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Merged Senate Report on CIA Torture Program

sunmaster14 said:
Picking a single day is obviously ludicrous. Who even knows what the government was doing or plotting on that day anyway? Less than 3.5 years before, they were overthrowing the elected government of Iran and fighting a war in Korea. Approximately 3.5 years later, they were trying to assassinate Castro.



This is a silly game, but I don't view any of those things as even bad, let alone immoral. We're doing what we can with respect to Ukraine. I thought Obama could have been a little more forceful, but we're obviously constrained. If he engineered the drop in the price of oil, which is putting a major hurt to both Russia and Iran, then good for him. The national debt is definitely not a bad thing, as I've tried to explain elsewhere.
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In other words, you cannot support or defend your claim, you will not even attempt to define your criteria, and because it upsets you that my response makes this clear, you engage in some vast No True Scotsman fallacy. Yes, there is ludicrousness here, but it is not coming from me.
 
sunmaster14 said:
You do realize that the count is of the number of times water was poured onto his face for a time lasting less than 5 seconds, right? It's not of actual waterboarding sessions. And I'm not defending the methods which were used in this case.
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So it's only a little torture some of the time. More importantly, you still avoid the question: which one of those sessions -- long or short -- is the one that worked?

sunmaster14 said:
I have only argued two things here:

(1) The people responsible for authorizing torture and carrying it out probably should not be prosecuted, or even vilified; and

(2) The moral absolutists who claim that torture is never justified are either illogical or intellectually dishonest.
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1. Your argument has been sparse and comprises one claim counter to the US's historical judgments: they were doing what they were told, directly or indirectly.

2. You have yet to show why it would be justified given that neither you nor anyone else has shown that it works except maybe sometime but even then not better, faster, or more reliably than non-torturous methods.
 
bit_pattern said:
You mean you can get confessions and intelligence from standard interrogation techniques without engaging in torture?
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Even better, with standard interrogation techniques you can also get false confessions and bad intelligence. I don't think standard interrogation gives quite the level of sadistic pleasure though.
 
fishbob said:
2 - Apart from completely unrealistic hypotheticals, why?
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Actually, it isn't justified for most of the completely unrealistic hypotheticals, either. Even conceptually, torture is both unreliable and slow, necessarily producing information with a low signal-to-noise ratio. Moral questions aside, if you need reliable information quickly, torture fails.

The only purpose for torture is to hurt them. Information gathering is low-yield, high-effort side effect.
 
Garrette said:
In other words, you cannot support or defend your claim, you will not even attempt to define your criteria, and because it upsets you that my response makes this clear, you engage in some vast No True Scotsman fallacy. Yes, there is ludicrousness here, but it is not coming from me.
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I think it's important to review the discussion and the claim. anglolawyer implied (more than implied actually) that the US used to be "good" and now it's "bad." I claimed that the US has continually improved its standards of what constitutes moral behavior, and that if the US were not considered "good" now, it really never was (nor was any country, frankly, but that's a separate issue). You asked for proof, and I turned it around and challenged you to find a counterexample, which is a much easier thing to do than for me to analyze each period in the history of the US and assess the country's behavior relative to today. That is, I asked you to name a time period when the US was "good" or at least "better" than it is now, and I figured we could compare and contrast.

In response, you gave me a period of one day. I thought you were making some kind of clever point, and that that particular day was significant in some way. I think now that you just picked a random day when the US was not conducting any kind of overt military action. Of course, choosing a period of one day is ridiculous, especially given that anglolawyer was clearly referring to US "bad" behavior over a time period encompassing from 9/11 to today, i.e. a period of over 10 years. I don't see how a serious person could think that a period which didn't span at least a single Presidential administration is meaningful. Nevertheless, I put that single day in context. There was a lot of crap happening in close proximity to that day, and the Cold War was raging. I doubt very much that if anglolawyer did some research into US behavior on that day, he would characterize it as "good."
 
To those who are at least unsure as to whether or not these practices can be called "torture," a question:

Are you okay with government agents performing these procedures on people who have not been convicted of a crime?
 
sunmaster14 said:
I think it's important to review the discussion and the claim. anglolawyer implied (more than implied actually) that the US used to be "good" and now it's "bad." I claimed that the US has continually improved its standards of what constitutes moral behavior, and that if the US were not considered "good" now, it really never was (nor was any country, frankly, but that's a separate issue). You asked for proof, and I turned it around and challenged you to find a counterexample, which is a much easier thing to do than for me to analyze each period in the history of the US and assess the country's behavior relative to today. That is, I asked you to name a time period when the US was "good" or at least "better" than it is now, and I figured we could compare and contrast.

In response, you gave me a period of one day. I thought you were making some kind of clever point, and that that particular day was significant in some way. I think now that you just picked a random day when the US was not conducting any kind of overt military action. Of course, choosing a period of one day is ridiculous, especially given that anglolawyer was clearly referring to US "bad" behavior over a time period encompassing from 9/11 to today, i.e. a period of over 10 years. I don't see how a serious person could think that a period which didn't span at least a single Presidential administration is meaningful. Nevertheless, I put that single day in context. There was a lot of crap happening in close proximity to that day, and the Cold War was raging. I doubt very much that if anglolawyer did some research into US behavior on that day, he would characterize it as "good."
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As my name appears three times in the post above, I get to say something. I take the point that nations aren't aptly described as good or bad and I am glad you put those words in quotes. Nations ('states' might be a better word here') pursue their own interests at all times, or at least that is what they should do. But totalitarian or fascist states in general have a view of the world as they would like it to be which is different from the view that, say, a western democracy will have. A militarist state will see militarism as a means to its ends while a peaceful democracy will see negotiation and diplomacy as the way forward. A commercial state will pursue avenues of commerce. It doesn't seem wrong to ascribe moral qualities to these things. I live under the Pax Americana which is, on the whole, good. America is a democracy that espouses a belief in the rule of law and is willing to trade and ally with my country making my country (and me) richer. So, America is basically 'good'. For me anyway.

What I am saying is that America has been getting less 'good' as the years since 1945 have passed, especially in the last 13 years, to the point at which the word 'bad' is hoving into view: it drags the world into unnecessary, stupid, counter-productive, ill-considered and illegal wars, destabilises the world's economy with insane borrowing and financial shenanigans, erodes moral values by torturing people, sows mistrust by scheming in an increasingly unprincipled manner, tells lies and cocks a snook at its treaty obligations.

I wanted to add, there is a downside to all this in terms of loss of credibility. As a litigator I know all about credibility. It's extremely valuable. It enables you to make threats and not have to carry them out. It takes time to acquire, is easily lost and hard to regain. So, apart from all the obviously bad aspects of the war on terror, one of them is reputational harm. Not easily quantified in actual cash but extremely important in thousands of ways for a state like the US.
 
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Upchurch said:
You can repeat your words all you like, it is still not an argument that supports your claim that the ticking time bomb scenerio justifies torture. At best, it is an attempt to move the goalposts from an indefensible claim because now, instead of trying to demonstrate that torture would provide the information needed to stop the bomb, you've shifted to a political correctness argument that torture really isn't torture.

As far as I'm concerned, if we prosecuted people who water boarded others in WWII as war criminals, that firmly places it in the category of "torture".
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Do you not agree that there is a continuum for the use of force and mistreatment, and that there exists a grey area between what is torture and what is not torture?

You still seem to be misunderstanding my "continuity" argument, which is not that what happened doesn't constitute torture, but rather that there are logical implications to the acceptance of a continuum. If you accept that it is ok for a police officer to threaten or use physical force to subdue a suspect, because the goal of subduing a potential criminal is worth the immorality the inflicting pain (or threat of pain) on a human being, then it is impossible to draw a line at which the use of a certain kind of physical force is at all times unjustified.

For example, if handcuffing somebody's wrists in an uncomfortable position for 15 minutes is acceptable (and the police do this all the time), then what goal of coerced behavior justifies handcuffing for 20 minutes? Or 30 minutes, or an hour? At some length of time, you will define this as torture, but are there really no "ends" which justify such "means" when there were fairly commonplace "ends" which justified, say, "means" minus 15 minutes?
 
sunmaster14 said:
Do you not agree that there is a continuum for the use of force and mistreatment, and that there exists a grey area between what is torture and what is not torture?
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No.

Causing pain to gain information is in no way the same as using C&R techniques to control a suspect. They are not on the same continuum at all.
 
sunmaster14 said:
I think it's important to review the discussion and the claim. anglolawyer implied (more than implied actually) that the US used to be "good" and now it's "bad." I claimed that the US has continually improved its standards of what constitutes moral behavior, and that if the US were not considered "good" now, it really never was (nor was any country, frankly, but that's a separate issue). You asked for proof, and I turned it around and challenged you to find a counterexample, which is a much easier thing to do than for me to analyze each period in the history of the US and assess the country's behavior relative to today. That is, I asked you to name a time period when the US was "good" or at least "better" than it is now, and I figured we could compare and contrast.

In response, you gave me a period of one day. I thought you were making some kind of clever point, and that that particular day was significant in some way. I think now that you just picked a random day when the US was not conducting any kind of overt military action. Of course, choosing a period of one day is ridiculous, especially given that anglolawyer was clearly referring to US "bad" behavior over a time period encompassing from 9/11 to today, i.e. a period of over 10 years. I don't see how a serious person could think that a period which didn't span at least a single Presidential administration is meaningful. Nevertheless, I put that single day in context. There was a lot of crap happening in close proximity to that day, and the Cold War was raging. I doubt very much that if anglolawyer did some research into US behavior on that day, he would characterize it as "good."
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I am happy to review the exchange, and contrary to how my posts might appear, I really don't like engaging in nitpicking of words, so if I have misunderstood something, I'll be happy to admit it, but I do not think that you are giving an accurate review here.

sunmaster14 said:
anglolawyer said:
The US used to be good. Now it isn't anymore. Maybe this is inevitable but at least let's not pretend.
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This is nonsense. Either we're good today, or we've never been good, because we're better than we've ever been, present feckless leadership notwithstanding, of course.
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That's how it started, with the false dichotomy. Your explanation here is late to the game; if that's what you meant, then fine, but I could not have known that.

In regard to my response, yes, I picked a day, and no, it wasn't random. That's the day that the UN adopted the American-written resolution regarding the Suez Crisis. I consider Eisenhower's response to the Suez Crisis to be one of America's finest foreign policy hours. We had allies, but we did not back them blindly. The UK, France, and Israel were in the wrong, and we called them on it. We didn't abandon them; we didn't get histrionic; we didn't torture anyone; we didn't go to war; we didn't whitewash what had happened. We stood up to the aggressors and backed the aggrieved.

All the rest of your discussion is exactly as I have been pointing out: you are applying criteria that are not consistent and that you do not define or admit of their existence until it becomes convenient for your argument.

It has taken a very long time to get to the point where you still do not admit that "either the US is good now or it never was" is a vacuous claim.
 
3point14 said:
No.

Causing pain to gain information is in no way the same as using C&R techniques to control a suspect. They are not on the same continuum at all.
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I think this is a distinction without a difference, as I discussed at length in the Condoleezza Rice thread. I used the phrase "bending to the will" of authorities, whether it be "coming along quietly," not throwing food around your prison cell, or giving up the names of your conspirators.

Regardless, let's just focus on causing pain to gain information. Do you think lengthy interrogations, even those you are fine with, are not designed to cause some material level of discomfort, i.e. pain?
 
sunmaster14 said:
I think this is a distinction without a difference, as I discussed at length in the Condoleezza Rice thread. I used the phrase "bending to the will" of authorities, whether it be "coming along quietly," not throwing food around your prison cell, or giving up the names of your conspirators.
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No. they are distinct and different. Look at it this way, while exercising C&R techniques the inflicting party can always say exactly what is required to make the pain stop. A torturer cannot, a torturer can ony guess (however educated that guess may be) if the victim has provided the correct information, he or she does not know. That's a very long way from 'if you walk into that cell I will stop hyper-extending your elbow.


Regardless, let's just focus on causing pain to gain information. Do you think lengthy interrogations, even those you are fine with, are not designed to cause some material level of discomfort, i.e. pain?
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Mental, perhaps although police interrogations are actually more usually designed to gain the trust of the suspect (The FBI wy, not that CIA way). Any that are designed to cause physical pain to cause the suspect to provide information are illegal under international law and those indulging in the act and those that ordered or were aware of and did not prevent torture should be subject to prosecution.

There is no relation between the two, one legitamate and the other banned by every nation that the world considers to be civilised, and any attempt to link them to legitimise torture is merely a conscience salving exercise.
 
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sunmaster14 said:
Regardless, let's just focus on causing pain to gain information. Do you think lengthy interrogations, even those you are fine with, are not designed to cause some material level of discomfort, i.e. pain?
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Are you aware that a detained suspect has the right to stop an interrogation at any time?
 
Garrette said:
I am happy to review the exchange, and contrary to how my posts might appear, I really don't like engaging in nitpicking of words, so if I have misunderstood something, I'll be happy to admit it, but I do not think that you are giving an accurate review here.

That's how it started, with the false dichotomy. Your explanation here is late to the game; if that's what you meant, then fine, but I could not have known that.
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I'm still not sure what you think the false dichotomy is. My point has always been that the US keeps improving its standards of behavior. In large part, this is a luxury of increasing wealth and security, as well as advanced technology, e.g. precision weaponry. To some extent, it is improving standards of morality for their own sake (e.g. protecting civil rights for minorities). I still think that most of our social progress has been enabled by our increasing wealth and security, though, in that we can "afford" to act more morally and not suffer much downside from it. It has always been the case, and always will be the case, that we'll "do what we have to do" in order to survive. That is pretty much true for all humans and all countries. We'll turn into a police state if terrorists ever manage to detonate a nuclear weapon in a major city, for instance.

In regard to my response, yes, I picked a day, and no, it wasn't random. That's the day that the UN adopted the American-written resolution regarding the Suez Crisis. I consider Eisenhower's response to the Suez Crisis to be one of America's finest foreign policy hours. We had allies, but we did not back them blindly. The UK, France, and Israel were in the wrong, and we called them on it. We didn't abandon them; we didn't get histrionic; we didn't torture anyone; we didn't go to war; we didn't whitewash what had happened. We stood up to the aggressors and backed the aggrieved.
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Ok, well that was a good day, I guess, from your perspective. Personally, I'm not too fond of Eisenhower's response, which I thought was undertaken in both a fit of pique and an incorrect assessment of the geopolitical situation (he thought that Nasser could become an ally against the Soviets). Note that his response was similar to the US response to Britain and France's attempts to reconstitute their colonial empires after WWII. We were fine with it until we saw it as an impediment to our rivalry with the Soviets. In fact, we at first had made a kind of a cynical bargain with the Brits. We'll stop complaining about your racist treatment of the black people of Africa, if you stop complaining about our racist treatment of the black people of the US. All in all, I'm not terribly impressed with the US of the 1950s.
 
3point14 said:
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Mental, perhaps although police interrogations are actually more usually designed to gain the trust of the suspect (The FBI wy, not that CIA way). Any that are designed to cause physical pain to cause the suspect to provide information are illegal under international law and those indulging in the act and those that ordered or were aware of and did not prevent torture should be subject to prosecution.
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I thought that only torture was proscribed, which means intentional infliction of severe pain. The only international laws I am aware of which deal with any kind of pain or lengthy interrogations apply only to legal combatants in a military conflict. They wouldn't apply to policing activities within a state, nor to unlawful combatants.
 
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