Yes of course they are different but the point is kidnapping someone and roistering their family is probably as bad or worse than simply breaking in their house.
Yeah, good points all around but no one wants to concede my point:
If it were you and you could break the rules, and use violence or torture to save a loved one or keep them safe, I think most people, if they are at all honest, would have to admit they would break the rules (assuming they were somehow able to). SO how can you say someone else is wrong for doing the EXACT same thing you would do???
How many times does this have to be explained to you? This only happens in the fevered imagination of people trying to justify torture. Here, in the real world, you don’t get the option of saying “if you torture, you will save a loved one”. In the real world the BEST you can get is “if you torture, you might get the information you want, but torture is ineffective and other forms of interrogation may have better results”.
so you’re denying that people get kidnapped?, you’re denying that terrorists carry out bombings?, you’re denying that both activities take coordination and planning?, you’re denying that conspirators occasionally get caught? or are you simply denying that if caught, there will be any reliable information extracted?
You are seriously trying my patience. I’ve explained this to you multiple times in multiple ways. I am not denying any of that. I am denying that, here in the real world, that you can say that you will get reliable information from torture. The best, the VERY BEST, you can hope for is the possibility that you MIGHT get reliable information, while other methods may work better. How are you still not grasping this?
Because you are putting the safety, comfort and civil rights of criminals and terrorists ABOVE the safety and comfort of innocent people. So if the methods are not “efficient” as they could be I really don’t care. And if they suffer I really don’t care. I know that sounds horrible but why, WHY is the comfort, safety and civil rights of criminals and terrorists more important to you than the comfort and safety of innocent people?
Hypothetically, some terrorist plot in the last fifteen years was thwarted due to information obtained through torture. (I say hypothetically because, thus far, every claim for such an event has turned out to be a fabrication or the torture was simply used to (purportedly) confirm information obtained through other means.) On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence that “intelligence” obtained through torture resulted in bad decisions–including the rationale to go to war–that harmed far more people than any hypothetical terrorist attack.
Plain, simple, unadulterated bullshit. That’s the kind of response I would expect from a Glenn Beck or a torture fetishist.
You keep trying, vainly to anyone with operating brain cells, to equate the possibility of receiving valuable information with the surety of gaining valuable information.
That’s simply not how reality works. If you could guarantee that torture will work, then yes, it is possible that the ends (saving lives) would justify the means (torture).
But here’s the thing. The thing I’ve explained to you over and over and over and over and over to no avail.
You can’t make that guarantee. Nobody can. Because it simply has no basis in reality. Which is why you have to resort to preposterous hypotheticals where the torture is necessary and WILL work. It’s simply not reality. What is reality is that it is annoying having to explain this to you multiple times.
I think this is a completely reasonable assessment. But I have two situations I am skeptical of. If you can disprove them or dismantle them I would have to admit I have no argument left.
Situation 1- you capture someone in a terrorist training camp. They may not know a lot but they will have some valuable information.
Situation 2- The CIA/NSA monitors a small group of individuals and determines they are planning an attack but critical details do not show up in emails/phone calls
right. defend the safety and comfort of criminals and terrorists. because hurting them might not work. i’ve lost my patience too. i suspect there is nothing left to say.
What is the purpose of conceding a point that is wrong?
This is silly. If my wife or daughter were sexually assaulted and beaten, I might very well lose control of my anger and inflict great harm or death on the person I believed was responsible.
However, I would still be held liable for he harm I inflicted and there is always the chance that I had the wrong guy and inflicted harm on an innocent person.
We do not excuse criminal behavior just because a person is angry and we cannot justify torture on the off chance that someone, somewhere used it (with a good probability of error) because they happened to hold an irrational belief that they were defending their family.
Wrong. We refrain from becoming terrorists and criminals by using unreliable methods to find information by inflicting suffering on people who might be innocent.
so you are 100% certain torture is NEVER acceptable under any circumstances??? are you so committed to a philosophical or moral principle that you can’t see ANY situation where it would be appropriate? As evil, mean, and ruthless as I assume you think I am (which I am not) I think you are not being honest if you maintain that it is NEVER appropriate under any circumstances.
But why bother, I’m sure you think I’m evil and I doubt you give any consideration to the fact that I might actually have a point to make.
If I said “I would say don’t torture,” then you could say “You’re just saying that” or “You don’t really know.”
If I said “I would say torture,” then you could say “See! You’re a hypocrite!”
The real answer is that I don’t know what I would say. I would hope I would say the first. But if I said the second, it wouldn’t be hypocrisy. It would be a conflict of interest, something we recognize as a problem in any kind of decision-making situation, which is why we don’t allow people in that situation to make the decision.
The ONLY rare cases are ones you have create in your fevered imagination that have absolutely no basis in reality. As long as you keep your torture there, we’ll be fine. It’s when you try to expand that dream world to here in the real world, where there are absolutely no guarantees that torture works (and evidence it doesn’t work any better than other methods), that we’ll have a problem.
It is really a stretch to assume that the enemy does not also take into account that possibility when one of their members disappears. It makes their information next to useless.
Same issues as the other one, it is really naive to think that the enemy at those levels would not be ready to make efforts so the information that the ones being tortured could give to the enemy could be used against the enemy too. As an example IIRC there was once a rebel radio in El Salvador where the military obtained information of the location of the radio broadcast unit of the guerrillas, some of the info was obtained by torture, the proud military thugs took the radio equipment into their helicopter to display their price in the capital city. The army commander that had organized the Mozote massacre was blown to bits in the air with the device that was inside the false radio broadcast unit.
And then I do have my suspicions that many Al-Qaeda terrorists that were captured did want to see the USA to get involved in Iraq.
The crimes do happen. That torture will definitely stop those crimese is only in your head. I’ve only explained this to you 8 times now, so I’m not confident it will sink in.
And for Pete’s sake, learn to use the Shift button.