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CIA interrogations informed by bad science

McHrozni said:
Torture is an interesting aspect ... information gained through torture is inherently unreliable, but what other way do you have to extract information from fanatics?
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There are other ways. Some interrogators have said they were getting good information before the torture started.
 
Whiplash said:
I'm surprised you could so easily attribute malice and evil to the man.
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Towlie didn't. But considering Bush thought attacking a country that was not a threat to us and installing a new government was a perfectly reasonable thing to do, we can certainly attribute evil to him. That's an inherently evil act.
 
godless dave said:
Towlie didn't. But considering Bush thought attacking a country that was not a threat to us and installing a new government was a perfectly reasonable thing to do, we can certainly attribute evil to him. That's an inherently evil act.
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I think we should distinguish between evil outcomes and evil intent. Hannah Arendt's classic "The Banality of Evil" teaches that evil is much less often the result of evil intent than typically assumed.

I believe Bush truly thought his policies were the best thing for Americans - and even Iraqis. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

I think the outcomes of his policies have been evil, but that he is not evil himself.
 
godless dave said:
There are other ways. Some interrogators have said they were getting good information before the torture started.
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Yeah, I saw that above. It's interesting. Any word on how many captives they were able to convince to spill the beans without torture?

McHrozni
 
Well, I don't think most of the time there is such a thing as intent to do something evil. Evil overlords cackling over death-ray plans, just for the sake of causing pain and death, exist only in comic books and really really bad novels/movies.

The evil intent as defined by law for example, the "mens rea", doesn't mean the degree to which you intended to be evil, but the degree to which you intended to do an act that, as it happens, is defined as evil. E.g., if I commit premeditated murder on my neighbour, the "premeditated" is the whole extent to which the "mens rea" is judged.

And yes, the mind behind RL evil is generally a more mundane case of not giving a rat's rear as long as I achieve my goals. In a sense, that _is_ RL evil. Not caring how many people have to pay, nor what price, as long as you get what you wanted.

And in that sense, I will judge Bush and his stooges and corporate masters as evil.
 
HansMustermann said:
Well, I don't think most of the time there is such a thing as intent to do something evil. Evil overlords cackling over death-ray plans, just for the sake of causing pain and death, exist only in comic books and really really bad novels/movies.

The evil intent as defined by law for example, the "mens rea", doesn't mean the degree to which you intended to be evil, but the degree to which you intended to do an act that, as it happens, is defined as evil. E.g., if I commit premeditated murder on my neighbour, the "premeditated" is the whole extent to which the "mens rea" is judged.

And yes, the mind behind RL evil is generally a more mundane case of not giving a rat's rear as long as I achieve my goals. In a sense, that _is_ RL evil. Not caring how many people have to pay, nor what price, as long as you get what you wanted.

And in that sense, I will judge Bush and his stooges and corporate masters as evil.
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Fair point. And with this approach I think you avoid the pitfall of falling into the trap of thinking along the lines of your first two sentences.
 
Praktik said:
I think we should distinguish between evil outcomes and evil intent. Hannah Arendt's classic "The Banality of Evil" teaches that evil is much less often the result of evil intent than typically assumed.

I believe Bush truly thought his policies were the best thing for Americans - and even Iraqis. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

I think the outcomes of his policies have been evil, but that he is not evil himself.
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I never claimed he had evil intent. Evil people usually think they are doing the right thing.I would hope that nobody on this forum thinks otherwise.
 
Towlie said:
I'm surprised that you think he cared.
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Whiplash said:
I'm surprised you could so easily attribute malice and evil to the man.
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I agree with Whiplash, Towlie's statement was a facile characterization of Bush as evil that was unfair, even if humor was an obvious goal of the comment.

Towlie said:
I guess the stupid vs. evil debate will be going on long after we're gone. The truth about Bush is probably a combination of those two factors. I wonder how historians will ultimately handle the legacy of the worst president in American history.
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I think the debate is more fully described as between indirectly incompetent, directly incompetent and evil.

By indirectly incompetent, I mean incompetence that was the result of excessive deference to others perhaps as the result of the manipulation of Bush through narcissism. By direct incompetence I mean the overall lack of knowledge, analytical ability and laziness that lead to an unusually high poor decision rate for a president. By evil I mean the excessive dependence on partisan or other self serving reasons as a basis for decisions by Bush.

godless dave said:
Towlie didn't. But considering Bush thought attacking a country that was not a threat to us and installing a new government was a perfectly reasonable thing to do, we can certainly attribute evil to him. That's an inherently evil act.
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With respect, I think godless dave is just wrong here. Towlie's post did suggest evil, even sociopathic tendencies in Bush. godless dave's second comment is even more problematic in my mind. I agree that the decision to attack Iraq was wrong and that the implementation of the occupation wandered into the area of criminal cronyism.

But I disagree that there weren't arguments for the invasion of Iraq and that Bush could not have judged the arguments to be persuasive without evil motivation.
 
davefoc said:
godless dave's second comment is even more problematic in my mind. I agree that the decision to attack Iraq was wrong and that the implementation of the occupation wandered into the area of criminal cronyism.

But I disagree that there weren't arguments for the invasion of Iraq and that Bush could not have judged the arguments to be persuasive without evil motivation.
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I'm not talking about motivation, I'm talking about actions. Again, evil people usually think they're doing the right thing for the right reasons. The fact that he thought that invading a country to change its government was the right thing for the right reasons is exactly what makes him evil. I would call that an evil motivation myself, but really, motivation is irrelevant to this discussion.

I don't think it's "sociopathic" to want to torture people you think are terrorists. It may show a lack of empathy, but more importantly it shows a lack of regard for the possibility that the person being tortured is not a terrorist who attacked or wanted to attack the United States. That's evil, but it's not sociopathic, it's human. Remember, some of the people tortured were Iraqi resistance fighters who were members of the military under Saddam's regime. By law and the conventions of war, they should have been treated as prisoners of war, not criminals or criminal suspects. Doing otherwise was also evil, but not sociopathic.
 
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godless dave said:
It's been known for a long time that torture rarely produces useful information. This is interesting evidence of why.

I'm not surprised Bush didn't know about the ineffectiveness of torture, but I'm a little surprised the CIA didn't.
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Torture (and condoning it as an effective method as Dick Cheney has repeatedly done) is like "airport security theater": It gives the appearance that the people in charge are actually doing something. Creating the illusion of security is a specialty of people who are scared to death of losing face; so they concoct half-baked, limp-wristed plans then heave insults (such as questioning their "patriotism" or calling them "weak") at people who see through said ill-thought out nonsense. It doesn't really matter that what they're doing doesn't actually work, what matters is that they talk and look tough, especially while sitting a comfortable distance away from the fray and sounding perfectly rational.
 
themusicteacher said:
Torture (and condoning it as an effective method as Dick Cheney has repeatedly done) is like "airport security theater": It gives the appearance that the people in charge are actually doing something. Creating the illusion of security is a specialty of people who are scared to death of losing face; so they concoct half-baked, limp-wristed plans then heave insults (such as questioning their "patriotism" or calling them "weak") at people who see through said ill-thought out nonsense. It doesn't really matter that what they're doing doesn't actually work, what matters is that they talk and look tough, especially while sitting a comfortable distance away from the fray and sounding perfectly rational.
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Very good point. In that sense, torture did "work". It also explained why Bush and Cheney's CIA and military had regular agents and enlisted personnel doing the torture, instead of the previous practice of entrusting it only to a few agents who could be counted on to keep it secret.

I think it was also intended to serve Cheney's agenda of rolling back the reforms imposed after the Church committee reports, and his publicly stated agenda of asserting greater executive power for the president than the constitution actually provides.
 
godless dave said:
Very good point. In that sense, torture did "work". It also explained why Bush and Cheney's CIA and military had regular agents and enlisted personnel doing the torture, instead of the previous practice of entrusting it only to a few agents who could be counted on to keep it secret.

I think it was also intended to serve Cheney's agenda of rolling back the reforms imposed after the Church committee reports, and his publicly stated agenda of asserting greater executive power for the president than the constitution actually provides.
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Everything Dick Cheney has ever done in his life, I am convinced, has been calculated to make him look macho, tough, in charge, powerful and, above all, patriotic. I imagine his emergence from the birth canal was orchestrated to look as though he had been "liberated" from some terrible gulag.

People like Cheney care very little, if at all, for reality. What matters is how they are perceived. If they look tough and active when torturing people, regardless of poor results, it still looks as though they're doing something. If it doesn't work, oh well, blame it on the liberals and their weak-minded opposition. I mean, look at them, they'd rather read these evildoers their rights and give them therapy than actually stop them from doing harm, right?

Everything is a mind game with neo-cons and it's a two-pronged attack: give the illusion that you're doing everything you can to stop these guys who want to hurt us(I mean, who doesn't like a Marlboro Man/Dirty Harry/John Galt/rugged individualist?) and make sure the opposition looks like a bunch of pussies (the more sense they make, the weaker and more un-American they are). Of course, as you said, it's a blatant power-grab. The weaker and more scornful you make the opposition look, the more likely people are, you suppose, to continue to give their support to you.

As I have baldly stated in previous posts about torture: bottom line, it does not work and it never will.
 
Whiplash said:
I'm surprised you could so easily attribute malice and evil to the man.
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Cheney has taken full responsibility for the torture program and he has publicly stated the means were justified.

What has Bush said publicly one way or the other? I believe he said repeatedly, "the US doesn't torture".
 
Even if Towlie was attributing malice to Bush, he wasn't doing it "easily". He was doing it after observing the man's behavior over eight years.
 
Whiplash said:
I'm surprised you could so easily attribute malice and evil to the man.
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Malicious and evil? No, I don't think Bush was either of these.


Misguided, rigid, fundamentalist, not particularly bright... Definitely.
 
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