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Merged Senate Report on CIA Torture Program

Upchurch said:
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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Because REVENGE..
 
Monketey Ghost said:
I understand I'm far in the minority here.
But let's suppose one of you has Randi's phone number and you want to keep it from me.
I'm pretty sure I could obtain that number from you using torture.

Can we get an honest assessment of that at least? Then I'll leave y'all to your hand wringing and self congratulating.
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What if I'm a poor slob who doesn't know the number but you think I do?

What do I do? Keep blurting out random numbers until I get it right?
 
Monketey Ghost said:
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?
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Upchurch said:
I don't get it. Are you making an argument from authority or an argument from incredulity?
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Maybe an implicit appeal to consequences, perhaps with a dash of appeal to patriotism?

"Torture can't be inefficient, because that would mean our intelligence gathering people are inept."​

I need help here. I'm really struggling to understand this.
 
Upchurch said:
Maybe an implicit appeal to consequences, perhaps with a dash of appeal to patriotism?
"Torture can't be inefficient, because that would mean our intelligence gathering people are inept."​
I need help here. I'm really struggling to understand this.
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In the first appeal of the Birmingham SixWP defendants, Lord Denning echoed a similar sentiment. In effect he concluded that to allow the appeal would mean the police had acted corruptly. "That simply can't be, therefore the appeal is dismissed". (I paraphrase somewhat here ;))

We depend on police, armed forces, security services etc for our safety, both real and perceived. It hurts to have to admit they can not only screw up but be positively out of control and malicious sometimes.

eta: Denning's words:

If they won, it would mean that the police were guilty of perjury; that they were guilty of violence and threats; that the confessions were involuntary and improperly admitted in evidence; and that the convictions were erroneous. ... That was such an appalling vista that every sensible person would say, "It cannot be right that these actions should go any further"
 
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3point14 said:
And that discounts the rest of the post, does it?
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Nope, if I disagreed with the rest of your post I'd have said so. I just always found the argument that torturing someone who is innocent is going to turn them into a terrorist to be hollow.

Minoosh said:
"Seems to be seen as acceptable" - do you have any evidence of that?

How do you define an "Islamist," let alone someone who's tortured, then takes it out on the torturer's culture at large? I'm not saying evidence doesn't exist; just that you haven't cited any.
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No, I admit I don't know of any cases either way (other than Yunis Khatayer Abbas, but he was tortured by Saddam Hussein's goons, not the CIA's), but the argument isn't originally mine and I don't see where it's unlikely. After all, when Terry Jones burned a Koran in 2011, fanatics saw nothing wrong with finding the nearest Westerners they could and murdering them for it.

I define "Islamist" as anyone who bases their worldview on fundamentalist Islam and acts to impose that worldview on others, through violence or coercion.
 
Monketey Ghost said:
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?
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Sorry to go so far off topic, but rising from son of president to president doesn't seem like quite that large of an accomplishment.
 
Polaris said:
Nope, if I disagreed with the rest of your post I'd have said so. I just always found the argument that torturing someone who is innocent is going to turn them into a terrorist to be hollow.
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Oh, I see.

I was sort of aiming from turning a borderline case into a fully fledged, active nutter.
 
3point14 said:
Oh, I see.

I was sort of aiming from turning a borderline case into a fully fledged, active nutter.
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That may be possible or even likely, but in my only slightly educated opinion is infrequent at best.

Let me be clear before I go further: Regardless of any post-torture effect on the tortured, the torture itself remains both morally indefensible and practically unsupportable.

But let's take it that extra step and see what happens when there is torture and word gets out. The individual who was tortured may or may not turn into a political or military foe, but that's one person and the impact can be considered negligible. Let's look instead at the wider political impact. What happened after Abu Ghraib? Our moral authority and therefore our ability to influence and recruit on behalf of the government of Iraq was negatively affected. But Abu Ghraib wasn't torture, you say. It doesn't matter; it was perceived as torture, and what was not perceived as torture was perceived as degrading and had the same impact.

Then there's Guantanamo. Torture or not, it is perceived as such, and we have never overcome that perception with the result that attempts to act as global leader of the free and superior world of democracies is substantially harmed.

Short version: Torture hurts the tortured and the torturer with results at best no more reliable than non-torture and at the cost of global standing.
 
Details are slowly trickling out:

5 stunning revelations from Senate report exposing CIA torture

The 5 point, see the article for details:
1. Black site at Guantanamo.
2. CIA used British-controlled island.
3. CIA handed over prisoners who are now dead.
4. CIA went beyond legal memo.
5. CIA lied about number of prisoners.
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I'm sorry, but I do not consider the people who did this to be heroes and I don't buy that this was beneficial to the country. That may or may not have been their intention, but if so they failed miserably. They deserve to be fully prosecuted.
 
Dire warning over pending release of CIA torture report

Legitimate concern or last desperate attempt to avoid embarrassing revelations?

WASHINGTON -- Foreign governments and U.S. intelligence agencies are predicting that the release of a Senate report examining the use of torture by the CIA will cause "violence and deaths" abroad, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said Sunday.

Rep. Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican, is regularly briefed on intelligence assessments. He told CNN's "State of the Union" that U.S. intelligence agencies and foreign governments have said privately that the release of the report on CIA interrogations a decade ago will be used by extremists to incite violence that is likely to cost lives. The 480-page report, a summary of a still-classified 6,000 page study, is expected to be made public next week.

"I think this is a terrible idea," Rogers said of the expected release. "Our foreign partners are telling us this will cause violence and deaths...Foreign leaders have approached the government and said, 'You do this, this will cause violence and deaths.' Our own intelligence community has assessed that this will cause violence and deaths."
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ETA:
Also allows those responsible to shift the blame:

Our torturing people didn't cause this violent reaction, your foolish irresponsible decision to release this information caused it! Shame on you!
 
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Foreign governments and U.S. intelligence agencies are predicting that the release of a Senate report examining the use of torture by the CIA will cause "violence and deaths" abroad, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said Sunday.
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Of course it will! That's why you don't torture people. Lay in that bed you made.
 
"This will make them hate us."
"They already hate us."
"This will make them hate us more!"
"Um... any chance we could do things that might make them hate us less then?"
"Don't think so. We pretty much like doing all the things we do now."
"Um... I think I'm starting to dislike us too."
 
Puppycow said:
Any thoughts? Shouldn't some heads roll over this at least? I don't think there is much appetite for prosecutions, but shouldn't there be some kind of accountability?
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Well, this is the thing about torture, innit? It's all about rolling other people's heads.
 
logger said:
Agreed, foolish to release this.
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Foolish for who?

The voters, the people who pay the bills, who will learn what sort of shenanigans some parts of our government are up to? Not foolish.

The politicians who authorize funds for these hi-jinks? Not foolish.

The people who went beyond the law in their actions? OK, you got me - it will be foolish for this group.
 
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