Verbal threats are not, as I understand the term, “torture.” I’ve never heard or read of a real-world example where the good guys were able to use torture in a ticking-bomb emergency to get actionable intelligence. Maybe it’s happened, but you’d think torture’s American defenders would have cited any such cases by now. And they haven’t, which should tell you something.
Torture is just wrong. It’s immoral. It’s a betrayal of the founding principles of our country. It coarsens those who practice it. It’s illegal under international treaties which the U.S. has ratified and which, under the Constitution, are the supreme law of the land. And it’s ineffective. It’s been abandoned as a method of intelligence-gathering by Israel, a nation under the constant threat of terrorism if there ever was one.
John McCain knows something of torture, and he knows that the United States loses all credibility if it practices torture while preaching human rights and the rule of law (after WW2, we prosecuted for war crimes several Japanese troops who’d practiced waterboarding). If we torture others, we subject our own captured troops to similar treatment and lose virtually any standing to then complain or prosecute. No one has been more outspoken in Congress against torture than McCain; Clinton and Obama share his views, although fortunately not because of any personal experience with the practice. I take some comfort from the strong likelihood that, no matter who’s elected President in November, our country will stop torturing. We should never have started.
You misunderstand; physical torture, and psychological coercion based upon physical restraint and stimulus can result in a subject offering information. Sometimes the information might even be accurate. The question posed by the o.p. is if there is any real world example of torture being used in an interrogation which resulted in averting an attack and saving lives in the immediate future. This rationale–which is often the basis in which a literary or cinematic character can engage in torture but be morally exonerated–is often used for justification for torture in the real world, but appears to lack actual productive incidence, even in cases where torture is routinely used. Many people trained and experienced in the field of interrogation including physical methods have come forth and baldly stated that information as a product from torture is unreliable and often counterproductive, whereas advocates of the application of torture, here and otherwise, tend to resort to hypothetical scenarios rather than provide concrete examples.
Regardless of the answer, methods of torture are in opposition to the stated principles to which the United States nominally adheres, and serves only to undermine any moral authority to impose peace and order in the name of humanitarian justice. Even if it were effective it would be morally reprehensible. But even from a Machiavellian standpoint it appears unjustifiable.
I don’t actually misunderstand any of that at all. I just think it’s daft asking for one concrete example - as if one could never be found. As you say, concrete examples don’t make it acceptable - so why even ask for them?
Yes. I do think they tortured thousands of people just for their own amusement.
Thing is, when you use routine torture, you need people to carry out the torture. People who don’t enjoy torturing people tend not to enjoy carrying out the torture. So when it is decided that torture is neccesary, they call over Crazy Joe, the guy who enjoys torture, and turn the prisoner over to Crazy Joe.
But the problem with this is that while gaining accurate information might be the primary goal of Crazy Joe’s superiors, it is way down the list for Crazy Joe himself. Crazy Joe tortures because he likes torture, he doesn’t give a shit about accurate information except that he’s got to tell his superiors something every so often if he wants to have continued access to more victims.
Except in many cases, even Crazy Joe’s superiors don’t give a shit about accurate information. They just want to keep THEIR bosses happy. So in the event of a crime, you grab a random guy, decide he’s the perpetrator of the crime, hand him over to Crazy Joe, Crazy Joe tortures him until he confesses, then you hold a trial and convict the random guy, and suddenly the case is solved. That’s a heck of a lot easier than detective work to figure out who the actual perpetrator was.
And besides, if the crime is something like treason there doesn’t have to be an actual crime in the first place. You grab a random guy, torture him, he confesses to treason, you execute him, and report back to your bosses that you’ve uncovered a dastardly plot against the leader and dealt with it appropriately. This is how you get promotions when you’re in the secret police. How many plots against the leader did you uncover this month? None? Maybe YOU are the traitor, if you can’t even uncover one plot against the leader.
May I ask about you location?, I suppose you are a US citizen, right?
Well, I´m Uruguayan, a country that was part of the Condor Plan together with Argentina Paraguay, Chile, etc… So I grew up a little closer and not isolated from the facts of torture applied by a goverment. Intelligence gathering was a very secondary purpose to those fuckers, many survivors testified that they where never even asked anything, it was cattle prod, beatings and rape room to begin with.
Mind you, this where the “good” guys fighting against the evil comunists.
The fact that these thugs tortured individuals for years is proof enough that they motive wasn´t information gathering.
One would think that one of the several people posting on this thread would have taken a few minutes and watched one of the several YouTube clips I provided of three defenders of “enhanced interrogation” debating three opponents of torture. If only in the interest of fighting ignorance.
The one by Professor Darius Rejali is the most relevant. He’s written a book called “Torture and Democracy” and it’s a fairly exhaustive overview of 30 years of research into torture and the regimes that use it.
For instance, he’s found that among regimes that torture, “20 to 78 innocent people have to be tortured to find one ‘bad guy’”.
Here’s a bit from his speech:
…and he answers the “ticking bomb” scenario:
During the Q&A he brought up another important point:
For what it’s worth, gaffa, I agree with Professor Rejali. There are much more effective ways of gathering information than torture and the probable costs of torture far outweigh any possible benefits that are gained. But there is a cost/benefit ratio there. Despite this, people on one side of the issue claim there’s no costs and people on the other side claim there’s no benefits.
And how would you feel if the Vietnamese had tortured your room mate and his buddies, to accomplish their mission and protect their buddies ?
Would you have felt immense contempt for anyone that had moral problems with that ? Would you have shunned your room mate if he complained about being tortured ? Or is this “it’s OK if you’re an American” things ?
Please watch the video. He makes it clear that torture is staggeringly ineffective, and that innocent people wind up being tortured at a ratio of at least 20:1. And that torture is just stupid. If you torture innocent people, you run the risk of creating enemies where none were before.
That’s because there is a clear moral element. It’s like the arguments against capital punishment. People will argue the morality of it, whether it has any deterrent value, if society has a right and/or responsibility to extract vengeance…but the best argument I’ve heard is the fact that innocent people have been killed by the state, and that it’s impossible to un-kill a man. This is a relevant comparison given the number of false confessions obtained by torture.
Most arguments devolve into each side forced to the most extreme position. But torture already is an extreme.
Simple minded people advocate torture because it seems like a quick and easy solution. Our law enforment professionals seem to get by just fine without resorting to tortue to gather information.
On the other hand, why would a captured soldier, terrorist or criminal give any relevant information at all without some system of coercion and reward? At what point does coercion become torture?
I have to think the “24” scenario is pretty much bullshit IRL. First of all I don’t think the situation is ever so black and white. Second, I don’t believe that there’s ever just one bit of information that ties the whole plan together. I mean what? the NSA just found out that Pennsylvania Dutch seperatists acquired a nuclear bomb and are going to detonate it somewhere in Amish country in the next 24 hours? And Jedidiah here happens to know the whole plan and fell into our laps?
One of the crossbeams went out askew on the treadle when I read this…
Parsing the meaning from the bottom upwards…
You feel an immense contempt for those who…
…have a moral problem with…
…torture related to you anecdotally as being in some way (hoped to be) expedient
What am I misunderstanding in this grotesque statement?
The ticking time bomb situation as presented isn’t very realistic.
But, in the real world all strategic information is time sensitive. If you have knowledge of enemy positions, strengths, what sort of long terms strategy they are currently working under, etc. these are all things which are going to become less accurate the longer you wait.
So if you are certain that you are on the side of good and the other guy is on the side of bad, and thus anything you can do to nullify their team is going to save lives, then yes it’s a “ticking time bomb” situation. I wouldn’t consider that implausible by any means.
Torture should be illegal in all circumstances. In the vanishingly rare occasion where torture is needed to extract crucial, timely information, the officer in charge should be willing to break the law and risk the consequences. Otherwise, the information is not so crucial, is it? If it is actually justified, the law will probably go easy on him.
I think you could make a better case in a court of law for the standard of living in capitalist democratic republics over Sharia law, but of course that doesn’t factor in eternity in hell for sinful living…