempt to deny things that they'll probably regret ever attempting to deny, all the while, simultaneously, committing to actions that provide the greatest arguments for the existence of the actions and facilities they've attempted to hide -- Cheney's bargaining for the removal of the anti-torture rider, Bush's threat to veto the appropriations containing the rider that prohibits the torture that he once claimed we've never used, .. It's bad P.R., bad intel.
The consequences in Iraq provide the most stark examples: for even isolated incidents, such as the Abu Ghurayb scandal, there is an observable emergence of provoked outrage and resistance within the national population, that solidifies America's status as The Enemy in the eyes of the Iraqi culture. Now that most people in that part of the world (already inclined to a fully negative view of the United States) will easily believe that we are torturers who operate secret torture prisons in Eastern Europe, we've effectively fed the beast.
No magically useful information we could ever acquire from hypothetical magical silver-bullet eleventh-hour torture opportunities seems like it could ever compensate for the damage that the administration has already incurred from its misguided torture-friendly policy. At best, we'll be discovering that we've simply made more people willing to die to try to kill us in our own nation.
More likely, though, they'll be feeding us the useless bull that you really get when you torture people: the impossible confessions, the Green Bay lineups, the imaginary ties between Iraq and Al-Qaeda. The ultimate position I have on torture is "Well, it's morally repugnant, but it's a fairly useless tool in extracting actionable information! What a dilemma!"
It's a losing game.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:The fundamental elements of torture-extracted confession make it such a gamble that I can't believe that people in ostensibly civilized societies make such an issue about wanting the government to be able to use it in hypothetical Last Minute Jack Bauer Power Hour situations.
So you acknowledge the scenario where it is most likely to be necessary to save lives and most likely to be effective, claim it's not effective in this scenario, and then talk about a bunch of different scenarios.
The statement "the use of torture in situation X can produce information that would otherwise be unavailable" is not a moral statement, your disbelief that some people would want to actually examine this statement in order to be able to answer the moral questions torture raises notwithstanding.
quote:No magically useful information we could ever acquire from hypothetical magical silver-bullet eleventh-hour torture opportunities seems like it could ever compensate for the damage that the administration has already incurred from its misguided torture-friendly policy. At best, we'll be discovering that we've simply made more people willing to die to try to kill us in our own nation.
Again, according to you, the administration has used torture in other situations. A torture policy that preserved the 11th hour scenario would NOT have provoked this outrage, because it wouldn't have been used yet.
You have utterly disregarded in your calculus whether torture could theoretically save millions of lives. You have also leaped from "torture causes people to hate us" to torture is "a fairly useless tool in extracting actionable information" without even trying to address its usefulness in 11th hour situations.
Quite simply, your unwillingness to deal directly with this aspect of the issue means that you have left an important moral question unanswered.
quote:The moral argument against torture is exactly what the guy said: it affects the torturers more than the tortured. Condoning torture and imagining that it will not affect us is fallacy.
You seem to think someone has imagined this.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Our present situation acts as a perfect example of the consequence of torture.
Further, it's quite unreasonable to think that the world would react the same way to a single instance of torture that led to the discovery of a bomb that would have killed one million people.
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
quote:My sarcasto-meter is deficient, JLM. I can't tell if you're saying that it is OK for police to break into a suspect's homes without a warrant or if it's not OK.
To be clear, the search method used that would not fly in the US was indeed with a warrant. The difference is that in Britain, they do not have to tell you they searched your home nor do you have a right to be present. So it's not as if the British police can search any home - they do have to obtain a warrant first.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:You have utterly disregarded in your calculus whether torture could theoretically save millions of lives. You have also leaped from "torture causes people to hate us" to torture is "a fairly useless tool in extracting actionable information" without even trying to address its usefulness in 11th hour situations.
Quite simply, your unwillingness to deal directly with this aspect of the issue means that you have left an important moral question unanswered.
I dunno. Those moral questions play like a series of utilitarian runarounds. I'd like to think that I'm just allowed to hope that civilized nations abstain from torture, because I find torture to be barbaric. I also don't enjoy the introduction of blatant hypocrisies to our fundamental approaches to law and human rights.
I don't play the plausible hypotheticals game very well because you can find 'plausible' utilitarianist hypotheticals for everything. I once listened to a guy talk for hours about how glassing the terrorist-harboring nations of the Middle East with nukes a.s.a.p. was the only path that would lead to a brighter, sun-shinier, world-peace scenario in as little as twenty years. To hear him talk about it, we were drowning ourselves in a contemporary ethic which was sacrificing long-term good for the sake of not mass murdering the populations of entire nations with nukes.
With the pro-torture arguments, it's sort of the same idea, albiet cleaner and neater, without the element of communal sacrifice. We apparently have to be willing, when pressed by crisis, to do something repulsive because it can be assumed that it would play to the greater benefit of others. Human beings in cold storage? Five year plus stays in Guantanamo, sans charges? Secret detention facilities in Eastern Europe? Extraordinary rendition to Saudi kneecappers? It's all emerged as tools For The Greater Good.
So far, as demonstrated by real life outside of network television shows, torture is sketchy and unreliable. There's lots of articles about it, journalistic, editorial, peer reviewed ... Fascinating psychological insights into the process of interrogation. Everything I'm talking about has to do with how our government's torture-friendly policy has done us no good, but the psychological study of torture shows that it probably isn't even worth keeping around just for the hypothetical last-minute scenarios.
Which isn't how it stays, either. The Israelis tried and later abandoned a program involving the specific allowance of "torture-lite," where they reserved the right to use torture as an interrogation tool in any 'ticking bomb' circumstance.
Despite the policy not helping them whatsoever, it wasn't long before approximately 85% of Palestinian detainees were being qualified and subject to 'ticking bomb' treatment. Craig Murray, an ambassador who exposed human rights abuses under Islam Karimov and went on to become an expert study in all things torture, noted that the capability to finely calibrate torture has eluded every democratic government which has tried it.
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
quote: they do not have to tell you they searched your home nor do you have a right to be present.
I'm not sure to what degree either of these things are true in the U.S., too.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by docmagik:
quote:
quote:As much as I detest torture, I detest more the vermin that had this information and had to be coerced into communicating it.
I submit that this means you don't actually detest torture. You just detest torturing good people.
To borrow an analogy from another thread, let's say this had gone like this:
Idea: As much as I detest throwing up, I detest more the idea of retaining poison in my stomach that will kill me.
Retort: I submit that this means you don't actually detest throwing up. You just detest throwing up good food.
Sophistry. Plain and simple.
You don't have a biological impulse to torture someone in order to defend yourself. That is an act which is carried out in deliberation, and not in defense. Swatting a fly away from your face is reflex, killing an attacker is reflex, but finding someone you think is guilty, strapping him to a water board and scaring the ever-loving crap out of him to get what you want is not reflex. Do you see why your analogy is pretty weak? You're not talking about throwing up (a biological act and perfectly normal), you're talking about torturing people, which serves no purpose in your immediate survival.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
I fail to see how one being biological and the other not invalidates the analogy.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dagonee:
quote:Our present situation acts as a perfect example of the consequence of torture.
Further, it's quite unreasonable to think that the world would react the same way to a single instance of torture that led to the discovery of a bomb that would have killed one million people.
Well, our current situation isn't all that good... And who's to say that one million man bomb isn't carried in the backpack of a family member of a torture victim. People become terrorists for a reason; its because their super super super pissed off. I'm not saying do anything to placate, but simply keep in mind that we are at least still claiming to be setting a good example in the middle-east (that is still our claim even if what we do has no relationship to that).
I for one, wouldn't like to pose such grand hypotheticals, (even though I kinda just did with my family member hypothetical, oops) because they are almost always used as a silly kind of disproof of a policy:
"we shouldn't torture people!"
"Ever?"
"yes, Never!"
"What if all the people in the world are about to die from a huge bomb and one man has the code and he won't give it up unless we blow torch his nipples (or something)?"
"Wellll"
"AHAH! Torture DOES WORK!"
Edit: I'll just say that it sits very badly with me when people start going down this road of trying to find where you WILL justify torture. I can tell you the situation at hand is not a justification for torture, and I can tell you that I am against torture always, because it is despicable and wrong. Now, when something despicable and wrong becomes a necessity for survival (a REAL necessity, not a political or a possible or a likely or a hypothical), then the rules are different, and people do things to survive that they don't do in society. This does not make torture good, or useful or acceptable AT ALL. If the reality ever became harsh enough that torture was needed, it would still be horribly wrong, but it would have become unavoidable. That is not a justification, though, it would NEVER be justified. Its like Hiroshima to me, a horrible act for which there is NO excuse, even if it saved thousands of lives, it was still murder. If we had to drop another nuke on someone, then it would be murder then too, it wouldn't be ok just because the situation had forced us to act.
I always remember Ender's Game, he travels around for 3,000 years with the guilt of his actions because he IS guilty. He DID do it and he would do it again. Neither justified or good, and yet that he would do it to survive; that doesn't EVER make it ok.
[ August 18, 2006, 04:34 PM: Message edited by: Orincoro ]
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head: I fail to see how one being biological and the other not invalidates the analogy.
Hmmm. Throwing up poison is reflexive, it is not conscious, it is not a decision you make, it is something you just do (hopefully). Going out and torturing someone is not a reflexive action, it isn't nearly the same thing. I think that spoils the analogy: a person bats a fly or throws up poison automatically, but we don't automatically torture people, its something we do in delibaration and consciously knowing what we are doing.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro:
quote:Originally posted by Dagonee:
quote:Our present situation acts as a perfect example of the consequence of torture.
Further, it's quite unreasonable to think that the world would react the same way to a single instance of torture that led to the discovery of a bomb that would have killed one million people.
Well, our current situation isn't all that good... And who's to say that one million man bomb isn't carried in the backpack of a family member of a torture victim. People become terrorists for a reason; its because their super super super pissed off. I'm not saying do anything to placate, but simply keep in mind that we are at least still claiming to be setting a good example in the middle-east (that is still our claim even if what we do has no relationship to that).
I for one, wouldn't like to pose such grand hypotheticals, (even though I kinda just did with my family member hypothetical, oops) because they are almost always used as a silly kind of disproof of a policy:
"we shouldn't torture people!"
"Ever?"
"yes, Never!"
"What if all the people in the world are about to die from a huge bomb and one man has the code and he won't give it up unless we blow torch his nipples (or something)?"
"Wellll"
"AHAH! Torture DOES WORK!"
Are we talking about torture working, or it being ethical?
In the case of it working, its a pretty simple for me.
Keep in mind Torture is used typically when bribery and verbal persuasive techniques fail. Unless we have a 24 situation in which case they might jump to torture.
If I had a piece of information that in my opinion was so valuable it would be worth enduring death through torture to hold on to, I would like to think I would take it to the grave. But I can't be sure because I've never been tortured before. But I am sure there are those who have taken their secrets to the grave, I could use them for support. (Torture might work but most likely wont.
If I had a piece of information that in my opinion was valuable, but I was alittle unsure that what I was keeping secret ought to be kept secret. You could possibly coerce from me through bribery, and if you tortured me I would likely give it up without much resistance, unless I became indignant towards my torturers in which case my pride might compel me to take it to the grave, I can't see myself being that way. (Torture could likely work, it might not)
If I had a piece of information that I just happened upon that I felt I could use at worst as a way to avoid going to jail, at best would get me some sort of reward, I would try to get some sort of benefit from divulging, if I was offered nothing and they were going to torture me, I would give it up really fast so as to avoid the inconvenience of torture. (Torture would work in this situation, every time.)
Finally
If I knew nothing, but people were convinced I did, I would continue to insist I knew nothing hoping they would believe me, if the torture got so bad I could not stand it, I might eventually admit to knowing something, anything to get them to stop. (In this case, Torture just does not work.)
There might be more variables than I am giving, but in my opinion there are CERTAINLY people who if tortured would give up valuable intelegence. Not everyone with information will, and some people do not have information at all (how do we know before they have been tortured?)
I still do not know how I stand on torture, I can't give some sort of general response, but I think its plain to me that there are situations where torture COULD obtain the utilitarian ideal of the greatest good for the greatest #. Unless you think torture is so barbaric that to save say the human race at the cost of its humanity makes saving humanity moot.
Posted by Dan_raven (Member # 3383) on :
To compete against the "Ticking Bomb" or "24" myth, lets argue against Torture's use with the "Ali Jones" myth.
They pick up Yasim as a possible terrorists. They think he knows things. They think he knows who other terrorists are. They ask for names. Being smart interogators, they don't ask "Is Ali Smith a terrorist." They don't lead the questions. They do ask, "Who else knew Sheik Ahmed. Who else was at the Sheik's sister's wedding, talking to Sadam and Eric?"
But Yasim does not know. He was not at the wedding. He does not know the Sheik. What does he do? His protests of innocence and lack of knowledge just get him tortured more. They demand a name. They demand a name to stop the torture.
Ali Jones is Yasim's brother-in-law, and a man that manages to annoy Yasim at every family meal. In desperation, Yasim says "Ali Jones. He was there. He spent a lot of time with the blonde and the Sheik at the wedding."
The torture ends for Yasim, but innocent Ali Jones is picked up and next in line for torture.
That is how torure doesn't work.
Another way it doesn't work?
There are two types or political organizations--those in power and those out of power.
When those out of power want to terrorize their way into power, they use bombs, murders, and violent fear. We call this Terrorism, for it is supposed to scare the people into obiediance.
When those in power want to terrorize their way into maintaining power, they use torture. One of the main aspects of torture in its deterence. Don't be a terrorist, or the government will put you in pain for days at a time. Is this not scaring people into obeidiance? Is this not terrorism?
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
The problem is that those instances are very, very rare, aren't they? edit: This in response to BB's post.
[ August 18, 2006, 05:21 PM: Message edited by: Storm Saxon ]
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
Dan: I acknowledged that torture sometimes does NOT work on a case by case basis. But I certainly provided examples where it MIGHT work and where it WOULD work.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote: I for one, wouldn't like to pose such grand hypotheticals, (even though I kinda just did with my family member hypothetical, oops) because they are almost always used as a silly kind of disproof of a policy:
"we shouldn't torture people!"
"Ever?"
"yes, Never!"
"What if all the people in the world are about to die from a huge bomb and one man has the code and he won't give it up unless we blow torch his nipples (or something)?"
"Wellll"
"AHAH! Torture DOES WORK!"
OK, you can go argue about that with someone who actually said that. The fact that you have to rephrase my post in order to dismiss speaks volumes.
quote:I'll just say that it sits very badly with me when people start going down this road of trying to find where you WILL justify torture.
It sits badly with me when people attempt to short-circuit moral reasoning as you are doing. Defining the extremes is not something that should sit badly with you - it's necessary.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:I dunno. Those moral questions play like a series of utilitarian runarounds. I'd like to think that I'm just allowed to hope that civilized nations abstain from torture, because I find torture to be barbaric. I also don't enjoy the introduction of blatant hypocrisies to our fundamental approaches to law and human rights.
It would be nice if you identified the blatant hypocrisies I've introduced.
The thrust of my post was that you have refused to deal with the ticking bomb question. You still haven't. Instead you've once again given a passionate post about why torture is wrong in non-ticking time bomb situations.
That's fine, but it doesn't support the contention that torture should never be used, any more than outlining why capital punishment is a bad idea supports the contention that we should never kill.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Torture should never be used because, once used, there will always be the temptation to misapply it in the future.
Posted by human_2.0 (Member # 6006) on :
If someone is going to kill 10 million people with a bomb, does anyone really think torturing him or any form of interrogation would somehow stop it? Especially in the case of the 24 series. Honestly, if I were a terrorist, I would only have to withstand the torture for 24 hours...
Posted by Dim (Member # 9672) on :
ditto
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Torture should never be used because, once used, there will always be the temptation to misapply it in the future.
Does this apply to killing as well? How about lying?
quote:If someone is going to kill 10 million people with a bomb, does anyone really think torturing him or any form of interrogation would somehow stop it?
With 10 million people at risk of an imminent, verifiable threat, an action with a small chance of success might be worth taking.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Does this apply to killing as well? How about lying?
Yes, actually, but for the fact that we as a society are generally agreed that certain forms of killing and certain lies are, by and large, not as "bad" as torture of the helpless. By that logic, while lying once makes you more likely to lie in the future, lying more often in the future isn't as much of a problem as torturing people more often in the future.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Yes, actually, but for the fact that we as a society are generally agreed that certain forms of killing and certain lies are, by and large, not as "bad" as torture of the helpless. By that logic, while lying once makes you more likely to lie in the future, lying more often in the future isn't as much of a problem as torturing people more often in the future.
So what's your evidence that there isn't future temptation to use torture absent its use once to stop a nuclear bomb?
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
My reasons against torture and similar to my reasons against the death penalty. They are simple. It degrades my sense of humanity to live in a state that kills people. It offends my sense of humanity to live in a state that tortures people. I don't care if either alternative is effective.
We have an elaborate procedure that somehow removes the awfulness from state-assisted murder, I'm sure we can do the same for torture.
This is far from an easy issue, and as I see it, it doesn't give itself to absolutes. Or if it does, my principles aren't strong enough to stand against the possibility of averting a terrorist mass execution. I'm not a man of principles. I think that they are useful guides and fine substitutes for actual thinking in general, but in these cases, in any case of truly important matters, there is no substitute for thinking on a situation in its particularity.
In a way, the moment we start torturing a person, it's like are drafting him into the army, then killing him, and since I believe that the President has the ability to draft whomever he/she wills, why don't we make it the president's decision, in the way of an executive order, subject to congressional veto.
It may politicize the process, but I'm not sure that that is a bad thing. In allowing torture, I think that we are allowing for an evil that is not necessary, but rather, an evil that is terribly convenient. We are going to over-prescribe it. We are going to torture the wrong person, and even if we torture the "right" person, we are going to gain information by behaving like animals, and I like to think myself above the beast.
So if we are going to do it, I'd rather not pretend that it's ever justified, and let us go forth torturing knowing that it's always a matter of our own savagery.
[ August 19, 2006, 11:50 AM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by human_2.0 (Member # 6006) on :
Do any religions have teachings on this? I'm sure other people have thought about this. I'd welcome any input, because I don't really have a response to the people in favor of torture. I just see it as plain wrong. When in doubt appeal to authority? Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:So what's your evidence that there isn't future temptation to use torture absent its use once to stop a nuclear bomb?
Actually, I think there'd be future temptation to use torture once it's used to stop anything. Which is why I think we need to draw the line so strongly.
I'd be okay with allowing the information gathered by torture to be admissible and actionable, provided the torturers were themselves sentenced to death. Irami's suggestion -- that all acts of torture must be individually sanctioned by the President -- would also be acceptable to me, provided that an annual report listing the number of tortured individuals were released to the public.
Posted by Gwen (Member # 9551) on :
Er, doesn't the Geneva Conventions have something or other to say on the topic of torture? Or am I missing something?
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:It would be nice if you identified the blatant hypocrisies I've introduced.
I'm talking about torture itself. Torture is a giant flaming neon hypocrisy that glows from the parapets of any nation that lays claim to the support or defense of unalienable human-rights protections.
There are many things that a government can justify doing "for the greater good." It won't give a practice a free pass with me, though. I have specific moral reservations against some acts, regardless of their functional utility, making me not unlike just about any other human being on earth. Part of the whole ethical package I tend to work with is "boo to torture."
But, my reservations are more empirical. Dubious utility. Even in ticking-clock scenarios. Plus, governments giving themselves specific permissions to torture has not gone over well, now or practically ever!
quote:The thrust of my post was that you have refused to deal with the ticking bomb question.
I am adamantly trying. I rarely have time to forum it up, these days, but I'm working with a thrust of my own. I will absolutely not agree that I have refused to deal with this question.
"It doesn't work" is one part of it; this is not really my position, but rather the assessment of what people who know what they are talking about actually have to say when they can openly talk about their experiences with torture and interrogation. Mainly, they're inclined to say that they'd rather use other options, even in a hypothetical 11th hour situation.
A few have even mentioned (and I read a fascinating article about it in the Atlantic) that ticking-clock scenarios actually convolute the already-dubious utility of torture. Since, of course, the hypothetical fellas who've been hypothetically caught in these hypothetical situations are most likely to be zealotically devoted at best, and suicidally devoted at worst, and they just have to misdirect for a little tiny while to 'win.'
The other part is that I probably wouldn't be in favor of giving the government the authority to torture even if I could be damned sure that it works, for reasons that Tom is also talking about. Even in the middle ages, people were beginning to find out that the practice was pretty bupkis. The middle ages.
quote:That's fine, but it doesn't support the contention that torture should never be used, any more than outlining why capital punishment is a bad idea supports the contention that we should never kill.
But that's because you can kill someone as self defense under immediate personal threat of harm. The tangent doesn't really flow over, since anyone being tortured is a captive in your charge, already well beyond the point of a mitigating self-defense scenario. It's the apples-and-oranges point of comparison.
I'd love to rework this wandering dialogue a million times and make a more cogent point, but this blather of mine will have to do. I'm literally quite out of time, and I have terrified myself by again failing to sum up my central points! I'll have to subsist on the general idea alone, and hope it transmits.
Really enjoying this otherwise, ciao
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Dubious utility. Even in ticking-clock scenarios.
You keep saying this. You have yet to support it except for the one sentence about zealots in this last post.
quote:the hypothetical fellas who've been hypothetically caught in these hypothetical situations are most likely to be zealotically devoted at best, and suicidally devoted at worst, and they just have to misdirect for a little tiny while to 'win.'
Yet, with the ticking time bomb scenario, there is a way to verify the information quickly. If the guy only has to hold out 30 minutes, you're probably right. 24 hours? It's very hard to say.
Especially with the conflation of torture and other questioning methods that has occurred in popular press lately. Are drugs torture? I've seen at least two articles that claim they are.
I'm not sure where I stand on the ticking time bomb scenario. What I am sure of is that it, specifically, must be discussed in order to answer the question, "Is it ever moral to torture someone?"
quote:But that's because you can kill someone as self defense under immediate personal threat of harm. The tangent doesn't really flow over, since anyone being tortured is a captive in your charge, already well beyond the point of a mitigating self-defense scenario. It's the apples-and-oranges point of comparison.
Only because you've seized on only one aspect of self-defense's justification. The apple in each comparison is "Do X or bad thing Y happens."
You can make statements about greater good all you want. The fact is that, for most people, there are situations where it is moral to kill. There are situations in which it is moral to lie. We ought to spend a lot of effort defining those situations as best we can. The same goes for torture.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:You keep saying this. You have yet to support it except for the one sentence about zealots in this last post.
The burden is actually on the other end. I'd like to see validated evidence that torture produces reliable evidence, yet the only stories we get are intelligence disasters like al-Libi.
While pro-torture folks will frequently make the claim that torture saves lives (or at the very least, that they assume it will save lives in hypothetical scenarios), it absolutely must be recognized that expert assessment of torture will completely deflate the issue.
A declassified FBI email from 2004 indicates that the experts on torture have maintained, based in part from experiences at Guantanamo, that physically abusive interrogation produces information that is always suspect. Always. The Judge Advocate General for the Navy, John Hutson, noted "All the literature and experts say that if we really want usable information, we should go exactly the opposite way and try to gain the trust and confidence of the prisoners. Torture will get you information, but it's not reliable. Eventually, if you don't accidentally kill them first, torture victims will tell you something just to make you stop. It may or may not be true. If you torture 100 people, you'll get 100 different stories. If you gain the confidence of 100 people, you may get one valuable story."
With hypothetical ticking-time-bomb scenariocrafting, the issue descends into reducto territory, especially given that time is not on the side of the torturers, and the torturers have to investigate claims made by the tortured party, since it cannot be assumed that they are true. Especially, based on all knowledge we have about torture, because the claims were made under torture. Since a severe time constraint won't transform torture-extracted confessions into not being suspect, then there's no payoff. If you don't have enough time to go about things the 'nice guy' way -- this being assumed to be the only time where torture becomes an option -- you're hosed anyway.
As an extra special bonus, we're essentially required to assume that the government is going to be allowed nigh-immediate rubber-stamp approval of torture, to make it useful in the dire hypothetical timeframes presented. If we've got to wait for a warrant of some sort, the excercise in theorycraft is already over, since we're probably gunning for a mysterious timeframe where, hypothetically, torture is the 'only way.' Anywhere between an hour and fifteen minutes is assumed, regularly.
I would venture to guess that the burden of proof lies with a standpoint that wishes to demonstrate that there is any benefit whatsoever behind the alteration of current international conventions against the use of torture.
You've heard of the One Percent Doctrine, I'm sure; a person playing this game is playing the 0.0001% doctrine.
That, or perhaps they've watched too much 24.
Posted by pH (Member # 1350) on :
You know, any discussion of torture always makes me think of 1984, where in fact people DO confess to all kinds of crimes they haven't committed and expose all sorts of "conspirators" they don't have.
Moral implications of torture aside, the idea that if you aren't a terrorist, you have nothing to worry about frightens me.
-pH
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:The burden is actually on the other end. I'd like to see validated evidence that torture produces reliable evidence, yet the only stories we get are intelligence disasters like al-Libi.
Actually, the burden is on the one making the absolute claims. I'm not; you are.
quote:A declassified FBI email from 2004 indicates that the experts on torture have maintained, based in part from experiences at Guantanamo, that physically abusive interrogation produces information that is always suspect. Always.
Yes, which is why I've repeatedly emphasized the special characteristic of a ticking bomb scenario that the information is quickly verifiable. "Suspect" does not mean useless. I know a lot of investigators who pursue suspect information all the time because sometimes it pans out.
quote:With hypothetical ticking-time-bomb scenariocrafting, the issue descends into reducto territory, especially given that time is not on the side of the torturers, and the torturers have to investigate claims made by the tortured party, since it cannot be assumed that they are true.
Yes, and this is why it might be effective in the ticking bomb scenario. The guy says, "The bomb is in the basement." You send a guy down to the basement to check. Meanwhile, you have everyone else conducting whatever other search operation is appropriate.
quote:Since a severe time constraint won't transform torture-extracted confessions into not being suspect, then there's no payoff. If you don't have enough time to go about things the 'nice guy' way -- this being assumed to be the only time where torture becomes an option -- you're hosed anyway.
Again, you haven't supported this at all. Answer 1 given. Checked by searcher, found to be false. Torture begins again.
Since you've essentially admitted that normal interrogation methods won't work, the ability to extract suspect but checkable information is the only option other than searching - which would be done anyway.
quote:As an extra special bonus, we're essentially required to assume that the government is going to be allowed nigh-immediate rubber-stamp approval of torture, to make it useful in the dire hypothetical timeframes presented. If we've got to wait for a warrant of some sort,
The most I've even considered is a defense to the criminal charge of torture similar to the justification defense for homicide. Even when a cop shoots someone in the line of duty, he is immediately investigated as if he might have committed a crime. Same thing here.
quote:I would venture to guess that the burden of proof lies with a standpoint that wishes to demonstrate that there is any benefit whatsoever behind the alteration of current international conventions against the use of torture.
Again, the burden of proof is on those who are making absolute claims, as you have, that torture is "by and large" useless. First, the by and large admits the possibilities of scenarios where it's not useless. Second, you have repeatedly used evidence (good evidence, I might add) about the "by and large" case with only a superficial attempt at best to show why it applies to the not "by and large scenarios."
If you want to say anyone who wants to justify torture in a particular situation needs to demonstrate a chance of success at least equal to X, then you introduced a moral argument concerning where the burden of proof should be.
But using that burden of proof to justify your factual - not moral - statement that "torture is useless in situation X" doesn't work. You've made a claim about something factual, not moral, and you've yet to support it with evidence that applies to the specific claim.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Real torture has that effect. It's fascinating (albeit grisly) from a psychological standpoint. A tortured individual is attempting only to get the torture to stop, and so they'll unintentionally be cold-reading their interrogators and telling them what they want to hear. Let's say you want to know where the bomb was planted, but you've not picked up the terrorist who knows where the bomb is. Totally irrelevant; you will get confessions and locations. It's reflexive. You could almost call it unintentional. People who know the location you are torturing for have added complications, since they could be luring, and all information that isn't immediately testable will work for purposes of ending the pain. Witness, the impossible confessions, the Green Bay Packers lineups.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:You've heard of the One Percent Doctrine, I'm sure; a person playing this game is playing the 0.0001% doctrine.
That, or perhaps they've watched too much 24.
Never watched the show in my life. Beyond that, I don't care how rare the circumstance is.
Look, the question being examined is "Should torture be used in scenario X?" X makes up 100% of the topic under discussion, not 1% or .0001%
Evidence that torture doesn't work in scenarios Y and Z is irrelevant unless one can show that the differences between Y, Z, and X are irrelevant to the efficacy of torture.
I'm sick and tired of you turning the factual question into an implicit attack on the morals of those willing to grapple with that question.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:all information that isn't immediately testable will work for purposes of ending the pain
I'll repeat it, since it seems necessary:
quote:which is why I've repeatedly emphasized the special characteristic of a ticking bomb scenario that the information is quickly verifiable.
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
My question is, how many lives is there a possibility to be saved for torture to be viable?
Posted by human_2.0 (Member # 6006) on :
Does the constitution say something about cruel and unusual punishment or is that the bill of rights?
And I assume those considering torture are at least agreeing that the person has been tried and found guilty?
If you aren't, then terrorism has already succeeded at destorying America.
Posted by citadel (Member # 8367) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:So what's your evidence that there isn't future temptation to use torture absent its use once to stop a nuclear bomb?
Actually, I think there'd be future temptation to use torture once it's used to stop anything. Which is why I think we need to draw the line so strongly.
I'd be okay with allowing the information gathered by torture to be admissible and actionable, provided the torturers were themselves sentenced to death. Irami's suggestion -- that all acts of torture must be individually sanctioned by the President -- would also be acceptable to me, provided that an annual report listing the number of tortured individuals were released to the public.
I agree that it opens a can of worms and should be avoided. I am categorically against it.
I am against it because there are no checks and balances. Giving the president the power to say torture is okay for a given circumstance gives him too much power. What if the president is wrong and this person knows nothing and was tortured for no good? Does the president face any consequences?
Has this person that is to be tortured been convicted by 12 people or are we just going on a jack bauer gut feeling? We don't even allow torture for convicted child molestors/murders who have been convicted by 12 of their peers.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote:What if the president is wrong and this person knows nothing and was tortured for no good? Does the president face any consequences?
That's why the deliberative process has to be as public as possible. If we resort to torture, the public process will force the President, and by extension, the Congress, to offer a defense to the public. And to be honest, if the people start voting in torturers, or congressmen start being casual about torturing on their watch, then we deserve what we get.
It's like Truman and the Bomb.
This said, I do think that we should circumscribe strict parameters in which even the President can authorize torture. In addition, I think that a violation of these parameters should be grounds for impeachment. _______________
Again, this is where the law fails. We can talk about "clear and convincing" evidence, or a "preponderance" of evidence, but I don't know if it's possible to license the President to torture without giving him freedom to torture.
This is how Congress let Bush get us into this Iraq mess to begin with: giving him the authority to go to war, and watching as this authority collapsed into a semblance of freedom to go to war.
The nightmare scenario is to have some President defend himself(and it would be a him who would say this) by saying, "It was completely within my constitutional right to torture X."
[ August 19, 2006, 04:46 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Again, this is where the law fails. We can talk about "clear and convincing" evidence, or a "preponderance" of evidence, but I don't know if it's possible to license the President to torture without giving him freedom to torture.
Which is why I think the only possible recognition of torture we should give is a defense against criminal charges. Just like we don't "authorize" people to kill in self-defense, we don't "authorize" people to torture. We say, if you do, we might not throw you in prison if you had a good enough reason. But, the person using it is taking a chance that they will be found guilty, just as a person pulling the trigger on an intruder is taking a chance of being convicted of murder.
And note, I'm still not convinced it's a good idea to even allow this defense. I haven't made up my mind one way or the other.
quote:Does the constitution say something about cruel and unusual punishment or is that the bill of rights?
The constitution also says that we won't deprive anyone of life without due process of law, let we allow normal citizens, prison guards, and police officers to shoot to kill in certain situations.
quote:And I assume those considering torture are at least agreeing that the person has been tried and found guilty?
Doubtful. I can't imagine an exigent circumstance that would justify torture AND still exist after a conviction. I can imagine exigent circumstances that might justify torture immediately after an arrest.
quote:My question is, how many lives is there a possibility to be saved for torture to be viable?
I'm not sure one isn't enough. For example, the buried-alive for ransom scenario only risks one life, but if the kidnapper is caught somehow and identified, I might use torture to find the victim.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Look, the question being examined is "Should torture be used in scenario X?" X makes up 100% of the topic under discussion, not 1% or .0001%
quote:I'm sick and tired of you turning the factual question into an implicit attack on the morals of those willing to grapple with that question.
Perhaps you should read my contentions again: the meat of it has to do with the fact that I think a policy of giving the government the right to torture captives 'just in case' needlessly infringes on human rights for the sake of implausible scenarios.
In case it needs to be said, I'm not making implicit attacks against those grappling with the question. I am actually making very open attacks against the practice. Boo on torture! I do not like it! I think it's a terrible thing! We should not torture!
quote:Again, the burden of proof is on those who are making absolute claims, as you have, that torture is "by and large" useless.
I've referenced several expert opinions which lead me to be greatly confident that granting the feds 'the torture option' will confer negligible benefit at the cost of opening massive avenues by which the government may abuse power over detainees. We may sit here and dream up millions upon millions of addendum hypotheticals. "Yes, but in my scenario, the government WON'T end up abusing the power." "Yes, but in my scenario, this DOES happen in exactly the way that would make it potentially useful, and the international community gives it the OK."
Note that my view on the time-bomb-scenario torture is not swayed by custom-fit hypotheticals. My position originates from an attempt to tie it in to actual plausibilities and an attempt to reference historical precedent. Based on this wider reasoning, I'd stand by the principle of the matter -- unalienable human rights -- were it to come down to me having to decide whether or not we grant the government the power to utilize torture. If I've got to decide to grant the government that power, I don't.
To narrow the hypothetical down more: the scenario happens and I'm a part of some group that has to decide whether or not we get to torture some dude to try to keep a bomb from going off and killing thousands (or millions, sure, whatever) of people (the right to do so or the prohibition against doing so not having been resolved). Those millions of people better hope that they can get someone else to do it, since I won't do it. Part of this is "ew, I don't like torture" and part of this is that I reliably would have no reason to suspect that torture would help us out at all, and experts in the matter, as published in such seedy rags as the CIA's "Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual" (no joke) are feeding me that information based on knowledge they have accumulated from their own study and practice in the matter.
Exa:
quote:But does torture work? ... I still cannot find a positive answer. I've heard it said that the Syrians and the Egyptians "really know how to get these things done." I've heard the Israelis mentioned, without proof. I've heard Algeria mentioned, too, but Darius Rejali, an academic who recently trolled through French archives, found no clear examples of how torture helped the French in Algeria -- and they lost that war anyway. "Liberals," argued an article in the liberal online magazine Slate a few months ago, "have a tendency to accept, all too eagerly, the argument that torture is ineffective." But it's also true that "realists," whether liberal or conservative, have a tendency to accept, all too eagerly, fictitious accounts of effective torture carried out by someone else.
By contrast, it is easy to find experienced U.S. officers who argue precisely the opposite. Meet, for example, retired Air Force Col. John Rothrock, who, as a young captain, headed a combat interrogation team in Vietnam. More than once he was faced with a ticking time-bomb scenario: a captured Vietcong guerrilla who knew of plans to kill Americans. What was done in such cases was "not nice," he says. "But we did not physically abuse them." Rothrock used psychology, the shock of capture and of the unexpected. Once, he let a prisoner see a wounded comrade die. Yet -- as he remembers saying to the "desperate and honorable officers" who wanted him to move faster -- "if I take a Bunsen burner to the guy's genitals, he's going to tell you just about anything," which would be pointless. Rothrock, who is no squishy liberal, says that he doesn't know "any professional intelligence officers of my generation who would think this is a good idea."
Or listen to Army Col. Stuart Herrington, a military intelligence specialist who conducted interrogations in Vietnam, Panama and Iraq during Desert Storm, and who was sent by the Pentagon in 2003 -- long before Abu Ghraib -- to assess interrogations in Iraq. Aside from its immorality and its illegality, says Herrington, torture is simply "not a good way to get information." In his experience, nine out of 10 people can be persuaded to talk with no "stress methods" at all, let alone cruel and unusual ones. Asked whether that would be true of religiously motivated fanatics, he says that the "batting average" might be lower: "perhaps six out of ten." And if you beat up the remaining four? "They'll just tell you anything to get you to stop."
...
Given the overwhelmingly negative evidence, the really interesting question is not whether torture works but why so many people in our society want to believe that it works.
If I were a person having to decide whether or not to torture him, I would base my decision not to torture off of experience from guys like Herrington. I would be concluding that it's not worth trying.
But if we narrow down the hypothetical even more and assume that -- for whatever magical reason, maybe God told me or something, or maybe the CIA released a new torture handbook saying 'whoops, we found out some new stuff about torture, and now think it's a good idea' -- I've got plausible evidence that torturing this guy will actually stand a good chance of saving the millions of people, above and beyond any other available option?
Well, gee. Who knows. I might take a drill to his kneecaps. I'm not sure, just like I'm not sure how I would respond if an alien told me that I had to decapitate a busload of adorable doe-eyed orphan children with an icepick by nightfall if I wanted to keep him from killing three-quarters of earth's population. It's why I'm -- as mentioned before -- really not good at the plausible utilitarianist hypotheticals game!
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:really not good at the plausible utilitarianist hypotheticals game!
\
BTW, one thing I am NOT is a utilitarian. Nor is the hypothetical strictly utilitarianist. For example, the culpability of the subject in the threat would certainly factor into my decision.
Further, once again, you are the one who is actually answering the hypothetical here, not me. You are answering yet STILL won't address those factors which make it different form the intelligence-gathering scenarios presented in your evidence against torture's efficacy.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:BTW, one thing I am NOT is a utilitarian. Nor is the hypothetical strictly utilitarianist. For example, the culpability of the subject in the threat would certainly factor into my decision.
Don't worry, I'm only talking about the scenarios They're usually reductionist/utilitarianist since they generally ask questions that pit virtues and ethics versus a calculated cost.
Generally. "Do you personally do a TERRIBLE thing? To prevent ANOTHER TERRIBLE THING from happening?"
As for efficacy, note my last presentation: Stuart Herrington. Real-life ticking scenarios. Interrogated people in Vietnam, Panama and Iraq. Front of the renditions class. Easily a man who knows what he is talking about, and if he can conclude so strongly that he doesn't know any experts in his field who think it's a good idea? He's really talking, here, about nonconfidence in torture even in last-minute scenarios.
If it's still a leap of faith to assume that torture probably isn't realistically going to be much of a silver-bullet utility in these hypothetical situations, then, golly I'm a leaper. I'm welcome to being proven wrong, but I don't expect to see any studies or practices of time-critical torture on fanatical extremists with non-torture methods as a control group. You are hinting towards a personal requirement of proof which I am happy to say I cannot provide, since I -- thankfully -- have never heard of that sort of study ever existing. I'll just continue to assume that the body of knowledge we have on torture indicates the same 'dubious utility' concept I was working on, a few posts back.
Fortunately and lazily for my position, I'm not advocating any change to openly allow torture: I could base my nonallowance of torture entirely on axiomatic principles. Specifically, I'm happy to stick with the 'universal human right' angle, and be all in favor of contracts between civilized nations that agree not to torture people. This is because I'm still, after all, all like "hooray for no torture."
Posted by human_2.0 (Member # 6006) on :
I think it would help to define torture. Interrorgation is a mind game. There is a line when it quits being a mind game and starts inflicting physical pain.
As some of the quoted interrorgators say, once a prisoner starts talking, it is easy to get information out of them through deception. It is like the stories about hypnotism. You can't hypnotize a person and tell them to undress. But you can tell them that they are going to take a shower and off come the clothes.
If inflicting pain is part of the mind game, that is something. But in my opinion, emotional pain is much more powerful than physical pain. Isn't that what typical police detectives usually do? Threaten emotional distress? "I'll drag you to the station and book you..." Even threats of physical pain raise emotions.
But once you start physically hurting someone, the body of kicks in and it actually fortifies the victim's mind. Hasn't anyone been in a some sort of physical fight? I lost all of mine, but my mind never gave up.
And it is why we scratch itches. The pain drowns the itch and we feel better. The pain makes us feel better! Inflicting physical pain is the LAST thing you want to do when interrorgating a person!
Posted by human_2.0 (Member # 6006) on :
If you want a form of torture that I think might work... Give a person anesthetics so they can't feel their arm but their mind isn't affected at all. Then slice their wrist. If the person doesn't feel any pain and they are fully aware of what is happening, the emotional distress would likely break any resistance they felt and they would probably talk.
Even better, if you could somehow put them in a device so that they couldn't see their arm correctly, and slice the wrist of a fake arm, that might even be legal and wont lead to the person's death... Deception at its best. Still don't know if it would work though. But it at least gets past my belief that physical pain fortifies the mind.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
If you want a form of torture that I think might work... Give a person anesthetics so they can't feel their arm but their mind isn't affected at all. Then slice their wrist. If the person doesn't feel any pain and they are fully aware of what is happening, the emotional distress would likely break any resistance they felt and they would probably talk.
Even better, if you could somehow put them in a device so that they couldn't see their arm correctly, and slice the wrist of a fake arm, that might even be legal and wont lead to the person's death... Deception at its best. Still don't know if it would work though. But it at least gets past my belief that physical pain fortifies the mind.
I asked this awhile ago and nobody tackled it. I really hope somebody does. If we use the deception of Torture, or fool somebody into believing we are GOING to toture them, is that unethical?
Posted by Sterling (Member # 8096) on :
There is no one, no one, we should trust with the authority to authorize torture. If we did, that authority would be abused. If we did, our own moral authority would vanish. If we did, our right to expect and demand humane treatment of our own captured personnel disappears.
The situation in which we have absolute certainty that there is (a bomb, a person buried alive...) but no knowledge of where that Macguffin is is a fiction. And virtual certainty means an unknown number of innocents, ignorant captives, attention seekers and the like would be tortured.
If someone believes beyond doubt that if they don't torture someone to get information immediately many people will die, then perhaps they should be prepared to suffer the legal consequences for performing that illegal act. Under no less circumstances should it happen, and we as a society should never condone it.
[ August 20, 2006, 11:32 PM: Message edited by: Sterling ]
Posted by Gwen (Member # 9551) on :
BlackBlade: From what Terry said it seems like they already do it, to some degree. Take guy A, question him, don't take him back to the cell. Do the same thing with guys B, C, D, E, and F, spaced ten minutes apart. Guy G has been waiting for an hour and none of the others have come back and he's probably thinking that he'll be tortured and he'll have no reason to believe otherwise. You bring him in, and he'll be scared enough to talk...and you don't even have to say the "t" word. Same thing with the letters; tell them that if they talk they can write letters home. Of course they're guaranteed that right under Geneva anyway but they don't know that and you can make it take longer for them to get the chance anyway. And since a lot of people don't know what their rights are under the Geneva Conventions, they're easy to sucker in through rewards that are theirs anyway. Right on, Sterling! --The thing about the earlier suggestion (or maybe it was somewhere else, I can't really keep track) that evidence obtained through torture only be admissable in court if the torturers are executed is that it admits torture in non-eleventh-hour situations; people already act on information gotten through torture in dangerous situations, but allowing it in court brings in a totally different idea. The goal is to stop bombs from being exploded and the like. Doesn't the Geneva Conventions have something to say about torture? Or am I missing something?
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
Torturing an American citizen before they have been tried and convicted would totally throw the American legal system into chaos. I just don't see how it wouldn't.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dagonee:
quote:But that's because you can kill someone as self defense under immediate personal threat of harm. The tangent doesn't really flow over, since anyone being tortured is a captive in your charge, already well beyond the point of a mitigating self-defense scenario. It's the apples-and-oranges point of comparison.
Only because you've seized on only one aspect of self-defense's justification. The apple in each comparison is "Do X or bad thing Y happens."
You can make statements about greater good all you want. The fact is that, for most people, there are situations where it is moral to kill. There are situations in which it is moral to lie. We ought to spend a lot of effort defining those situations as best we can. The same goes for torture.
This is something that commonly confuses me in your posts Dag. What do you actually believe? I am not being snide, I really don't know if you're just arguing because you can, or because you really believe that torture is a good idea in the right circumstances? Failing that, what do you believe about torture, forgetting all the possible benifits and downsides (if that is an answerable question)?
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Originally posted by Storm Saxon: Torturing an American citizen before they have been tried and convicted would totally throw the American legal system into chaos. I just don't see how it wouldn't.
You would be suprised the measures that can be taken in war time so as to avoid the slowness of due process in favor of winning.
From the US constitution: Article 1, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution states, "The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it."
And more recently during Hurricane Katrina, from Wikipedia: "Contrary to many media reports at the time, martial law was not declared in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, because no such term exists in Louisiana state law. However, a state of emergency was declared, which does give unique powers to the state government similar to those of martial law. On the evening of August 31, 2005, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin nominally declared "martial law" and said that "officers don't have to worry about civil rights and Miranda rights in stopping the looters." Federal troops were a common sight in New Orleans after Katrina. At one point, as many as 15,000 federal troops and National Guardsmen patrolled the city to curb its descent into chaos and looting."
^^ Especially the United States section is interesting.
Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
I like the idea of disallowing torture, and prosecuting anyone who uses it, while allowing them the chance to defend its use as "necessary" in the circumstance.
Sadly, I don't think that's where this country is going with its use of torture. CIA operatives have asked for protection from prosecution for violations of the Geneva Convention. This sort of came out of the blue, but I suspect that what prompted it is that someone, somewhere is starting to narrow down the list of people who may, just possibly, have visited Abu Ghraib a week or so before things got turned onto a bad footing there. We have repeated heard tales of the "operative" who instructed the jailers on prisoner treatment. No-one has disputed those claims. They've just prosecuted the dumb-@ss regular army chumps who took it too far, took pictures, and were complete bone-heads about it.
But somewhere, there's at least one CIA or Army intelligence officer wondering when his name will surface.
Add to that the folks who arranged the extraordinary renditions and violated the laws in some foreign lands that are supposedly our allies.
I think there are quite a number of "operatives" out there who may not want to see the inside of a courtroom. Ultimately, we "asked" them to do some things on our behalf.
I think, as a nation, we have a moral obligation to identify and prosecute the people who went beyond what is lawful under our own laws, or who broke our laws by violating treaties that the US has signed and ratified. If we fail to do that, then we condone the torture, renditions, etc.
Ultimately, the courts may decide on our behalf that the circumstances warranted use of torture in specific cases. If so, so be it. I'll work to change the laws. On the other hand, I have little doubt and less hope that ALL the uses of torture in this war and in our recent history WERE legal or necessary.
I suspect there may be a small number of them that a court would find "acceptable" due to circumstances.
I continue to be worried about ALL uses of torture by our government and our proxies. When we have full disclosure and open review of our use of torture, and we see exactly how much of this activity was legal, I'll be willing to learn that there are a few circumstances in which the use of torture was valid.
I won't buy it now because I haven't seen anything like full disclosure or any attempt to hold the real leaders and instigators responsible.
Bring a few of those operatives to trial, then let's talk.
Disclose what the Administration's orders have been with respect to "rendition," and then let's talk.
Until then, I'll just laugh at the hypotheticals and the rush to prove that 11 guys were caught in England because someone was tortured by our buddies in Pakistan. It's a bunch of all-too-convenient theater.
Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
This quote was making the rounds of the progressive blogs in June, and I didn't see it on this thread. I think it perfectly illustrates the seductive, illusory comforts afforded by torture, in this case apparently approved by the President.
quote: From the Washington Post’s review of the The One Percent Doctrine by Ron Suskind: Bush “was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth,” Suskind writes, and he asked one briefer, “Do some of these harsh methods really work?”
Interrogators did their best to find out, Suskind reports. They strapped Abu Zubaydah to a water-board, which reproduces the agony of drowning. They threatened him with certain death. They withheld medication. They bombarded him with deafening noise and harsh lights, depriving him of sleep.
Under that duress, he began to speak of plots of every variety — against shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty. With each new tale, “thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each…target.” And so, Suskind writes, “the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered.”
All of this torture, or harsh interogation if you insist on euphemisms (certainly waterboarding at least is torture), was conducted after the CIA and FBI knew that Abu Zubaydah was clearly delusional, not a high-ranking al-Queada operative, and "appeared to know nothing about terrorist operations."
quote: Now let's keep firmly in Mind all of this Torture (best to call things what they really are, I find) , was going on MONTHS after the CIA and the FBI had conclusive proof this guy was not merely insane, but actively suffering from multiple personality disorder:
CIA and FBI analysts, poring over a diary he kept for more than a decade, found entries "in the voice of three people: Hani 1, Hani 2, and Hani 3" -- a boy, a young man and a middle-aged alter ego. All three recorded in numbing detail "what people ate, or wore, or trifling things they said." Dan Coleman, then the FBI's top al-Qaeda analyst, told a senior bureau official, "This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality."
and it Bears repeating again
Abu Zubaydah also appeared to know nothing about terrorist operations; rather, he was al-Qaeda's go-to guy for minor logistics -- travel for wives and children and the like. That judgment was "echoed at the top of CIA and was, of course, briefed to the President and Vice President," {long BEFORE the torture was ordered-ED}
As thinkprogress concludes:"The answer to your question, President Bush, is 'no.'"
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
BB,
I odn't believe anything about martial law allows torturing citizens because the arresting authorities believe they have done something wrong, particularly if the civilian courts are available. I'm not even sure torturing is currently allowed for non-citizens out of country, at all, and that's not getting into a trial. See
The argument that has been put forth for a while on this thread by those promoting torture is that of the 'ticking time bomb'. The problem with this is that it doesn't really define how much life should possibly be at stake in order to use torture. That's why I asked Dagonee my question. According to him, the loss of life can be as little as one person. So, what we are basically saying at this point is that the state can use torture to save a life. Furthermore, the situation is implied to be such that speed is of the essence. That is, torture must be used right then because the state doesn't have time to wait for a confession.
The problem as I see it is that in order for this to be done to citizens, you must almost totally abandon every single right a citizen has. Innocence till proven guilty, right to a speedy trial, right to an attorney. Everything. It's a situation that doesn't currently exist even when there's martial law, I don't think.
Well, we say, if it's to save a life, isn't it worth it? The problem here is the underlying assumption that we must know for a verifiable fact that a life is at stake, for if the state does not know verifiably that there is imminent danger to life, then this opens the door to the worst kinds of abuses. Not that, mind you, even 'verifiable' doesn't. In any case, let's keep it simple and say that the state must have some kind of almost absolute proof that there is a life hanging in the balance if it doesn't get information soon.
The problem here is that loss of life can't be verifiable. If the state knows that someone is in danger, then it almost certainly must know where the danger is. If it knows where the danger is, then it can almost certainly prevent that danger.
For instance, in the case of ticking bombs, how does the state know for sure that there is a bomb waiting to go off? Think about the number of times that the state has raised the alert level and nothing has happened. Well, it could have, we might say. The problem is is that could have shouldn't be good enough in this situation, because could have allows the state carte blanche to do whatever it wants whenever it wants to prevent not even clear and present danger, but the possibility of danger for just one person. Did the state torture the wrong person? Oh, well. Some sadistic jackass on the police force extorting confessions out of people? Well, there were lives to be saved, right?
We might say that torture can only be done with proper authorization, and I'm open to that idea as a possible answer to the torture issue, but what of issues of national security where things must be kept under wraps? What happens if the use of torture was incorrect? Will he who gives the order be held accountable? I doubt it. Even now, if there is a miscarriage of justice, a person *might* get some kind of settlement. Then again, chances are good that they get nothing. And that's after a full trial where all the facts are examined.
It comes down to what I first wrote in this thread. The circumstances defining what is reasonable for the use of torture, and the definition of what is torture, are jsut so vague and nebulous that it opens the door too wide to abuse by the state.
I agree with those who say to keep it illegal as it is. If there is a real need for it to be done, then let the person doing it do so with the full knowledge that if what he does is ever found it, he will be punished, and if it saves lives, then he can do his time (or whatever) confident that from he at least had some good come from his decision to do something wrong.
Posted by pH (Member # 1350) on :
I'd like to point out that New Orleans is not the first city to declare a state of emergency. I seem to recall that we had a few declared when I lived in Florida too, and no one was tortured.
-pH
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
Oh I was not saying that Martial Law gives the govt a basis for torturing somebody. Merely that declaring martial law pushes everything much closer to a state where torture is possible.
It reminds me of the movie "The Siege" Denzel Washington, and Bruce Willis. Too bad the movie sucked, but the basic premise is that there are terrorists that bomb a bank. Martial law is declared in the city and the army captures and tortures a terrorist to get information about the next attack. They end up torturing him and then putting a bullet in his head because to went too far. I do not remember if in the movie torture yielded valuable information, but the Bruce Willis's character is court martialed for ordering the torture.
People keep submitting anecdotes where a suspected terrorist was tortured in all sorts of nasty ways, and then we find out he wastes our time with false leads, and then we find out he knew nothing. Remember the point of the thread was that Pakistan seems to have used torture and gleaned information enough to warn Great Britain of a clear and present danger.
Were you able to wind back the clock, would you have prevented the capture of the man they (allegedly) tortured into talking, in order to preserve his human rights. Then hoped that the British govt would figure out the plot on its own through sensible more humanitarian means?
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
It's not clear that the one man's torture was what led to the case breaking open, but let's take it as true. The question is, did those people capturing him know what he knew before they captured him, but only needed to torture him to prevent the harm? If so, this falls under the 'ticking time bomb' scenario.
If they didn't, then you can't claim ticking time bomb.
It's clear, 100% clear that torture can lead to valuable information. I said this in my first post in this thread. The problem is, freaking look at Pakistan. Without looking, it was an out and out dictatorship for a while. I think it might ahve loosened up some, but I can't remember whether it's still a military dictatorship or not, but it still doesn't have the rights that we have, as Americans.
We are Americans. We don't want to become Pakistan. We want to stay American. Free(ish). Able to look at porn, read naughty books, wear scandalous clothing, and generally be goofy.
This freedom carries a price. The price for that freedom is people die because they are allowed to do stupid crap, and because our society is open.
Leave torture alone. We could prevent deaths and mayhem just by having border checks at each of the state lines before letting people into each state. Would it be a pain in the ass? Sure. Would it be doable and prevent deaths from undesirables moving around? Sure. Same thing goes for motorcycle helmets, drugs, sunbathing in the nude and letting people drink. Yes, taking those freedoms away would mean that more lives would be saved, but in the end, for the most part, most people who engage in those activities are responsible, law abiding citizens.
I firmly believe that we are not in a war against terror, we are in a war against stupidity. 90% of the people in the world can get along and try to be good neighbors. 10% of the world is stupid enough to try and bomb other people, drive drunk, and generally not care about others. Trying to keep these people from screwing over the rest of us, or themselves, by penalizing decent smart people doesn't really penalize the stupid people--they'll just move to sniffing glue or building bombs out of gas and nails. (Somewhat pessimistic, but I'm grouchy.) It only penalizes the innocent.
If torture is sanctioned, the people who it's going to be used against, by and large, are giong to be the poor, the ignorant, and the basically harmless. I have no doubt that something so clandestine will be abused and misused for the reasons that I've already layed out.
So, to answer your question, while I can see that 1 times out of a million, torture might be useful, the corruptive influence on the state and society that routine use of torture will have is not worth it.
Posted by Tatiana (Member # 6776) on :
The fact that we're even having this discussion, on hatrack, among people I consider to be the best and the brightest that our civilization has to offer, physically sickens me.
I am appalled, and more than appalled. I am afraid to have anything to do with you who condone torture. I think you are sick. This is my gut reaction.
Torturers do far worse damage to themselves, and to the side they represent, than to any enemy, real or imagined. Torturers represent the epitome of the evil I would struggle against with all my being. Whatever side embraces torture, that side has lost my support and gained my opposition.
Please do NOT imagine, when condoning torture, that it will not ever come to the torture of you and your dear ones. Please don't imagine only foreigners, or terrorists, or murderers will be tortured. History shows us that it is far more often the powerless, the political opponent, the population at large, who are singled out by torturers. Don't imagine that it will be confined to the guilty, or to people with skin a different color, whose accent is a different flavor from yours. No, it will be you. Your family. Your friends. Your brothers and children. They are the ones whom you condemn to the torturers' art.
Think deeply and long about this. Get down on your knees and pray about it with all the energy of your soul.
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
quote: In a democracy, I do not think we should ask our fellow citizens to sacrifice themselves or their principles for the public good unless we are, at least in principle, prepared to do the same. We may not be capable of serving in the military, but we should understand what that means before we ask our fellow citizens to fight for us. One of the signal characteristics of the TTB is that it treats the interrogators and their agency, their principles, as a black box. Who they are is unknown. But we should not assume “democracy for us, dictatorship for the interrogators.” The interrogators are our fellow citizens, part of our democracy, and it would be wrong to ask them to do something we were not prepared to do ourselves. Thus the democratic implication of the TTB is that we must steel ourselves to do something that is very unpleasant, but necessary.
So let us imagine ourselves in the interrogation room with the suspect. Evidence collected from his apartment certainly seems to indicate that he has knowledge of a looming terrorist attack, but he is begging for mercy. Too bad, isn’t it? All we have done is deprive him of sleep and clothing. And it is a bit cold. Unfortunately, he may be scared and cold, but he hasn’t given us one scrap of useful information. And we’re under some time pressure. Your superior has an idea. For better cover, the suspect was living with his family, a wife and young daughter. We’re detaining them in another room. The evidence seems to show the suspect cares for them. Perhaps if we brought them into the room? Your superior warns you to steel yourself for what comes next. Perhaps the suspect will respond to mere threats that they might be put to death in front of him. If threats are not enough, however, we must be prepared to do the worst. Of course, in some cultures there are acts regarded as worse than death. Your superior looks at you. Do you understand what he is talking about? Of course you do. You are experienced in the ways of the TTB, of doing what is necessary to elicit information under the terrible pressure of a deadline.
Posted by Dan_raven (Member # 3383) on :
There are many causes for which I would gladdly give my life.
There are very few for which I would take another.
There are even fewer for which I would torture an innocent. I can't think of one.
Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
Almost anything can be justified in very unlikely and extreme circumstances. Consider the situation of an operator whose job it is to raise a bridge to let ships through. A child has somehow gotten his clothes caught in the machinery, and there's no time to get him out, because a ferry is headed for the bridge, and for some reason there's no one at the controls. If the operator pulls the lever, the machinery will crush the child. If the operator doesn't pull the lever, hundreds of people will die when the ferry hits the bridge.
If the situation isn't extreme enough, make it thousands. If there's a way out of the dilemma, assume that for some reason that won't work.
If your decision is to pull the lever, does that mean we should legalize the murder of children? If you decision is not to, should we therefore legalize mass killing?
Wild and unlikely cases make for bad law. Let torture remain (or become) extremely illegal, and people will use it only when the alternative is also extreme. Legalize it because you might need it someday, and we end up with torture (I should say, more torture) of people who aren't even remotely connected with terrorism.
Posted by Mig (Member # 9284) on :
I agree wholeheartedly, Dan. But no one is advocating torturing an innocent. Kalid Sheik Mohamad does not count as an innocent in my book. Captured AQ don't count as innocents either. And what do you consider torture? Bamboo under the nails? Yes. Electrodes to the testicles? No doubt, yes, Waterboarding? Forced to listen to Jessica Simpson? Maybe, but not to the same degree as others. Frankly, I'm less concerned with these and can see myself waterboarding, without any regrets or guilty conscience, on captured AQs.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Would I ever knowingly torture an innocent? Under any circumstances?
Yes, I can imagine circumstances under which I might torture an innocent human being. If, for example, someone were standing over me with total believability and said, "Torture this innocent human being, or I will torture to a slow and agonizing death everyone you like and love."
Perhaps I am defective somehow, but I don't think I'm really all that unusual in that sense. While fortunately this decision will never be forced upon me, I think it is more effective in general for things like this to say, instead of, "Never," take proactive steps to avoid having the decision forced at all.
Because 'never' is a very big word, bigger than every human being I've ever met.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Why on Earth is waterboarding different than bamboo under the fingernails?
I can easily see someone being just as terrified by waterboarding as by bamboo under the fingernails. At least with bamboo under the fingernails, you're only in excruciating pain and not constant fear of death by drowning.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:But no one is advocating torturing an innocent.
Would you wait for a formal trial to prove the guilt of someone before torturing them?
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
I'm with Will on this one.
Posted by Dan_raven (Member # 3383) on :
Mig, Storm Saxon's post has us torturing a terrorist's daughter in order to get the terrorist to talk.
However, the claim that "we only would torture terrorists" puts an almost divine omnicience on the intelligence community, one they have often shown does not exist.
How many innocent people would be permissable to be tortured before the whole idea of torturing Terrorists would not be worth the price?
Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
I liked this anti-torture essay, "The Myth of the Ticking Time Bomb" by Alfred W. McCoy, a history professor. It examines torture and the ticking time bomb scenario very logically and with historical perspective.
quote:[edit:the end of point three:So the choices are clear. Major success from limited, surgical torture is a fable, a fiction. But mass torture of thousands of suspects, some guilty, most innocent, can produce some useful intelligence. /edit]
Number four: Useful intelligence perhaps, but at what cost? The price of torture is unacceptably high because it disgraces and then undermines the country that countenances it. For the French in Algeria, for the Americans in Vietnam, and now for the Americans in Iraq, the costs have been astronomical and have outweighed any gains gathered by torture.
Official sources are nearly unanimous that the yield from the massive Phoenix program, with more than forty prisons across South Vietnam systematically torturing thousands of suspected communists, was surprisingly low. One Pentagon contract study found that, in 1970-71, only 3 percent of the Viet Cong “killed, captured, or rallied were full or probationary Party members above the district level.” Not surprisingly, such a brutal pacification effort failed either to crush the Viet Cong or win the support of Vietnamese villagers, contributing to the ultimate U.S. defeat in the Vietnam War.
Similarly, the French army won the Battle of Algiers but soon lost the war for Algeria, in part because their systematic torture delegitimated the larger war effort in the eyes of most Algerians and many French. “You might say that the Battle of Algiers was won through the use of torture,” observed British journalist Sir Alistair Horne, “but that the war, the Algerian war, was lost.”
His conclusion?
quote: Number six: The use of torture to stop ticking bombs leads ultimately to a cruel choice—either legalize this brutality, à la Dershowitz and Bush, or accept that the logical corollary to state-sanctioned torture is state-sponsored murder, à la Vietnam.
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