We have terrorists that are willing to strap a bomb to themselves and set it off. They do not fear that. But torture, that scares them into telling all.
The interrogators at Gitmo were professionals, who, after trying many other techniques, specifically requested the ‘advanced’ stuff like waterboarding.
Or are they no true Scottsman?
Isn’t it that they were forced to use advanced techniques because the whitehouse *decidered *that they had to?
Isn’t it that SERE guys were brought in with expertise in techniques historically used to elicit false confessions because the whitehouse said to? Wasn’t it a policy decision to use torture despite interrogators not having any faith in it?
Can you link to where you heard that actual trained interrogators were asking for SERE training?
Don’t most trained interrogators think that torture is unreliable?
Most trained interrogators know torture does not work. It is the amateurs that think they know better. Iraq was a war run by civilians. Rummy , Cheneyand their staffs became military experts somehow.
You’ve omitted the word ‘necessarily’ from the bolded sentence above. In the scenario hansel presented, time constraints excuse the cop from the obligation of demonstrating that torture will likely work. He doesn’t have the time to try anything else and so has nothing to lose by cranking up the car battery and letting rip. The terrorist may well lie. Then again, he may well not.
This is a simple utilitarian equation, and it baffles me that so many smart people are expending such eloquence arguing that torture has no possibility of working, or that there are more effective means of procuring the required information in the 60 minute timeframe hansel provided. Until it can be proven that torture would be ineffective in this specific scenario, or until someone can supply a credible alternative means by which the bomb’s location can be extracted within one hour, there will be no persuasive counterargument to xtisme’s original rebuttal, that “One chance in a thousand or a million is better than no chance at all”
I have provided your evidence in post #67. On the other hand you (or others here arguing your side) have provided none.
As you say in your post, the time constraint provided by the OP is absurd. However, if we’re going to keep this discussion on track we can’t fight the hypothetical. The cases to which you referred all involved scenarios in which the interrogators, relatively speaking, had time on their side. There is no evidence their methods would work in 60 minutes.
As for evidence to support the use of torture, all that is needed is knowledge that people generally respond to incentives, and that the threat of physical pain is generally regarded as a great incentive.
I reiterate that I believe the chances of torture eliciting relevant information remains slight, but given the stakes hansel presented, a slight chance is a hell of a lot better than no chance at all.
[ul]
[li]I’ll give you a million dollars and arrange for your family to be moved to America if you give me information to stop the bomb.[/li]
[li]There is a mosque with over a thousand good American Muslims in the radius of the bomb.[/li]
[li]This is Imam Larry, he will tell you why what you are doing is abhorrent based on the Quaran.[/li]
[li]Your family is being held by American special forces right now. If the bomb goes off we’re going to turn them over to Syria.[/li]
[li]Why are you doing this? America has a Muslim president. (show fox news)[/li][/ul]
Rapport works better than torture is the consensus among those in the know. Any of those things probably has a higher chance of working than being a macho fuckweasel.
Has it escaped you that all he has to do is lie to you once? The guy is willing to nuke New York. You are electrocuting his nutsack. Do you suppose this will prompt him to tell you the truth or confirm his suspicion we’re all assholes and deserve what we are about to get? You are making a vengeful person more vengeful. It is trivially easy for him to lead you astray.
Much better to try some other route.
Hmmm…I’m down with this idea in principle. However, I must also balance my natural preference for this alternative with the fact that, traditionally, the efficacy of bribes is as unproven as the efficacy of torture. As xtisme pointed out, we’ve had a 25 million dollar bounty on Bin Laden’s head for over six years and it hasn’t paid any dividends yet. Moreover, one who truly believes in the metaphysics of martyrdom may consider a million dollar bribe somewhat paltry compared to the endless riches & 72 virgins he would receive in paradise.
Still, the practical upside to this alternative is that “negotiations” can be carried out very quickly. There might be time to offer a bribe before resorting to torture, and the terrorist might take the deal. How’s this for a compromise? I say offer the bribe, wait a couple of minutes, come back, tell the terrorist he’s a liar (regardless of whether the bomb squad has had time to go the address the terrorist has offered), and then use torture to confirm the information. If it doesn’t match, we will have at least ruled out one possible location.
I think this would be a non-starter. The possibility of killing numerous good American Muslims didn’t deter the 9/11 hijackers.
A very good idea, but one which I think would likely fall foul of the 60 minute time constraint. I think it stands to reason that someone prepared to commit mass murder on the basis of an especially militant interpretation of the Qu’ran would also be versed in justifying the righteousness of his interpretation.
Whereupon the Syrians would presumably treat them very badly. This alternative strikes me as less moral than the straight up torture proposed by the OP, and would be even more vulnerable to the same criticisms numerous torture opponents have already offered.
Nice! 
No, it hasn’t. I noted as much in my first post. The terrorist may very well lie. Then again, he may not. The cop won’t know until he’s tried.
Well, I am quite keen on Lobohan’s “Carrot & stick” approach. The only other route which I think would stand a chance of improving the odds of finding the bomb would be to offer a bribe first. A bribe could be negotiated in short order and the information it elicits could be swiftly confirmed by torture. If that fails, however, I would revert to my original position that torture would provide the best chance of finding the weapon. If I thought there were other routes which could be taken in the time provided I wouldn’t be arguing the position that I am.
No, if it doesn’t match, then all you’ve proven is that you’ve used torture, which you already knew. Once you start torturing the guy, of course he’s going to tell you something different, because clearly what he already told you wasn’t enough to prevent the torture. What you’re saying is that you’re willing to get good information, as long as you’re allowed to throw that good information away immediately.
Why does everyone want to immediately discard all of the methods that could work quickly enough? We’re desperate, here… Do you WANT that bomb to go off?
Professionals argue that torture is the wrong thing to do even in the TTB scenario.
(Bolding mine)
No, the professionals were shoved aside so the torturers could go to work. And complained about how their work was therefore ruined.
No; they just want the excuse to torture someone, and are willing to see New York nuked to do so. They don’t CARE that torture isn’t a good way to get information; torture is the goal, not the method.
The persuasive argument is that the toture advocates have utterly failed to demonstrate that torture is a better piss-poor technique for getting information in extremely limited timescales than other methods.
Here’s the way I see it. You need to get a volatile package to somewhere a mile away in six minutes. Before you you have:
1: a fit man in running shoes.
2: a fat man on a bicycle that looks like it wouldn’t last half a mile.
3: a large catapult that has a 100/1 chance of hitting its target (and a 99% chance of smashing the package on impact and killing everyone in 100 yards of it.)
Now, an argument can be made for choosing the catapult. But it isn’t “Well, we can be certain that the other options are no good just by glancing at them, and the catapult has a chance of working, and the short amount of time justifies anything, so fire away!”
Well, unless you’re a catapult salesman or something - to persons with ulterior motives, any argument that supports their views can be persuasive.
Look at the wangling and “re defining” going on now in Washington.
God damn politicians and “heroes”. If it was so right, then stand up and be proud of it. Go on television and say “Yeah I did it and I would do it again”. After all, it wasn’t long ago that “you” were all for it, and anyone who disapproved was an America hating freedom hating bleeding heart traitor liberal.
Have some damn balls you Washington pukes.
How is this supposed to work? Suppose he told you the truth when he accepted the bribe. Then you tell him he lied, and start torturing him until he tells the “truth”. So he has to make up a lie.
Torture doesn’t magically make someone tell the truth, it magically makes them say what they think will stop the torture. If the only way to avoid future torture is to tell the truth, then it is likely that the victim will tell the truth. But if the victim will be tortured regardless of whether they tell the truth or lie, then torture is useless as a mechanism for extracting the truth.
So the ticking time bomb scenario makes torture useless, if the parameters of the scenario are that you only get one chance. The victim has to have a chance to make the torture stop if they tell the truth, or they won’t tell the truth.
“OK, Achmed, where’s the bomb?”
“I won’t tell you”
“OK, then we’ll torture you.”
“Wait, I don’t want to be tortured. It’s on 183rd Street”.
“No, you’re lying. Torture him, boys.”
“Aaaaaah! OK, I lied! It’s on 147th Street!”
“Still lying, Achmed? OK, more torture for you!”
“Aaaaaaaaaaaah! OK, I lied! It’s on 82nd Avenue!”
“Liar!”
“Aaaaaaaah! 34th Street?”
“Liar!”
“Aaaah! 42nd Street?”
“Liar!”
“Aaaah! 99th Street?”
“Liar!”
“Aaaah! Wait, let me get organized. 1st Street?”
“Liar!”
“Aaaah! 2nd Street?”
“Liar!”
“Aaaah! 3rd Street?”
“Liar!”
Now, suppose you’re the interrogator in the above scenario. You’ve got one bomb squad and you can send the bomb squad to only one location. Which location do you choose? The one he said before the torture? The one he said after you tortured him the first time?
Even if we take as a given that everyone eventually breaks under torture, there’s no way to tell which time he told you the truth. Did he break the first time? The second time? The third time?
If you had a locked safe and an hour to open it, you would probably be able to torture the combination out of the victim, assuming they knew the combination in the first place. But that’s because you can check the combination very quickly, and once the safe is open the torture will presumably stop. But suppose rather than a safe, it’s a computer password, and if you enter an incorrect password the computer system locks the user out. In this case how does torture help you get the correct password?
In the July 2005 London bombings, there were a number of other young men with bombs ready to go. A genuine “ticking bomb” scenario. Their own parents turned them over to the police specifically because they knew that their sons would not be tortured. Here’s where I learned this:
Once again, here’s Former FBI Interrogator Jack Cloonan talking about the “ticking bomb”. As the sadists probably won’t click on the link, here’s the text:
*I have been hard-pressed to find a situation where anybody can tell me that they’ve ever encountered the ticking bomb scenario. It’s a bit of a red herring, it’s thrown up there…we have a really strong reaction to that…“what if?”. In the real world? It doesn’t happen. The Israelis, who have been doing this for a long time and are very good at it, you know, they don’t believe in this stuff. And they’ve never had a situation where there was a quote “ticking bomb”. And so when we have a show like “24” who popularized that, and they show them sticking a wire on this guy to get him to talk because he’s got the Keys to the Kingdom, you know, it makes all of believe this is is real. It’s not. Throw that stuff out. It doesn’t happen. *
Otherwise, as they say in the British Parliament, “I’ll refer the learned gentleman to my earlier remarks”.
Or, if one has to do it the Jack Bauer tough guy way : “If your bomb goes off, we nuke Mecca in retaliation. And you, my friend, will be kept alive, well fed, and paraded for all the Muslim world to see. You won’t be a martyr, your name will be mud. You will forever be remembered and reviled as the guy who let the everlasting, eternal symbol of what Muhammad stood for get vitrified for the sake of a stupid and petty plot. We are DEAD. FUCKING. SERIOUS. Care to chat, now ?”
So, I posted a link to a genuine expert on interrogation who says that torture doesn’t work and that he doesn’t believe the “ticking bomb” scenario exists in the real world, and an expert who has literally written the book on torture and offered an example of a genuine “ticking bomb” scenario that was successfully defused because that country didn’t torture.
And in response? Nothing. Crickets chirping. Anyone with a counter-example that they didn’t pull out of their ass? Anyone with the grace and honesty to return to this thread and admit that their position was wrong?
