Jesse Ventura says water boarding is indeed torture

[TraneWreck]

This is nonsensical. Torture can and often does work. It's a fantasy to believe otherwise. The crude use of torture is mostly used for getting false confessions, but that really isn't its only potential application. Information which can be verified once obtained is very susceptible to extraction through torture, because if the subject doesn't give the correct information, then the torture will not in fact stop.

This just isn't accurate. There are centuries upon centuries of data demonstrating that torture is not an effective means of information gathering:

..an exhaustive 2014 report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence analyzed millions of internal CIA documents related to the torture of terrorism suspects, concluding that “the CIA's use of its enhanced interrogation techniques was not an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining cooperation from detainees.” It adds that “multiple CIA detainees fabricated information, resulting in faulty intelligence.”

https://www.scientificamerican.com/...or-400-years-that-torture-doesn-rsquo-t-work/

This is a legitimate argument. But it's really the only legitimate argument. People don't want to resort to it because of the obvious tradeoff that it implies (harm may result in not obtaining information that could have been obtained through torture), and so they resort to the far more comforting lie of your first argument. But you can't escape that potential tradeoff if you're being honest.

I think the moral side is a sufficient argument, but the empirical data almost unanimously supports the fact that torture is not a reliable information gathering technique.

 

[BobTheCoward]

Here is something I never understood. There are bad places that use false confessions to target opponents. But why bother with the torture? Why not just say they confessed?

 

[Tony Stark]

KSM gave the CIA accurate information on his first day in custody before he was tortured. The CIA assumed he was lying. When they tortured him, he frequently gave false confessions.

The detainee who provided the most accurate information about the courier that led the CIA to bin Laden did so without being tortured. Detainees that were tortured withheld or falsified information.

 

[Tony Stark]

Here is something I never understood. There are bad places that use false confessions to target opponents. But why bother with the torture? Why not just say they confessed?

Sadism?

 

[3point14]

This is nonsensical. Torture can and often does work. It's a fantasy to believe otherwise. The crude use of torture is mostly used for getting false confessions, but that really isn't its only potential application. Information which can be verified once obtained is very susceptible to extraction through torture, because if the subject doesn't give the correct information, then the torture will not in fact stop.



This is a legitimate argument. But it's really the only legitimate argument. People don't want to resort to it because of the obvious tradeoff that it implies (harm may result in not obtaining information that could have been obtained through torture), and so they resort to the far more comforting lie of your first argument. But you can't escape that potential tradeoff if you're being honest.

There's some really worrying wishful thinking in this post.

 

[Aepervius]

This is nonsensical. Torture can and often does work. It's a fantasy to believe otherwise.

Sure. And witches contorted with the devil.

It does not matter what you think about this, there is pretty much the agreement a general agreement that once you start including pain or psychological distress, then the information you get is tainted.

 

[Aepervius]

Here is something I never understood. There are bad places that use false confessions to target opponents. But why bother with the torture? Why not just say they confessed?

Because they film the confession or make them sign themselves, and that hold far more water than "they told us so".

 

[Aepervius]

There's some really worrying wishful thinking in this post.

There is always with people thinking torture is a useful tool. In this case, I think a lot of people were influenced unduly by "24h" and similar testosterone flicks and series, and they know better...

 

[3point14]

There is always with people thinking torture is a useful tool. In this case, I think a lot of people were influenced unduly by "24h" and similar testosterone flicks and series, and they know better...

It's like they think that utterly unfeasible fiction represents reality. Which, to be fair, goes some way to describing why the electorate appears to be so ill informed in the UK and the US.

 

[marplots]

Sure. And witches contorted with the devil.

It does not matter what you think about this, there is pretty much the agreement a general agreement that once you start including pain or psychological distress, then the information you get is tainted.

Seems like getting captured and imprisoned would be psychologically distressful.

 

[applecorped]

There's some really worrying wishful thinking in this post.

And projection in this post

 

[3point14]

And projection in this post

Oh, is there? Please explain? Given that the post I quoted was expressing, as fact, an opinion contrary to the actual, researched studies, nearly all of which describe torture as ineffective, what am I projecting and on to whom?

 

[Crossbow]

This is nonsensical. Torture can and often does work. It's a fantasy to believe otherwise. The crude use of torture is mostly used for getting false confessions, but that really isn't its only potential application. Information which can be verified once obtained is very susceptible to extraction through torture, because if the subject doesn't give the correct information, then the torture will not in fact stop.



This is a legitimate argument. But it's really the only legitimate argument. People don't want to resort to it because of the obvious tradeoff that it implies (harm may result in not obtaining information that could have been obtained through torture), and so they resort to the far more comforting lie of your first argument. But you can't escape that potential tradeoff if you're being honest.

Sorry 'Ziggurat', but torture is actually a very poor way of collecting data.

By the time the person is apprehended, the torture is used, the data collected, and then the data has been validated, then the data collected has very little, if any, real use.

For example, the Germans and Japanese used torture extensively during World War II and yet they still lost. Also, torture was used widely centuries before to discover witches and agents of Satan, and even though quite a few people confessed to being such thing, however no actual supernatural beings were ever found.

 

[Dr. Keith]

This just isn't accurate. There are centuries upon centuries of data demonstrating that torture is not an effective means of information gathering:


https://www.scientificamerican.com/...or-400-years-that-torture-doesn-rsquo-t-work/




I think the moral side is a sufficient argument, but the empirical data almost unanimously supports the fact that torture is not a reliable information gathering technique.

KSM gave the CIA accurate information on his first day in custody before he was tortured. The CIA assumed he was lying. When they tortured him, he frequently gave false confessions.

The detainee who provided the most accurate information about the courier that led the CIA to bin Laden did so without being tortured. Detainees that were tortured withheld or falsified information.

Just a quick thanks to both of you. Facts do seem to get in the way.

 

[sackett]

The Inquisitors had a saying, "They always talk after the Boot." I'm not going to describe the Boot.

But I really like "contorting with the devil." Much better than old prim "consorting." Once again, a non-native speaker advances the English language!

 

[Bob001]

.....

I think the moral side is a sufficient argument, but the empirical data almost unanimously supports the fact that torture is not a reliable information gathering technique.

Another argument is purely practical. The U.S. can't demand that its own troops and diplomats be treated humanely when captured by foreign powers if the U.S. tortures its own prisoners.

 

[TraneWreck]

Another argument is purely practical. The U.S. can't demand that its own troops and diplomats be treated humanely when captured by foreign powers if the U.S. tortures its own prisoners.

Also an excellent point.

 

[Crossbow]

Another argument is purely practical. The U.S. can't demand that its own troops and diplomats be treated humanely when captured by foreign powers if the U.S. tortures its own prisoners.

Thanks much.

I have said basically the same thing several times myself, but it has no impact on the pro-torture people.

 

[I Am The Scum]

This is nonsensical. Torture can and often does work. It's a fantasy to believe otherwise.

Can you provide a single example of torture being used to acquire accurate information? Just once, throughout the history of mankind?

 

[3point14]

Can you provide a single example of torture being used to acquire accurate information? Just once, throughout the history of mankind?

It is really good at getting people to say what you want them to say.