Effectiveness of Torture

Drysdale said:
First,what is the definition of torture?
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Torture is defined as the intentional infliction of severe pain--mental or physical--by an agent of a government on a person in his custody or control for the purpose of extracting information, a confession or as punishment. It is so defined in the Convention Against Torture (signed and ratified by the US and therefore part of US law), and in the U.S. Code Title 18, Part 1, Chapter 113C, section 2340 (passed to comply with the CAT).

I personally dont consider waterboarding torture.
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I find it interesting that you're willing to express the opinion that waterboarding isn't torture when you've also expressed ignorance of the definition of torture.

You just intuit that it's not torture?
 
Back to the topic. . .

I think there are several lines of thought that have been well expressed here that show that torture is ineffective. If I might summarize them. . .

1. At the point in time when you decide to break the law and commit torture (the law allows no circumstance whatsoever to justify torture), you can't possibly know whether you'll get useful information. (Yes, I understand you can sometimes get information that can then be verified, but when you decide to intentionally inflict severe pain on a prison, you don't know for sure the guy knows the information you need, and you don't know that he'll give it to you if he does.)

2. Even if you somehow magically knew you had the guy with the information and knew 100% for sure that you would get that information (and not get bad information that needed to be teased apart from the good info), you still can't possibly know that committing the crime of torture is the only way to get that information. Law enforcement is full of stories of unexpected tips, a quirky turn of events that leads to the information, etc. For the matter, the intel you're after might already be sitting on some analysts desks and be minutes away from getting to the person who will recognize its significance.

3. The history of torture hasn't show it to be particularly effective. (Hence tsig's pointed question, "Do you believe in witches?") Witchhunts and the Inquisition have shown that you can make a person say pretty much anything you want him to say to stop pain. There was a thread on how torture supposedly won WWII for the Allies, but it has been shown that in fact the Axis probably committed more acts of torture than they Allies, and yet they lost the war. I doubt we could tease out causality, but it's clear that torture did not correlate with success.

I think any one of these points is sufficient to show that torture is not effective.

The point I keep making in these torture threads, which I understand isn't the question being asked here, is that even if you can prove torture is effective, it's irrelevant when asking whether or not it's OK to torture. The law clearly says nothing can be used to justify torture. Even wrt crimes where the law doesn't specifically say nothing can be used to justify committing the crime, the end of the crime usually can't be used as a defense. The example I keep using is that if I rob a bank in order to pay for a loved-one's medical treatment, I have still committed the crime of robbery. I might be able to use the noble end as a mitigating circumstance in sentencing, but it is certainly not a defense.
 
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Marc39 said:
Has anyone mentioned the sheer fun factor of torturing terrorists?
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I hope you're joking, but if I take it at face value I can respond to your post.

The crime of torture that we've been talking about (as defined in the C.A.T.) doesn't cover the intentional infliction of severe pain for purposes of fun. In the U.S. that version of torture is a matter for State law. For the most part, States see that sort of torture as an aggravating factor of some other crime rather than a crime itself (because it's impossible to commit torture without committing some other crime). Here's a paper offering a very nice summary of that version of torture.

However, that kind of torture is not the same topic. I think we can safely say that all of the torture threads in this forum, including this one, refer to torture as defined by the C.A.T. (torture committed by an agent of a government for the purpose of extracting info, a confession or as punishment).
 
Upchurch said:
Source?



Lisa: By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.
Homer: Oh, how does it work?
Lisa: It doesn't work.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: It's just a stupid rock.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: But I don't see any tigers around, do you?
[Homer thinks of this, then pulls out some money]
Homer: Lisa, I want to buy your rock.
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It's the missing elephant on the corner fallacy.
 
JoeTheJuggler said:
I hope you're joking, but if I take it at face value I can respond to your post.

The crime of torture that we've been talking about (as defined in the C.A.T.) doesn't cover the intentional infliction of severe pain for purposes of fun. In the U.S. that version of torture is a matter for State law. For the most part, States see that sort of torture as an aggravating factor of some other crime rather than a crime itself (because it's impossible to commit torture without committing some other crime). Here's a paper offering a very nice summary of that version of torture.

However, that kind of torture is not the same topic. I think we can safely say that all of the torture threads in this forum, including this one, refer to torture as defined by the C.A.T. (torture committed by an agent of a government for the purpose of extracting info, a confession or as punishment).
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So you are saying that "an agent of a government for the purpose of extracting info, a confession or as punishment" couldn't also get a little joy out of watching the pain?
 
I'm thinking that it takes a bit of a sadist to torture another human being, for any reason.

However, back on topic....... still no evidence has been presented that torture is effective and reliable. Why violate human rights to do something that hasn't been shown to be reliable or effective?
 
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thaiboxerken said:
I'm thinking that it takes a bit of a sadist to torture another human being, for any reason.
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The proponents of torture out themselves with every post. It's not information they want but to punish the evildoer.
 
JoeTheJuggler said:
3. The history of torture hasn't show it to be particularly effective.
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That is basically a dodge. The point of the thread was really about the effectiveness of water boarding and not torture in general.

By your weak logic. Baseball is a game for losers because their is only 1 team a year that is the champion team. All the other teams failed.
 
corplinx said:
That is basically a dodge. The point of the thread was really about the effectiveness of water boarding and not torture in general.
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No. The point of this thread is about the effectiveness of torture, of which water-boarding is one of the methods.

By your weak logic. Baseball is a game for losers because their is only 1 team a year that is the champion team. All the other teams failed.
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By your logic, water-boarding is effective because some expert said it is, even though other experts disagree.
 
corplinx said:
That is basically a dodge. The point of the thread was really about the effectiveness of water boarding and not torture in general.

By your weak logic. Baseball is a game for losers because their is only 1 team a year that is the champion team. All the other teams failed.
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You might want to look at the title of the thread " Effectiveness of Torture" before you embarrass yourself further.
 
tsig said:
You might want to look at the title of the thread " Effectiveness of Torture" before you embarrass yourself further.
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Do try keeping up with the thread sometime before embarassing yourself any more. Even thought that was the title, the opening post starts:
"In various water-boarding threads, the pro-boarders have all but admitted that water-boarding is torture. Most of them have brought up effectiveness and efficiency as part of their argument as to why it's ok to do, thus evading the actual argument as to whether it's torture or not.

However, this thread is not about discussing whether water-boarding is torture or not. This is about whether torture is effective."

He does on to say not just water boarding but torture in general should be discussed, but as you can see from the thread (if you had bothered reading it), nobody argued that torture in general works. So this has basically been a water boarding thread.

To recap:
The thread was created because of his perceptions about proponents of water boarding. Most of the discussions has been about waterboarding. Despite the title and a small disclaimer in the opening post, it is a water boarding thread.

Stop failing so hard.
 
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thaiboxerken said:
I'm thinking that it takes a bit of a sadist to torture another human being, for any reason.

However, back on topic....... still no evidence has been presented that torture is effective and reliable. Why violate human rights to do something that hasn't been shown to be reliable or effective?
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Is there any evidence it isnt effective?
 
JoeTheJuggler said:
Torture is defined as the intentional infliction of severe pain--mental or physical--by an agent of a government on a person in his custody or control for the purpose of extracting information, a confession or as punishment. It is so defined in the Convention Against Torture (signed and ratified by the US and therefore part of US law), and in the U.S. Code Title 18, Part 1, Chapter 113C, section 2340 (passed to comply with the CAT).


I find it interesting that you're willing to express the opinion that waterboarding isn't torture when you've also expressed ignorance of the definition of torture.

You just intuit that it's not torture?
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Which of those definitions cited would apply to waterboarding?
 
corplinx said:
Do try keeping up with the thread sometime before embarassing yourself any more. Even thought that was the title, the opening post starts:
"In various water-boarding threads, the pro-boarders have all but admitted that water-boarding is torture. Most of them have brought up effectiveness and efficiency as part of their argument as to why it's ok to do, thus evading the actual argument as to whether it's torture or not.

However, this thread is not about discussing whether water-boarding is torture or not. This is about whether torture is effective."

He does on to say not just water boarding but torture in general should be discussed, but as you can see from the thread (if you had bothered reading it), nobody argued that torture in general works. So this has basically been a water boarding thread.

To recap:
The thread was created because of his perceptions about proponents of water boarding. Most of the discussions has been about waterboarding. Despite the title and a small disclaimer in the opening post, it is a water boarding thread.

Stop failing so hard.
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Semantics aside do you favor waterboarding? Would you trust your life to the information gained during waterboarding?
 
thaiboxerken said:
In gathering truthful data, there is no evidence that it's effective. In gathering false-confessions and false-data, yes, it's been shown to be effective.
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Evidence?


This always sounds like a weak cop out. I'd agree that if someone is actually innocent, sure, they'll say a load of crap to stop it from happening.

But the people that were waterboarded were exceptional cases, not just some middle eastern looking people who were walking down a street looking at a high rise funny.

I would imagine that those people were in fact prepared for interrogations, of many sorts. And when simple stuff doesn't work, you attempt something more.

Do I think that it's something to be proud of? Hell no!
If it can save lives and be worthwhile, do I think it should happen? If necessary, sure!
 
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