The Shasta Groene discovery: anybody else think some torture might be beneficial?

The BBQ Pit
21

Well, I’m sure there will be other posters like Metacom and Uncle Beer who’ll make sure to tell us that we are evil, blood-thirsty people for even considering the topic, but I can’t imagine how anyone who really understands the consequences of what creatures like Duncan have done doesn’t feel an impulse towards a little torture.

I’m not saying we should give in to those urges. The arguments already cited are plenty reason not too. These actions are abominations. They stir - in most of us, I suppose - a primal instinct not just to stop the actions, but to destroy the person who commits these actions. We are - again, most of us - disgusted by what this person has done, and disgust is as powerful an emotion as fear and lust.

In the end, I do not want to be the kind of person who would torture another human being. Even if I have doubts as to that person’s humanity. I do not want to be the kind of person who sends another person to do the torturing. Nor do I want to be the person who accepts torture as a normal part of the judicial system. While it may be satisfying to think of Duncan or others like him getting an extra heap of pain and torment as payment for the pain and torment they caused, it’s not something we should pursue. (What’s the old saying? ‘An eye for an eye’ just means that everyone ends up blind?)

22

Oh, what the hell. I might as well state my position a little more clearly:
Hypothetical Wanker:

"John K Kiddiediddler, a three-time convicted sex offender who escapped from a double-plus supermaximum security prison’s ‘Really Fucking Evil Bastard’ unit, is pulled over driving a Ford Excursion while talking on cellular phone (stolen from a nun).

In the back seat are the dismembered corpses of several blond-haired, blue-eyed, cherubic (at least formerly) upper-middle class elementary-school honor students whom he abducted while they were helping de-louse destitute orphans at a local charity. He says the sole surviving child is currently tied up in the basement of an undisclosed building, where a swinging blade is slowly being lowered towards its abdomen and William Shatner’s latest CD is being played in the background.

He states that “I’lll never tell you a damn thing, you ignorant pig!” and goes on to say that he enjoys torturing puppies and making regular donations to ‘Focus on the Family’.

What about now?"

Metacom:

No.

No, if you advocate the use of torture you’ll be an evil, blood-thirty person. Think about it all you want.

23

Calm down. Where did I pull out any Hollywood? You’re the one who’s advocating a methodology that’s known to be unreliable - people being tortured will usually break by giving their torturers whatever it is they think that the torturers will want to hear. This is a very different animal from truth.

Frankly - I believe with a faith that is perhaps greater than my religious faith, in the rule of law. Torture violates that on so many levels, it’s not funny: What about protection against self-incrimination? And, quite frankly, do you like hearing the reports out of GITMO and Abu Ghraib? For every instance of torture that you seem to think would be justified - there’s at least ten more that I can’t justify. And it’s allowing people to think that anything is appropriate in the name of getting the bad guys that makes them willing to cut corners.

These are pragmatic arguments, in my mind, not simply moral ones.

The moral one is even more blunt: The people who do these crimes have proven themselves to be more animal than human - and so I advocating them just as I would any other deadly animal: Don’t torture them, they can’t really understand it - they’re the only real person in the world, so it’s not all comparable to what they did to their toys. You’ll never get 'em to understand, and so why waste your time? Kill them if that’s what is necessary to safeguard people in the future, but don’t torture them because they’ve made you mad.

24

Try imagining yourself as an innocent person wrongly accused and subjected to torture. Therein may lie an answer to your question.

25

Wring already said it for me.

Yes, this man sounds like a monster, and I, too, support the death penalty in certain circumstances. However, I worked out long ago that if I return evil with evil, however tempting, then I in turn become a bit evil myself. I will not sully my own soul by yielding to my temptation to sink to his level. If I do that, I’d better stop calling myself a Christian in public at the least. It’s easy to behave honorably and decently to those who behave honorably and decently towards others. To me, the test of a person’s character is how he or she behaves towards those who act dishonorably. I will not allow this creature to drag me down to his level.

Respectfully,
CJ

26

I am against torture being used in any official context.

But if some slimeball should have an “accident” or two behind closed doors and lives are saved because of it, well, you won’t find me asking too many questions.

27

None of you has given a reason why torture is bad in itself.

Metacom, while I always enjoy your humor you haven’t explained anything at all. You have only said ‘no.’ You said earlier that it was disgusting. Fine and good. I agree with you. But bugger sandwiches are disgusting too and that does not mean that they are morally repugnant.

OtakuLoki (and probably **El_Kabong **), I am not talking about torture as a punishment at all. Prison or whatever sentence is prescribed in law is fine as a punishment. I’m not advocating it as retribution at all. I am saying that in a situation where we know that the person has the information that we need to save innocent lives and refuses to give it to us this seems like a valid tool. At some point these indviduals should cease to have the rights accorded to everyone else.

If it turns out that it is just innacurate and does not give the results that we want from it then it should be put aside like any other broken tool.

Siege I respect your choice and views regarding your personal actions. If another is willing to take on the emotional burden of inflicting pain in order to save lives, why is that wrong?

What is it about torture that makes it morally repugnant?

28

See now, that I’m against. If law enforcement are not subject to the law it may become a serious problem. I don’t want suspects beaten by police. I want lots of options available to law enforcement in the event that knowledge must be obtained from a person who certainly committed the crime.

29

My position is always the same. There might extreme circumstances where torture is warranted. But it doesn’t mean it should be legalized. IOW if the situation is so serious that it warrants torture, then it’s serious enough for you to accept to face spending the rest of your life behind bars for using it. If it’s really that important, you’ll accept the consequences of your actions.

If you don’t think it’s important enough for you to be judged and sentenced as a criminal, then it’s not important enough for you to commit this criminal action.

30

By my personal standards, deliberately harming another human being is morally wrong. Doing so for gain, be it societal or personal, is even more morally wrong. There are times when it’s necessary – I would kill someone intent on killing me, someone I loved, or someone I was responsible for – but that does not make it any less morally wrong.

There are certain absolutes in my life, even if they’re not the conventional ones, and I do what I can to live by them. If I allow someone to do something I know to be morally wrong for me, then once again, I’ve done something morally wrong, unless I tried to stop them and failed. By the way, since I’m on crutches and dating a very chivalrous, stubborn man, I’ve learned just how hard it can be to stop someone bent on doing something on your behalf! :sigh!: If he robbed a bank or tortured someone because he thought it was what I needed and I hadn’t been able to stop him, I wouldn’t be in the wrong, but I would stop dating him. Don’t let the courtesy or the surface liberality fool you – I am as absolutist and firm in my beliefs as any Bible-thumping, Young-Earth Creationist type Christian out there. It’s just that my beliefs about what’s right and wrong don’t necessarily align with theirs.

Respectfully,
CJ

31

[ul]
[li]Torture is not a reliable way to get information.[/li][li]Torture is harmful to the torturer as well as the tortured; we want our law enforcers to be as mentally healthy as possible.[/li][li]Torture will be very expensive: Medical care for the tortured, mental health care for the torturer, court costs to determine if torture was applied correctly.[/li][li]You’d probably have to change the constitution.[/li][li]We’d even further ostracize ourselves in the eyes of Western Europe.[/li][/ul]

Moral’ish Reasons:
[ul]
[li]No way to quickly and easily tell if the person to be tortured was sane enough to be culpable for crimes.[/li][li]An innocent person would eventually get tortured (people make false confessions all the time; even a seemingly clear-cut case may lead to someone being tortured).[/li][/ul]

Flaming Religious Nutjob Reasons:

[ul]
[li]Deliberately hurting another human being is always morally unacceptable.[/li][/ul]

32

Doh! I meant to stick “pragmatic reasons” before the first list.

33

I looks like we have an impasse here. If you deny the basic statement that ‘hurting someone is at times ok’ then we really can’t reason past it.

34

OttoDaFe, we could do with more posts like that.

I don’t believe in torturing anyone – not even Robert Novak.

35

I’m suspicious of that argument. It sounds like a way of “scientifically” dealing with what is esssentially an ethical problem. If someone came to my house right now and started cutting my fingers off if I didn’t tell them my bank account number, I’d give it to them pretty darn quick.

In cases where the information is hard to verify, or the person is under some other threat, then it might not work. But the blanket statement of “torture doesn’t work” is B.S. For instance, if we catch some al Qaeda guy and try to get info from him thru torture, he’s liable to be more afraid of what his fellow al Qaeda members would do to his family if they found he talked.

But your average criminal working by himself? I bet torture would be pretty effective.

I’m not advocating torture, just saying it probably would work in many criminal cases.

36

I agree.

37

At least you’re honest and direct in your arguing. :wink:

38

In the very contrived situation mentioned (family goes missing, guy is caught with remains of some of them in his car, claims that another one is trapped somewhere to die), I would choose to torture him. Note:
(1) There is absolute irrefutable physical evidence that we got the right guy
(2) There is very strong evidence that there is useful lifesaving information to be gained from the torture. If there were 10 murders 5 years ago, and we find 9 of the bodies buried in someone’s house, we don’t torture him just in case he’s been keeping the 10th one alive in a cage for 5 years

Also note that all the objections that torture doesn’t work are irrelevant in a situation like this. If he says “OK, she’s at 123 fake street”, we can go look at 123 fake street and either find her or not. We then have absolute verification that he was telling the truth or not. Furthermore, he KNOWS that we will know. Note the huge difference between this and, say, capturing someone, thinking they’re probably guilty, and then torturing them until they admit it (pointless), or capturing someone, thinking they’re probably guilty, then torturing them until they name collaborators, and then we capture THOSE people, torture them until they admit they’re guilt, torture THEM until they name collaborators, etc.
BUT, I’m not necessarily sure that making torture in extreme situations like this legal is a good idea, because situations like this are SO rare, and setting up a law that makes torture legal in SUCH a hypothetical situation is probably going to do more harm than good. And just as being a torturer probably harms someone (and I agree that it does, but I think it would be worth it in this kind of extreme hypothetical), I think being a nation which passed a law to make torture legal, even in an extreme hypothetical, would probably damage us, as a nation.
All of that said, if I’m the sheriff, and I catch a guy in this Extreme Hypthetical, I’ll torture him in an effort to save the missing kid, who I’ll either save or not, and then I’ll admit what I did, throw myself on the mercy of the court, and trust public opinion to keep anyone from throwing the book at me. Because I’d rather do that and be able to look the surviving family members in the eye and say “I did everything I could to save that child. What I did, I did not for vengeance, but to save a life.”

39

For what it’s worth, no less of a bleeding heart liberal than Alan Dershowitz has advocated legalizing torture in certain situations. And no less a bleeding heart liberal than I agree with him.

Dershowitz mentions that there are some situations in which torture is so obviously necessary, and would actually be used, that we ought to set up a legal framework for its use, just like we do for search warrants. We as a society recognize that a “man’s home is his castle,” and that there are grave concerns about letting the state send armed men running through your house looking for evidence of a crime. But we also know that situations will arise in which the police are so certain that evidence of a heinous crime exists in a man’s house, and feel so strongly about the need to find the evidence and arrest the suspect, that they will go into a man’s home and seize the evidence, law or no law. Given this situation, rather than adopting a Draconian rule that would prosecute the officers who did such a thing, we allow an occasional intrusion into a man’s sanctuary, provided certain legal procedures are followed. Thus, the requirement of a search warrant. That way, police have the ability to get evidence from a suspect’s home when necessary, but do not run rough-shod over individual rights.

A “torture warrant” could work in similar circumstances, albeit with a much higher threshold of proof and necessity.

Consider the following hypothetical for those who think torture is never necessary (yes, I know it’s ripped right out of a cheap Hollywood thriller, so sue me).

An Al Qaeda suspect is capture in New York City, and a portable nuclear bomb is found in his possession. It is set to detonate in 30 minutes unless a code is entered to disable it. The suspect freely confesses to the crime, even laughing at police and telling them that they’ll all soon be dead. 30 minutes is not enough time to move the bomb out of a populated area, nor to find the disabling code by any other means. Furthermore, it is known (somehow) that the suspect has a very low tolerance for pain, such that if you started yanking out his fingernails with pliers, he’d give you the code before you hit the middle finger. Pull out two fingernails, and you save the lives of millions of people. Categorically refuse to use torture, and millions of innocent people die. Would you do it? Remember, no concerns about innocence or the reliability of the information. As soon as he gives you a code, just enter it in, and if it doesn’t work, the torturing continues. No escaping by telling the interrogators what they want even if it’s not true.

I, for one, would gladly go in there with my pliers and start ripping. In fact, I consider those who would refuse to do so nearly as culpable as one who would perpetrate such a disaster in the first place. I can’t even imagine what bizarro moral philosophy you live by. Siege–hurting another is more wrong when it’s for personal or societal benefit than just for the kicks of it? WTF? Torture is never permissible because an innocent person might get tortured? I guess bye-bye to prison then, because an innocent person might get sent to prison. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’d much rather endure a 10 minute, or even 10 hour torture session, than 60 years in an 8x10 cell.

Anyway, back to Dershowitz’s point. In the hypothetical I’ve described, there can be no doubt that the police actually would torture the suspect, regardless of whether it was legal or not. So, we might as well set up a mechanism to make sure that when torture is used, it isn’t done based on the gut reactions and evaluations of emotionally invested police officers, but by a neutral magistrate who can more calmly and rationally take into account all the relevant factors and decide whether torture is necessary in the given situation.

Final question for the never-torture crowd. Even though you’re not willing to torture, would you ever be willing to inflict some degree of physical pain to save lives? E.g., a maniac is shooting up a local McDonalds. You know that, with minimal person risk to yourself, you can sneak up behind him, bonk him on the head with a package of frozen patties, and knock him unconscious. He will experience a sore bump on the head and a minor headache for the next few days as a result, but no permanent injuries. Do you do it? Or is hurting people, even in defense of others/ self-defense, always wrong? How does this differ from the Hollywood torture scenario I’ve presented above?

40

Given perfect knowledge, it’s hard to argue against torture although it remains morally repugnant. But given perfect knowledge, it’s also hard to argue against the death penalty, Communism, and Minority Report-style precrime operations, to all of which I’m also opposed. And that’s my problem with these scenarios.