The deference to CIA officials is, to me, the surest sign that those defending torture are doing so out of political biases and not some hard-headed utilitarianism.
These officials have the most on the line–their freedom, for many of them, and their professional reputation for all of them–and they are also not best positioned to judge effectiveness. Each time they have cited specific instances of when actionable intelligence was gained through torture, those instances have been debunked–in some cases with the CIA ultimately agreeing to the debunking. The most prominent of those is the so-called West Coast plot, which Dick Cheney is still lying about to this day.
Also relevant is the report’s finding that the CIA did no real research into torture before launching it’s torture program. Indeed, the CIA has and had comparatively little experience with interrogation as compared to the military and FBI.
An appeal to authority here is not entirely unwarranted. But CIA directors are not authorities on the effectiveness of torture; they have been demonstrably wrong about the effectiveness of this torture program; and they have the largest incentive to lie of everyone who might weigh in.
The current CIA chief just stated the same thing during his press conference - that after the enhanced interrogation techniques were applied important actionable information was gathered from the individuals in question leading to significant operational successes including killing Bin Laden.
This is not his reputation or freedom at stake - he didn’t preside over the interrogation program. Why do you think he’s lying?
Depending on how the nail is removed, the nail can grow back intact. Is that permanent physical damage? Alternatively, the nail can be permanently excised with no other damage to the hand. Are you arguing that a missing nail qualifies as permament physical damage?
Asphyxiation can lead to permanent problems. Muscle spasm of the esophageal muscles. Tearing of the esophageal muscles. Death.
Those are not common outcomes, certainly. Which is why I’m curious about what likelihood you base your position upon.
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I find it truly astounding that conservative posters on this board are defending the right of the government to use torture.
Put aside questions of morality. Put aside questions of efficacy. If nothing else, conservatives ought to be awed and humbled by the enormity of potential unintended consequences: inadvertent torture of innocents, use of unsanctioned methods (see: nutritional enema), torture that serves no purpose other than sadism, eventual spread of the practices to include US citizens. All of which strike me as inevitable over the long term, once the floodgates are open.
Conservatives: isn’t your basic premise that we’re all but stewards of everything good and worthy that we’ve inherited from prior generations, and which we should safeguard for the next? Does it strike you as very conservative to throw to the wind a taboo against torture that took humanity 300 years to firmly establish?
There should not be an institutionalized torture program in the United States. We should not legalize torture just to deal with the unbelievably remote scenario of a ticking nuclear bomb about to detonate in midtown Manhattan.
I’m sorry, but I don’t see how legal torture figures into any conceivable definition of small government.
Still looking for your definition of torture, so we can determine if future methods are or are not torture. Remember, a list from the CIA is not a definition.
Actually, there was. You just refuse to acknowledge it.
Do you think that by keeping on asserting that it wasn’t so, you win the argument? As long as you can muster up a, “Nu Uh!” the cause isn’t lost? I’m sorry the men you voted for and believed in took a shit on America’s ideals. It sucks to be betrayed like that.
But pretending that that shit is cornflakes doesn’t equal a nutritious breakfast.
How about if we do careful surgical removal without the local?
I am trying to understand your position on mind-body duality here. You seem to be making a distinction between “physical” pain or distress caused by tissue damage, and “psychological” pain or distress caused by other means (which may be physical, but do not damage body tissue). In the former case, it’s torture. In the latter, it’s not? Do I have that right? Is pain only “real” if it is accompanied by physical damage? Is deliberate infliction of panic and emotional distress not a “real” thing, even though fear and stress response can be measured by levels of stress hormones in the blood?
Suppose I had a way to stimulate the brain, in a non-destructive way, such that the prisoner felt extreme agony, but remained physically unmolested. Would that qualify as torture or not?
Well, heck, why not waterboard juvenile offenders, no permanent harm, and its for their own good!
As for the lying part, well, what? The Democrats on the committee, they made it all up? Some six thousand pages, they made up, and then produced this summary? All of it lies, was it? And nobody caught on?
Did they make up Abu Ghraib, too? Just a bunch of photoshopped pictures and lies?
Nobody in the CIA knew anything about torture? Some of the old hands knew about it, the same guys who worked with the S Vietnamese regime. The guys who worked in Central and South America, protecting our bananas from the Communists. Heck, go back far enough, the guys we sent to the Philippines, when we betrayed the Filipino revolutionaries who fought with us against the Spanish. Knew all about the “water treatment”.
We can accept the truth about who we are, and who we have been, and change that. Or we can simply pretend it just ain’t so.
“I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.”
No, there wasn’t “an institutionalized torture program in the United States”. It was outside of the United States, and it was a very limited, discriminating, and (IMO) necessary program. And “America’s ideals” does not include exposing our populace to danger because our security forces are too wimpy to extract critical intelligence using fairly mild physical and psychological pressure from enemy combatants.
Oh, so I guess that makes it okay. It’s the borders that make torture wrong. All we need to do is get them offshore and then let’s stick whatever we want up their asses!
Why should anyone care about *your *opinion? Actual experts agree that torture doesn’t work. Actual evidence shows it got us nothing of value. And we agreed not to do it. If you don’t think America’s word matters for anything, well why even have a government?
It does include not torturing people. And your characterization of what happened isn’t accurate.
I note the part where America’s ideals is in scare quotes. Reminds of the story about Gandhi being asked what he thought of Western civilization, and answering that he thought it was a good idea.