Jesse Ventura says water boarding is indeed torture

[William Parcher]

That is often the case.

I do not know if you have heard or not, but these days there is actually a considerable amount of skepticism regarding intelligence work.

While it is true that very once in a great while, intelligence services do hit a 'home run' which makes them quite appreciated for a least a few years. But the record clearly shows, that nations tend to be be poorly served by their respective intelligence services in spite of the vast amounts of resources that are used to support these intelligence services.

Intelligence is inherently covert and classified as Top Secret. We don't know a fraction of what happens because we aren't supposed to. We hear about some "home runs" but we may never hear about all the runners who are "picked off base". The reason is because they don't want the world to know what they are doing, and what they are working on, and how it all happens.

Torture that "works" may be similar in that it's covert and not subject to any form of formal study or evaluation.

 

[Belz...]

I did not reply of the top of my head. I researched first.

Stop it. I said that I supplied an example off the top of my head, not that I didn't know what I was talking about. Your inability to admit to having being wrong is more than a bit insulting.

 

[Belz...]

Well of course I do agree that information collected via torture should be verified if it is possible to do so.

That's not what I meant. I meant that if you collect information via other means, you still have to verify the information. To me this means that this specific objection of yours to torture is irrelevant.

 

[beren]

Stop it. I said that I supplied an example off the top of my head, not that I didn't know what I was talking about. Your inability to admit to having being wrong is more than a bit insulting.

You talking to me or yourself?
You communicated poorly and won't admit that words have meanings.

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[Belz...]

You talking to me or yourself?
You communicated poorly and won't admit that words have meanings.

I repeat: I supplied an example off the top of my head. Yes, words have meanings, and my meaning was clear.

Now, stop with the personalisation.

 

[beren]

I repeat: I supplied an example off the top of my head. Yes, words have meanings, and my meaning was clear.

Now, stop with the personalisation.

No, it was not clear. The meaning you now claim is the opposite of what your words meant.

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[Belz...]

No, it was not clear. The meaning you now claim is the opposite of what your words meant.

The very links you supplied agree with me: I drew the example from memory. Your line of argument is ridiculous. You didn't interpret it properly. Learn and move on.

 

[beren]

The very links you supplied agree with me: I drew the example from memory. Your line of argument is ridiculous. You didn't interpret it properly. Learn and move on.

You need to reread them.

They say things like

if you say something off the top of your head, you say it without thinking about it for very long or looking at something that has been written

based on what you remember

without giving it too much thought or without precise knowledge.*



You objected to my saying you didn't check your facts. This supports you how?


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[Belz...]

You need to reread them.

They say things like

if you say something off the top of your head, you say it without thinking about it for very long or looking at something that has been written

based on what you remember

Hey, stop listening to yourself and read what I post: the EXAMPLE was off the top of my head. It doesn't follow that the content of the example was. Like, someone can say "off the top of my head, the most powerful car in the world is the Bugatti Veyron" and then check the information before posting it. It's absolutely not contradictory.

Now would you please drop this ridiculous semantic argument?

You objected to my saying you didn't check your facts.

Because you're WRONG.

 

[beren]

Hey, stop listening to yourself and read what I post: the EXAMPLE was off the top of my head. It doesn't follow that the content of the example was. Like, someone can say "off the top of my head, the most powerful car in the world is the Bugatti Veyron" and then check the information before posting it. It's absolutely not contradictory.

Now would you please drop this ridiculous semantic argument?



Because you're WRONG.

Got said it.
I took got literally.

You communicated poorly.
I am not wrong. My claim is about what you said you did, not what you actually did.



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[Belz...]

Got said it.
I took got literally.

You communicated poorly.
I am not wrong.

You can continue this argument with yourself if you want. You're derailed this thread with your nonsense enough as it is.

 

[beren]

You can continue this argument with yourself if you want. You're derailed this thread with your nonsense enough as it is.

You innability to admit being wrong, even in the face of evidence is insulting.

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[Crossbow]

Intelligence is inherently covert and classified as Top Secret. We don't know a fraction of what happens because we aren't supposed to. We hear about some "home runs" but we may never hear about all the runners who are "picked off base". The reason is because they don't want the world to know what they are doing, and what they are working on, and how it all happens.

Torture that "works" may be similar in that it's covert and not subject to any form of formal study or evaluation.

While I do agree with your first paragraph, I do have to take a bit of an exception to your second paragraph.

There are good records from World War II regarding the torture that was done by the Germans and Japanese to learn military secrets, and one will find that the data they obtained was of little, if any, practical value once it was obtained.

Also, there is the more recent Senate report on the use of torture during the Bush Administration and they could not even find one case where torture provided any data of any real value.

 

[Crossbow]

Sorry, but I have to unpack this a bit ...

That's not what I meant. I meant that if you collect information via other means, you still have to verify the information.

Yes. I do agree that is normally the case. When intelligence is collected, then every attempt is made to verify that intelligence.

This fact does indeed apply to cases where intelligence is obtained via non-torture.

I hope that clarifies things for you.

To me this means that this specific objection of yours to torture is irrelevant.

And I am afraid that I cannot determine what you are saying here, so please clarify it if you can do so.

Thanks much in advance.

 

[Belz...]

Sorry, but I have to unpack this a bit ...

I do that all the time. No need to apologise.

And I am afraid that I cannot determine what you are saying here, so please clarify it if you can do so.

Well if your objection applies to all forms of intelligence gathering, it can't be used specifically as an objection to torture, can it?

 

[TraneWreck]

It's not a controlled study. Saying that the CIA didn't do it well doesn't mean it can't be done well.

I see your argument.

I think there's more than enough historical data from us, the Soviet Union, Nazis, Latin American countries (whose strong men we installed regularly tortured)....etc. to conclude that it isn't effective.

Also, we have plenty of studies about coercive interrogation techniques - there's an entire branch of legal academic studies focusing on these issues - to fairly extrapolate. If less coercive means yield bad information, it's pretty safe to conclude that the effect of more coercive means will just be worse.

But yes, the controlled study hasn't been done, nor will it...at least not by us, hopefully. The next Nazis who come along and devote clinical precision to their perversions will have to go down that route.

 

[Belz...]

If less coercive means yield bad information, it's pretty safe to conclude that the effect of more coercive means will just be worse.

The evidence seems to point that way, though I don't think that it's self-evident.

 

[TraneWreck]

Governments already routinely use forms of torture which aren't really regarded as torture per se. The most common is probably the removal of freedom (jail, prison, being detained, etc.), and the threat of loss of freedom.

Torture has a legal and internationally established definition. There are obviously cases on the margins that will test any definition, but nothing you mentioned really fits that category.

Conventional interrogation can include threats of torture. We aren't going to let you go back home to your family until you tell us what we want to know. We can keep you here for a very long time, but we won't physically touch you. It's a torture that isn't generally regarded as a torture.

There is a great deal of legal academic work aimed at studying these issues. The malign effects of torture with regard to information gathering (setting aside the ethical issue) is seen in coercive interrogation methods that don't fall under torture.

A good example of that is the Brendan Dassey case.

There is another interesting case where an officer managed to get 4 people in separate interrogations to confess to a crime they didn't commit entirely by accident - the officer was not trying to force a confession:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/the-confessions/

This is all on a continuum to torture. So I disagree with how you're using "torture," but you are raising a really important point about things we've come to accept as normal being highly coercive.

 

[TraneWreck]

The evidence seems to point that way, though I don't think that it's self-evident.

That's fair. It's not a matter of logic; it's a matter of empiricism.

 

[marplots]

If someone being tortured will say anything to get the torture to stop, why wouldn't they say the truth?

And as far as non-torture yielding higher quality information, we have many examples of the police eliciting false confessions without the thumb screws. Now, if the answer to that little factoid is that the police were not conducting the interview properly, and that's why they got a false confession, then I'd say the same about a bad torturer - if they are getting bad information, they are doing it wrong.

A better way to view the topic is as a scale of incentives and matching the right incentive to the person in front of you. Threats of incarceration or a plea deal might work for one but not for the next.