I have debunked these arguments several times already. The fact that you keep bringing them up does not inspire confidence that you can change your mind.
The key idea (for probably the 5th time at least) is that you only ask those questions to which the answers can be verified. For example, "what is the password for this encrypted file that I found on your computer?"
No you haven't debunked them - you gave examples where according to your theory it might have worked whereas I gave numerous examples where it didn't - spoilered as it is pretty long:
It might work in theory but not in practice, so let's traduce our fundamental values in order to make it slightly easier to protect a small aspect of our way of life?
Well, that's awfully convenient because it would be unethical to do direct scientific experiments. The best we can do is extrapolate from punitive measures which fall short of torture and which are allowed. That's the evidence on which I'm basing my argument. In the olden days, corporal punishment of children was pretty common, and I think it mostly worked to alter their behavior.
Except that the CIA *did* try to work out the efficacy of torture - in fact they had previously tried with the MKULTRA program. They dodn't seem to have progressed much beyond that, given how they behaved in the their assessment of the torture used post 9/11 (see highlighted part for an example).
I don't think this argument about "does it work/doesn't it work" is using the same idea of the role of torture on both sides. The one side seems to have an idea that torture is going to be used to extract specific information - like someone's pin code or where the bomb is hidden. Others would say it's just one piece of the larger picture, a link in a chain meant to develop intelligence generally. In this view, saying we could have got the info in another way is always true - a case is built up from many elements, no one of which is the "smoking gun." Any of them could be missing and it is quite possible the information would be found. This puts torture in a more minor, adjunct role, instead of the star of the show.
The latter view would have torture as a useful tool, even if it didn't "get the goods" in a clear an unambiguous manner. It might not even reveal any specific fact and still have a use as evidence that some suite of facts is true in a cumulative fashion.
It could also have a role as a threat. If information is given to avoid torture, no torture happens - does the torture get credit or not?
The general mechanism is valid, or seems so. "Tell us about X, or Y will happen." That's a common enough pattern. We see it in cop interrogations all the time - sometimes implied, sometimes stated outright: "The judge will go easier on you if you come clean now, before we get the DNA tests back."
The root issue about whether it works or not then has to do with what we take "works" to mean. As usual, it comes down to expectations and metrics. With two different operative definitions, both sides of the issue can be correct.
Well, being most generous to the idea of torture it might be good for getting information that is difficult to otherwise get easily - however it is significantly harder to get accurate information.
The CIA say it worked but can't give any examples. An FBI interrogator said it stopped one source of information and gave an example. There is at least one other case where a tortured Al Quaeda suspect cracked, then falsely confessed as well as falsely claiming that Iraq had been supplying Al Quaeda with WMDs.
I'm speaking of institutional experience and knowledge. People who learned from torture passed on their information to the next generation and so on. It's not necessary for the people who first conducted the research or gained the experience to still be at the CIA, or even alive. I think that if torture really didn't work, then the CIA as an institution would have taught its employees that it didn't work. I mean there's really no good reason for using it if you know it doesn't work. It's not only demoralizing, but it puts your people in legal jeopardy too. And it's quite clear that the CIA was very anxious from the very beginning about putting their people in legal jeopardy. They knew that the legal and political environment was a lot different in 2002 than it was in 1972 or 1962 or 1952.
If that was the case, why did they hire private contractors with no experience of actual interrogation - just of designing training regimes to help withstand interrogation?
There are reasons why the CIA turned to outsourcing. Few of them are good. The CIA had no experience in running detention centres. It was handed this mission abruptly a few days after 9/11. The Senate report stresses how “unprepared” it was. So it sought assistance from outside its ranks. The psychologists asked to conceive a set of “coercive interrogation techniques” had previously worked at a US Air Force school, training pilots to withstand the treatment they might face if taken prisoner or hostage. This was the basis on which they won this grim contract.
Meanwhile a couple of science blog posts in the guardian:
here (from 2010)
One of the interesting features of the torture debate is that many in the military and intelligence communities seem decidedly unconvinced about the effectiveness of torture. Ali Soufan, a former FBI special agent with considerable experience interrogating al-Qaeda operatives, pointed out in Time that:
He isn't alone in this assessment – a number of former intelligence people have expressed similar views, and his words are echoed by the US Army Training Manual's section on interrogation, which suggests that:When they are in pain, people will say anything to get the pain to stop. Most of the time, they will lie, make up anything to make you stop hurting them. That means the information you're getting is useless.
…the use of force is a poor technique, as it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.
or this about one of the CIA's claims:
The situation is further clouded by the fact that members of the George W. Bush administration made claims for the effectiveness of torture that have later been proven to be untrue. One such claim was that the water-boarding (simulated drowning) of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed produced vital information that allowed them to break up a plot to attack the Liberty Tower in Los Angeles in 2002. Slight problem - in 2002 Shaikh Mohammed was busy evading capture in Pakistan.
Well, no. Suppose I start beating you around the head, demanding that you tell me that Justin Bieber is in fact a supremely talented artist. Eventually, although it may take several days of torture to get there, you'll tell me what I want to hear, but that doesn't make it true.
The second major problem is that human memory just isn't reliable. Take a bunch of witnesses from any major news event: a bombing, 9/11, a car crash, wherever. The more people you interview, the more different stories you'll get, because our recall of past events isn't always very accurate. On top of that, there is a vast body of scientific literature telling us that one way to make a person's memory even less reliable is to deprive them of sleep, or put them under great stress, or otherwise confuse them. You know, like you do with torture.
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.
Your claims that it might be effective seem to be countered by the examples previously given in this thread. Recently I mentioned the NVA destroying a lot of its own capability due to this during the Vietnam war.
We also know it did produce incorrect intelligence in at least one case in the time that you are defending, where the torturers thought the victim (who wasn't innocent) knew something that he didn't - so he made it up.
Indeed, and the link in my post below showed that it produced wrong intelligence about Al Queada (A confession the person tortured was an aide to Bin Laden (they'd had a flalling out and) and that Al Quaeda was working with Saddam Hussein to distribute WMDs)
Referring to this quote:
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.
In short, there is nothing to say it works any better than chance, and a lot of evidence that it doesn't work even in the short-term tactical viewpoint, let alone when thinking about any wider goals.
In the case of Scalia, he seemed to think that torture was wrong as punishment when the guilt had been established, but not during the time that they are considered innocent.
I am not sure I'd agree with that.
ETA: a more concise version:
But it is more than compensated for by the selfless nature of their act. They do not torture for pleasure or for revenge, but to elicit information to save the lives of others.
Citation please.
Torture can get good information - the Gunpowder Plot conspirators were caught by that*. It can also get bad information - many people confessed to witchcraft.
The Gestapo weren't able to break some people.
I can't think of a real situation where it is justified.
*TheElizabethanStuart authorities probably also didn't care too much if innocent people were caught, as long as the guilty were caught, and history wouldn't be able to say if some of those implicated were actually innocent.
Defending freedom by destroying the freedoms people fought for seems somewhat counterproductive. There is a reason for the Fourth, Fifth and Eighth Amendments
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