I will repeat yet again that I believe torture is wrong on moral grounds. Yet I am astounded at the suggestion torture always provides useless data.
Here is a cite I found in about one second of searching Google:
The story suggests a major terrorist was arrested using information possibly obtained under duress. Or torture if you prefer.
I note - as you will - the “possibly” in there. But isn’t that inevitable? The various “Secret Services” are, there is a clue in the name, secretive. They tend not to reveal information about how they work and what they know and how successful their tactics are too readily - even if everything in question is legally and morally spotless - and obviously they are even less likely to reveal information about what they are doing and if it was successful if it refers to practices that are immoral or illegal.
It seems to me self evident that torture will obtain facts which may, or may not be accurate. I do not dispute a tortured person will say anything to get the torture to stop. But to repeat the hypothetical example I used in my first post. A suspect is tortured for the location of an arms cache. The location is checked out and weapons and materials are found: Success from torture. Nothing is found: Temporary failure but so long as the suspect wasn’t killed the torture can continue.
Further, if say ten isolated and separate suspects are tortured their data can be collated and cross referenced and a likely truth can be assembled. The leads that arise can be followed up. Some will (in my opinion but I do not find this controversial) will be correct. Others won’t be.
To sum up:
Torture is wrong in my opinion.
Torture does not guarantee accurate data.
Torture will provide data, information, leads (whatever you want to call it) and over time some will prove correct.
I cannot see why there is doubt that torture can sometimes be valuable (in terms of the information it provides) and I do not believe that justifies it’s use.
Every study and report I’ve seen so far shows this to be true.
And if you roll a hundred-sided die enough times, eventually a 1 will pop up. Torture is evil, and a waste of valuable time and effort.
You cannot see why there is doubt that torture can sometimes be valuable in terms of the information it provides, and yet the amount of evidence it took to erase your doubt seems infinitesimal.
I think if you tortured me I would state I was Elvis, a vampire, that it was I who shot JFK, that I am Jack the Ripper and anything else you wanted me to say or I thought you wanted me to say. And for the record none of those things would be the truth. But I would say them to stop the torture.
Torture can and does obtain data, confessions, whatever that are useless and that includes untrue, unreliable and misleading.
I am not advocating torture and I try to make that clear in each post.
Czarcasm
You asked for an example of torture working and in good faith I provided one.
Once more. I do not believe torture is a good thing and I do not believe it is always reliable. I do believe it sometimes works. I could provide cites suggesting the Germans used torture successfully during WW2. I could provide cites suggesting the French used torture successfully during their war in Algeria (and I could also provide cites suggesting the French later lost faith in the technique).
I believe torture is wrong. I believe it sometimes works. I do not believe that justifies it’s use. Can you provide a cite suggesting there has never ever been a case of torture working?
And yet again I’ll say it: I do not think torture is justified. I just believe it is naive to say it never works. I believe it’s value can never justify the moral cost.
There’s an argument against torture that no one has yet made in this thread.
June of 1943: American troops land on the Italian island of Pantelleria. The entire Italian garrison surrenders without firing a shot. A few weeks later, the allies land on Sicily. Once again, many Italians surrender without a fight. Shortly thereafter, the whole nation of Italy surrenders and joins the allies. It’s nice when that happens.
Ok, so why did the Italians surrender so easily? At the time, the USA had a reputation for good treatment of POWs. In fact, life in an American POW camp was probably better than life in the Italian army. That’s why those Italians surrendered so readily.
But if America had a reputation for waterboarding, those soldiers probably wouldn’t have surrendered so quickly. They probably would have fought long and hard, killing many Americans in the process.
The distinction is obvious. So obvious that in post 84 I stated twice within the text that I did not believe torture produces reliable information plus gave an example of how I myself, under torture, would provide unreliable testimony.
Does that not demonstrate I understand the distinction?
I am not supporting torture. But I feel it is unhelpful to suggest information obtained under torture can never be correct. Information can be obtained, checked and will either be correct or not.
If I have confused you let me try and clarify.
I do not support the use of torture
I do not believe information obtained by torture is reliable or accurate
Where accurate, the cost (the moral cost to a society or nation) of obtaining information (by torture) is in my opinion too high. Torture cannot be justified on moral grounds
I do not have access to enough data to know whether torture can be justified on operational grounds (whether it is cost effective, expedient or accurate more often than data gathered in other ways) but since I don’t support torture in any case, such grounds would not be enough for me.
Although I’ll listen to other views nothing so far added here has changed my belief that on occasion information obtained under torture will be correct.
Another example. Perhaps one which clarifies. Or perhaps, sadly, will just obscure further.
I believe torturing a suspect in order to obtain a confession is a worthless technique since under sufficient torture I suspect anyone will confess to anything.
However a known terrorist could - in theory - be tortured to give up information on the identities of other suspects, of codes, of weapon stores. People and places especially.
That data can then be checked. Checked against other sources (including other torturees) and physically checked; Go to locations and interview people named.
Sometimes, I am continuing to insist, that data will turn out to be correct. That is the only statement I am making. That sometimes the data obtained from torture will be correct.
But I still think it would be wrong on moral grounds to do so.
Here is the problem with taking the moral high ground, saying torture is wrong. I think that most people, the vast majority of people, would approve of torture if it were necessary to save the the life of a family member or someone they loved dearly.
Outside of TV, film and movies the number of situations where a “suspect” is in custody (of the state or an individual) and holds time sensitive information is widely considered vanishingly small. Although I have no cite so could be misinformed.
However you write with such certainty. Can I ask how many times you have willingly put aside your morality and tortured people? Further, if it were on several occasions, can I ask about the accuracy of the information you obtained - does torture work successfully for you?
I suspect that any claim I make you will just just label as hypothetical or irrational and disregard. But the real question is, do you honestly think there has not been a single case of terrorism prevented by using torture? I guess if you can - honestly - answer no to that question then there is no grounds for discussion. Because, if no such event ever occurred then of course torture is wrong, in every situation. But if such an event has occurred, then it means the situation must be determined on a case by case basis. And, also, to answer your question, I would imagine that if the person does not have the information you need, torture would be very ineffective. If, however, they did have the information you need, I imagine it would be effective in most cases.
Seems to me it’s just about the harshest one can go against the Golden Rule, which itself is the basis of most morality systems. If being moral means behaving towards the other as you wish they would treat you, then going out of one’s way to deliberately treat them the worst possible way that comes to mind cannot be.
[QUOTE=ITR Champion]
June of 1943: American troops land on the Italian island of Pantelleria. The entire Italian garrison surrenders without firing a shot. A few weeks later, the allies land on Sicily. Once again, many Italians surrender without a fight. Shortly thereafter, the whole nation of Italy surrenders and joins the allies. It’s nice when that happens.
Ok, so why did the Italians surrender so easily? At the time, the USA had a reputation for good treatment of POWs. In fact, life in an American POW camp was probably better than life in the Italian army. That’s why those Italians surrendered so readily.
But if America had a reputation for waterboarding, those soldiers probably wouldn’t have surrendered so quickly. They probably would have fought long and hard, killing many Americans in the process.
[/QUOTE]
Which is basically why the Japanese on the other hand would not surrender : they assumed, both due to propaganda and because of their own cultural notions re:what happens and should happen to a prisoner, and also because many of them were veterans of the Chinese theatre where Chinese partisans absolutely *would *torture Japanese soldiers, often in horrific ways, that capture by the American forces meant a fate worse than death.
And so many of them even the starving, the wounded, the mistreated by their own officers would often rather grenade themselves than get captured. Many expressed deep shock when they wound up in relatively decent prison camps in Australia or stateside. Quite a few had nervous breakdowns or just shut down in semi-catatonia because they just did not understand, couldn’t process the reality of their situation.
your perfectly well suited to think that. except that i’m not being evasive or refusing to answer anything. i dont have the specifics of a hypothetical in mind but that does not mean that terrorists are never captured who hold vital information.
In this thread Monty stated about torture in post 34 “Since it doesn’t work” which could mean either it doesn’t work (say) 95% of the time and is therefore unreliable but it could be interpreted as a sweeping statement that it never works.
In post 69 ElvisL1ves stated “The “actionable intelligence” obtained via torture is bullshit” which, again, could be interpreted as a sweeping statement it never works.
Outside of this thread a Google search on “Torture doesn’t work” throws up 39 million hits ( Google ) and a glance at the first few pages throws up repeated page titles with variations of “Torture doesn’t work”, “Why torture doesn’t work” and “We know it doesn’t work”
You and I seem to agree on all points. We both feel torture is wrong. We both feel it is unreliable. We both acknowledge - pretty much inevitably - it will occasionally produce accurate data (your hundred sided die analogy). We seem to agree on everything and yet it feels like we are arguing.
I think the reason people consider torture to be wrong is that it involves or requires tremendous malice; considerably more so than dropping a bomb on someone from 15,000 feet or sniping them with a rifle shot a thousand yards away.
The argument of “It’s wrong because it causes pain” isn’t really consistent unless one also opposes bombing or shooting, which cause pain and suffering too. But torture involves a very high level of malice.
