To torture or not to torture

Great Debates
1

Reading some of the memos just released by the Obama DOJ got me thinking.

There’s no doubt that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and others held in Gitmo and Bagram committed horrible atrocities that led to the deaths of thousands of innocent people. They also might know more information that could potentially affect many lives in the future. They’re some bad guys, to say the least.

These bad guys were tortured. They were made to stay awake for up to 11 days, waterboarded hundreds of times and physically and mentally abused among other things. But can torture ever be justified?

Personally, I would like to think that torture is always wrong, but I can’t say for sure that I wouldn’t want to personally peel off a terrorist’s fingernails if, say, my mother had been killed. Is there a line that can be drawn to torture someone or not based on the extent of atrocities committed or potential value of information being withheld?

How do you all feel?

2

Personally I feel it can’t be justified… Practally I’ve never seen convincing evidence it works regardless.

-XR

3

I can say for sure that I would want to personally peel off a terrorist’s fingernails, in such a situation. However, I would also want the government to discourage and prevent me from doing so (as much as I might object at that time).

Basically, the reasons to torture someone boil down to two things:
[list=“1”]
[li] Punishment[/li][li] Information extraction[/li][/list]
Neither purpose is justifiable, IMO. The first only satisfies a savage desire at the expense of another human being, and the second has been shown to be unreliable. It’s lose-lose.

4

I don’t think it can be justified. I would rather be dead than compromise who I am, and I think it’s embarrassing and shameful that we did it.

5

What you want to do in a fit of rage isn’t necessarily the right thing to do. Torturing the person that killed your mother won’t bring her back. It won’t fix anything at all. Torture is literally evil. It is always wrong.

6

Yes, there is doubt. You’d confess to all those things after torture as well. You can’t trust anything said by our victims.

Irrelevant. Just because you would like to do something doesn’t make it either right or smart.

Given how unreliable torture is, and how evil, no.

7

You can have an opinion about gravity too. That doesn’t change the direction things fall, though. Torture is wrong even if people have various opinions.

8

I think there should be more research into “truth serums” and neurochemical ways of inducing people to give out information. This, in the long run, would be far more effective, and humane, than any kind of torture.

9

Torture as a means of information gathering is essentially always useful (manpower permitting.) When you’re in a battle, knowing what the other guy’s plans are is of immense value. And even if some regular schlub isn’t party to the planning of events, it’s possible that he’s seen troop movements, crates of materials being sent out or arriving, etc. He has information that lets them verify info gathered elsewhere or to use as a basis for guessing the tactics that are being planned.

And since the more time you have to consider such information, the better the odds that you will win the encounter, this essentially makes all such situations a ticking bomb scenario. Presuming that you know that the prisoner is actually an active opponent, any information you can get out of him is of potential, vital strategic importance.

But in regular old war, your guys are going to be captured by them probably on a pretty equal basis, and if your “advantage” by torturing their people is negated by them torturing your people. Ultimately, it’s rather a no-win scenario.

But when you’re fighting terrorists, this thinking doesn’t really hold. It’s unlikely that you’re ever going to encounter your opponent face-to-face. They’re not going to be capturing your soldiers, and likely they don’t care what your battle plans are. You don’t know where they are, and the only way to find that out is by clever spy or deductive work, or by taking the single guy you captured and making him tell you.

While terrorists won’t capture your soldiers (by and large), they will capture regular citizens. If you torture terrorists, are they more likely to torture their captives? No, because there’s no particular value to it. They might do it for fun, but they might have done it for fun anyways.

If you don’t torture terrorists, are they more likely to stop being terrorists (i.e. cease viewing you as the Great Satan)? Unlikely. They don’t like us because their own countries suck and we’re handy to blame for it. Outside of making their country cease suckage, they’ll continue to hate us.

If you stop torturing terrorists, are you more or less likely to prevent harm to regular citizens? Torturing them lets you find more terrorists and attacks they have planned. The more time they’re on the street, the more citizens they attack. And since ceasing torture doesn’t make life easier for citizens nor make terrorists stop, finding them is the only method to save our people.

Now there are some real reasons to not torture:

  1. It makes our supporters cease providing support.
  2. It’s illegal. (Which is a rather large item given that we live in a country dedicated to the rule of law.)
  3. Hypnosis and/or truth drugs may be an equally powerful method of extracting information.

There are also some fake reasons to not torture:

  1. Torture doesn’t provide information. It has been proven that torture can make anyone say anything you want them to. It has also been proven that people under torture will make up anything they can to satisfy you. The first of these two items is immaterial to basic information gathering. The second, while certainly a risk, is not all that much of a problem. Via a process of multiple attestation (i.e. more than one source mentioned it), you can narrow in on the more probably true items. Lots of information can also be checked for validity, simply by sending someone to check it. Ultimately, more information–even some of which is incorrect or a plain out lie–is better than none. It gives you a starting point.

  2. Torture has never been shown to lead to information that saves lives/There is no such thing as a “ticking bomb scenario”. I commented on the second of these already. For the former, there isn’t a lot of information, just because torture has been the province of clandestine operatives for the last 50 years. There is some information out of Israel.

  3. It is morally indefensible. Of course the counter argument is that this is war, so the terrorists were already viable killing targets. Torture is arguably more humane than murder. Saying that torture makes us just as bad as the bad guys totally passes over the fact that we just as much use selective murder to accomplish our goals.

10

Sage Rat:
“Torture doesn’t provide information. It has been proven that torture can make anyone say anything you want them to. It has also been proven that people under torture will make up anything they can to satisfy you. The first of these two items is immaterial to basic information gathering. The second, while certainly a risk, is not all that much of a problem. Via a process of multiple attestation (i.e. more than one source mentioned it), you can narrow in on the more probably true items. Lots of information can also be checked for validity, simply by sending someone to check it. Ultimately, more information–even some of which is incorrect or a plain out lie–is better than none. It gives you a starting point.”

So, is the only justification for torture that you must torture a lot of people so it can work? Anything worth doing is worth doing to excess? Otherwise don’t bother?

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Oh, Sage Rat, by the way you might get credit for one of the great euphemisms of all time when you refer to “multiple attestation.” You get a George Orwell Award.

12

And congratulations, you have an excellent chance of getting your forces annihilated because you sent them into an unwinnable battle on the strength of information someone made up to stop you from torturing them. And they will be fighting people who will inflict more casualties because they will be less willing to surrender, and more willing to die to kill you.

Atrocity stories get manufactured and spread during war because they weaken the side targeted with them; one effect of torture is that you do that damage to yourself.

And how do you do that ? Not torture. You are ignoring that we tried what you recommend, and it was a predictable disaster.

No, but anyone who cooperates with us is more likely to be tortured or killed. Quite possibly by their own friends and families, not just terrorists.

Garbage, and the standard American attempt to claim that foreigners aren’t human, and have no rational reasons to hate us. Of COURSE they’ll hate us more if we torture them. And of COURSE people who would otherwise NOT be terrorists will become terrorists. Or at least, people who fight us, which we automatically label as “terrorists”. And there will be far more people who support our enemies, or look the other way, and fewer who support us. One effect of our torture campaign was that our sources of information all vanished; no one wants to talk to torturers.

You mean the regular citizen that you’ve decided is a terrorist and are torturing ? People who torture are monsters; they don’t CARE about regular citizens, except as victims.

Wrong on all counts. And frankly, all you are doing is arguing that “our people” don’t deserve to be saved.

No, it doesn’t. As we proved quite effectively in Iraq. Torture has fallen out of favor because it’s not very useful.

Garbage. Torture is utterly evil; everyone involved should be hunted down and at the very least imprisoned for life. You are also ignoring the fact that we have shown no concern as to whether or not we torture random people or “terrorists”. This is inevitable, because ONLY evil people torture, and evil people don’t care or actively enjoy the fact that they are torturing innocents.

13

For all that you wrote, we are never going to know what the take was on the output. That means that morality aside, we dont have the data to at least hold our noses and claim at least it works. Not that the data does not exist, otherwise no govt would advocate or use torture for information.

So unless you have the required clearances, it cant be justified so all your left with is your personal feelings regarding the matter. In our civilized world , its a throwback to mideival times, putting innocent people to the question etc.

It was done and was done for the right reasons. Until we get something like fast penta, I want that tool in the govts arsenal, but at the same time I want everyone that hates the idea of it , to call that govt on it at all times to make sure its not the goto tool for every situation.

Declan

14

And governments never do stupid or evil things ?

And the evidence that we got an awful lot of bad information. And the fact that actual interrogation professionals DON’T advocate torture.

So those innocent people we tortured because someone sold them to us for profit were tortured for the right reasons ?

15

Cite that no military or clandestine-usefull information was extracted in regards to Iraq?

16

Again, when you read Sage Rat’s post in detail, the only assertion he makes about torture’s efficacy is that, “Via a process of multiple attestation (i.e. more than one source mentioned it), you can narrow in on the more probably true items.” Give me a couple of good homicide cops and they’ll get the same thing while in front of a judge. Torture is a technique used by those who don’t know any better.

17

Cite that some was ?

Oh, let me guess. Very important and vital information was discovered, but it’s all super-secret and I should just take it on faith.

And, IT DOESN’T MATTER. The bad information and the damage to our credibility and the manufacture of new enemies easily overwhelms the possibility that we might have gotten some trivial data from a victim who by luck was actually guilty of something, and who happened to blurt out something true we chose to believe. And the fact that we tortured means that our cause is evil, and we DESERVE to lose. We deserve as big a disaster for ourselves as possible for what we did.

18

Der , why don’t you just come out and say America, instead of just generic govts. You just voted out one party and elected the opposite, who when getting appraised of the take decided that yes torture took place, but the “bad guys” would not be prosecuted.

Why , when was the last time the US sent cruise missiles into some milk factory based on those interrogation professionals. Can we just be a little more realistic here der tris, most of them would not advocate torture cause its ilegal and makes them look bad and causes political problems in a pc enviroment.

If they have qualms about using torture , fine i get that. But I dont have the metrics available to agree with what they say , and I am not just going to believe em , cause 4 out of 5 doctors recomended.

You might want to google H-blocks or the maze or long kesh, I do know something about that subject.

Declan

19

I’m all for a compromise: those committing the torture can admit to it and do the time (no death penalty or torture) and then they can do it and use the information. If someone thinks that it is important enough to do the time for it as a crime, then I’ll let them be the judge of that. But it is still a crime for those ordering it, those doing it and those propagandizing for it.

Ew, ew, ew, ew.

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