Why not torture?

[Mirrorglass]

What claim? I haven't suggested anything.

You're right, my bad. So we're in agreement that exceptions to rules don't almost always lead to slippery slopes?

Your strawman?

Yes.

 

[tsig]

So you believe that if something will work in one situation, it must necessarily work in every possible situation?

Amendment 8 - Cruel and Unusual Punishment. Ratified 12/15/1791.

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposedor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#Am8

Looks like your argument was anticipated over 200 years ago.

 

[Mirrorglass]

Amendment 8 - Cruel and Unusual Punishment. Ratified 12/15/1791.

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposedor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#Am8

Looks like your argument was anticipated over 200 years ago.

That's non sequitur on several levels, in addition to being just an argument from authority and established practice.

First of all, I'm not American, so I doubt I'm the one these people were anticipating. Second of all, isn't this the document that allowed slavery? And thirdly, since when is citing a law evidence that said law should be in place?

 

[tsig]

That's non sequitur on several levels, in addition to being just an argument from authority and established practice.

First of all, I'm not American, so I doubt I'm the one these people were anticipating. Second of all, isn't this the document that allowed slavery? And thirdly, since when is citing a law evidence that said law should be in place?

First of all it isn't a law. Second the constitution was amended to forbid slavery.
Third i suggest you learn why confessions obtained by torture are not allowed in court.

 

[willhaven]

Have they not shed their rights by committing crime?

No, they haven't.

If they've been convicted of a crime, we have evidence and we convict them. If they haven't been convicted of a crime and we don't have any evidence or exigent circumstances, they shouldn't be held in the first place.

It is conceivable that utilizing torture could save lives in some instances. What matters are the other instances where we torture innocent people and waste intelligence resources tracking down false leads derived through torture.

One of the most important parts of the US justice system is that accused murderers are allowed due process. No witch hunts.

 

[Mirrorglass]

First of all it isn't a law. Second the constitution was amended to forbid slavery.
Third i suggest you learn why confessions obtained by torture are not allowed in court.

I was under the impression that the constitution is the Law, on which all other laws are based. But that's really just semantics.

Secondly, the constitution could be amended to allow torture in special circumstances; the point is simply that the fact that something is against the constitution is not proof that it should be.

And third, why do you keep returning to confessions? I said pages ago that torture cannot be used to get reliable answers to the question "Is this person guilty?". I could broaden that statement to say that torture is unreliable for any yes/no question.

However, I argued that there are different questions, to which reliable (or reliable enough to be useful) answers can be gained from torture. Yet you keep referring to confessions obtained by torture, something that should have been left outside the discussion on page two. Is the distinction really so difficult to grasp?

 

[tsig]

I was under the impression that the constitution is the Law, on which all other laws are based. But that's really just semantics.

Secondly, the constitution could be amended to allow torture in special circumstances; the point is simply that the fact that something is against the constitution is not proof that it should be.

And third, why do you keep returning to confessions? I said pages ago that torture cannot be used to get reliable answers to the question "Is this person guilty?". I could broaden that statement to say that torture is unreliable for any yes/no question.

However, I argued that there are different questions, to which reliable (or reliable enough to be useful) answers can be gained from torture. Yet you keep referring to confessions obtained by torture, something that should have been left outside the discussion on page two. Is the distinction really so difficult to grasp?

So torture is OK depending on the questions asked?

 

[tsig]

I was under the impression that the constitution is the Law, on which all other laws are based. But that's really just semantics.

Secondly, the constitution could be amended to allow torture in special circumstances; the point is simply that the fact that something is against the constitution is not proof that it should be.

And third, why do you keep returning to confessions? I said pages ago that torture cannot be used to get reliable answers to the question "Is this person guilty?". I could broaden that statement to say that torture is unreliable for any yes/no question.

However, I argued that there are different questions, to which reliable (or reliable enough to be useful) answers can be gained from torture. Yet you keep referring to confessions obtained by torture, something that should have been left outside the discussion on page two. Is the distinction really so difficult to grasp?

Could you cite one of those cases?

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

I think some people are still missing the point that we have banned torture (and genocide, and biological warfare, and chemical warfare, and using POWs for medical research and so on and on) in spite of the fact that these things are useful.

Whether or not torture works is not the issue. Whether or not chemical warfare works, or testing weapons on POWs works is not the issue. We put an end to these things because we thought that they should never happen again even if they happened to be convenient to the powers of the day.

By the logic put forward here for torture, why not use captured Al Qaida members for testing biological and chemical weapons? After all it could save lives, they did something bad so they are fair game for any brutality we care to visit upon them even before they are convicted by a court of law (apparently), and as the Nazis and Imperial Japenese showed it's and effective form of scientific research. So why not?

That said, the slippery slope argument Mirrorglass is demanding evidence for is one we slid down just in very recent memory. Have you forgotten Abu Ghraib, Mirrorglass? "Well-meaning" suits in the USA decided that it would be just fine to allow "enhanced interrogation" of "high-value suspects" in the "War on Terror" and in short order Iraqi POWs were being tortured to death. Once you let society's sickos loose with a license to torture it's an empirical fact that they get out of line.

Maybe that's just because torture is carried out in secret, because if the public saw it they'd put a stop to it. However once people start torturing with impunity they don't stop.

 

[Elind]

Besides the ethical issues of causing another human to suffer for your gain, the information gathered through torture is not reliable. People will say whatever they think the interrogator wants to hear if it will make the torture stop.

Did you read this somewhere, or were you told to repeat it? Again and again and again....

Of course anyone can be forced to say what someone wants them to say. That is trivial and that is torture for its own sake. The issue is not confession.

The point is, can they be forced to say what was not known but suspected, and can be verified?

 

[tsig]

Did you read this somewhere, or were you told to repeat it? Again and again and again....

Of course anyone can be forced to say what someone wants them to say. That is trivial and that is torture for its own sake. The issue is not confession.

The point is, can they be forced to say what was not known but suspected, and can be verified?

If it can be verified from other sources the you did not need the torture.

 

[Mirrorglass]

So torture is OK depending on the questions asked?

Again, you keep misrepresenting my position. I said torture can work depending on the questions asked.

There is an implied position that torture is OK if it can save lives, of course, but that is a separate point from the one you are addressing.

Could you cite one of those cases?

A kidnapper is caught, and there is reason to suspect a victim is still alive, but confined to a location the kidnapper refuses to reveal.

 

[Mirrorglass]

I think some people are still missing the point that we have banned torture (and genocide, and biological warfare, and chemical warfare, and using POWs for medical research and so on and on) in spite of the fact that these things are useful.

Whether or not torture works is not the issue. Whether or not chemical warfare works, or testing weapons on POWs works is not the issue. We put an end to these things because we thought that they should never happen again even if they happened to be convenient to the powers of the day.

By the logic put forward here for torture, why not use captured Al Qaida members for testing biological and chemical weapons? After all it could save lives, they did something bad so they are fair game for any brutality we care to visit upon them even before they are convicted by a court of law (apparently), and as the Nazis and Imperial Japenese showed it's and effective form of scientific research. So why not?

That said, the slippery slope argument Mirrorglass is demanding evidence for is one we slid down just in very recent memory. Have you forgotten Abu Ghraib, Mirrorglass? "Well-meaning" suits in the USA decided that it would be just fine to allow "enhanced interrogation" of "high-value suspects" in the "War on Terror" and in short order Iraqi POWs were being tortured to death. Once you let society's sickos loose with a license to torture it's an empirical fact that they get out of line.

Maybe that's just because torture is carried out in secret, because if the public saw it they'd put a stop to it. However once people start torturing with impunity they don't stop.

I wouldn't say I'm missing the point, so much, as disagreeing with it. I'm quite aware of the fact that many people consider torture wrong in all situations. I simply think about a situation where torture could save lives, and hear the argument as "the comfort of one person is more important than the death of others", which, to me, sounds absurd.

For your example about biological warfare, you'll note that I never suggested a prisoner could deserve torture. That is not the issue. The issue is an immediate and palpable gain of information from the torture - information that could clearly and quickly save lives. Can the same be expected from researching weapons?

Still, the point about Abu Ghraib is valid. I suspect the problems had more to do with anger and sadism than reaching for personal gain, but still, a fair point. Perhaps it could be said than in a war, allowing torture is a bad idea. I'll admit I don't like the idea of torturing prisoners of war very much - not that it's going to stop, anyway.

But that still leaves certain non-military applications I would approve of. Also, the conclusion you draw from Abu Ghraib seems rather extreme. Did every single person who was given the permission to use torture abuse this right?

 

[Belz...]

Frankly, I have no problem torturing people like KSM. I would do it myself. Maybe you get good information. If you not, so what. He is a piece of crap responsible for three thousand murders and deserves the suffering.

"Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. "

Are you sure you can be trusted to determine who deserves to suffer ?

 

[Belz...]

You're assuming that all torturers are trying to produce truth.

And how do you differenciate between the good ones and the bad ones ?

No True Torturer fallacy.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

I wouldn't say I'm missing the point, so much, as disagreeing with it. I'm quite aware of the fact that many people consider torture wrong in all situations. I simply think about a situation where torture could save lives, and hear the argument as "the comfort of one person is more important than the death of others", which, to me, sounds absurd.

It's not about the comfort of one person. I'm not against torture, or capital punishment, or anything else for that matter in fantasy worlds where it's a postulate that whatever it is you are trying to justify is a necessary evil inflicted on bad people to lead to a much greater good.

I'm against it because the political goal of the torture lobby is not and never has been to only torture people in highly specific situations like the "ticking time bomb" fantasy from 24 or the "kidnapper with the victim in a room with the air running out" fantasy from Dirty Harry, any more than the goal of the capital punishment lobby is to only execute people whose guilt is proven beyond any doubt whatsoever and who are provably a serious and ongoing danger to others.

As others have said, in cases like those there is absolutely nothing stopping the hypothetical heroic army people or whoever from torturing the crap out of their victim and then fronting up to a court to explain themselves. If it really was necessary to save lives then I think they'd have a decent chance of getting off. Such cases are so unusual we need no specific law to cover them.

For your example about biological warfare, you'll note that I never suggested a prisoner could deserve torture. That is not the issue. The issue is an immediate and palpable gain of information from the torture - information that could clearly and quickly save lives. Can the same be expected from researching weapons?

What's so special about an immediate payoff? If experimenting on POWs means that you get your biological weapon deployed in the field in six months instead of twelve months, that could still save lives or even win a war, right?

Still, the point about Abu Ghraib is valid. I suspect the problems had more to do with anger and sadism than reaching for personal gain, but still, a fair point. Perhaps it could be said than in a war, allowing torture is a bad idea. I'll admit I don't like the idea of torturing prisoners of war very much - not that it's going to stop, anyway.

Yet you are okay with torturing terrorists, which is what makes me think that you believe that somehow they deserve to be tortured, or that they are fair game for torture in a way that POWs are not. Surely you could potentially save just as many lives torturing a uniformed officer you captured as you could by torturing a terrorist, in just as immediate a fashion, so it can't simply be immediacy or results that are important.

But that still leaves certain non-military applications I would approve of. Also, the conclusion you draw from Abu Ghraib seems rather extreme. Did every single person who was given the permission to use torture abuse this right?

A better question would be, does ever single government that gives itself permission to torture end up abusing that power? I can't name one that did not do so offhand, can you? The USA sure as heck couldn't manage to keep its use of torture within anything resembling tolerable bounds, nor punish those responsible after the fact.

 

[Elind]

If it can be verified from other sources the you did not need the torture.

Why insult me by pretending I accept stupid logic?

Verified does not mean "known".

 

[A Lurker]

Kevin, what was the point in Godwinning this thread?

You had an interesting line going in re treaties, and why people/governments actually sign them, and they you pissed it away.

Pity.

No, he didn't, he simply ran into another fallacy instead, the one that goes "no matter what, we are not like them". In your particular case, it's a tendency towards the fallacy of American Exceptionalism, as if there was really anything particularly special about America that prevents you being like Nazi Germany or Japan. Here in Europe, we used to think like that for a while too, except a lot of us were the Nazis ourselves; every country here had it's Black/Brown/Dumbshirts, and it's cowed collaborators when the real Nazis came to town (yes, even we Brits, although we try so very hard to forget about Jersey and other Crown Dependencies that did fall. Dunkirk spirit and all that!)
These days, whilst we get lectured on having no National Pride, and letting Muslims push us around by the far right across the pond (DOC is at it over in R&P right now), it's so much better than pretending "It Couldn't Be Us." Oh yes it could... and our buildings still carry the rolls of the dead, and in some places, the original blast damage from the time when it was.

Still, if Nazi Germany is a "Godwin", how about these images instead;

Waterboarding table and illustration of it's use both taken from the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, formerly the S-21 Prison of the Khmer Rouge

There's no way around it. We're doing the same thing. In one small, but significant step, we're now the Nazis. Or the Khmer Rouge, if you'd prefer?

But back to that torture we're involved in; JihadJane has already linked to an attempt within the last week to quantify the true nature of waterboarding, as if you didn't already know; but what ever you think about her personal qualities, The Sun is completely on the other end of the political spectrum. This is a newspaper that has "Our Boys" as a special key on their typewriter, who famously ran a front page of the Belgrano sinking with the headline "GOTCHA!". It took as mentioned 12 seconds for their reporter to become a card carrying anti-waterboarding advocate.

Of course, what still makes "Us" different from "Them" is that they are "Evil" and have knowledge of "Evil Things" we can get from them; Except again this week, the now Conservative British Government, no haters of America they, have stated categorically Torture doesn't work, and they gained no information from the Americans which prevented attacks in the UK, despite Bush's autobiographical claims. Indeed, the attack that's used to justify his waterboarding in said autobiography, the Heathrow alert in February 2003 happened a month before KSM was even arrested.

And they even go on to say, although subtly as befits a concerned friend of Americas, you know old chap, we have rather noticed a tendency towards wanting them to tell you what you'd like to hear...

(Former Shadow Home Secretary) Davis pointed to claims made by one detainee, Ibn Sheikh al-Libi, after he was tortured that there was a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida and that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, both of which have proved not to be true.

I'm sure he said a fair bit that was true as well; as did the people strapped to the tables in S-21 no doubt. It's all kind of irrelevant though when you've got to that point... because there's someone who wants to torture you regardless, in there with you. Still, Tory British Government not good enough? How about a home grown, Republican voice on the issue? Take it away, amongst others Senator John McCain;

I think that these interrogations once publicized helped al Qaeda recruit. I got that from an al Qaeda operative in a prison camp in Iraq who told-- who told me that.


He goes on to say:

I was in -- Senator Lindsey Graham and I were in -- in Camp Bucca, the twenty-thousand-prisoner camp. We met with a former high-ranking member of al Qaeda. I said, "How did you succeed so well in Iraq after the initial invasions?" He said two things. One, the chaos that existed after the initial invasion, there was no order of any kind. Two, he said, Abu Ghraib pictures allowed me and helped me to recruit thousands of young men to our cause. Now that's al Qaeda.


Former General Counsel to the Navy Alberto Mora has stated this same conclusion in testimony to Congress more than a year ago. He said:

There are serving U.S. flag-rank officers who maintain that the first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq -- as judged by their effectiveness in recruiting insurgent fighters into combat -- are, respectively the symbols of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.


General Ray Odierno:

The graphic revelations of detainee abuse motivated some terrorists including foreign fighters from Syria, Yemen and Saudi Arabia to join the jihad.


General David Petraeus:

An influx of foreign fighters from outside Afghanistan and new recruits from within Afghan could materialize, as the new photos serve as potent recruiting material to attract new members to join the insurgency.


From the SENATE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE INQUIRY INTO THE TREATMENT OF DETAINEES IN U.S. CUSTODY:

Treating detainees harshly only reinforces that distorted view, increases resistance to cooperation, and creates new enemies.

Oh KSM may have been involved in killing 3,000 Americans, but only people like the pro-torturers here can help him to destroy the American soul as well.

 

[Halfcentaur]

I think there is a fundamental disconnect with society and civilization that the people in favor of the death penalty and torture don't appreciate. Once people start living in groups larger than that of a hundred or so people, you can't have the same sort of black and white rules that the human psyche is prone to desiring. These people live in a global society while still under the impression it's "them and their family/tribe" against the world.

Once we started living in cities and creating nations, these eye for an eye systems do not work. Laws and ethics are a necessity to living in such a system.

 

[Mirrorglass]

It's not about the comfort of one person. I'm not against torture, or capital punishment, or anything else for that matter in fantasy worlds where it's a postulate that whatever it is you are trying to justify is a necessary evil inflicted on bad people to lead to a much greater good.

I'm against it because the political goal of the torture lobby is not and never has been to only torture people in highly specific situations like the "ticking time bomb" fantasy from 24 or the "kidnapper with the victim in a room with the air running out" fantasy from Dirty Harry, any more than the goal of the capital punishment lobby is to only execute people whose guilt is proven beyond any doubt whatsoever and who are provably a serious and ongoing danger to others.

As others have said, in cases like those there is absolutely nothing stopping the hypothetical heroic army people or whoever from torturing the crap out of their victim and then fronting up to a court to explain themselves. If it really was necessary to save lives then I think they'd have a decent chance of getting off. Such cases are so unusual we need no specific law to cover them.

Well, you are basically saying that if I am to condone torture in any situation, I must condone excessive use of torture, because some other person has done that. It's not a good argument, and I don't see a need to deal with it.

I also don't like the idea that the law can simply be disregarded in special circumstances. If there is such a circumstance, then there should be an amendment to the law; otherwise, it will be just the personal opinion of the judge that settles who has the right to use torture and in what situation. What you are suggesting does not differ from changing the law - it would still give people the chance to torture without punishment in special cases - but it would make the punishments (or lack thereof) inconsistent.

What's so special about an immediate payoff? If experimenting on POWs means that you get your biological weapon deployed in the field in six months instead of twelve months, that could still save lives or even win a war, right?

Biological warfare saves lives? That's the first I've heard of it.

Yet you are okay with torturing terrorists, which is what makes me think that you believe that somehow they deserve to be tortured, or that they are fair game for torture in a way that POWs are not. Surely you could potentially save just as many lives torturing a uniformed officer you captured as you could by torturing a terrorist, in just as immediate a fashion, so it can't simply be immediacy or results that are important.

Ah yes, the "you must be a bad person" argument.

War, of course, is hardly as simple a matter as law enforcement. "Saving lives" in a wartime situation often means killing enemies, which makes the whole moral aspect rather more ambiguous. In addition, war, to certain extent, is a game played according to rules. If both sides agree not to use torture, neither clearly has an incentive to break that agreement. The same is not true for criminals.

Suggesting that I must simply think that "terrorists deserve it" is disingenuous.

A better question would be, does ever single government that gives itself permission to torture end up abusing that power? I can't name one that did not do so offhand, can you? The USA sure as heck couldn't manage to keep its use of torture within anything resembling tolerable bounds, nor punish those responsible after the fact.

No, that isn't a better question, actually. It wasn't the government that abused the power in the case of Abu Ghraib, although there certainly are problems with how the abuses were dealt with. My impression was that it was a group of individuals that abused the power given to them. I think the question of whether all individuals given said power ended up abusing it is quite relevant; if yes, then you have a point, but if no, then that suggests torture could be used without abuses if it's use was more strictly regulated.