Merged Senate Report on CIA Torture Program

[Upchurch]

Well yes marplots if you want a false confession and have no scruples, then torture is fine.

I may have misunderstood, but I now think marplots's point is that the only thing it is good for is revenge and hatred. For that, it works just fine. Frankly, I have to agree.

 

[marplots]

Well yes marplots if you want a false confession and have no scruples, then torture is fine.

For political purposes, those might be the goal.

 

[tsig]

Did you read the definition of torture? That definition includes purpose. What you're discussing isn't torture.

It's just beating a prisoner with no reason which is OK with some posters here.

 

[marplots]

Did you read the definition of torture? That definition includes purpose. What you're discussing isn't torture.

I didn't. What am I referring to then?

 

[marplots]

I may have misunderstood, but I now think marplots's point is that the only thing it is good for is revenge and hatred. For that, it works just fine. Frankly, I have to agree.

Actually, those were just two examples. I listed a couple more possibilities earlier. However, I'll repeat that I'm not well-versed in the subject and have only skimmed the Senate report.

 

[3point14]

I didn't. What am I referring to then?

Beats the hell out of me.

 

[marplots]

Beats the hell out of me.

What's the point of the distinction? For example, suppose you wanted to train someone to be a torturer. Would her practice victims count under the definition of torture? Seems like they should, even if there were no information to extract.

 

[sunmaster14]

One cannot see what one will not look at. I've posted links and sources. You simply refuse to acknowledge them.

There's absolutely nothing new in the paper you linked. It is simply the same old unsupported assertions about the efficacy of the CIA program that are contained in other reports (e.g. the Senate Intelligence Committee report) and which the CIA adamantly denies (the CIA also claims, by the way, that claims of effectiveness were made contemporaneously, in internal reports which were never meant to be made public).

If you want to dig up a link to Rejali, 2007 which your excerpt referenced and quoted, then I'm happy to read that. For the most part though, the review you linked was off-topic, although it was an interesting read. It was particularly interesting to read that some people do not consider penal torture (i.e. torture for the purpose of punishment) to be real torture. That only judicial torture (i.e. torture for the purpose of extracting information or confessions) constitutes real torture. That is certainly not a distinction I would make.

 

[RandFan]

One cannot see what one will not look at. I've posted links and sources. You simply refuse to acknowledge them.

There's absolutely nothing new in the paper you linked. It is simply the same old unsupported assertions about the efficacy of the CIA program that are contained in other reports (e.g. the Senate Intelligence Committee report) and which the CIA adamantly denies (the CIA also claims, by the way, that claims of effectiveness were made contemporaneously, in internal reports which were never meant to be made public).

Hand-waving. Claiming that the assertions are unsupported is just automatic gainsaying and rhetoric. You've never provided evidence that torture is effective. We've provided multiple lines of evidence that you simply hand-wave away. In any event, the CIA adamant denials are self serving.

 

[jimbob]

Sunmaster, if you had an $80M contract to develop interrogation techniques do you think you might have a bit of bias if asked to assess whether these techniques were effective?

 

[sunmaster14]

The Game Theory Case Against Torture
(or, if you prefer, the actual paper by John Schiemann)

I tried reading the paper, but I got bogged down in too much abstraction and math. I think I got the gist of it, though, which is that it is inevitable that "over-torture" will happen in the sense that some people will be tortured past the point at which they've revealed all they know, even if they knew anything at all. That seems like a reasonable worry to me, and it's something I've thought of before, although I don't think it applies to all situations.

The paper does claim that the torture literature is devoid of cogent research on the topic. Neither the torture "apologists" nor their detractors have been able to point to clear-cut evidence regarding the efficacy of torture. I, however, consider the burden of proof to be on the detractors because the ability of incentives (the promise of pleasure or the ending of pain, and inversely the promise of pain or the ending of pleasure) to affect human behavior are so well-established in other areas. Torture is merely a more intense form of incentive.

I am working on a plausible scenario to demonstrate this point.

 

[jimbob]

There's absolutely nothing new in the paper you linked. It is simply the same old unsupported assertions about the efficacy of the CIA program that are contained in other reports (e.g. the Senate Intelligence Committee report) and which the CIA adamantly denies (the CIA also claims, by the way, that claims of effectiveness were made contemporaneously, in internal reports which were never meant to be made public).

A top al Qaeda expert who remains in a senior position at the CIA was a key architect of the agency's defense of its detention and "enhanced interrogation" program for suspected terrorists, developing oft-repeated talking points that misrepresented and overstated its effectiveness, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee's report released last week.
The report singles out the female expert as a key apologist for the program, stating that she repeatedly told her superiors and others — including members of Congress — that the "torture" was working and producing useful intelligence, when it was not. She wrote the "template on which future justifications for the CIA program and the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques were based," it said.
The expert also participated in "enhanced interrogations" of self-professed 9-11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, witnessed the waterboarding of terror suspect Abu Zubaydah and ordered the detention of a suspected terrorist who turned out to be unconnected to al Qaeda, according to the report.

The expert is no stranger to controversy. She was criticized after 9/11 terrorist attacks for countenancing a subordinate's refusal to share the names of two of the hijackers with the FBI prior to the terror attacks.

But instead of being sanctioned, she was promoted.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/bin-laden-expert-accused-shaping-cia-deception-torture-program-n269551

or this:

http://www.theguardian.com/science/the-lay-scientist/2014/dec/11/torture-why-did-the-cia-spend-over-180m-on-bad-science

In a stunningly obtuse piece of mismanagement, the same psychologists the CIA had contracted to engage in the torture were also assessing their own effectiveness, as detailed on page 473:

The CIA Inspector General Special Review states that CIA ‘psychologists objected to the use of on-site psychologists as interrogators and raised conflict of interest and ethical concerns.’ According to the Special Review, this was ‘based on a concern that the on-site psychologists who were administering the [CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques] participated in the evaluations, assessing the effectiveness and impact of the [CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques] on the detainees. In January 2003, CIA Headquarters requested that at least one other psychologist be present who was not physically participating in the administration of the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques. According to [Redacted] OMS, however, the problem still existed because ‘psychologist/interrogators continue to perform both functions.’
​

The situation being described would be insane even if you took torture out of the picture – the CIA was apparently contracting work out to a private company, then asking that company to evaluate its own performance. You might as well ask students to grade their own exams. And someone who just tortured a suspect is hardly going to write a report the next day concluding, “oh wait, actually, I probably didn’t need to do that. YOLO!” From the moment this “scientific” programme was set up, it was destined to degenerate into a cycle of torture, post-hoc justification, and more torture.

 

[RandFan]

Sunmaster, if you had an $80M contract to develop interrogation techniques do you think you might have a bit of bias if asked to assess whether these techniques were effective?

If the CIA blew $80M on a worthless study to you think they might have a bit of bias if asked to assess whether the techniques were effective?

BTW: Why so much to two individuals who had no expertise in intelligence gathering? Human psychology. Pricing strategy. The more you spend the more value it is perceived to have. There is no rational basis to give two people $181 Million (the original contract price) who were only ostensibly experts in withstanding torture. A dubious expertise.

 

[sunmaster14]

Sunmaster, if you had an $80M contract to develop interrogation techniques do you think you might have a bit of bias if asked to assess whether these techniques were effective?

Yes, I do not trust what James Mitchell (or whatever his name is) has to say on the topic. But he agrees that he is not to be trusted either because of his conflict. He says to look at the contemporaneous reports produced by others and which were never meant to become public. To my knowledge, these reports have not been made public.

 

[RandFan]

I tried reading the paper, but I got bogged down in too much abstraction and math. I think I got the gist of it, though, which is that it is inevitable that "over-torture" will happen in the sense that some people will be tortured past the point at which they've revealed all they know, even if they knew anything at all. That seems like a reasonable worry to me, and it's something I've thought of before, although I don't think it applies to all situations.

The paper does claim that the torture literature is devoid of cogent research on the topic. Neither the torture "apologists" nor their detractors have been able to point to clear-cut evidence regarding the efficacy of torture. I, however, consider the burden of proof to be on the detractors because the ability of incentives (the promise of pleasure or the ending of pain, and inversely the promise of pain or the ending of pleasure) to affect human behavior are so well-established in other areas. Torture is merely a more intense form of incentive.

I am working on a plausible scenario to demonstrate this point.

Sunamaster, have you acknowledged that much of the information is useless and requires lots of resources to falsify? You seem to ignore this most salient of points.

 

[sunmaster14]

or this:

http://www.theguardian.com/science/the-lay-scientist/2014/dec/11/torture-why-did-the-cia-spend-over-180m-on-bad-science

I encourage you to watch James Mitchell's interview with Megyn Kelly on Fox. He claims that the Senate report cherry picks quotes from over 6 million documents that they reviewed and was very dishonest about attribution (e.g. he is the source for some of the claims that people at the CIA were raising concerns about the program). I found him to be quite credible, especially since some of the claims he was making can by gainsaid by Senate intelligence committee members, if in fact they are untrue.

 

[RandFan]

Yes, I do not trust what James Mitchell (or whatever his name is) has to say on the topic. But he agrees that he is not to be trusted either because of his conflict. He says to look at the contemporaneous reports produced by others and which were never meant to become public. To my knowledge, these reports have not been made public.

Isn't this a "the dog ate my homework" type of reply?

• We aren't supposed to trust James Mitchell.
• Even James Mitchell says we should not trust him.
• We SHOULD trust James Mitchell that somewhere there is secret evidence for why we should trust him?

That is circular. Don't trust me. Trust that there is evidence that corroborates my claim. How do we know there is this evidence? I claim it.

 

[RandFan]

I encourage you to watch James Mitchell's interview with Megyn Kelly on Fox. He claims that the Senate report cherry picks quotes from over 6 million documents that they reviewed and was very dishonest about attribution (e.g. he is the source for some of the claims that people at the CIA were raising concerns about the program). I found him to be quite credible, especially since some of the claims he was making can by gainsaid by Senate intelligence committee members, if in fact they are untrue.

Couldn't some of his claims be verified by the CIA? Doesn't the CIA have motivation to corroborate Mitchell?

 

[sunmaster14]

Sunamaster, have you acknowledged that much of the information is useless and requires lots of resources to falsify? You seem to ignore this most salient of points.

Yes, I acknowledge it, and no I don't ignore it. But I understand option theory, which says that something is always better than nothing. If you get information, you have the option to do nothing with it. To expend zero resources validating it or acting on it. The decision to act on information is completely separate from the decision to get the information. This doesn't address Upchurch's claim, however, that getting information using torture might preclude getting better information in other ways.

 

[sunmaster14]

Couldn't some of his claims be verified by the CIA? Doesn't the CIA have motivation to corroborate Mitchell?

I'm not sure how free a hand they have to do that. The Senate report authors could certainly claim that he is lying though (or at least wrong), if in fact he is.