Waterboarding Rocks!

[JoeTheJuggler]

Well, there you go folks. Here's someone who under no circumstances would apply non-lethal pain or mental distress to save a life. Or a hundred thousand lives. Or a million lives. Or the lives of everyone on the planet. Or the lives of every living creature on earth.

Again, I reject your bogus scenarios (gleaned from TV shows and movies) where you claim to have knowledge that is simply impossible to have, but yes, I reject the use of torture in any circumstances.

That is the law:

No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political in stability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

I don't see any language in there that makes an exception for circumstances where you're pretty darn sure you can save lives.

As several people have said, even if you think it's possible to have such knowledge, I still wouldn't want to leave that judgement to individuals. Even if your good guys are all Jack Bauer-types who have infallible judgement, you still open the door to other people to use that exception based on their judgement.

 

[BeAChooser]

BeAChooser - why do you wish to give your government the right to torture you?

I have no reason to believe the government wants or needs to torture me. I'm not a terrorist trying to kill tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, tens of millions or even billions.

So Darat - can you answer the yes/no question I posed? Under the scenario I outlined (regardless of whether you think it plausible or not), would you apply non-lethal pain to a prisoner in the hopes of saving a hundred thousand lives or perhaps a few billion lives? Yes or no?

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

The only reason torture is deemed illegal is because it is deemed immoral.

Says who?

I've given several other reasons on these threads already.

I'll recap and number them for convenient referral:
1) Even if it's moral in some rare circumstance, once you open the door to that, other people will certainly try to claim their wrong use is justified.

2) The intelligence you get from torture isn't reliable (people will say what they think you want to hear to make it stop--even innocent people, while the hardened bad guys might be trained to resist torture and feed you bad info).

3) You can't use evidence gathered by coercion in legitimate courts.

4) You open up your own agents to reprisals and mistreatments.

 

[BeAChooser]

Oh NOES!! I can only imagine how many times something this contrived could possibly happen outside of TV and the movies!!! I am now thoroughly PANICKED!

So Upchurch ... are you another who is afraid to answer yes or no to my simple hypothetical?

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

I have no reason to believe the government wants or needs to torture me. I'm not a terrorist trying to kill tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, tens of millions or even billions.

Neither was Dilawar. He too had no reason to believe the U.S. government wanted or needed to torture him. He too was not a terrorist trying to kill tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, tens of millions or even billions. In fact, he wasn't a terrorist at all. He didn't even have connections to terrorists.

Yet they tortured him to death.

 

[leftysergeant]

So Upchurch ... are you another who is afraid to answer yes or no to my simple hypothetical?

What has your hypothetical to do with this time/space continuum?

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Did the rule of law apply when it was considered legal or only now when it considered illegal?

I can't parse this question. Are you asking if it was illegal to torture when it was legal to torture?

But there is little precedent for prosecuting government lawyers who provided arguably bad legal opinions.

I've gone back and forth on this question a few times. I agree with the arguments WildCat made that you can't prosecute the people who gave really really bad legal advice for the crime of torture. I think you can probably find some other legal theory to hold them accountable. (On the other thread I rejected legal malpractice because that would only be if someone like Bush sued them. I speculated that there might be some conspiracy law--like the kind of charges that were brought against Charles Manson. In his case, since people were killed, they probably used the felony murder rule to up the charges from conspiracy to commit murder to murder.)

I honestly don't know of any law or legal theory that might result in significant charges against the lawyers. (They should certainly be disbarred for giving such egregiously contradictory opinions of pretty clear law.)

The policy makers who relied on that crappy advice should certainly be held accountable.

 

[Nogbad]

So Upchurch ... are you another who is afraid to answer yes or no to my simple hypothetical?

Sorry, that reminds me. I have no wish to return to darker times. No, unequivocally.

 

[applecorped]

Turn on the light, it's dark in here!!!!

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Yes, it will be interesting to watch a debate between adults living in the real world ... and children living in some imaginary liberal utopia.

This from the person whose arguments consist of plots from TV shows and movies and seems to think everyone in the U.S. government is decent and honorable and deserving to be given no end of discretion in their actions!

I rather think that my opinion on the torture law is based somewhat in my cynical nature.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Says who?

I've given several other reasons on these threads already.

I'll recap and number them for convenient referral:
1) Even if it's moral in some rare circumstance, once you open the door to that, other people will certainly try to claim their wrong use is justified.

2) The intelligence you get from torture isn't reliable (people will say what they think you want to hear to make it stop--even innocent people, while the hardened bad guys might be trained to resist torture and feed you bad info).

3) You can't use evidence gathered by coercion in legitimate courts.

4) You open up your own agents to reprisals and mistreatments.

I forgot this one:

5) From the point of view of the people on the ground conducting interrogations: I would hate for the matter to be one of discretion because that means in the heat of the moment I would have to decide whether or not this is one of those rare circumstances where torture is justified and my decision would be subject to review since it is a matter of discretion and judgement. As a practical matter, it's far safer for them just not to do it ever.

 

[Nogbad]

This from the person whose arguments consist of plots from TV shows and movies and seems to think everyone in the U.S. government is decent and honorable and deserving to be given no end of discretion in their actions!

I rather think that my opinion on the torture law is based somewhat in my cynical nature.

BeaChooser's trust in Government is heart warming hactually

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

What has your hypothetical to do with this time/space continuum?

I think he's basically asking whether or not you agree with the C.A.T. Part I Article 2.2:

No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political in stability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

I think he would prefer a law that says it is sometimes justifiable.

I think that approach opens a huge can of worms. At worst, that approach would simply undo the entire idea of a law against torture at all.

 

[BeAChooser]

BeAChooser - There are many historical examples where valuable intel has been obtained through torture.

Linky?

NOW!

Don't try to BS us any more. PROVE IT.

No lefty ... I'm not going to do that because I've asked you repeatedly to back up claims you've made (like telling us "bush had stated while he was governor of Texas that he wanted to invade Iraq toi gain political capiutal") and you ignored me. So all I'm going to do is give you some clues where you can look to find the answer to your question. If you're not too lazy to spend some of YOUR time actually doing some web research.

Neil Livingstone, a terrorism expert and former intelligence officer, would tell you that torture works and would be a valuable tool in the circumstances I outlined. A number of experts will tell you that water boarding is what broke Khalid Sheikh Mohammed ... not months of conversing with FBI lawyers. And the information they learned saved lives. The British used torture in Northern Ireland and would tell you they saved many lives, too. The Jordanians and Egyptians say the same thing. The French would tell you it works (see the Battle of Algiers). The Israelis would also tell you it works. It may not work in every circumstance but it is just plain false to suggest it never works. Alan Dershowitz, a staunch defenders of civil liberties, also agrees that torture might be necessary in some instances here and he even said that courts should be allowed to issue torture warrants. What do you think of that? The real truth is that torture, properly applied can extract information from most people. But it's not for the squeamish nor am I recommending it as a rule. But to completely rule it out under the hypothetical circumstance I outlined is just plain foolish.

I would rather risk the nebulous threat of harm from foreign operatives than live in the kind of cess pool the animals who ran the country the last eight years were trying to dig for us.

 

[BeAChooser]

For example, it helped us to identify millions of witches. ... snip ... Torture's great, isn't it? It makes people say what you want to hear.

Still having difficulty answering my simply hypothetical yes/no question?

 

[Prometheus]

Still having difficulty answering my simply hypothetical yes/no question?

Having some difficulty of your own with mine?

 

[BeAChooser]

Ok BeAChooser you missed my replies on the other page to this hypothetical but I have two problems with it:

You are weaseling out of answering my simply yes/no question. Irregardless of how plausible you may think my scenario is (I could spend all day creating scenarios and no doubt you object to them all), would you apply non-lethal pain to one individual if there were a 1% chance that you could learn the location of the bomb and save hundreds of thousands of innocent lives, ... or would you just sit there claiming moral and legal superiority while those hundreds of thousands perished?

In your scenario, if they torture and it worked - a judge will more than likely have leniency.

Why should he? Torture is either moral or not. The outcome doesn't make something immoral become moral. If the judge is lenient, then that to me says that the C.T.A is wrong. Torture is justified in some circumstances.

The president could even pardon them.

Oh. So you think the President should be the final arbiter of what is moral and immoral?

Like I said, we don't have legalized murder because sometimes its justified in self-defense - they go to court and prove that and the defendant is let off the hook or charged with a lesser crime.

And like I said, we aren't talking about a civilian murder here. We are talking about an enemy combatant who is preparing to use a highly lethal weapon on a battlefield of his choosing (one of our cities). Under that circumstance, why should we treat him any better than we do enemy combatants in Afghanistan who pointed a gun at one of our soldiers? Why should we treat the *soldier* in the first case any different than the *soldier* in the second case?

 

[Morrigan]

Well, *dear*, I see you are having trouble with this hypothetical too.

Not really. The thing is, when you build an argument using an hypothetical scenario, it's best to use an hypothetical scenario that is remotely plausible. Otherwise you are just mouthing off at nothing at all.
For the record, I religiously watch, and enjoy, 24. But I'm clever enough to know that it's 100% unrealistic fiction.

You know the city where the bomb will go off, but don't know where the bomb is in the city. And it turns out to be the city where you and your family currently reside. So, do you torture the individual in the hopes of saving not only the hundreds of thousands of innocent lives, but your own family, or do you cut and run from the city (with your family) to save yourselves (of course, taking the prisoner with you because afterall it would be torture to make him wait in the city knowing the bomb is about to go off and he will die)? Or do you just wait for the bomb to go off while feeling superior?

You watch far too much TV. There's no way such a scenario could ever occur, and you know it. Thing is, you have to make up some fiction in order to prove your point, because you know that there is no real life situation where your point could possibly be proven. If there were, you'd use those real life scenarios instead. Say, do you read Terry Goodkind books, by any chance?

The stupid just rools off of this. The chance of knowing that there is a bomb, but not knowing where it is, while still knowing who to torture the fool out of is as likely as finding a a rational twoofer in a mental hospital.

And no one transported from Baghram to Gitmo will have actionable intelligence by the time he gets there.

You are arguing from an ignorance of anything at all relevant to what does and does not work in law enforcement or military operations.

Yes, he's quite disconnected from reality.

We are actually talking about an imaginary hypothetical piece of nonsense that you made up in your head.

Yup. But hey, I can do that, too. Let's see...

BeAChooser, do you think that child rape is wrong in every circumstance? Of course you do. So do we all.

...But hey! What if a rabid lunatic psychopath abducted you and your family, and threatened to blow up the building he stuck your family in, unless you rape the child he's asking you to, because he would get off at seeing you do it? Would you do it, to save your own family? Of course, you might think you have no guarantee it will work, but we're talking about the life of your family here, would you take that chance, or would you refuse it, feeling all superior while your family gets blown to bits?
Wait, wait, what if it weren't just your family, but <Jack Bauer voice>thousands of innocent American lives</Jack Bauer voice> at stake??

Now there's a scenario for you. Ever see the movie "The Satan Bug"? Not all that farfetched given advances in genetic and nanotech engineering.

Yeah, it's about as "not that farfetched" as the ridiculous scenario I described above.
I'd add that on the off-chance that a sadistic wizard with proven powers threatened to destroy the planet unless I commit some egregious crime that goes against my moral compass, I'd probably do it if I thought there was no other way. But I can sleep easy at night knowing that kind of crap only ever happens in speculative fiction.

 

[BeAChooser]

The stupid just rools off of this.

I see you too are having trouble with my simple hypothetical yes/no question. Irregardless of how it came about, would you apply non-lethal pain to someone if you thought they could provide information in a timely manner that might save hundreds of thousands of people? For all you talk, how much do you REALLY value human life, lefty?

 

[BeAChooser]

Oh, well as long as we're just makin' up fun stories instead of dealing with, you know, facts or evidence or anything

But that's precisely what I'm dealing with Prometheus. I'm trying to find out how much you folks REALLY value a human life. So irregardless of how it came about, would YOU apply non-lethal pain to someone if you thought (for whatever reason) they could provide information in a timely manner that might save hundreds of thousands of people from a violent death? How much do you REALLY value human life, Prometheus? Or is it all an ivory tower, abstract concept to you? That's what I'm beginning to think.