The Senate torture report

[Terr]

@iiandyiiii

Pain is different. Pain is never (beyond sci-fi and Jack Bauer silliness) a “necessary part”.

By that logic neither is killing someone.

[Terr]

@iiandyiiii

Sometimes it’s not, but when it is “better”, it’s because inflicting pain to get information is always wrong, while killing is not always wrong.

“It is wrong because it is always wrong” kind of argument, I see.

[iiandyiiii]

@Terr

By that logic neither is killing someone.

No it’s not.

[iiandyiiii]

@Terr

“It is wrong because it is always wrong” kind of argument, I see.

That’s the argument for every part of any moral system ever, when you drill down. Morality is a human-created concept, and relies on human judgment, logic, decision-making, etc., whether one claims it comes from a book, or from one’s own logical sense, the commands of a divine being, or something else.

[Terr]

@iiandyiiii

That’s the argument for every part of any moral system ever, when you drill down. Morality is a human-created concept, and relies on human judgment, logic, decision-making, etc.

Your argument does not rely on “logic”. “It is wrong because I say it is wrong” is not logic.

[iiandyiiii]

@Terr

Your argument does not rely on “logic”. “It is wrong because I say it is wrong” is not logic.

I didn’t say only logic. There are other factors – judgment, shared assumptions, values, decision-making, pragmatism, and many, many more.

[Budget_Player_Cadet]

Wait, do we have people arguing that torture is never morally justifiable? Because that’s just wrong. An example I can think of recently was actually quite famous in German law. A pedophile had been captured, it was well-established that he currently had a victim who was very recently alive hidden somewhere without food or water, and time was running out. He wouldn’t talk. So the police officer threatened him with torture. Not even did it - just threatened it. He talked (unfortunately too late to save the kid).

That said, trying to justify what the CIA did is at least a good bit harder. This wasn’t a case where we had time running out, a clear way to check the answer, and a damn good justification. Did we know who we were torturing? Did we know how to verify their intel? Were we sure we were actually dealing with terrorists? I kinda doubt it.

[iiandyiiii]

@Budget_Player_Cadet

Wait, do we have people arguing that torture is never morally justifiable? Because that’s just wrong. An example I can think of recently was actually quite famous in German law. A pedophile had been captured, it was well-established that he currently had a victim who was very recently alive hidden somewhere without food or water, and time was running out. He wouldn’t talk. So the police officer threatened him with torture. Not even did it - just threatened it. He talked (unfortunately too late to save the kid).

That’s a Jack Bauer/sci-fi sort of scenario, which I’ve exempted. I don’t think such scenarios should be covered by the law – that’s one of the sorts of things that Presidential pardons are for, in my view.

[Grumman]

@Terr

Well, no. You see, you bomb the tank, and you kill the soldiers inside, sometimes instantly, often quite painfully. But very intentionally. So - morally - how is that better than capturing them, then inflicting pain to get information?

Because causing pain or death to the tank crew is morally acceptable to incapacitate an enemy combatant. Torture is not used to incapacitate an enemy combatant, it is used on somebody who has already surrendered or been captured, and is thus already incapacitated.

Just because a cop is allowed to shoot an armed criminal does not mean he is allowed to shoot the criminal after he has been disarmed and taken into custody. Do you not understand that?

[Terr]

@Grumman

Because causing pain or death to the tank crew is morally acceptable to incapacitate an enemy combatant. Torture is not used to incapacitate an enemy combatant, it is used on somebody who has already surrendered or been captured, and is thus already incapacitated.

That’s an arbitrary distinction. “Incapacitating an enemy combatant” is not a goal in itself. It is a means. Why do you want to incapacitate an enemy combatant? Presumably to preserve your own combatants’ lives, and your civilian population’s, and maybe to reach some political goals? So - if these goals are promoted by using “enhanced interrogation methods” (a euphemism, yes, but so is “incapacitating an enemy combatant”), why is that not morally acceptable?

[Lemur866]

So Terr, you’re the hero who’s going to allow the cops to torture people? Where in the American constitution does it give the cops the right to torture people?

If you don’t like America, then why don’t you go back to Soviet Russia where you came from?

[Terr]

@Lemur866

So Terr, you’re the hero who’s going to allow the cops to torture people? Where in the American constitution does it give the cops the right to torture people?

If you don’t like America, then why don’t you go back to Soviet Russia where you came from?

Would you like a rabbit with a pancake on its head?

[Lemur866]

I’m just saying, if you’re going to advocate that we run America like Stalinist Russia, maybe you’d be happier back in Russia. I hear Putin is doing some really creative fresh things with authoritarianism nowadays.

[BobLibDem]

@Terr

Well, no. You see, you bomb the tank, and you kill the soldiers inside, sometimes instantly, often quite painfully. But very intentionally. So - morally - how is that better than capturing them, then inflicting pain to get information?

The pain inflicted by bombing the tank is not the purpose of the bomb. If killing is necessary, then the less pain the better. The goal is to get the tank and kill the crew, NOT to make them suffer. Bombing a tank in time of war is not against international law. Using torture at ANY time to ANYBODY is illegal under a UN agreement.

[Grumman]

Hey, Terr, the CIA was even torturing people working for the CIA!

In the spring of 2004, after two detainees were transferred to CIA custody, CIA interrogators proposed, and CIA Headquarters approved, using the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques on one of the two detainees …

After both detainees had spent approximately 24 hours shackled in the standing sleep deprivation position, CIA Headquarters confirmed that the detainees were former CIA sources.

The two detainees had tried to contact the CIA on multiple occasions prior to their detention to inform the CIA of their activities and provide intelligence.

The messages they had sent to the CIA [redacted] were not translated until after the detainees were subjected to the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques.

link

Why the fuck do you trust these mouth-breathers?

[Boyo_Jim]

@Fotheringay-Phipps

OK, but what’s the difference from a moral standpoint? ISTM that the equation is the same.

Hence the comment upthread about your logic being sociopathic.

[Budget_Player_Cadet]

@iiandyiiii

That’s a Jack Bauer/sci-fi sort of scenario, which I’ve exempted. I don’t think such scenarios should be covered by the law – that’s one of the sorts of things that Presidential pardons are for, in my view.

Fair enough.

[BOOM]

I don’t understand much of this. Torture is illegal right, even in the US?

There is now a 500 page summary of a 6,700 page report, and it doesn’t try to identify who gave the orders?

[Morgenstern]

@Lemur866

So because drug dealers kill innocent kids, it’s OK for American cops to kill innocent kids?

What the fuck is wrong with you people?

Torture is OK as long as we only do it to bad people? Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you?

The contention that waterboarding, hypothermia, stress positions, sleep deprivation, starvation, dehydration, unrelenting noise, threatening family members, and so on aren’t torture is simply disgusting. It is torture, it’s torture straight out of Stalin’s gulags. LITERALLY copied straight out of Stalin’s gulags, they literally actually read about Stalin’s torture methods and set out to copy them in American-run prisons.

Oh, it was bad when Stalin tortured people, but OK for Americans, because Stalin was bad and we’re good? It was bad for Nazis to torture people, because Nazis are bad, but we tortured people for good? And we know the people we tortured were bad guys because…the torturers told us they were bad.

The myth of the Jack Bauer-style hero torturer is fiction. Torturers who only torture because of a ticking time bomb, who only torture bad people, who don’t enjoy torture, are fictional. Because if torture makes you sick, you can’t keep doing it. So the people who end up running torture chambers are invariably sadists. It always works this way, it is inevitable. And so anyone who ends up in a torture chamber gets tortured, not for information because information is always secondary to the sadist, the purpose of information or confessions extracted from the prisoner is merely to mollify the sadist’s bosses, so the sadist can continue his fun.

Hey, if there’s a terrorist holding the disarm codes to the nuclear bomb in downtown Manhattan, and you’re the hero who decides to torture him to defuse the bomb OR MILLIONS OF PEOPLE WILL DIE, then go right the fuck ahead and torture him. And then turn yourself in. Oh, you need to keep your torture secret? How convenient. You reserve the right to torture people, in the name of national security, except you get to decide who to torture, and when and the masses can never know of your sacrifice. All for their own good.

That’s called, you know, fascism.

Maybe there are cases where torture could be justified. But playing the hypothetical torture game misses the fucking point by a fucking mile. It’s not that torture is or is not justified, it’s that government agents should not be given the legal power to torture people. I can imagine shooting a guy who deserves death if there’s no other way this person can be stopped. That doesn’t mean cops get to summarily execute whoever they like. A hero cop can torture a terrorist and get the bomb codes, but he doesn’t get LEGAL AUTHORITY to torture. He can torture, and then face the fucking justice system, and have his actions reviewed by a fucking jury, and if it turns out he tortured innocent people for no reason, then he’s a criminal who needs to spend the rest of his life in jail.

The fact that your boss told you it was OK to torture people–that the torture was approved, and judged legal by a team of torture lawyers? Yeah, how’d that defense work at Nuremberg?

I said it wasn’t right, but I wasn’t going to lose any sleep over it. Other than that, TL;DR

[Grumman]

@BOOM

I don’t understand much of this. Torture is illegal right, even in the US?

There is now a 500 page summary of a 6,700 page report, and it doesn’t try to identify who gave the orders?

Of course it doesn’t. Obama’s on the torturers’ side - that’s why the only CIA agent who his administration has charged - let alone found guilty - was the whistleblower John Kiriakou, now serving a two and a half year prison sentence for refusing to protect war criminals from public scrutiny.