mg,
what part of:
“Nowhere do I support torture as a viable tool for normal interrogation.”
do you not understand?
Oooooh, now there’s rational participation in a debate.
Have you read anything at all about fMRI investigation? Anything at all? Try these excerpts on for size:
“When people gave truthful answers, the fMRI showed increased activity in parts of the brain related to vision and finger movement. When they lied, the same areas lit up, but so did additional areas including the anterior cingulated cortex, a section of the brain that has been linked to monitoring of errors and attention. Dr. Langleben concluded that the study showed “a neurophysiological difference between deception and truth at the brain activation level that can be detected with an fMRI.” Essentially, it took more mental energy to lie than to tell the truth.”
“Nevertheless, in the near future, we may not only discover whether a person is being deceptive, but we could determine whether the deception was an on-the-spot fib or a premeditated lie. We will also be able to determine peoples deeply held contentions and beliefs. With advances in neurotechnology occurring at such a rapid pace, our legal system will soon be overwhelmed with new types of evidence that our current system has not been able to effectively handle. In fact, this new evidence may even alter our system of justice.”
It took all of 0.22 seconds of Google searching to find this article. Surely you can find that much time to cogently participate in your own thread.
According to the Independent, American officials are admitting that two suspects died while under interrrogation:
In other words, they were beaten to death.
If this is true, it’s greatly disturbing. We’re supposed to be the good guys, and good guys don’t torture people. Even if it means valuable information will go unlearned.
If the United States is going to be the world’s sole hyperpower, and exercise that power around the world, then the burden is on it to be absolutely above reproach. There must be no Mai Lai’s. There must be no torture, and no extra-judicial killings. Do not give your enemies psychological and emotional ammunition to be used against you.
The battle for the hearts and minds of the world is the most important one when you’re exercising unilateral power. Every single action the U.S. takes should be evaluated on moral grounds and found to be acceptable.
As a Canadian, I know our own less-than-stellar record in this regard. Canadians are known as peaceful people, but this masks the fact that our military is one of the deadliest on the planet, man for man. Our entire airborne regiment was disbanded after it was discovered that they tortured a Somali to death in an interrogation. This was an over-reaction, throwing out the baby with the bathwater, as the Airborne had a long, distinguished history. But certainly the men who did the torturing should have been punished severely. Civilized nations do not condone torture.
Psst, Sam? That’s the story that prompted me to revive this thread a week ago. 
The part where you refuse to say AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN whether you support torture in any circumstances other than the classic ticking bomb scenario. Great, now you’ve eliminated “normal interrogation.” How 'bout everything else short of the ticking bomb?
Sheesh, it ain’t that bloody complicated. Why do you insist on being so evasive about it?
Your entire first post in this thread (3/13/03, 6:54am) was a lengthy and passionate exposition of the (to you) unprecedented horror of modern terrorism, how it must change our understanding of the moral equations for the sake of the greater good, fighting “fire with fire in ways we have never before… considered.” You single out terrorists as having by their actions “forfeit[ed] their right to humane treatment”, while giving us the moral dispensation that’s been used countless times in defense of the indefensible: “How we treat [ x class of criminals] does not entirely reflect upon our society as a whole.”
The fact that you closed your post with hand-wringing about the difficulty of knowing which terrorist it might be productive to torture doesn’t detract from your central message. Which is a rationalization for the situational use of torture.
Oops. I guess I missed that, Minty. In any event, it looks like we’ve found something we both agree on.
First things first.
Shodan, I’m not really interested in whether or not the CIA has used or condoned torture in the past at this precise moment in time. xenophon41 summed it up pretty well. Let’s say this: at the moment, I have a suspicion that they did, and the existence of evidence like declassified manuals on how to torture people makes me veer towards believing this more positively. On the other hand, the fact that it’s hard to get any information at all on the subject reinforces my original point that I’m unlikely to get information relating to a complex and detailed scientific study of the information-gathering abilities of torture. If you would like me to spend a great deal of time and study the CIA’s historical attitude towards torture, I’ll be happy to do so, but give me a month in which to do it, won’t you?
Now, onwards towards Zenster>
No it didn’t. A terrorist nuclear attack has been a distinct possibility since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall, at the very least. Given the state of the Soviet army in its later years, there was a very good chance that nuclear warheads were available, for a price, before then. Nothing changed in September 11, other than the fact that the population of the USA, as a whole, got more scared about all the potential bad things that could happen to them.
Do you recall, by any chance, the Oklahoma City bombing? Do you recall the Lockerbie bombing? As I said before, the possibility of terrorists getting hold of nuclear warheads is something we in Europe, especially given our geographic closeness to the fallen Soviet Union, have lived with for a long long time now. So far, the attacks have not been nuclear, they have been with Semtex, fertiliser, dynamite and AK-47s. If you want to claim a “paradigm shift,” you could make a semblance of a case for it happening gradually between 1960 and 1991, but one has certainly not happened in the last ten years, no matter how much US-Centric thinking would claim it has.
This is an interesting statement. Let’s look at it, shall we.
CIA World Factbook entry on Indonesia
GDP - $687Bn (assuming we’re working on the US Bn at 10^9, 687,000,000,000). A loss of 1Bn from that would be bad, yes, but hardly catastrophic.
It seems that Indonesia’s economic makeup is 42% services, with tourism having far less of an influence on its economy than the various petrochemical and manufacturing industries.
A story here contains the following data:
That is to say, the revenue for Bali itself was down approximately 40% in the final three months of the year, although it looks to be ]url=http://www.indo.com/indonesia/news152.html]recovering now, and the Bali bombing is hardly the least of Indonesia’s problems.
From the CIAWFB again:
Indeed, it seems that, supposing we take this 1Bn decrease as accurate, to blame it on “the Bali bomb” is disingenuous at best. Looking at the circumstances surrounding Bali and Indonesia as a whole, I find it hard to believe that this is an example of a “Paradigm Shift,” when its roots are planted firmly in the type of seccessionist terrorism that we have known and loved in Ireland and Spain and Italy and France for many years now.
You want to know what “irony” is? Try reading what I said again, then consider how you responded to it. THAT, my friend, is irony.
No, it’s not. What might be considered to be “new”, inasmuch as it has emerged over a period of time beginning in the late 19th century and developing over the 20th, is that the “few” are not necessarily all rich now. But Al Qua’ida hardly fits that mould, does it? We’ve had people inheriting wealth and using it to raise armies with which to invade other countries for at least 3,000 years now. Their methods haven’t always been the same, but Al Qua’ida are operating under the same old idea that William the Conqueror and Augustus Caesar had and, indeed, that is still prevalent among the Neocons and Old Imperialists of the USA and the UK.
Well, I marched against one set of liars in London not so long ago, and I’ve written to Tony Blair (my MP as well as my PM) asking him to explain quite how his moralistic sanctimony isn’t a deception when it has no discernible relevance to his actions, but I assume that that’s not what you’re talking about here.
Oh how easy it is to find the mote in the other’s eye, eh?
How does one fight terrorism, without torture, eh? What a tough, harsh question to answer. Except not.
Let me refer back to something I said above: “Our enemies are our enemies because of what they do, not because of who they are. So if we do what they do, that means we become our enemies, so that even if we win, our enemies beat us.” I stand by that. A “victory” over terrorism won be resorting to torture is no victory at all.
And as to how we fight them? Well, I particularly like the methods which we’ve shown to be fairly effective in the past. We eradicate terrorism by alienating the extremists from the populations they claim to represent, or, rather, by allowing them to alienate themselves. Terrorism cannot be countered by attacking and killing terrorists or those suspected of terrorism - its nature is such that these actions only add fuel to the fire.
On the other hand, terrorism can be limted and contained by giving populations who previously had a vested interest in joining terrorist groups a vested interest in maintaining society and order - ie, not joining terrorist groups.
Let me give you an example. There is a gentlemen in London known as Abu Hamza. He is an inflammatory sort, tending to preach that it is the duty of every young Muslin to sacrifice his life by killing Christians etc etc. We haven’t arrested or deported him, and I don’t believe we ever will, simply because it is much safer to have him wandering around claiming that westerners are Evil to people who can see, just by looking out of the window, that for all our faults the man is obviously off his rocker, than to have him in Palestine or Afghanistan, where the obviousness of his delusional ranting is not as apparent, and, indeed, can make a great deal of sense to people. Abu Hamza’s own Mosque recently told him he couldn’t preach there because he was giving it a bad name. The man is alienating himself, and we haven’t had to torture him, or even arrest him, to get him to do it. We let him expose himself as a crazy nutjob, and most of the population see more benefit for themselves in ignoring him than buying his rhetoric, with the result that he has about seven mad people and a dog who believe what he says, and we know who they all are, and they can’t do any physical damage.
So how do we fight terrorism in other parts of the world? We let people know that supporting us will be better for them than supporting the fanatics, and I don’t mean threatening them militarily. I mean not reneging on our promises. I mean supporting them with trade and supporting the development of democracy in their countries. The Arabic speaking world is by no means backwards or archaic, but it has been made to appear so by Western-centric involvement. I by no means support backing away and leaving the region entirely, but I do support approaching them with greater flexibility and understanding that “different” does not equal “bad”, so that we can work with them to develop their nations and economies in ways that suit everyone.
Terrorists are not beaten with concessions or with opression, they are beaten with bread on the tables of the hungry and the voices of the powerless being listened to without them having to kill someone to be heard.
I’ll share with you a post I made right after 9-11. Since then I have gained even greater confidence that technology may allow us to gather the intelligence that torture might not. I find it curious that none of you have responded to my suggestion that brain scans and other technology may obselete any application of torture.
As a devout capitalist, I firmly believe that prosperity and education are the best solutions to combating disenfranchisement and aggression. I still maintain that there may not be sufficient time to rely upon them as the sole means of doing so. I believe that torture is wrong. A recent thread discussing the possibility of torturing terrorist’s children utterly revolted me. One of the only things that revolts me more than the idea of torture is the prospect of mega-deaths occurring at the hands of terrorist scum.
Keep on dancin’, Z.
I refer you to this thread. Do not think that I am jesting.
So, you refuse to answer the question? How lame.
BTW, this statement in the other thread is priceless:
:wally
Oh dear.
You want an opinion on CAT scans and the like? Go for it. As long as you can actually prove that they work and that their weight as evidence is given in proportion to the amount that they work (ie, if they work 85% of the time, jurors should know this when being asked to consider evidence which relies on CAT scans, meaning it should not be the only evidence presented), as long as you can operate a system within the boundaries enshrined in the constitution and/or the ECHR and/or the Geneva Convention, then by all means, go for it.
But given that we’re actually talking about torture, I have to ask, whafu…? What the hell kind of point is this supposed to make? “Look, we have new technology which means we don’t have to torture people any more… but here’s why I think we should still torture people!” That’s almost amusing, in a “cognitive dissonance” kind of way.
With regards your other thread, I’ll take it seriously when you explain how my answer to an impossible situation has any relevance to this discussion whatsoever.