• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Waterboarding Rocks!

BeAChooser said:
But which is more wrong? Waterboarding (causing some temporary pain and discomfort) one person under the sort of circumstances that were defined as allowable or allowing large numbers of people to die because you didn't learn information that the prisoner knew about mass casualty terrorist plots?
Click to expand...

It aint temporary and there is no proof that it gets us anything,.
Seems to me you are suggesting that causing some temporary pain is worse than allowing mass murder to occur. Which is ridiculous. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Seems you have no idea what waterboarding involves, or how human beings feel after suffering torture at the hands of some complete moron. You never served in the military, did you? I guess that is why you have no clue what PTSD is all about.
 
BeAChooser said:
But which is more wrong? Waterboarding (causing some temporary pain and discomfort) one person under the sort of circumstances that were defined as allowable or allowing large numbers of people to die because you didn't learn information that the prisoner knew about mass casualty terrorist plots? Seems to me you are suggesting that causing some temporary pain is worse than allowing mass murder to occur. Which is ridiculous. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
No, what's ridiculous is trotting out the Ticking Bomb Scenario as if it had any bearing on reality. The Ticking Bomb Scenario has never happened, and in all likelihood, will never happen. It's never known for certain that that one suspect knows the location of the bomb, or that he'll divulge it if you torture him as opposed to giving a prepared bogus story which will take time to follow up, and by the time it's found to be false, it'll be too late anyway (and if it's not too late, then the pressure wasn't so high that torture was the only option, right?).

Then there's the risk of mission creep. What if the guy won't talk quickly enough? Is it acceptable to seize family members--say, his children--and waterboard them to make him talk? If not, why not? What if we have a bunch of suspects, but not all of them know where the bomb is, and we don't know which one is the one who might know? Can we waterboard all of them? What if we have reason to believe that a couple of our suspects might not even be members of the terrorist group in question? Do we waterboard them all anyway?

Hell, the closest real-life example of a Ticking Bomb Scenario I've heard of was when the Israeli Shin Beit got wind of a possible suicide bombing. They rounded up a bunch of Palestinians without the proper documents, and one of them turned out to be the bomber. Great, except that means the other twenty or so weren't, and presumably they got worked over as well. So we're looking at twenty or so innocent people being subjected to "enhanced interrogation techniques" to save the lives of maybe two dozen people. That's not exactly "we have to torture just this one guy so we can save 100,000 lives" now, is it?
 
Don't bother trying to answer BAC's "are you still beating your wife?" question. There is no correct yes or no answer. It has been thoroughly deconstructed in the other waterboarding thread.

The most appropriate response is to reject the question entirely.
 
BeAChooser said:
Congratulations, DA. You just went in lefty's basket because you successfully demonstrated you are incapable of honest, logical debate. :D
Click to expand...
You seem to have invented your own silly little private language in which to describe your own silly little private universe.
 
The Fool said:
if you could save 100,000 people? sigh.....why not make it a million? How about 10 million.
Click to expand...

Ok, Fool, since you've decided to join this, what's your answer to the question I did ask? Is waterboarding (causing some temporary pain and discomfort) more evil and wrong than allowing a 1000 or 100,000 people to be killed because you won't waterboard someone that you suspect has information about such plots and that waterboarding might elicit? Would you let those 100,000 people die or inflict some temporary pain and discomfort?
 
BeAChooser said:
Is a "bit of the blame for" 100,000 deaths more evil than causing a very bad person temporary pain and discomfort?
Click to expand...

If you want to cause a very bad person temporary pain and discomfort, BeAChooser, then you put them on trial and you convict them of their very bad deeds and then you put them though temporary pain and discomfort that is not cruel or unusual. That is how things should be done by a moral people.
 
BeAChooser said:
Is a "bit of the blame for" 100,000 deaths more evil than causing a very bad person temporary pain and discomfort?
Click to expand...

Why not use the same psychic powers that let you know he's a bad person to get the info from him?
 
Upchurch said:
Don't bother trying to answer BAC's "are you still beating your wife?" question. There is no correct yes or no answer. It has been thoroughly deconstructed in the other waterboarding thread.

The most appropriate response is to reject the question entirely.
Click to expand...

Yep. And that was my first response to any hypothetical that posits 100% certain knowledge of something we can't possibly know with certainty.

I also mentioned the chance way that the Unabomber case was solved. We can simply never know for certain that an anonymous tip or other informant or scrap of evidence (or intel that's already sitting on some analyst's desk) won't come to light. So again, the assertion that the ONLY way to get some specific bit of information is torture is untrue.

More importantly, I still say all this talk of "effectiveness" is beside the point. Committing armed robbery would be an effective way of me getting enough money to pay my bills. That end does nothing to make a crime into a legal or moral act.
 
Upchurch said:
Now, I realize Cicero is probably out living his life away from the board (as we must all do once in a while), but I would hate to think he might forget to back his claim just because several pages have zoomed by in his absence.
Click to expand...

1) Gen. Donovan, OSS Chief, served as special assistant to chief prosecutor Telford Taylor at several trials following the main Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal. Any information about OSS operatives in Europe performing unorthodox methods of interrogation on the enemy was not something he was about to reveal.

2) However, in the Far East, Donovan could not suppress the news regarding OSS operatives that implemented some of the same techniques used by the Japanese that were later tried in Tokyo for war crimes. Commander Milton E. Miles, was director of OSS operations in the Far East. He worked closely with Dai Li , who was Chiang Kai-shek’s spymaster during World War II. As the result of the 1942 SACO Treaty (Sino-American Cooperative Organization) Dai was placed as head of Sino-American intelligence activities. An OSS operative.


"Dai’s secret police were directed against Chiang’s internal enemies rather than the Japanese. There was the matter of torture: Dai Li’s base, “Happy Valley,”which had a sanitized mess hall and western toilets for the Americans, also had “a grim prison about which unpleasant stories were told.” There was Miles, who insisted that nothing be kept secret from the Chinese; they would work directly with the Americans and everything would be shared."

https://www.cia.gov/library/center-...studies/vol53no1/pdfs/U- Bergin-Spymaster.pdf
 
BeAChooser said:
Would you let those 100,000 people die or inflict some temporary pain and discomfort?
Click to expand...
Leaving aside for a moment the question of how you magically can know the future when you're deciding whether or not to torture someone, while I do appreciate that you quit referring to torture as "a little pain" your newer language still is an obvious attempt to downplay torture.

"Some temporary pain and discomfort" is not at all an accurate description of waterboarding. Waterboarding fits even the U.S. Code's definition of torture. One of the definitions it gives for "severe mental pain" is "the threat of imminent death". The main point of waterboarding is to make the victim think he's about to die.

So, a better phrasing of your question would be something like this: "Would you intentionally inflict severe pain on someone, set a terrible precedent, and flagrantly violate U.S. and international law to extract information that may or may not save some lives?"

Most of us have already answered this question with a resounding, "No!"
 
Last edited:
I'm not sure what the ongoing debate about post WWII trials is about, but I first brought up Nuremberg on one of these threads to show the origin of the legal principle that "just following orders" is not a defense. That was in response to Obama and Holder's initial statements that they wouldn't prosecute CIA operatives who committed torture because they were just following orders.

The biggest problem with Nuremberg is that, by and large, it was strictly a matter of the winners prosecuting the losers. While it established some good legal principles, the fact is they were not applied equally. I think many of the people involved at least hoped for a future when the rule of law (rather than might makes right) would hold sway.

I think the time has come to make their vision a reality. We've got to do better than Nuremberg now.
 
Cicero said:
2) However, in the Far East, Donovan could not suppress the news regarding OSS operatives that implemented some of the same techniques used by the Japanese that were later tried in Tokyo for war crimes. Commander Milton E. Miles, was director of OSS operations in the Far East. He worked closely with Dai Li , who was Chiang Kai-shek’s spymaster during World War II. As the result of the 1942 SACO Treaty (Sino-American Cooperative Organization) Dai was placed as head of Sino-American intelligence activities. An OSS operative.

"Dai’s secret police were directed against Chiang’s internal enemies rather than the Japanese. There was the matter of torture: Dai Li’s base, “Happy Valley,”which had a sanitized mess hall and western toilets for the Americans, also had “a grim prison about which unpleasant stories were told.” There was Miles, who insisted that nothing be kept secret from the Chinese; they would work directly with the Americans and everything would be shared."

https://www.cia.gov/library/center-...studies/vol53no1/pdfs/U- Bergin-Spymaster.pdf
Click to expand...

So, your "evidence" for the claim that OSS agents tortured during WWII is a link to a book review, with a quoted extract saying that Dai Li's secret police caused trouble for the OSS ostensibly sent to help them and mentioning only that "unpleasant stories were told" about torture (torture done by Dai Li's secret police, not the OSS...else it'd be more than just stories to the OSS men based at "Happy Valley", wouldn't it?).

And I notice you conveniently left off the beginning and end of that paragraph which makes it absolutely clear that the "torture" that the OSS men only heard stories about was just part of a litany of troubles the OSS had with Dai Li - the torture was one of the problems the Americans had with Dai Li, not something they wanted or particpated in.

"There were problems from the start. Dai’s secret police were directed against Chiang’s internal enemies rather than the Japanese. There was the matter of torture: Happy Valley, which had a sanitized mess hall and western toilets for the Americans, also had “a grim prison about which unpleasant stories were told.” There was Miles, who insisted that nothing be kept secret from the Chinese; they would work directly with the Americans and everything would be shared. There was Dai Li, whose hand was seen in thwarted OSS operations. Free Thai agents being infiltrated into Thailand were delayed and several killed. Dai Li had his own plans. He would invade Thailand with a force of 10,000 Chinese guerrillas disguised as Thai—on 10,000 Tibetan ponies."

Oh, and even had the torture been done by OSS men, Donovan himself didn't think much of the results, from your own linked book review:

"By contrast, “no intelligence or operations of any consequence have come out of SACO,” Donovan reported to Roosevelt in November 1944."

In short, your supposed "evidence" says that the OSS didn't torture, and what torture was carried out by the Chinese themselves didn't help the US war effort one bit.
 
Last edited:
Cicero said:
1) Gen. Donovan, OSS Chief, served as special assistant to chief prosecutor Telford Taylor at several trials following the main Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal. Any information about OSS operatives in Europe performing unorthodox methods of interrogation on the enemy was not something he was about to reveal.

2) However, in the Far East, Donovan could not suppress the news regarding OSS operatives that implemented some of the same techniques used by the Japanese that were later tried in Tokyo for war crimes. Commander Milton E. Miles, was director of OSS operations in the Far East. He worked closely with Dai Li , who was Chiang Kai-shek’s spymaster during World War II. As the result of the 1942 SACO Treaty (Sino-American Cooperative Organization) Dai was placed as head of Sino-American intelligence activities. An OSS operative.


"Dai’s secret police were directed against Chiang’s internal enemies rather than the Japanese. There was the matter of torture: Dai Li’s base, “Happy Valley,”which had a sanitized mess hall and western toilets for the Americans, also had “a grim prison about which unpleasant stories were told.” There was Miles, who insisted that nothing be kept secret from the Chinese; they would work directly with the Americans and everything would be shared."

https://www.cia.gov/library/center-...studies/vol53no1/pdfs/U- Bergin-Spymaster.pdf
Click to expand...

failboat.jpg
 
Euromutt said:
No, what's ridiculous is trotting out the Ticking Bomb Scenario as if it had any bearing on reality. The Ticking Bomb Scenario has never happened, and in all likelihood, will never happen.
Click to expand...

You are complete wrong and I can demonstrate that from facts already posted in this thread (which I bet you didn't even bother to read before you posted).

1) On 9/11 a terrorist plot horrifically murdered over 3000 innocent men, women and children in the United States. And some of those people spent many long minutes knowing they were going to die a horrible death. Saying goodbye to loved ones on the phone.

2) We captured the mastermind of that plot, a man with the initials KSM. He's a man so evil that he actually plotted the death of 30,000 people and managed to murder over 3000. Some of those people died in ways that involved jumping from the 100th floor of a burning skyscraper because of the fire and smoke surrounding them. Imagine the REAL torture in that! Do you know how long it took those people to fall a 100 stories, Euromutt? Imagine the stress and torture in being trapped on one of the planes as it flew into a building. In being on a plane knowing that other planes had already been flown into skyscrapers. That happened.

3) KSM was interrogated by conventional means for weeks and then months. Yes, he did reveal some information, but apparently nothing that he didn't already think we knew. They were totally unable to get him to reveal information about any ongoing or still planned plots, and he did not give up the names of any other terrorists that he thought we didn't already know. In this regard, the conventional methods utterly failed.

4) After all those weeks and months, when asked what al-Qaeda plots were in the works, KSM told the interrogators that "Soon, you will know". Imagine that. Here is a man who they already knew masterminded the killing of 3000+ people; who destroyed a complex of skyscrapers; who caused a trillion dollars in damage to an economy; and who damaged the psyche of an entire nation, and he's leading the investigators to believe that "soon" there will be other such calamities.

5) And those investigators know that there are indeed other plots underway. They know that the terrorist organization is large, with many members. They know that KSM was high enough in the al-Qaeda organization to know about some of them. In fact, this is a man who they've already discovered was looking into crop dusters before he was caught ... planes whose only terrorist use might be to spread some form or biological or chemical weapon. So if nothing else, they suspect that might be an ongoing plot.

So quite clearly, you are wrong. To those interrogators, a time bomb was indeed ticking. Perhaps several. And they were responsible to an entire nation to make sure none went off. And they couldn't be sure that one wasn't set to go off tomorrow. Only that it would be "soon", from a man who gloated as he said the word. A man who had already killed thousands of innocent Americans in such a plot. A man who had *friends* on the outside who were still hard at work trying to kill Americans.

6) So they decided to waterboard him. And after all those months of getting nothing out of KSM that he didn't want to tell them, that he didn't think they already knew, he broke in minutes and started telling them things about ongoing plots and the names of other terrorists. Sure, he continued to resist, so they had to waterboard him repeatedly. But in the ensuing weeks they learned many things that indeed did prevent the loss of many additional lives (and not just Americans, but Europeans).

7) The article I quoted in post #903, lists some of the life saving facts they learned from waterboarding KSM and the two other top al-Qaeda members. As result of the information they obtained, they captured multiple additional terrorists ... terrorists who they hadn't known anything about even after months of conventional interrogation ... terrorists who were actively plotting additional mass murders at the time they were caught ... terrorists who were involved in the mass murder plots that had already taken place or that had been involved in plots that had been stopped.

8) And as pointed out in that article, one the plots (carrying out simultaneous attacks on the consulate, western residences and westerners at the local airport in Karachi) was stopped only days before it was completed. And the only reason that happened is that we used enhanced interrogation techniques on another captive.

So you are just plain wrong. Scenarios like I hypothesized can indeed happen. And I think you just don't want to answer the question I asked because of what it reveals about your character ... about how little you actually value human life ... about the moral equivalency with which you view the world.

Euromutt said:
It's never known for certain that that one suspect knows the location of the bomb, or that he'll divulge it if you torture him
Click to expand...

Of course it's never certain. Do you demand certainty in every thing you do? Of course not. NOTHING is certain ... not even the sun rising tomorrow. But that doesn't stop us from acting and it certainly doesn't excuse not acting when there is a reasonable chance of saving a thousand or hundreds of thousands of human lives by doing nothing more than applying some temporary pain or discomfort to a very, very bad man.

Euromutt said:
as opposed to giving a prepared bogus story which will take time to follow up, and by the time it's found to be false, it'll be too late anyway
Click to expand...

And neither is that an excuse for not acting. The fact is that we do have means of verifying whether the person is lying ... and the terrorist knows it. If he lies, he knows there's a good chance he will be subjected to more of this *torture* that you claim is so awful that he would say anything to stop it. That's a powerful inducement not to lie. And indeed, the facts in the above actual case show that KSM didn't feed us bogus information after being waterboarded. The facts show he and the others gave up real names of terrorists and information that stopped multiple terrorist attacks.

The real truth is that you refuse to answer my hypothetical question because you fear what it will reveal about of your lack of moral clarity.
 
ANTPogo said:
So, your "evidence" for the claim that OSS agents tortured during WWII is a link to a book review, with a quoted extract saying that Dai Li's secret police caused trouble for the OSS ostensibly sent to help them and mentioning only that "unpleasant stories were told" about torture (torture done by Dai Li's secret police, not the OSS...else it'd be more than just stories to the OSS men based at "Happy Valley", wouldn't it?).

And I notice you conveniently left off the beginning and end of that paragraph which makes it absolutely clear that the "torture" that the OSS men only heard stories about was just part of a litany of troubles the OSS had with Dai Li - the torture was one of the problems the Americans had with Dai Li, not something they wanted or particpated in.

"There were problems from the start. Dai’s secret police were directed against Chiang’s internal enemies rather than the Japanese. There was the matter of torture: Happy Valley, which had a sanitized mess hall and western toilets for the Americans, also had “a grim prison about which unpleasant stories were told.” There was Miles, who insisted that nothing be kept secret from the Chinese; they would work directly with the Americans and everything would be shared. There was Dai Li, whose hand was seen in thwarted OSS operations. Free Thai agents being infiltrated into Thailand were delayed and several killed. Dai Li had his own plans. He would invade Thailand with a force of 10,000 Chinese guerrillas disguised as Thai—on 10,000 Tibetan ponies."

Oh, and even had the torture been done by OSS men, Donovan himself didn't think much of the results, from your own linked book review:

"By contrast, “no intelligence or operations of any consequence have come out of SACO,” Donovan reported to Roosevelt in November 1944."

In short, your supposed "evidence" says that the OSS didn't torture, and what torture was carried out by the Chinese themselves didn't help the US war effort one bit.
Click to expand...

Dai Li was an OSS operative. He did employ torture and Commander Miles, the OSS region chief, was on the scene. What does this have to do with whether or not Li's use of torture helped the war effort?
 
Lonewulf said:
[qimg]http://grahamtastic.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/failboat.jpg[/qimg]
Click to expand...

Dai Li, an OSS operative, implemented torture as a method of interrogation. So we have the OSS connection and confirmed accounts of Li's use of torture. That ship of yours is floundering because it has taken on too much of the Egyptian River.
 
boloboffin said:
If you want to cause a very bad person temporary pain and discomfort, BeAChooser, then you put them on trial and you convict them of their very bad deeds and then you put them though temporary pain and discomfort that is not cruel or unusual. That is how things should be done by a moral people.
Click to expand...

But the ultimate purpose isn't to cause a very bad person temporary pain and discomfort ... or even bring him to "justice". The purpose is to make that very bad person reveal some information IN A TIMELY MANNER that would save thousands or even hundreds of thousands of lives.

Try as you might to squirm off this hook, this conversation is only revealing that you, for all your talk about "moral people", lack moral clarity. It's only demonstrating that you see no difference in the evil of causing someone temporary pain and discomfort and the evil of standing by and letting thousands of people DIE because you refuse to cause that someone temporary pain and discomfort. And I think you know the untenability of your position which is why you are squirming so vigorously. :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom