Okay, I’m done with you.
They’re CIA personnel, not military officers- and their manual is classified. So, they might be.
Didn’t the US Congress (or some committee) know abuot ALL the methods (torture or not) that were being used and approved?
And, as to the OP, Obama is still wearing slippers…it’s a looong time (if ever) until he puts on shoes for the ball-kicking.
Do you want the prisoner to talk, or not? If sitting down to a steak dinner is what gets the prisoner to give up the needed information, you bet your ass you sit down and eat a steak dinner with him.
What’s more important–the information, or making the prisoner pay? If you aren’t interested in information, just put the guy in the regular prison camp and forget about him. Either he’ll be charged with some sort of crime and given a trial, or he’ll be detained as a POW, or he’ll be sent home, but it doesn’t matter to you or your buddies, because he doesn’t have anything useful to tell. So who cares?
As for getting him to agree with you–well, isn’t that the whole point of this little adventure? Get the Iraqis and Afghans and such to see some sense? Win hearts and minds? Even if the prisoner is a scumbag, treating him decently really can get him to look at his enemy differently. You’ve probably read about Japanese soldiers in WWII who expected rough treatement from Americans, but when treated with simple decency realized they’d been lied to by the militarists. The goal of fighting the war isn’t to kill people, it’s to win the war. The war is over when the other guys stop fighting.
Exactly. And if doing something that a bunch of douchebags on a liberal-leaning messageboard think is torture is what gets the prisoner to give up the needed information, you bet your ass you do that.
If you support torture, you are a monster, an enemy of humanity. Rather worse than being a “douchebag”. And as said, and demonstrated by our own actions it doesn’t work, anyway. We tortured a bunch of poeple, mostly innocents, and predictably got a lot of false trails and destroyed our own information sources.
You aren’t very smart, are you?
Since torture is a dehumanizing and cruel means to extract notoriously unreliable information, there is no justification for its use, unless the real goal is to terrorize and control a population in which case torture is extremely effective.
Really? Am I missing some subtle nuance here or are you just arguing that there’s no such thing as objective legality?
If we look at this page of the number of attacks per year, 16 (successful) attacks in one year is a large number. Foiling 45 per year is a significant success rate. It might also be noted that in 1999, the ability for the GSS to practice coercive interrogation (torture) was limited in Israel, and so the high point over a thirty year period in 1996 is entirely blown away subsequently. An average of 1-2 successful attacks per year has become ~5 attacks per year.
Even if you ignore the legal and moral arguments, and even if you think torture successfully foils attacks, you have to contend with the real costs to America’s image and soft power. If we prevented 3,000 deaths through torture, but caused 5,000 more because of increased terrorist recruiting and decreased ability to work with allies, capture hearts and minds, etc., then it doesn’t make much sense, does it?
Or ask yourself-if the otherside was doing it to us-would we consider it torture?
never mind
This doesn’t make sense. Either torture doesn’t work, in which case you don’t have to worry about changing your plans, or torture does work, so you have to change your plans. Which is it?
Actually I’m fairly intelligent, if not a genius. And unlike you, I’m not a monster. You are exactly the sort of person who could kill thousands or millions with a clean conscience and a smile on your face.
And an unfounded accusation of stupidity doesn’t refute a thing I said.
False dilemma, since a covert organization also has to take into account the possibility that their enemies might use an interrogation technique that ISN’T torture. Or that the captured guy is just cowardly or treacherous and sells them out voluntarily.
In other words, you’d characterize yourself as an unamerican coward?
Reminder: Please avoid using the word fuck in this manner.
No warning issued.
**Gfactor **
Pit Moderator
elucidator used an example that is time critical eg. ticking bomb. Friendly, sympathetic techniques, and this is an assumption on my part, would take a while. I can’t see how it would generate quick returns because it seems to rely on trust and empathy. Both take time to establish.
If the guy is cowardly, I would think that waving a hammer around and smashing a few fingers would probably loosen his tongue somewhat quicker than an offer of a cigarette and a sympathetic/empathetic shoulder. Or, would just showing him the hammer and implying that you’d smash his fingers be good enough? Another form of torture, afaic.
And if the guy is treacherous then he’s probably sold you out already.
And if you use torture you are likely worse off because you’ll be chasing a false lead from the guy whom you’ll probably find out later was innocent. And then imprison or kill, anyway, since being a torturer you are by definition a monster.
Funniest post I’ve read all week. 
Why would anyone question some random guy off the street, let alone torture them, in an attempt to find useful information? You’d spend your time and resources on those you think know something useful whatever techniques you’d use, wouldn’t you?
Btw, I don’t think torturers care that someone would label them monsters.