Torture!

[@\NightandtheShape/@]

You know what they could do Kaftan, force them to convert MILLIONS of TGA images to DDS... That'd show 'em! Dirty Terrorists!

[walkerguy]

(List largely in thanks to Krezack)

 

Supposedly there are about 14 CIA operatives in entire world who are authorised to carry out the interrogation techniques which border on torture

There is nothing there that "borders" on torture, all of it is torture if it is meant to help in extracting information. Unless you want to argue that some of that doesn't bring physical or mental pain.

 

This is Krezack's post modified (Sensory Deprivation and CIA quotes added) and put into Way-Off where the topic is more relevant. These certainly are torture methods, and that should be clear despite that one sentence. BTW, walkerguy, not walkerperson, theres no need for that, and the real username is shorter to type anyhow.

 

As Walsingham has already said, it isn't effective. People under torture don't tell the truth, they tell whatever they think will end the torture soonest. The information you get is useless.

 

*Darth Vader voice* Effective, terrifying torture will not result in grovelling information, but, rather, just the intel you wanted.

 

I personally don't buy the argument that our approach is "more humane". Torture is torture, period. If you think you can demand that U.S. soldiers be treated humanely when they're captured by other nations and then turn around and torture captives of that other nation, your demands fly right out the window. Why become what you hate anyway? Besides, as many other people have said, torture does not work--why do you think it went out of fashion in the more industrialized nations? Don't forget too that whoever is doing the torturing will also suffer from it. Do we really want to turn any of our CIA agents or men and women of the military or whoever into torturers?

 

Torture is torture, period.

Sure. But a belly slap isn't like ripping your limbs apart is it?

 

turn around and torture captives of that other nation

Thats not the point. Why should be expect al-Qaeda (our enemies) to be nice to our troops? So we don't get all flustered and have bush storm in with thousands more marines? We will not negotiate nor play fair with terrorists. If we need intel from a terrorist, we should do well to extract that information.

 

become what you hate anyway?

Thats too simple a point to argue about torture.

 

Besides, as many other people have said, torture does not work--why do you think it went out of fashion in the more industrialized nations?

Torture is not proven effective. It depends on your allegiance, what is at stake, how far one would go for intel. Torture is effective sometimes, but not all the time.

Edited April 2, 2008 by walkerguy

[walkerguy]

An excellent argument:

 

It is generally assumed that torture is impermissible, a throwback to a more brutal age. Enlightened societies reject it outright, and regimes suspected of using it risk the wrath of the United States.

 

I believe this attitude is unwise. There are situations in which torture is not merely permissible but morally mandatory. Moreover, these situations are moving from the realm of imagination to fact.

 

Death: Suppose a terrorist has hidden an atomic bomb on Manhattan Island which will detonate at noon on July 4 unless ... here follow the usual demands for money and release of his friends from jail. Suppose, further, that he is caught at 10 a.m on the fateful day, but preferring death to failure, won't disclose where the bomb is. What do we do? If we follow due process, wait for his lawyer, arraign him, millions of people will die. If the only way to save those lives is to subject the terrorist to the most excruciating possible pain, what grounds can there be for not doing so? I suggest there are none. In any case, I ask you to face the question with an open mind.

 

Torturing the terrorist is unconstitutional? Probably. But millions of lives surely outweigh constitutionality. Torture is barbaric? Mass murder is far more barbaric. Indeed, letting millions of innocents die in deference to one who flaunts his guilt is moral cowardice, an unwillingness to dirty one's hands. If you caught the terrorist, could you sleep nights knowing that millions died because you couldn't bring yourself to apply the electrodes?

 

Once you concede that torture is justified in extreme cases, you have admitted that the decision to use torture is a matter of balancing innocent lives against the means needed to save them. You must now face more realistic cases involving more modest numbers. Someone plants a bomb on a jumbo jet. I He alone can disarm it, and his demands cannot be met (or they can, we refuse to set a precedent by yielding to his threats). Surely we can, we must, do anything to the extortionist to save the passengers. How can we tell 300, or 100, or 10 people who never asked to be put in danger, "I'm sorry you'll have to die in agony, we just couldn't bring ourselves to . . . "

 

 

Here are the results of an informal poll about a third, hypothetical, case. Suppose a terrorist group kidnapped a newborn baby from a hospital. I asked four mothers if they would approve of torturing kidnappers if that were necessary to get their own newborns back. All said yes, the most "liberal" adding that she would like to administer it herself.

 

I am not advocating torture as punishment. Punishment is addressed to deeds irrevocably past. Rather, I am advocating torture as an acceptable measure for preventing future evils. So understood, it is far less objectionable than many extant punishments. Opponents of the death penalty, for example, are forever insisting that executing a murderer will not bring back his victim (as if the purpose of capital punishment were supposed to be resurrection, not deterrence or retribution). But torture, in the cases described, is intended not to bring anyone back but to keep innocents from being dispatched. The most powerful argument against using torture as a punishment or to secure confessions is that such practices disregard the rights of the individual. Well, if the individual is all that important, and he is, it is correspondingly important to protect the rights of individuals threatened by terrorists. If life is so valuable that it must never be taken, the lives of the innocents must be saved even at the price of hurting the one who endangers them.

 

Better precedents for torture are assassination and pre-emptive attack. No Allied leader would have flinched at assassinating Hitler, had that been possible. (The Allies did assassinate Heydrich.) Americans would be angered to learn that Roosevelt could have had Hitler killed in 1943, thereby shortening the war and saving millions of lives, but refused on moral grounds. Similarly, if nation A learns that nation B is about to launch an unprovoked attack, A has a right to save itself by destroying B's military capability first. In the same way, if the police can by torture save those who would otherwise die at the hands of kidnappers or terrorists, they must.

 

Idealism:There is an important difference between terrorists and their victims that should mute talk of the terrorists' "rights." The terrorist's victims are at risk unintentionally, not having asked to be endangered. But the terrorist knowingly initiated his actions. Unlike his victims, he volunteered for the risks of his deed. By threatening to kill for profit or idealism, he renounces civilized standards, and he can have no complaint if civilization tries to thwart him by whatever means necessary.

 

Just as torture is justified only to save lives (not extort confessions or incantations), it is justifiably administered only to those known to hold innocent lives in their hands. Ah, but how call the authorities ever be sure they have the right malefactor? Isn't there a danger of error and abuse? won't "WE" turn into "THEM?" Questions like these are disingenuous in a world in which terrorists proclaim themselves and perform for television. The name of their game is public recognition. After all, you can't very well intimidate a government into releasing your freedom fighters unless you announce that it is your group that has seized its embassy. "Clear guilt" is difficult to define, but when 40 million people see a group of masked gunmen seize an airplane on the evening news, there is not much question about who the perpetrators are. There will be hard cases where the situation is murkier. Nonetheless, a line demarcating the legitimate use of torture can be drawn. Torture only the obviously guilty, and only for the sake of saving innocents, and the line between "US" and "THEM" will remain clear.

 

 

There is little danger that the Western democracies will lose their way if they choose to inflict pain as one way of preserving order. Paralysis in the face of evil is the greater danger. Some day soon a terrorist will threaten tens of thousands of lives, and torture will be the only way to save them. We had better start thinking about this.

 

http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/torture.html

[Gfted1]

Ive been wondering about that after seeing poster after poster regurgitate the same line. Who/what/where determined that torture produces only lies? Thats preposterous.

[walkerguy]

Indeed, Gfted.

[SteveThaiBinh]

Ive been wondering about that after seeing poster after poster regurgitate the same line. Who/what/where determined that torture produces only lies? Thats preposterous.

 

In the lead-up to the Iraq war in 2003, Colin Powell told a

[walkerguy]

We can provide many cases when it did work. Just because terrorists have enough discipline not to tell the truth doesn't discount torture as a sometimes successful tool.

Edited April 2, 2008 by walkerguy

[Gorgon]

Thats not the point he tried to make at all, rather torture induces the subject to tell the interrogator any wild tale he thinks will make it stop. Everyone breaks sooner or later.

Edited April 2, 2008 by Gorgon

[walkerguy]

So since the dawn of time and beginnings of torture, all tortured subjects have lied and the investigators have enjoyed it, even carried torture into the 21st century nonetheless! We know it is will not work, but its just such a pleasure to not recieve your desired intel. Another pastime is not torturing! Even less helpful data is gained resluting in even more enjoyment!!

[Gorgon]

Lets stay away from straw men shall we, obviously the observation that torture doesn't work is general, not specific.

[walkerguy]

Torture can result in either failure or success. Both are frequent results of such an unpleasant practice. So, neither views on torture are wholly correct on whether it works or not.

Edited April 2, 2008 by walkerguy

[Gorgon]

You can't qualify that statement or make any about how often either result occurs because both failure and success is kept a secret after the fact.

 

Rather we are left with some airy notion that so and so many terrorist actions have been prevented through torture, that significant intelligence obtained through torture helped a military campaign to fruition, these are claims though that by their nature are never fully investigated.

Edited April 2, 2008 by Gorgon

[Nick_i_am]

Demanding 'no' option.

[Gorth]

Torture can result in either failure or success. Both are frequent results of such an unpleasant practice. So, neither views on torture are wholly correct on whether it works or not.

 

Not really. If its intended use is to retrieve reliable information and If you don't know when it is reliable or not, it doesn't work.

 

Edit: Quote added. Shees, people are quick posters.

Edited April 2, 2008 by Gorth

[walkerguy]

Sorry, nick. (about no no option)

 

Plainer: Torture works sometimes, sometimes it doesn't.

Edited April 2, 2008 by walkerguy

[Nick_i_am]

Well, without it it's hard to guage the proportion of people who think that it can be necessary compared to those who think it totally isn't.

 

Not that that means that the discussion isn't interesting.

[walkerguy]

The poll is more for a discussion about which kinds of torture that you do approve of, not inclusive of those who don't approve at all, which was not my intent.

 

Well whether or not torture has only worked in some past cases I'd still use it if times deemed neccesary along with the other strategies of war.

[Walsingham]

Ive been wondering about that after seeing poster after poster regurgitate the same line. Who/what/where determined that torture produces only lies? Thats preposterous.

 

No. What's preposterous is people who've (hopefully) no experience of using it claiming it does. If I hear an NCO with twenty five years and five operational theatres saying that they've seen it applied by dubious types teh world over and it's crap then I believe him. What's your counter-argument? "It works in my head"?

[Deadly_Nightshade]

Who/what/where determined that torture produces only lies?

 

Well, torture victims have been known to give false confessions to stop the pain - but I believe that those instances were mainly when the persons were subjected to extreme physical abuse.

[Walsingham]

Who/what/where determined that torture produces only lies?

 

Well, torture victims have been known to give false confessions to stop the pain - but I believe that those instances were mainly when the persons were subjected to extreme physical abuse.

 

They just tell you any old b*****cks. Whatever they think you want to hear. the only possible good this could do is if you were abstractedly interested in what people thought you wanted to hear.

 

I should also repeat that it isn't just first hand stuff, or even every single first hand professional I've ever met and discussed it with*. It's also in page after page of history.

 

 

 

* Amateurs discuss tactics. Professionals discuss logistics. Old soldiers discuss toilets facilities. Weirdos discuss torture.

[SweetiePea]

Is torture effective?

 

Washington Post editorial with quotes from experts.

 

MSNBC transcript with quotes from their military analyst, a retired Army (U.S.) colonel.

 

These are just two of the many hits Google turned up when I typed in "is torture effective". There's plenty of reading out there.

Edited April 3, 2008 by SweetiePea

[random n00b]

Sounds bad but it's not quite so. Those are in fact rather mild "torture" methods, when compared to stuff they do elsewhere. That kind of torture is just an accessory to the feeling of powerlessness and being at the mercy of people that can do anything with you to get what they want that breaks a person's will.

 

And unfortunately asking politely just won't do the trick.

[Brdavs]

And they say "turning into the very thing you`re fighting against" is just an old outworn clich

[random n00b]

Good and evil exist only in your mind.

[Brdavs]

So you`re saying terrorism is not really evil but an outcry of people so desperate for a change for the better and so devoid of other political means to bring about that change that they resort to violence and taking theirown lives as they`re pushed into fanaticism?

 

I could actually get behind that idea of yours, you know... Instead of blowing ppl up we`d give them a chance of a life worthy of a human being... instead of putting more "boots on the ground" we`d stop the "cultural rape"... you get the picture heh... ;P