There’s no possible way that, on any reasonable scale, I could be described as anything other than anti-torture, but hilariously overbroad statements like that make me want to vehemently argue the other side just because.
Never in the entire history of the human race has torture EVER provided useful information for ANYONE? Come ON.
My position on the ticking bomb scenario is this: Our laws and customs and morals should make torture illegal and anathema. We should not start codifying exceptions and precedents. At the same time, I can at least hypothetically imagine a situation in which my response to finding out someone “on my side” had used torture was “well, we have to punish him because the rule of law is important, but at the same time a freakish confluence of circumstances resulted in a situation where I would have at least considered doing the same thing if I were in his position, so I’m not in favor of throwing the book at him”. But that situation is NOT “we have some guys at gitmo who have funny last names, let’s waterboard them!” or anything else that, as far as I know, has actually ever happened.
People mock me, but not the OP, for some reason. I agree with xtisme: the scenario presented is incredibly stupid, and makes incredibly dense assumptions. If torture didn’t work (on several levels), ain’t noone’d bother.
But they do, probably because it can work. It doesn’t even have to work all the time. But if it works even a reasonably percentage, then on a purely practical level it would be worth considering. If you really don’t believe it would work, then you should argue solely on the grounds that noone will ever break under the pressure in order to spare themselves an agonizing fate worse than death. And that is clearly false. People break under vastly smaller pressures all the time: witness how police interrogations can quite easily catch people up very quickly and easily in most cases - even the point of convincing totally innocent people to confess! I a case where you know the suspect is guilty and simply want to pressure them into giving up the details, you’ve already got the advantage.
No, the real question is one of morality, or not. Are you willing to torture someone in the hope of getting some useful information and stopping an attack or not? If not, can you live with knowing that people - perhaps thousands - could die from your unwillingness to do your own dirtywork? Is this a case of justified moral stance, or a weak-kneed pacifism that wrings its dainty hands while people die?
The answer to that is not at all clear, and people toss around the very word “torture” like a live grenade at their political opponents.
Der Trihs, Begbert2, and Emmaliminal. I’ll answer you all for the hat trick if you don’t mind.
This is where the truly ludicris nature of the scenario as presented comes into play. You have rather effectively eliminated any possible solution but torture, and torture still isn’t a very effective solution to the problem. You have a person who is willing to kill a very large number of people for whatever reason and they know they only have to wait an hour for their evil plan to triumph. Torture is the most effective (though still not very effective at all) solution only because anything else has been eliminated by the staging. That’s it. That’s all there is to it.
For example, booze. Takes a bit long and he’s just as likely to laugh in your face (or vomit) as to tell you something actually informative if it can get from the brain through the booze to his mouth.
Chicken entrails? Maybe just less effective than torture in providing information but a real pain to find unless you’re the kind of weirdo that keeps them on hand.
So you see, all other solutions have been rather effectively removed from the situation due to the time constraints. That’s why those of the pro-torture persuasion love it.
Bullshit. You argue we should torture if it will save lives. But that ain’t how it works in real life. How many lives were saved by torturing the prisoners at Gitmo? None. They waterboarded a guy 183 times. And how much information did they get from him? If torture was such an easy way to get information, why didn’t it work the first 182 times?
What if the terrorist told you that he’d tell you where the bomb was hidden, but only if you raped your 8 year old daughter? Would you do it? Or would wring your dainty little hands about how it’s wrong for a father to rape his own daughter, and let people die?
Either you agree that raping your daughter is justified, or you agree that letting people die is justified.
We know that raping your daughter will save New York. Now whip out your tiny little dick and start raping, or shut the fuck up.
I’m not sure that pointing out that police interrogations can convince totally innocent people to confess helps your point much.
And I’m pretty sure that the reasons torture is alive and well are twofold: firstly the threat of it is an effective way of keeping a populace in line or sending a message- that is, it serves purposes other than information gathering; and secondly there seem to be lots of people who forget the first reason, and thus deduce that because people do it, it must be useful for gathering information.
Torture does work on several levels - but most of those levels aren’t going to find you a bomb. In the ticking time bomb scenario, I strongly suspect that the only level torture works on with any reliability at all is that of releiving the frustration of the torturer. The only time I would resonably expect torture to actually work is when there is not a ticking bomb and you can present them with a choice of unending torture or relief through verified truth. But if you have time for that, of course, you have time for an alternate method that doesn’t make you a monster.
Except, as has been demonstrated, torture is also completely ineffective - at least as much as booze, bribes (which at least have the benefit of reducing their incentive to spit in your face). If all the other options are “effectively removed” for being inneffective in the timeframe, then so is torture for the same reason - and so you might as well just bend over and kiss your ass goodbye.
People arguing for torture using the ticking bomb scenario are making an argument that doesn’t even stand up to cursory scrutiny. The assertion that torture will work is an unsubstantiated and doubtful load of crap. The assertion that other interrogation methods would be less effective is also an unsubstantiated and doubtful load of crap. And unless the pro-torture argument can back up both dubious assertions, their argument explodes in their face.
Truly, your arguments have defeated me. Yes, I am really a tiny-dicked man who supports torture and raping the daughters I don’t have and have been outed by your heroic manhood!
Actually, I don’t argue we should torture. I quite specifically don’t think we should. But I also don’t pretend, as do small-minded fools incapable of pondering a real and deep moral choice without vomiting bullshit up upon the site (although of course I am surely not at all referring to anyone named Lemur666, oh no), that it is a clear or easy choice. And while I cannot condone torture, I also cannot bring myself to outright condemn anyone who, stuck into a bind as discussed, does so. I am also not clearly convinced one way or the other as to whether waterboarding is torture or not, although it certainly unpleasant.
However, waterboarding or no, the CIA c laims to have gotten serious value from it. And I don’t deny it.
The questions are, is that info true or some bullshit said by someone covering their ass, and if it is true, could the info have been attained by other means. Every interrogator I’ve seen has said that torture is utterly unreliable and better results are attainable by non-torture means.
Also, waterboarding has been prosecuted as torture before.
Perhaps so, but law does not make for truth. Likewise, even “non-torture” means are very likely to be grossly pressuring. Hence the argument of waterboarding.
Back in 2004, the CIA tryed to pass this off as an Iraqi “mobile bioweapons production facility.” They put up a website with pictures sufficient to deceive americans unfamiliar with fermentation processes. They left the website up for months after being called on the bogosity of their claims.
There was little reason to trust what the CIA said back then, and there’s little reason to trust what they say now.
Of course it’s torture; that’s why we used it, and why we condemned it as torture when other people used it. And by trying to redefine away waterboarding as torture, you are indeed condoning torture.
And of course, a bunch of torturers would never do anything as unscruplous as lie, now would they ?
I disagree. Torture may be completely ineffective, but you can’t say that for sure. Guaranteeing that torture will absolutely not work is just as as offbase as guaranteeing that torture will absolutely work. I pretty much agree that if you’re down to this situation, you’re pretty much boned anyways. Smiling Bandit pretty much nailed down the morality of it though.
Considering that despite a lot of incentive the pro-torturers can’t come up with a verified case of it working, clearly you can come pretty close to calling it completely ineffective. I expect it probably has worked, at some point, some time in human history; if nothing else, sheer luck would see to it. But it’s clearly an absolutely awful technique in more than the moral sense.
Wow. You place down the goalposts with “Considering that despite a lot of incentive the pro-torturers can’t come up with a verified case of it working, clearly you can come pretty close to calling it completely ineffective.” and then render them meaningless with “I expect it probably has worked, at some point, some time in human history; if nothing else, sheer luck would see to it.”:dubious: Seeing as how you won’t believe any testimony from any torturers as liars, one wonders how you expect people to think you argue fairly.
Here’s a citefor you to ignore at your leisure. Bear in mind that it does a great job of laying the anti torture case out as well, so you may not want to. Here’s another onethat presents the anti torture case as well as claims of tortures “success.”
I’ll save you the time and post the counter argument one paragraph down.
Wonderful source NPR. Covers both sides of an issue.
Yet where is your proof? You and others have asserted so, but I’m not seeing anything remotely like proof or even logic here from your side. Just a lot of hot air and hand waving. Lets see a reasonable or logical argument on how, given the constraints of the OP how other methods COULD work…said argument doesn’t even get to the cursory scrutiny stage. Alcohol? How would that EVER work? How could you get someone drunk enough in an hour to make them tell such a secret? It would take hours…or the guy would pass out. As anyone knows who has actually ever gotten drunk should know. Drugs…well, perhaps (curious no one mentioned this before), but again I know of no ‘truth serium’ that works given the time constraints…all of the one’s I’ve heard about take days, as the person being questioned is worn down. Bribes? Get real…we have had a $25 million dollar reward for information leading to the capture of Bin Laden for like 6 years with no takers. What other methods? You and others have asserted non-torture type methods but thus far I haven’t even seen speculation on a method that would work in an hour. Feel free to actually provide one any time…thus far those exploding noises you are hearing are coming from your own side.
Would torture work in this situation? Probably not. But that reads PROBABLY not…which is better than NOT. Unless one of you guys can come up with SOME kind of plausible method to extract the info in the ridiculous time constraints given in the OP then it’s YOUR arguments that don’t pass the smell test here. We know for a fact that torture CAN work after all (there are documented instances of torture getting information from people…few and far between and unreliable as the cases may be)…it is just not reliable and thus in general is not a useful device when other, more time consuming but more reliable methods are available.
Why anyone against torture would actually engage in this silly debate is beyond me. The reason pro-torture folks use this argument is that it stacks the deck so that torture is acceptable and is probably the ONLY thing that would have even a small chance of working. It also frees all of the moral constraints as the guy who is trying to kill millions is in the hands of the authorities and there is no time for any other realistic alternatives…with only an hour there would be no time for searches, no time to prep the terrorist or wear him down, no time for psychological pressure…no time for anything except direct physical distress and hope it gets the information.
I fail to see the contradiction. If you do it often enough, anything will “work” by luck.
Don’t be silly. First, it’s completely rational to expect people to lie to save their own skin. Second, these are people who already have a history of lying and destroying records; trusting them is the act of a fool. And third, torture is the act of a monster; of someone utterly morally corrupt. I wouldn’t trust their word, trust them with a loan, or trust them in any other fashion.
I’ve always thought that torture could be effective theoretically, as I could see myself cracking under torture. Are all criminals so strong-willed that they can hold out and tell lies convincingly while under such duress? Is it totally impossible to sort through the various statements that a person being tortured will say and figure out which ones have the highest probability of being true?
I would think the primary argument against torture is that there are MORE effective techniques that are less morally wrong than torture. Why must torture be considered TOTALLY ineffective for us to condemn it?
Because any lesser standard would result in the criminal prosecution of members of the Bush administration. There’s no need for a fancier hypothesis here, this one is simple and covers the facts.
