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Merged Senate Report on CIA Torture Program

marplots said:
Whatever method you are going to use to check my torture answer (calling the number and seeing if Randi answers), you use that method without torture. Or, maybe you torture a bit and see if I change my answer.
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I totally would. If I told you the truth and you kept torturing me? I would tell you apples are square and the sun rises in the north. Anything you want to make the torture stop.


And therein lies the problem.
 
Upchurch said:
I totally would. If I told you the truth and you kept torturing me? I would tell you apples are square and the sun rises in the north. Anything you want to make the torture stop.


And therein lies the problem.
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As has been shown by people confessing in show trials in the 20th Century, and confessing to being witches.

ETA: And the converse situation where members of the French Resistance or SOE did not talk under Gestapo torture.
 
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Crossbow said:
I have noticed that you keep on mentioning that torture does sometimes produce useful data that could not be otherwise. However, I have also noticed that you have not shown even a single case where such a thing has occurred.
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I've noticed something different. Here are the MG's first four posts in the thread:

Monketey Ghost said:
They water boarded the **** out of KSM and I have no problem with it.
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Monketey Ghost said:
Seriously. That guy and his buddies spent their time plotting to kill complete strangers- just blow them up and maim them, to further their twisted ideology.
I really don't care how roughly they treated him or any of his friends.
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Monketey Ghost said:
If there was a line to punch KSM once in the mouth for anyone who felt like doing so, I'd join it and camp out for the wait.
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Monketey Ghost said:
The folks you shed a tear for, I never will, and I'll never lose a wink of sleep.

I do feel badly for those in the intelligence community whose jobs have been to drag the information out of the bad guys and have been thanked with the prospect of prosecution and loss of future opportunity in their careers serving their country.
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Torture isn't about getting information. There are better, more efficient ways to do that. Obtaining information is just a post hoc rationalization, an excuse.

Torture is primarily about hurting people and making them suffer.

Tell me I'm wrong.
 
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Monketey Ghost said:
I'm morally confused by the issue of torture in military situations with regard to people of no country's army who want to plant bombs.
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Your prior posts on this subject don't appear to be from someone who is "morally confused by the issue of torture". You've done nothing but advocate for torture, even starting out by claiming pure anger and revenge as good enough reasons to torture our enemies. Now you essentially say, "I'm not sure what to think." I don't buy it.
 
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Monketey Ghost said:
...assume it's information I can't ask you nicely for and expect to get.
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Garrette said:
Hah. You haven't seen my waterboard. Look at it just once and you'll tell me everything, even stuff you don't know.
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Exactly.

Randi's number is 867-5309.
Oh wait, it's RAD-JREF.
Or maybe IML-YING.

And that's the point. As others have said, if someone is being tortured, they will say ANYTHING to get the torture to stop.
 
Cl1mh4224rd said:
Your prior posts on this subject don't appear to be from someone who is "morally confused by the issue of torture". You've done nothing but advocate for torture, even starting out by claiming pure anger and revenge as good enough reasons to torture our enemies. Now you essentially say, "I'm not sure what to think." I don't buy it.
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Huh. Well, if I cared at all about anything you have to say, on any issue, you might've broken my heart. People can be of two minds on an issue, and this is one I'm comfortable with in that respect. But as the sanctimony in this thread is so spectacularly off the charts, and I enabled it, I'll withdraw from the discussion.

There'll be plenty to revive it for pages in the coming days anyhow. The thread doesn't need anyone who isn't absolutely sure about their position on the issue.
 
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Monketey Ghost said:
The thread doesn't need anyone who isn't absolutely sure about their position on the issue.
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But people who are not absolutely sure about the rightness or wrongness of torture could use this thread.

What are you unsure about? The effectiveness of torture as an intelligence gathering tool? The purpose of torture? The rightness or wrongness of torture? Why some people would advocate for torture?

Honestly, I'm not clear about that last one.
 
Well.

You know, maybe it's like what my brain did with W. People told me how stupid he is, and I agreed he seemed sort of dim, but my brain said to me, "Nobody who rises to the Presidency of the United States can possibly be stupid".

I might just not want to believe our forces and intelligence folks could be so inept. I mean, it doesn't make sense given the haystack they had to sift, that they'd want to burden the process by making unnecessary work for themselves with any random Johnny Jihad.

They can't be that inept. Can they?
 
Upchurch said:
I've noticed something different. Here are the MG's first four posts in the thread:








​
Torture isn't about getting information. There are better, more efficient ways to do that. Obtaining information is just a post hoc rationalization, an excuse.

Torture is primarily about hurting people and making them suffer.

Tell me I'm wrong.
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Thanks much!

That is about what I was thinking as well. I also think that 'Monketey Ghost' is actually interested in extracting some sort of revenge on detainees and is using the collection of data as an excuse to do horrible things to people that the hates.

Or to paraphrase the one book that I read on torture a few years back 'while torture is a very poor way to collect data, however torture is quite good at one side establishing its dominance over the side: and it may be the dominance issue that has lead to the continued popularity of torture over the centuries.'
 
Once it's conceded that victims of torture will say anything, including the truth, only two hurdles remain: First, to establish a protocol that exploits this fact. Second, an ethical framework for establishing when and how much torture may be used.

Here's my protocol in a nutshell: Don't ask the detainee to tell the truth. Ask the detainee to make testable predictions. The cell's safe house is X. The email accounts to watch are Y. The shipments are placed in a storage locker at the bus station, marked with a Z. Etc. You can even start by asking the detainee to make predictions that you know have already tested true. The torture stops when the detainee starts making accurate predictions.

Torture should never be an open-ended dominance game. That's morally, and pragmatically repugnant. It should always be a sober, experimental exercise in testable predictions and behavior modification--if it's even used at all.

But I doubt there's anyone in this thread besides me who would be in favor of torture if they thought it worked. All this talk about whether or not torture works is a red herring. Nobody is honestly objecting on the grounds that it doesn't work.
 
theprestige said:
Nobody is honestly objecting on the grounds that it doesn't work.
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Huh? I was sure you were keeping up with this thread. Do I need to go back to count how many times that exact point has been made? Or is the highlight your no-true-scotsman out card?
 
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theprestige said:
Once it's conceded that victims of torture will say anything, including the truth, only two hurdles remain: First, to establish a protocol that exploits this fact. Second, an ethical framework for establishing when and how much torture may be used.

Here's my protocol in a nutshell: Don't ask the detainee to tell the truth. Ask the detainee to make testable predictions. The cell's safe house is X. The email accounts to watch are Y. The shipments are placed in a storage locker at the bus station, marked with a Z. Etc. You can even start by asking the detainee to make predictions that you know have already tested true. The torture stops when the detainee starts making accurate predictions.

Torture should never be an open-ended dominance game. That's morally, and pragmatically repugnant. It should always be a sober, experimental exercise in testable predictions and behavior modification--if it's even used at all.

But I doubt there's anyone in this thread besides me who would be in favor of torture if they thought it worked. All this talk about whether or not torture works is a red herring. Nobody is honestly objecting on the grounds that it doesn't work.
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It's amazing that in all the repugnant history of torture regimes, no one ever thought to make it a dispassionate exercise in logic until you did. Well done, your Nobel prize is waiting for you.
 
Monketey Ghost said:
I might just not want to believe our forces and intelligence folks could be so inept. I mean, it doesn't make sense given the haystack they had to sift, that they'd want to burden the process by making unnecessary work for themselves with any random Johnny Jihad.

They can't be that inept. Can they?
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They had the time and inclination to waterboard KSM 180 times for zero return, I gather. Perhaps they like their job and want to stay busy?

Incidentally I did phone Randi. You know it and I freely admit it. Does that tell you I know his number?
 
theprestige said:
Second, an ethical framework for establishing when and how much torture may be used.
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You have a contradiction in terms. The numbers you are asking for is exactly zero. You must abandon ethics, if you wish to utilize torture.

But why? There are methods that work better without becoming a monster.
 
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