posted
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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%
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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.
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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.
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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?
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Samprimary, the ineffectiveness of torture to obtain one type of information does not mean it is ineffective at obtaining all types of information.
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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.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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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
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).
Posts: 1209 | Registered: Dec 2003
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posted
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.
posted
[sarcastic]But if rape will save 1000 lives and the person being raped is guilty, then it is ok![/sarcastic]
Posts: 1209 | Registered: Dec 2003
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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!"
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.
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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.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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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.
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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.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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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.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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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.
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.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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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.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
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?
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
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.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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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.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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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.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
Torture should never be used because, once used, there will always be the temptation to misapply it in the future.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
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...
Posts: 1209 | Registered: Dec 2003
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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.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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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.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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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?
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
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.
posted
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? Posts: 1209 | Registered: Dec 2003
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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.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Er, doesn't the Geneva Conventions have something or other to say on the topic of torture? Or am I missing something?
Posts: 283 | Registered: Jul 2006
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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
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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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.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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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.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
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.
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