Merged Senate Report on CIA Torture Program

[fishbob]

Numbered for my convenience:

Right, which is why causing the excruciatingly painful deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, including children, would have not been morally justified. I mean in order to justify inflicting suffering on that large a scale (e.g. Dresden in February 1945, Tokyo in March 1945, Hiroshima/Nagasaki in August 1945), you would have to think that you could shorten a war that was basically already won by at least a few weeks.

1 - I'm wondering how much worse do you think it is to burn hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians to death in comparison to waterboarding three mass murderers?

Ok, so it didn't really work, but we can't really hold that against "Bombs Away" LeMay or "Bomber" Harris because they thought it would be an effective strategy at the time. I feel similarly about the people who authorized and carried out waterboarding in 2002-2003.

2 - People here keep saying that despite the lack of any published evidence one way or the other. For the record, there sure are a lot of people at the CIA who believe it does work. As for the MKULTRA project, I haven't found any information about the efficacy of torture to extract information. The reference is useful to show to Garrette, however, since it seems like the program was going strong on Nov 2, 1956 when Eisenhower's behavior was otherwise exemplary.

1 - You seem to be saying that because we bombed in WW2 that it is OK to waterboard today. Boiled down to basics, this is the classic tu quoque fallacy.

2 - There are a lot of people who believe dowsing works too. Does this belief make them right or just stupid?

 

[Meed]

What does it matter whether it works or not? It's wrong and 'we' are supposed to be the good guys. The US is a signatory to the UN convention against torture which it has been wilfully and systematically subverting. Interestingly, the US appears not to be a signatory to the optional protocol which established a system of independent visits to which participants agreed to be subject. Now, why would that be?

We*'ve rarely been 'the good guys'. We've been straight up evil** for the most part. But that's not to say that other countries have generally been better. For some reason power and evil just seem to go hand in hand.

*"We" referring to the US government with respect to foreign policy.

**Not that "evil" necessary exists in an objective/absolute sense.

 

[RandFan]

1 - You seem to be saying that because we bombed in WW2 that it is OK to waterboard today. Boiled down to basics, this is the classic tu quoque fallacy.

I don't think for a moment that we should accept carpet bombing civilians as justified in time of war. I don't know how necessary it was. I don't know how effective it was. It strikes me as nothing more than rationalization. We used chemical warfare in WWI so why can't we drop nerve agents on ISIS?

 

[RandFan]

The Monologue of Colonel Kurtz

Demonstrable of nothing but perhaps apropos.

 

[sunmaster14]

Numbered for my convenience:


1 - You seem to be saying that because we bombed in WW2 that it is OK to waterboard today. Boiled down to basics, this is the classic tu quoque fallacy.

I have to say I've seen an awful lot of poor logic in this thread. I am not saying that it's ok because something else was ok. I'm saying that the people who believe that a far greater crime was ok, but the far lesser crime was a moral outrage, are inconsistent and illogical, to say the least.

2 - There are a lot of people who believe dowsing works too. Does this belief make them right or just stupid?

Well, to my knowledge, the US government is not paying dowsers big salaries and relying on them to protect the US from foreign threats. But, hey, it's the government, so maybe the CIA really is filled with kooks rather than spooks.

 

[Cleon]

Why are we even discussing "mild discomfort" in a scenario where people had stuff forced up their rectums?

The theory goes is if the treatment wasn't bad as some OTHER treatment, then it wasn't REALLY torture, just "mild discomfort."

"Hey, it was just the thumbscrews - at least we didn't use the rack!"

 

[Upchurch]

Well, to my knowledge, the US government is not paying dowsers big salaries and relying on them to protect the US from foreign threats.

Well, they aren't any longer.

 

[Wudang]

The continuum argument seems to be to be variant on what one book refers to as the "logically black is white slide". Sunset is defined at least 3 different ways, astronomical, civil and maritime so we can't draw an exact line and say sunset is there. Yet we're usually okay at spotting the difference between night and day.
The rest of it seems to rest on the assertion that torture can be justified if it averts a greater evil but fails because the effectiveness of torture remains unproven.
But ultimately it's like defending rape - whether intellectually satisfying or not you should just be damned well ashamed.

 

[jimbob]

I don't think for a moment that we should accept carpet bombing civilians as justified in time of war. I don't know how necessary it was. I don't know how effective it was. It strikes me as nothing more than rationalization. We used chemical warfare in WWI so why can't we drop nerve agents on ISIS?

I think it probably was necessary - if only to keep Russia on side.
There are debates about the effectiveness. JK Galbraith worked as an economist on the United States strategic Bombing Survey and concluded that each tonne of bombs dropped on Germany cost the Allies more than the Germans. (IIRC my reading of The Affluent Society)

 

[tsig]

If you are replying to me, no, not that. I was arguing with sun master that we were the good guys in WW2 notwithstanding there were some not so good things, among which I mentioned carpet bombing and the poster above corrected me and said that was in fact a good thing too so I thanked him for strengthening my argument.

WWII has been over a long time, the evil Nazis and Nips are now the heroes of the day and the former hero is now a torturer. Things change.

 

[tsig]

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?

"If you weren't guilty they would not have tortured you"

If torture works we can do away with the courts, all we need is the police to bring in the criminals and the torturers to bring in the truth.

 

[anglolawyer]

How many pre-1945 examples of US behaving badly would you like? Illegal unprovoked wars such as the invasion of Northern Mexico (1848) or Cuba (1898)? Signing and then ignoring the terms of nearly every treaty between the US and the various "Indian" nations in a bloody war of conquest? Bayoneting and hacking with sabers women and children, setting fire to innocent villages and committing biological warfare against those same Nations?

I could go on, but I think you miss something important: nations do Bad Things, always have, but since 1945 We The People have known about them through the agency of, among other things, an independent news media.

I dispute specifically your assertion that the behavior of the US is qualitatively or quantitatively "worse" since 1945 than previously.

Noted.

 

[fishbob]

I'm having multiple conversations at once. The distinction between torture and mild/moderate pain infliction arose in a dialog with 3.14 about my extrapolation from police interrogations to CIA "enhanced" interrogations. My claim is that international law is silent on the kind of pain infliction done by police thousands of times every day in the US.

The distinction between torture and mild/moderate pain infliction is completely irrelevant. Football and dungeon interrogations are not on the same continuum. To be clear, torture is sadistic abuse.

International law may be silent because under US law the police are not supposed to inflict pain in their interrogations.

 

[fishbob]

I don't think for a moment that we should accept carpet bombing civilians as justified in time of war. I don't know how necessary it was. I don't know how effective it was. It strikes me as nothing more than rationalization. We used chemical warfare in WWI so why can't we drop nerve agents on ISIS?

I am not accepting carpet bombing as justified, I don't know if it was necessary or effective either.
My position is that doing one horrible thing (carpet bombing) does not justify us doing another horrible thing (detainee abuse / torture) even if it is less horrible.

 

[jimbob]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/12/us-torture-shaker-aamer-cia-guantanamo

He might query why the single most important
catastrophe of the torture programme receives so
little attention. Shaker was Prisoner 005 in Bagram,
and he witnessed Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi being taken
out in a coffin. The CIA erroneously thought that
Libi, who was actually at odds with Osama bin
Laden, was number three in al-Qaida. They flew
him to Egypt where he was subjected to torture by
electric cattle prod. Once there, he “confessed” that
al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein were in league
together, trafficking in weapons of mass
destruction – a false and bitter fruit of torture that
was wheeled out to justify the invasion of Iraq, and
only discredited after many thousands had died.

 

[RandFan]

I am not accepting carpet bombing as justified, I don't know if it was necessary or effective either.
My position is that doing one horrible thing (carpet bombing) does not justify us doing another horrible thing (detainee abuse / torture) even if it is less horrible.

I apologize if it seemed I was taking you to task. I was simply agreeing with you and expanding on your perfectly valid point.

 

[RandFan]

Ron Wyden's point-by-point smackdown of the CIA's defense of torture

 

[Upchurch]

The rest of it seems to rest on the assertion that torture can be justified if it averts a greater evil but fails because the effectiveness of torture remains unproven.

In fact, the only 'greater evil' presented that comes close to justifying the use of torture is where making you use torture is the imaginary cartoon villain's actual goal. It serves no other purpose then to make you commit the act of torture, because MWA-HA-HAAA.

But ultimately it's like defending rape - whether intellectually satisfying or not you should just be damned well ashamed.

Not to harp on sunmaster14, but I've felt that way throughout these torture-topic threads regardless of who took the pro-position. The only logically valid reason to support it's use is to cause another pain; be it for revenge, hatred, or sadistic pleasure. Timely information gathering is a red herring, and simply not true.

 

[RandFan]

Not to harp on sunmaster14, but I've felt that way throughout these torture-topic threads regardless of who took the pro-position. The only logically valid reason to support it's use is to cause another pain; be it for revenge, hatred, or sadistic pleasure. Timely information gathering is a red herring, and simply not true.

At the risk of appearing to justify my previous stance, some time after 9/11 I listened to an interview by Dale Dye. He is a former Marine, military consultant and an actor (not that acting lends him authority on anything). In any event, Dye argued that these "techniques" were not torture. His reasoning was that torture was pain and these techniques were simply "discomfort". I bought into it.

I went and looked at some of my old posts in defense of torture. Ouch.

 

[Olowkow]

At the risk of appearing to justify my previous stance, some time after 9/11 I listened to an interview by Dale Dye. He is a former Marine, military consultant and an actor (not that acting lends him authority on anything). In any event, Dye argued that these "techniques" were not torture. His reasoning was that torture was pain and these techniques were simply "discomfort". I bought into it.

I went and looked at some of my old posts in defense of torture. Ouch.

I have followed your posts pretty closely since joining JREF, and as you know I am a sincere admirer of your philosophy in general, but I don't recall this era in your progression towards, shall we say, sanity. Nor was I aware of your Limbaugh or Mormon years. That must all have been before my time here. It might be relevant and instructive for you to link a few posts where you defended torture. I know I would like to read them.

I wonder whether Cheney understands that claims by him and others that torture works must be particularly galling for someone like John McCain. Is he claiming that McCain betrayed his country and really cannot be a national hero, because surely he must have caved under the pressure of torture by by the Viet Cong? Do Cheney and his torture advocating patriots really believe that they themselves would betray their families and friends if the pain were sufficient? If torture works, would it work on them? This is what they seem to be trying to get us to believe.

Why don't these news media interviewers ask the people some relevant questions of torture proponents such as "Would you like your son/daughter to study torture techniques and become an expert?"