Merged Senate Report on CIA Torture Program

logger said:
Yes I know, I think it is effective (because the CIA says so :) )
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When people doing evil things defend the evil things they're doing in an effort to prevent being prosecuted, it's meaningless.

Why don't we listen to independent organizations? Or, perhaps, why don't we listen to people who've been tortured. We have a good example here. A former US presidential candidate, held as a prisoner of war and interrogated with torture.

http://www.mccain.senate.gov/public...committee-report-on-cia-interrogation-methods
“They must know when the values that define our nation are intentionally disregarded by our security policies, even those policies that are conducted in secret. They must be able to make informed judgments about whether those policies and the personnel who supported them were justified in compromising our values; whether they served a greater good; or whether, as I believe, they stained our national honor, did much harm and little practical good.
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Why oh why, John McCain, did you have to take the crazy train on your journey through the elections?
 
ehcks said:
You call them unlawful combatants, and they call your whole war unlawful.

There is at all times agency on the part of the soldier, even the captive one. We know that because "I was just following orders" is not a valid defense.

He should know that by joining an unlawful war, he will be denied certain rights to due process and to prisoner of war status. He will be treated as the lowest criminal imaginable. Etcetera and such.
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The Geneva conventions are neutral with respect to the lawfulness of a war or with respect to "who started it." That is, a lawful combatant in an unlawful war is covered, whereas an unlawful combatant in a lawful war is not.

Once again, though, I have never claimed that the inherent criminality of a suspect justifies torture all by itself. Torture can only be justified in pursuit of a moral goal which outweighs the immorality of the torture. My point was, however, that the moral standing of the victim, as well as his ability to end the torture through cooperation, should enter into the moral calculus.
 
W.D.Clinger said:
For this to become a compelling argument, you'd have to provide evidence that you have thought about these issues more deeply than George Washington ever did (and that your peers do not regard you as a bit of a dim bulb).
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I never claimed it was a particularly compelling argument. One wasn't needed, since the appeal to George Washington's authority had little persuasive value. However, in comparing Washington to me, I'll note that I've contributed hundreds of posts on the subject to Washington's one (and the attribution to him may not even be accurate).

Washington's peers included Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton. Washington's peers chose Washington as commander of the Continental Army, president of the convention that drafted the US Constitution, and first President of the United States.
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Washington had many good qualities, and I consider him to be a hero. He was courageous, honest, kindhearted, modest and inspiring. He was also really tall, which no doubt enhanced his leadership qualities. But his talent as a speaker and a thinker was known to be wanting. He wasn't really such a good military strategist either apparently.

When a pseudonymous argument implicitly asks readers to believe the pseudonymous arguer's peers think more highly of him than Washington's peers thought of Washington, then the pseudonymous argument is toast.
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You are making the mistake of believing that being an intellectual is the only quality which matters. There are many admirable and successful people who are not all that bright.
 
sunmaster14 said:
The Geneva conventions are neutral with respect to the lawfulness of a war or with respect to "who started it." That is, a lawful combatant in an unlawful war is covered, whereas an unlawful combatant in a lawful war is not.
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Sure, but they didn't sign any Geneva Convention. We did. Therefore we need to hold ourselves to a higher standard.

If we can't do that, then we're as bad as we claim them to be.
 
ehcks said:
When people doing evil things defend the evil things they're doing in an effort to prevent being prosecuted, it's meaningless.

Why don't we listen to independent organizations? Or, perhaps, why don't we listen to people who've been tortured. We have a good example here. A former US presidential candidate, held as a prisoner of war and interrogated with torture.
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Even better. Let's put those responsible to trial in the world court and see how they fare? If it is so obviously common sense, then why should anyone be worried? Just imagine, the CIA and Cheney could show the world how right we are!

I'm serious. If it's so obvious that torture is justified, then what would be wrong with going to court for it?

Of course we know the answer. Because the world will not agree with sunmaster and logger that it is so obviously acceptable. And it's because the world is wrong, and they are right. Just like George Washington is wrong.
 
So, which senior US officials are now unable to leave the US for civilised* lands due to fear of arrest and prosecution for torture?






(*Civilised - where torture isn't state sponsered)
 
Frozenwolf150 said:
By the way, I don't agree with Sunmaster on everything, but he's actually arguing that torture was wrong. Where we differ is that he believes torture is effective, and that the moral outrage against it is disproportionate. Of course, you'd know that if you read the topic.
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It's not quite that cut and dried. He asserts that torture is wrong in this case but that there exists situations where the use of torture is right and justifiable, based on erroneous assumptions. Worse, even in this case where he agrees it was wrong and unjustified, he argues that those responsible for committing these crimes should not be prosecuted or punished.

That's a pretty far distance from just "torture is wrong."
 
Upchurch said:
It's not quite that cut and dried. He asserts that torture is wrong in this case but that there exists situations where the use of torture is right and justifiable, based on erroneous assumptions. Worse, even in this case where he agrees it was wrong and unjustified, he argues that those responsible for committing these crimes should not be prosecuted or punished.

That's a pretty far distance from just "torture is wrong."
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In that case, I admit my mistake and retract my statement. :p

And I stand by that poem I posted earlier. Maybe logger should read it, he would probably agree with it 100%.
 
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pgwenthold said:
Of course we know the answer. Because the world will not agree with sunmaster and logger that it is so obviously acceptable. And it's because the world is wrong, and they are right. Just like George Washington is wrong.
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And yet it will continue, hopefully more in secret. Repubs, dems and whoever else gets elected will not get in the way of allowing the military to protect this country no matter how much you libs cry about it.

For that I am grateful to them, I'm proud of them and I'm proud of this country. They've done a magnificent job in stopping almost all the threats we have faced.
 
logger said:
And yet it will continue, hopefully more in secret. Repubs, dems and whoever else gets elected will not get in the way of allowing the military to protect this country no matter how much you libs cry about it.
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Are you under the impression that the use of torture somehow protects this country?
 
logger said:
And yet it will continue, hopefully more in secret. Repubs, dems and whoever else gets elected will not get in the way of allowing the military to protect this country no matter how much you libs cry about it.

For that I am grateful to them, I'm proud of them and I'm proud of this country. They've done a magnificent job in stopping almost all the threats we have faced.
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What threats would those be?
 
logger said:
And yet it will continue, hopefully more in secret. Repubs, dems and whoever else gets elected will not get in the way of allowing the military to protect this country no matter how much you libs cry about it.



For that I am grateful to them, I'm proud of them and I'm proud of this country. They've done a magnificent job in stopping almost all the threats we have faced.
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The last war fought on US soil were the Indian Wars where the First Nations were reviled for their practice of ritual torture. The threat of these nations to the Republic was fairly minimal and the US Army seemed to do a fairly good job of winning without torture. The US military has managed to fight and win, or at least hold to a draw (discounting the loss of Vietnam) pretty much every conflict it has fought without resorting to torture (because the use of torture has become public every conflict it has been used in).

Why would the present conflict require resort to torture?

Or are you simply more afraid?
 
logger said:
Are you under the impression that torture is constantly used?
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No, Obama put an end to the use of torture by the US and good for him for doing so.

However, the topic of the thread is the CIA's use of torture. Are you under the impression that it's use was necessary to protect our country at any time?
 
marplots said:
I can speculate. This whole interrogation thing is like psychiatry in that there's an art along with the science. By "art" here I mean some dude's guess about what to do next.

I don't actually think it's linear but a bit from here, some from over there, and so on. For example, torture might seem to make person X compliant but not person Y. They get a bit of info from somewhere (say a captured cell phone call), call up the prison and say, "Hey, we want to know if the technique of dressing up like women to beat the checkpoints was something they used in Pakistan."

So that gets added to the list of things you want to know. Maybe one guy says it was and the other not. You believe whatever compliance technique you are using is valid, but you can never tell if what you are getting is the straight info, some localized bit, something the prisoner didn't know but heard or made up, or just noise. But in this soup of interviews, by whatever means, one hopes a coherent picture emerges.

In any case, I think this straight-line, from here-to-there bit is merely hypothetical, no matter what technique we are talking about. It makes it very hard to say anything with much clarity or prove something works either in the way you think it ought to or reliably.

I give you the polygraph as an example - bad science, but might work sometimes, needs independent verification.
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I suspect (but don't know anymore than you) information derived from torture is part of a mosaic made up of stuff from all kinds of sources. It's probably wrong to assume the torture-produced Intel is free-standing.

Anyone see The Battle of Algiers (film)? In that one the French torture (basically they beat up) a terrorist and learn the location of another terrorist's hide out, enabling them to capture him. So the veracity of the information is testable and there is basically no way the guy would have squawked without 'persuasion'.

I don't think the critique of torture is best based on the argument that it doesn't work. Using it as a one-size-fits-all method of intelligence gathering is probably what doesn't work but with a little brains (not always in good supply, I admit) I can't see why the immediate benefits should not be real. Viewed from a wider perspective its downsides may weigh heavily by:

  • exposing your own guys to retaliatory brutality
  • multiplying your enemies and stiffening resistance
  • undermining the legitimacy of your cause
  • corroding the democratic state and relations with allies and
  • demoralising your own side

Not so easy to work out the cost/benefit calculus.
 
anglolawyer said:
I don't think the critique of torture is best based on the argument that it doesn't work. Using it as a one-size-fits-all method of intelligence gathering is probably what doesn't work but with a little brains (not always in good supply, I admit) I can't see why the immediate benefits should not be real.
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Yeah, it worked in 24, too, but failed (heavily implied) in Star Wars: A New Hope.

No one has argued that torture can't work. Anyone who says that it is valiantly beating up a strawman.

The argument is that the signal-to-noise ratio is too low to make it useful as a ticking-time-bomb solution. Further, the science shows that prolonged torture effects memory recall, basically destroying the information one might be searching for. Studies to date have shown that rapport building is far more effective, efficient, and, clearly, safe, not to mention legal and ethical. (Sources all provided previously in the thread)

The argument against torture is that we don't need it and that it can, in fact, be counter-productive to obtaining intelligence. The only advantage in using torture is that it provides a sadistic thrill against someone we view as our enemy. Which, for the CIA, was completely wrong about 20% of the time; a very wide margin of error.
 
Upchurch said:
Yeah, it worked in 24, too, but failed (heavily implied) in Star Wars: A New Hope.

No one has argued that torture can't work. Anyone who says that it is valiantly beating up a strawman.

The argument is that the signal-to-noise ratio is too low to make it useful as a ticking-time-bomb solution. Further, the science shows that prolonged torture effects memory recall, basically destroying the information one might be searching for. Studies to date have shown that rapport building is far more effective, efficient, and, clearly, safe, not to mention legal and ethical. (Sources all provided previously in the thread)

The argument against torture is that we don't need it and that it can, in fact, be counter-productive to obtaining intelligence. The only advantage in using torture is that it provides a sadistic thrill against someone we view as our enemy. Which, for the CIA, was completely wrong about 20% of the time; a very wide margin of error.
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:boggled: Straw man? You just succinctly argued that it doesn't work.
 
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