Secret Prison camps!

The justification to ban it is that it is wrong.

If it doesn't work, that just adds to the absurdity of protecting its use.

(You OK with torturing all potential criminals / gang leaders / etc if it can be shown that some of the info from that torture might save lives???).

 

no.

you are saying we should do X because we can't prove X is not beneficial in all instances.

assuming arguendo that torture is not a moral abomination, illegal according to international law, and not befitting our nation, the government should have to prove that torture is effective before doing it.

stop being a moron. try to shut up. if not at least take a logic class at your nearest school. maybe even a stats class and learn what a null hypothesis is. maybe go with romney.

 

I think it's a dead-end argument to say torture never works. Of course it will work to some extent. If I was kidnapped by, say, England, and they told me to spill the beans, I may try to hold out. But, the minute they showed me the hot poker, I'd tell them everything I knew and I'd be as accurate as possible.

Problem #1 is that it is morally reprehensible to do that.

Problem #2 is what happens when my interrogator is not satisfied with the information I've provided. Now, I've got to come up with more information, even though I've run out. If I never knew anything, that would happen pretty early in the process.

Problem #3 is if I cared deeply enough and perhaps had some training on it, I might be able to resist the torture.

So, I'm sure torture is useful in gathering information to some extent, though it has its limitations. The reason we shouldn't do it is because it's wrong, not because it doesn't work.

 

would drugging of a captive, sleep deprivation, threatening and humiliation (not physical harm done)... be considered torture to you?

 

Funny it didn't work out that way. But that's another thread.

 

i can't believe there are people who actually ask this.

my god.

 

you are right, you have been clear. but you have a really, really bad memory. let me refresh - here you are being asked straight up if you condone torture and your reply is that it depends on the situation. see, this is you justifying torture.

furthermore, in post #26 you state that you support punishment without due process - this statement, by definition, makes you unamerican.

if that isnt enough, are you not trying to justify torture with these statements?

here is your response to me asking you about lindsey grahams statement that rape and murder was going on at abu-ghraib. this sure sounds like you are trying to justify what he is talking about.

here you are actually admitting that it is wrong to physically beat prisoners, but you refuse to acknowledge the fact that the bush administration signed off on just that. in fact, according to them anything short of organ failure or death does NOT qualify as torture. this is your president authorizing EXACTLY what you say is wrong. dont you have a problem with that?

your president signed off on it. and thats real nice of you - you guess that rape qualifies as torture.

you are wrong.

read any of your quotes which i so graciously posted for you.

i dont look at peoples names before i read a post, only afterwards and only if it is something i am responding to. i am not trying to "get" you. but this is a public message board and if someone is going to post the things you do i cant help but respond b/c i find your views morally reprehensible and unamerican.

 

yeah, just "some quotes" from random people like
Colin Powell
Rear Admiral (ret.) John Hutson, former Judge Advocate General for the Navy
Lawrence Korb, former Naval Intelligence officer and Assistant Secretary of Defense during the Reagan Administration
Bob Baer, former CIA official
Michael Scheuer, formerly a senior CIA official in the Counter-Terrorism Center
Dan Coleman, retired FBI agent
Army Field Manual 34-52 Chapter 1

what do any of these people know?

 

You know, there's certain people on here who will just resort to personal attacks and never address the debate on the merits of it. They are people who are too-small minded to consider different perspective and take out their issues on others by resorting to mud-slinging.

This is the purpose of the ignore feature. Not only does it save you from having to waste time reading thier posts, but it will insure that you never take them seriously again and accidently respond to their post. It's very useful.

However; if you quote them, then I can read them despite being on my ignore list. Get my drift?

 

But the dirty secret is that is can work. And I think we have to debate the merits of torture on that possibility. It's way too dogmatic to simply declare is doesn't work.

I am not ok with torturing all potential criminals, gang leaders, etc....I am only saying that torture is a last resort if the following conditions are met:

1. All other methods of interrogation have failed
2. There is clear evidence that the subject knows critical information
3. Obtaining this critical information would clear be able to prevent the death of many people (via terrorist attack)
4. Whatever torture is carried out, it must not leave permanent physical scaring or disability
5. The subject is given choice to negoiate terms to yield information at a "reasonable" cost - in other words, there is a positive incentive as well as the negative one of torture
6. It is clear that the subject is non-cooperative

 

Yeah well, that was a stupid war and I knew from the beginning it was all a lie. But my fellow Americans were happy to go along with it so there was nothing I could do. It actually marked my shift from being a Republican to a moderate. I actually went to the protest with a friend, helped egg on some libs to try to break through the police line, and we watched in horror as the cops beat them. And the funny thing is we were talking to the cops before hand and they were jsut guys doing their jobs - regular folks.

Trust me, the U.S. has been engaged in torture long before 9/11. Every country in the world will use torture if it has to....and for those that won't, well, it's because someone else is protecting them.

 

Well, I'm not passing moral judgement, it is in fact a matter of perspective and that's the problem.

My goal is to establish that it is potentially effective even if under a very narrow range. The next question is then if it's morally justified or not, and what all the other consequences.

I know torture is brutal and distasteful to many people, but I think it's important to look at the benefit to your civilization and ensure we keep an openmind about anything and everything....regardless on how they make us feel.

 

Oh, sure. Whatever flavor you are this week, NewYorker. Enjoy.



D&D. Replicant Democrat.

 

how dare someone ask questions to learn others opinions

You do understand that asking questions and actually answering them help people understand eachothers views and also helps establish some understanding and thus a foundation to have a good and productive conversation...dont you?

 

no its not. its asking for clarification. again, what you may consider torture others may not, thus i would need a clear cut example. You play with words well, i will give you that.

interesting. i didnt know all you need to be american was believe in due process. But again you are playing with the words well, dont confuse allowing for the possibility with reinforcing an idea.

i dont think justify is the appropriate word.

i've talked about the problems of defining torture many times. I think we all understand (or we all should) the difficulties in trying to place a robust and all encompassing meaning into words. it simple isnt very easy and is probably near impossible. Its a easy point to understand but for whatever reason you choose to ignore. It also complicates the situation when we start getting into law talk. But from a US perspective, it would be prudent to have some manueverability within its definition. That doesnt mean that US interrogators and prisoner guards are being trained to rape and beat the prisoners...it would seem that you think of america as nothing but hooligans...no who seems unamerican?


Give me your definition of torture then, since obviously you dont agree with the above ones.

its your president too.

and you are too busy trying to be "right" to actually have a good, open, honest and productive converstation.

stalker.

who are you to pass moral judgment? give me a freaking break guy. I would say its more immoral to have the arrogance and hubris to try and pass moral judgement on someone else! how conceited can you really be?

i appreciate your enthusiasm and your moral superiority to guide this immoral infidel but i think im done with this conversation, and you, for now.

 

If you were addressing the class in general, I would call those things torture. I don't like this slippery slope of how uncomfortable can we make someone before it is torture, so I slip all the way down to the bottom. If they committed a crime, prosecute and punish them (avoiding anything "cruel and unusual"). If they have information, you can use the witholding of that information in the prosecution, or cut a deal to get the information.

Well, I already agree with you that torture can be effective in some cases. I think you completely miss the ethical boat by looking at the ends before judging the means. We can probably just say we disagree on the ethics -- I will not condone it under any circumstance, and you would.

But, I have to say, I think your 6 preconditions are problematic. Most important is probably that torture is conducted without the due process of law. I still wouldn't be too happy, but perhaps a little happier if a prisoner was tried and convicted and sentenced to torture. On the particulars:

1. All other methods of interrogation have failed: if timing is crucial, which can often be the case in gathering intelligence on terrorism, there will be a lot of pressure to not waste time on other methods of interrogation.

2. There is clear evidence that the subject knows critical information: With no oversight and no due process, there is no way to police the decision on the likelihood that your prisoner knows anything.

3. Obtaining this critical information would clear be able to prevent the death of many people (via terrorist attack): Without knowing what information you'll get, how will you know it will prevent deaths? Will you know you'll be able to leverage that information to stop deaths?

4. Whatever torture is carried out, it must not leave permanent physical scaring or disability: What about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?

5. The subject is given choice to negoiate terms to yield information at a "reasonable" cost - in other words, there is a positive incentive as well as the negative one of torture: Sounds reasonable.

6. It is clear that the subject is non-cooperative: Sounds reasonable.

 

you are asked straight up if you condone torture and your reply is that "it depends on the situation". seems pretty clear to me. i cant help it if you keep contradicting yourself.

due process is one of the key tenants that this country was founded on so when you say that due process should be taken away i think that makes you unamerican. just my opinion.

what is the appropriate word?
condone?
defend?
support?
rationalize?

bush signed off on a law allowing detainees to be beaten to a point anything short of death or organ failure and it doesnt count as torture. and as some of the articles i linked to pointed out, one of the problems is that guards are not being trained period. they are working under the discretion of private contractors hired by the pentagon w/out proper prison guard training. and they are the ones going to prison for the abuses, even though their president authorized them to do what got them in trouble.

now you said that we shouldnt be physically beating people and i showed that your president signed off on just that.

our government is not america. you do realize that, dont you? well, considering the fact that you say things like "we wouldnt have all these problems if people didnt complain so much", maybe you dont realize that.

i think our government has been hijacked by a bunch of criminals who are destroying this country and people like you are facilitating it. if there was any justice these criminals would be put on trial. in recent history government leaders have been strung up for far less than what this current administration has done.

i would consider physically harming people, raping people, beating people to the point of death or organ failure, abusing detainees children to get info and long-term mental and psychological abuse to be torture. but i believe that we should adhere to the geneva conventions. i think that the military and private contractors in the field need to defer to the military field manual.

i also believe that forcing detainees to wear womens underwear, smear feces all over their bodies, get stacked in naked pyramids and masturbate infront of each other to be really weird and says more about the punishers than the punishees.

is that "unloaded" enough for you?

every breath you take
every move you make
ill be watching you

 

thats a fair point and i completely understand. But i like how you put it "how uncomfortable can we make it" and that makes sense. I personally wouldnt go as far as you and slip all the way to the bottom to the point where you do, especially when considering that certain persons will not care about prosecution or getting a deal cut. But one certainly has to be careful on that slope.

 

Yes - it is a difference of ethical interpretation. But apparently, with half of this country supporting the use of torture in cases of terrorism...I'm not an outlier.

I agree that it has to be managed carefully, and I may have been too rash to say I support it's use against American citizens. But like I said, our gov't uses torture, particularly through intelligence agencies such as the CIA. Also, we definitely use the threat of torture in foreign countries, and rendition is a common practice.

I see your counter points.

1. If time is crucial - I think there has to be a developed framework. For example, if there is evidence that there is a terrorist plot about to come to fruition in a couple of days, then authoritizes are obligated to use whatever tactics are necessary to extract info. It has to be left up to them for the most part. Hopefully that will not require torture, but what if torture is necessary? In long-term cases, where there isn't a developed plot, other means can be used for long periods of time with torture only being used as a very last resort and if authoritizes are absolutely convinced the subject is hiding something.

2. You are correct. The only policing would have to come from the agency that allows it. Since torture isn't acceptable, no one will ever formally approve anything, therefore there can not be any formal policing of the activity. However, I do not think POW's should be subject to torture. What should be allowed is for intelligence organizations to have an interrogation process and make the decision on the value of a subject prior to interrogation...and that be used to inform whether or not someone should be sent for "rendition". For instance, if someone is capture with bomb making residue on their clothing and hands, and then it's found in their apartment as well - clearly they know something.

3. There are some pieces of information that would be known to prevent death. Such as the location or connections to terrorist leaders. Or the location of bombs, or details of a plot. again, it would be safe to assume that someone that has been caught with bomb-making materials, illegal passports, are known assoicates of terrorists, and other facts - are clealry up to no good and have information that would prevent that no-goodness from coming to fruition.

4. There's no way to account for PTSD. I mean, putting Paris Hilton in jail may result in her having PTSD. It's so tied to the individual.

Again, I would only say that torture should be considered in the most extreme cases, where it's clear that an individual is not going to co-operate for ideological reasons and that they are part of a plot to target American citizens.