Merged Senate Report on CIA Torture Program

[Olowkow]

Cheney is looking very healthy. He cannot afford to admit he was wrong, because there are people out there wanting to try him in a world court. His claim is that torture worked. Why won't anyone ask specifics? I wish someone would ask him, "Would torture work on you sir? Would you betray your country under enhanced interrogation? Do you think it worked on John McCain?"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/14/dick-cheney-torture_n_6322872.html

ETA: This was only a part of the Chuck Todd Meet the Press interview. He states that he does not want a pardon, because there were no crimes committed, and that "we captured Bin Laden". The link below is a more complete one.

http://www.nbcnews.com/watch/meet-the-press/cheney-on-the-senate-intelligence-report-372288067934

 

[Fudbucker]

If one squints and tilts one head. Otherwise, no. There is no evidence to support your claim.

Listening to Cheney on MTP, I'm more sympathetic to your viewpoint.

 

[Frozenwolf150]

I think it's important to remember that the people running the CIA torture program are still human. They're still subject to human emotions and errors in judgment. They likely got just as scared and panicked as the rest of us after 9/11, and in their desperation, they were willing to do anything to avoid having to confront those feelings of vulnerability and helplessness again. I think this is the same mentality Bush and Cheney had. Even though they were our elected leaders in the highest positions of power, they were still prone to the same emotional frailties as the rest of us. They got scared, and so they lashed out.

 

[Tony Stark]

I think it's important to remember that the people running the CIA torture program are still human. They're still subject to human emotions and errors in judgment. They likely got just as scared and panicked as the rest of us after 9/11, and in their desperation, they were willing to do anything to avoid having to confront those feelings of vulnerability and helplessness again. I think this is the same mentality Bush and Cheney had. Even though they were our elected leaders in the highest positions of power, they were still prone to the same emotional frailties as the rest of us. They got scared, and so they lashed out.

I think this is pretty much spot on.

They should still all be in prison though as their actions were irrefutably illegal.

 

[RandFan]

I think it's important to remember that the people running the CIA torture program are still human. They're still subject to human emotions and errors in judgment. They likely got just as scared and panicked as the rest of us after 9/11, and in their desperation, they were willing to do anything to avoid having to confront those feelings of vulnerability and helplessness again. I think this is the same mentality Bush and Cheney had. Even though they were our elected leaders in the highest positions of power, they were still prone to the same emotional frailties as the rest of us. They got scared, and so they lashed out.

Last night I watched The Experiment which is a Hollywood account of the controversial and criticized Stanford Prison Experiment. I think the criticisms of that experiment are fair and they do call into question the conclusions of the experiment. However, I think in spite of the deficiencies in protocols and the lack of replication due to ethical concerns do not completely refute the findings. Further we do have real world data from prisons around the world, the holocaust and other experiments that do tend to support the findings and we need to accept that good people, not just sociopaths can be inhumane given the right circumstances.

 

[Fudbucker]

Last night I watched The Experiment which is a Hollywood account of the controversial and criticized Stanford Prison Experiment. I think the criticisms of that experiment are fair and they do call into question the conclusions of the experiment. However, I think in spite of the deficiencies in protocols and the lack of replication due to ethical concerns do not completely refute the findings. Further we do have real world data from prisons around the world, the holocaust and other experiments that do tend to support the findings and we need to accept that good people, not just sociopaths can be inhumane given the right circumstances.

Reserve Police Battalion 101.

 

[Cl1mh4224rd]

I think it's important to remember that the people running the CIA torture program are still human. They're still subject to human emotions and errors in judgment. They likely got just as scared and panicked as the rest of us after 9/11, and in their desperation, they were willing to do anything to avoid having to confront those feelings of vulnerability and helplessness again. [...]

I think it may be more accurate to say that they were willing to assign to others the task of doing "anything". How many of those who advocate for torture would be willing to administer that torture with their own hands?

 

[Olowkow]

Scalia has weighed in on torture with the predictable conservative side, but with a twist, seemingly ignoring precedent.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia weighed in on the debate surrounding the Senate torture report on Wednesday. "I don't know what article of the Constitution that would contravene," the AP quoted him telling a Swiss university audience in reference to torture.

Well, same sex marriage, drugs, and a lot of other social issues aren't contravened by any articles of the Constitution either.

It's a surprising statement for a justice to make. After all, the Supreme Court has held torture to be unconstitutional since its ruling in Wilkerson v. Utah in 1878. In that case, the justices wondered what part of the Constitution would forbid such a cruel and unusual punishment:

"Difficulty would attend the effort to define with exactness the extent of the constitutional provision which provides that cruel and unusual punishments shall not be inflicted; but it is safe to affirm that punishments of torture, such as those mentioned by the commentator referred to, and all others in the same line of unnecessary cruelty, are forbidden by that amendment to the Constitution."​

It seems that on certain social questions, some judges throw their legal training out and prefer instead to argue with their personal feelings which gives the impression of bias.

 

[RandFan]

Reserve Police Battalion 101.

Thank you very much. I've added this to the top of my Christmas book list. I will get all 3 of his books. I have Hanna Arendt's Eichman in Jerusalem and found her conclusions about the Banality of Evil compelling.

 

[Tony Stark]

Scalia has weighed in on torture with the predictable conservative side, but with a twist, seemingly ignoring precedent.

Well, same sex marriage, drugs, and a lot of other social issues aren't contravened by any articles of the Constitution either.



It seems that on certain social questions, some judges throw their legal training out and prefer instead to argue with their personal feelings which gives the impression of bias.

Even if torture isn't unconstitutional, it is definitely still illegal. At least two federal laws specifically make it a crime that is punishable by up to life in prison.

 

[hgus]

If "enhanced interrogation" doesn't work, why did the CIA ever go down that road? One would think they would pursue evidence-based practices. Did they think it would work, and only now are we realizing it didn't?

I think the reason why torture was used, and is defended by so many, is that it feels like it must be effective by common sense and gut feelings.

 

[Meed]

I think it's important to remember that the people running the CIA torture program are still human. They're still subject to human emotions and errors in judgment.

Of course. Everyone is. That doesn't change the fact that some people belong in prison for what they've done.

 

[Upchurch]

I think the reason why torture was used, and is defended by so many, is that it feels like it must be effective by common sense and gut feelings.

This feeling has been demonstrated by at least a couple of times in this thread by torture apologists. This is why "common sense" should always be a critical thinking red-flag. It's basically synonymous with "unquestioned belief".

 

[Tony Stark]

This feeling has been demonstrated by at least a couple of times in this thread by torture apologists. This is why "common sense" should always be a critical thinking red-flag. It's basically synonymous with "unquestioned belief".

TBH, to my shame, I used to share these sentiments. I've since come to realize that I was dead wrong.

I still don't have any sympathy at all for guys like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed but given that torture is (1) ineffective, and (2) illegal, there is no good reason to do it.

Everybody responsible for the US torture program from Bush/Cheny down to the the CIA officers that did the actual torture should go to prison.

 

[RandFan]

I think the reason why torture was used, and is defended by so many, is that it feels like it must be effective by common sense and gut feelings.

Agreed, I think there is something primal and perversely pleasurable when evil is met with evil. Perhaps the instinct to defend torture is rooted in the sense that our instincts are righteous.

 

[Tony Stark]

I think it may be more accurate to say that they were willing to assign to others the task of doing "anything". How many of those who advocate for torture would be willing to administer that torture with their own hands?

Back when I advocated torture, I used to claim that I would have done it myself. This was any easy claim to make and now reflecting back I think (or at least hope) that I would have been deeply troubled at the prospect of actually doing it myself if I had really been in such a position. It is considerably likely that I would have been less so troubled with delegating the task to others, though.

 

[Tony Stark]

One more comment that I want to make about this is that I think that Jack Bauer was morally and rationally (though not legally) justified in his use of torture in the TV show 24. In one case, for example, terrorists would have exploded a nuclear bomb in LA if he did not torture someone.

Of course, real life bears no reflection to that fictional TV show.

 

[sunmaster14]

This feeling has been demonstrated by at least a couple of times in this thread by torture apologists. This is why "common sense" should always be a critical thinking red-flag. It's basically synonymous with "unquestioned belief".

Common sense is not the same as "unquestioned belief" at all. It is knowledge that most humans learn from life experience, almost without knowing they're learning it. Common sense is not always accurate or correct, but humans are actually pretty good at adapting to reality, so common sense tends to be useful.

The idea that the prospect of reward or punishment can affect behavior is obvious. We see hundreds of examples of it in our own lives every day, and our entire society runs on the concept. What people like you would have us believe is that if the prospect of punishment is too intense, the entire incentive structure breaks down. Call me a skeptic.

 

[sunmaster14]

Agreed, I think there is something primal and perversely pleasurable when evil is met with evil. Perhaps the instinct to defend torture is rooted in the sense that our instincts are righteous.

I think Jonah Goldberg had a great piece on this recently. See here. He starts out explaining that there are a lot of movies where we do not feel revulsion when the good guy tortures the bad guy to save innocent lives. You can complain that these are just movies, but the fact is the moral judgments we make are real, even for things we know are fictional. We can suspend belief about many things, but not our sense of morality. He goes on:

My own partial explanation is that torture is ultimately a subset of violence. And violence, as I’ve written at some length here, is imbued with less moral significance than people sometimes assume. Violence is a tool. Violence used to enslave is evil. Violence used to free slaves, not so much. Violence used to rape? Evil. Violence used to subdue rapist? Fine by me. This is the problem with doctrines of non-violence. They end up being exercises in moral equivalence. As Bill Buckley famously said, if you have one man who pushes old ladies in front of oncoming buses and another man who pushes old ladies out of the way of oncoming buses, it simply will not do to describe them both as the sorts of men who “push old ladies around.”

I think it would be very, very hard to create a heroic character in film or TV who enjoyed torturing people simply for pleasure or money (though I’m sure some asshat is working on that as we speak). But it’s easy to create a likeable character who beats a bad guy to find the bomb at an orphanage or rescue a kid from suffocating in some pit. In other words, when it comes to violence, the why still matters more than the what for most people. I am entirely open to arguments that this shouldn’t be the case. But I think, simply put, it is the case for most people. And until persuaded otherwise, I’m with most people.

 

[RandFan]

One more comment that I want to make about this is that I think that Jack Bauer was morally and rationally (though not legally) justified in his use of torture in the TV show 24. In one case, for example, terrorists would have exploded a nuclear bomb in LA if he did not torture someone.

Of course, real life bears no reflection to that fictional TV show.

Good post. I think some of the same issues are raised in reference to movies and shows with revenge themes. I grew up on Death Wish and Dirty Harry. Our sense of justice should weigh differently in the real world than it does in our fantasy world.