Personal assaults on Obama

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

So argument from ignorance/incredulity it is?

On the other side, yes. No one in this discussion speaks from personal experience, I hope. I have read several articles, as well as a book related to the topic (__The Breaking of Bodies and Minds__). Solzhenitsyn wrote somewhere that there is one torture that no man can resist: four men hold you flat and a fifth presses the toe of his boot on your testicles. You will implicate your wife or best friend to escape the pain. I believe it.

...torture...makes the subject say what you want to hear...

Right. You just demolished the argument that torture does not work. What if what you want to hear is the name of bin Ladin's courier?

 

[Chaos]

You just demolished the argument that torture does not work. What if what you want to hear is the name of bin Ladin's courier?

Then you will hear a name. No telling if it is bin Ladin´s courier, though. No telling if that guy actually knows who bin Ladin´s courier is, either. No telling if bin Ladin actually HAS a courier, for that matter.

A tortured subject will lie, or pretend to know something he doesn´t, in order to make the torture stop.

 

[elbe]

On the other side, yes. No one in this discussion speaks from personal experience, I hope. I have read several articles, as well as a book related to the topic (__The Breaking of Bodies and Minds__). Solzhenitsyn wrote somewhere that there is one torture that no man can resist: four men hold you flat and a fifth presses the toe of his boot on your testicles. You will implicate your wife or best friend to escape the pain. I believe it.Right. You just demolished the argument that torture does not work. What if what you want to hear is the name of bin Ladin's courier?

You're right, I might implicate my dog as a terrorist if I was tortured. Not very useful information, that.

Sorry, I tend to go by what the people who have been interrogating suspects for years say, but sure, you can just ignore them because you don't want to believe what they say.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Then you will hear a name....A tortured subject will lie, or pretend to know something he doesn´t, in order to make the torture stop.

...

You're right, I might implicate my dog as a terrorist if I was tortured. Not very useful information, that...

We already addressed this objection. Here. You can always put your hands over your ears, squeeze your eyes shut, and chant "Nananana. I can't hear you", but it looks silly.

Sorry, I tend to go by what the people who have been interrogating suspects for years say, but sure, you can just ignore them because you don't want to believe what they say.

Me, too. My sources say torture works.

 

[Chaos]

...

I take the lack of actual argument in your reply to be an admission that you know you are wrong.

We already addressed this objection. Here. You can always put your hands over your ears, squeeze your eyes shut, and chant "Nananana. I can't hear you", but it looks silly.

That didn´t "address" anything, it was simply another claim.

Me, too. My sources say torture works.

Then produce your sources and the evidence they have for this.

 

[mhaze]

That's a bit strong. Verbal memory, assimilation of the rules of grammar, and the ability to see things from the point of view of the audience are ingredients of eloquence, seems to me. These have "nothing to do with intelligence"? Unlikely....
.......

True extemporaneous speaking on random subjects, such as Newt Gingrich does a superb job of, can be intelligence on display. But speaking is a learned skill and a politician can cover up intellectual defects with a group of warm and fuzzy phrases, used over and over in the context of the moment.

Obama without a teleprompter is not very impressive.

 

[elbe]

...We already addressed this objection. Here. You can always put your hands over your ears, squeeze your eyes shut, and chant "Nananana. I can't hear you", but it looks silly.Me, too.

You're really going to go with the Pavlov answer? Oh, that's sad.
Even I can think of a way around that and I'd probably break under interrogation pretty damn fast.

 

[Halfcentaur]

True extemporaneous speaking on random subjects, such as Newt Gingrich does a superb job of, can be intelligence on display. But speaking is a learned skill and a politician can cover up intellectual defects with a group of warm and fuzzy phrases, used over and over in the context of the moment.

Obama without a teleprompter is not very impressive.

I just don't see how this is an issue people discuss compared to the last president we had, for eight years,... it's just childish penny and dime criticism.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

I take the lack of actual argument in your reply to be an admission that you know you are wrong.¹That didn´t "address" anything, it was simply another claim.²Then produce your sources and the evidence they have for this.³

1. No need to repeat myself. I just link.
2. Not at all. It's the strategy to discourage lying.
3. Okay.

...torture...makes the subject say what you want to hear...

Like, the name of bin Ladin's courier.

 

[elbe]

3. Okay.Like, the name of bin Ladin's courier.

This is... sad. It's like arguing that playing lottery is a good idea because some people have actually won it. Sure, there are much better ways to make money and you're most likely to lose any money you've put into the lottery, but it happened once!

Have you thought of taking a remedial logic class? Your local community college might offer one.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Have you thought of taking a remedial logic class? Your local community college might offer one.

Logic was a two semester senior level class when I took it (455, 456) forty years ago. I was one of two undergrads in a class of six the first semester and the only undergrad in a class of four the second. I aced both semesters. I have no idea what the curve looked like, but a Math professor friend of mine said his colleague (Dale Meyers) did not give away free A's.
Anyway, it appears that you just admitted that torture DID yield the name of bin Ladin's courier. Iirc, it also busted an airplane bomb plot from London to the US.

 

[Border Reiver]

On the other side, yes. No one in this discussion speaks from personal experience, I hope. I have read several articles, as well as a book related to the topic (__The Breaking of Bodies and Minds__). Solzhenitsyn wrote somewhere that there is one torture that no man can resist: four men hold you flat and a fifth presses the toe of his boot on your testicles. You will implicate your wife or best friend to escape the pain. I believe it.Right. You just demolished the argument that torture does not work. What if what you want to hear is the name of bin Ladin's courier?

Yep, you'll implicate your wife to make the pain stop , and if that's what your torturers expect to hear they may stop. or they may not, keeping going until they get what they expect to get.

If the person being tortured doesn't know the answer to the question they'll make up a plausible answer just to get you to stop. When you get that answer you still need to check it out with other sources, and if it doesn't check out then not only have you wasted resources, but you've committed a crime to boot.

 

[Chaos]

1. No need to repeat myself. I just link.

Multiple repetitions do not turn claims into evidence.

2. Not at all. It's the strategy to discourage lying.

It´s the strategy to discourage telling you things you don´t want to hear... like that the subject doesn´t know the name of the courier, no matter how true that is.

3. Okay.Like, the name of bin Ladin's courier.

No. They will give you a name, any name, to make the torture stop. You can order them to tell you who murdered the Dead Sea, and they´ll give you the name of the perpetrator.

You know, you could do something absolutely unprecedented for you: research. Look up the witch hunts in a history book. Read about how torture was used to uncover vast networks of witches and warlocks all over Europe, all of which were named under torture as being guilty of crimes that not only never happened, but are actually physically impossible. Because under torture, they tell you what you want to hear.

 

[elbe]

Anyway, it appears that you just admitted that torture DID yield the name of bin Ladin's courier. Iirc, it also busted an airplane bomb plot from London to the US.

I seem to recall there being some debate over whether or not it did (something like Cheney admitting it didn't), but my memory is a bit hazy.

The thing you seem to ignore is not that torture can't work but that it's not considered a reliable way to interrogate people. It's generally a method for sadists to hurt people they don't like. There will always be people who will break when hurt, but that says nothing about whether they'd break using standard techniques too.
Do you like hurting people for no particular gain? Doing it because it might reveal the same information as professionals can get without hurting them just makes you evil. You're making me sad for America.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

..If the person being tortured doesn't know the answer to the question they'll make up a plausible answer just to get you to stop. When you get that answer you still need to check it out with other sources, and if it doesn't check out then not only have you wasted resources, but you've committed a crime to boot.

No argument here. This does not rebut the contention that torture can extract information from people who have it.

 

[elbe]

No argument here. This does not rebut the contention that torture can extract information from people who have it.

Less effectively, it seems, than normal interrogation techniques. At least from what I've heard by the people who's job it is to get information out of people. And, you know, simple reasoning.

Couldn't for the life of me imagine why people would defend torture then...


ETA: Is seems to have been Rumsfeld who said harsh techniques, especially waterboarding, were not used to gather the information.

 

[The Fallen Serpent]

No argument here. This does not rebut the contention that torture can extract information from people who have it.

Right, and the point people are making is that this information is unreliable, not that it is not information. Again, I think you fail to understand the purpose of these programs. It is to provide reliable intelligence to inform our system on how to proceed with actions. At least, that is what the American people want and were led to believe. I don't think most Americans are comfortable with Enhanced Interrogation if the programs are solely to provide propaganda and excuses. We don't need torture for that. That is not what those who claim effectiveness of these programs are crowing about.

 

[Travis]

1. No need to repeat myself. I just link.
2. Not at all. It's the strategy to discourage lying.
3. Okay.Like, the name of bin Ladin's courier.

And if they don't know the name of bin Ladins courier? You are aware, aren't you, that the vast majority of people tortured throughout history had no knowledge of what their torturer was trying to find out?

I'm sorry but throwing nails through the testes of random dudes is never going to be a reasonable way to find out anything.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

...Couldn't for the life of me imagine why people would defend torture then...

Here. Here.

I am not saying that I like torture. I am not saying we should do it—I think we shouldn’t. But to rest the moral argument against torture on the proposition that it doesn’t work eventually starts to sound silly. We have created a peculiar cognitive dissonance, where we want all good things to be true at once: so our military forces and intelligence analysts are to be congratulated for their exemplary work in discovering the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden and dispatching him, while, at the same time, we insist that none of the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques had anything to do with producing any of the information that helped lead to his hiding place. But there is so much evidence to the contrary (including the words of Leon Panetta, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency) that this position is no longer seriously sustainable.

Todd Akin told a convenient (for his policy) lie, that women who experience "honest" rape can shut their reproductive systems down. It may be convenient for the "no exceptions" position, but it's stupid. The lie, that torture does not work, is just as convenient and just as stupid. And just as opportunistic.

 

[elbe]

Here. Here.Todd Akin told a convenient (for his policy) lie, that women who experience "honest" rape can shut their reproductive systems down. It may be convenient for the "no exceptions" position, but it's stupid. The lie, that torture does not work, is just as convenient and just as stupid. And just as opportunistic.

The conclusions you've quoted is poorly drawn and, I think, we all know it.

ETA: I'm done here. If you can't see the faults in your own positions and continue to repeat the same assertions I see no point in continuing.