And? People lie. People misremember. Duress or not, all information has a chance of being invalid. That has nothing to do with the subject at hand unless you’re making an argument that homicide cops shouldn’t talk to suspects at all. Is that what you’re arguing? Oh noes, people lie 15% of the time. There’s no way to validate information, and thus we must throw away this thing known as basic human communication.
And, and? You don’t deny your statements that the only way you can depend on the results of torture is to get “multiple attestations” (presumably also by torture) and then put the puzzle pieces together, do you?
The “subject at hand” is the utility, not the legality, of torture. You made a long and detailed post about it. My analysis of it was that you agreed that the results of the torture of an idividual were less than credible, but when added to the results of the torture of many other individuals, one might, might, be able to learn something, which may or may not be useful.
You have yet to respond to that analysis.
What is at issue here, in your view?
Oh, I just want to remind people that “multiple attestations” gets a George Orwell Award.
Always open to further nominations…
I specifically said that you can also send people out to verify information. Basic Googling could verify any one point of data, depending on the data. So technically I do “deny” saying that. But, even so, let’s say that multiple attestation via torture is the only method known to man to verify data. And? How does that effect anything? Multiple attestation is just another word for “the scientific process”, for “cited material”, etc. Results must be replicatable. Why do you feel this is a point that needs to be given the hairy fish eye? I honestly don’t see what you think you’re getting at.
You chose to interpret me as saying that the resultant information that comes from torture is of less than credible quality. I’ve never tortured someone for information, so I can’t say anything on that front for sure.
The point, though, was that while it is almost definitely certain that some percentage of information will be wrong or made-up, that’s hardly a show-stopper. Homicide detectives do find and prosecute murderers, and CIA and GISS operatives do appear to find and capture terrorists. Historians are able to track through data to piece together history, hackers are able to circumvent purposefully confusing code to break systems, etc. The ability of humans to piece evidence together from scattered, incomplete parts is not a mystery. This is something pretty much everybody does on a daily basis as part of their job, regardless of what that job is.
Is the compilation of disparate and sometimes conflicting data an imperfect methodology? Of course. But, it would be a hard argument to make that it’s not good enough for all human purposes–because unfortunately it’s the only game in town.
Unless you see the point where I denounced the effectiveness of torture and even more torture for creating a body of information, I don’t see where you think there’s double speak.
Which I take as evidence that Obama is probably also having people tortured. And the Democrats and Republicans are hardly opposite.
No, they don’t advocate for torture because it’s inferior. Ever hear of Hanns Joachim Scharff ? Called the “Master Interrogator”, the best there was in Nazi Germany ? He achieved his successes without torture, without even raising his voice - and somehow I dont think that Nazi Germany qualifies as the “pc environment” you are talking about.
Torture has been discredited as a tool of interrogation for a long time. We didn’t use it because we had to, but out of sadism.
I wouldn’t say torture (or harsh treatment) is a useless information gathering technique. I would, however, very much say that the use of torture *alone *is.
What does work best is good cop, bad cop.
One guy (or institution) beats the shit out of you. The other is kind to you, and clashes with the first right in front of you. Has open and vocal dislike of him. Then they leave you alone with the nice guy, who’s aaaall about making sure you’re OK. He’s your friend. He’ll get you out of there. He won’t let the bad man hurt you again. Trust him. But you’ve got to help him do that, too…
That’s the caricature, but this kind of thing can be done in very insidious ways. And that’s what works. It’s what Scharff used.
There’s a very good (and frightening) account of such a technique in Clancy’s book where a pilot is shot down over Viet Nam… Without Remorse I think ?
You state there is ‘no doubt’. How many people from Guantanamo Bay have been prosecuted in court?
Before you started torturing them, how did you know they were guilty?
How about the innocent people you’ve tortured? (Many Guantanamo Bay prisoners have been released; some due to mistaken identity.)
Is it OK to torture Americans to see if your country is about to be attacked?
Can you point to a successful campaign against terrorism where torture won the day? (I refer you to the decades of Northern Ireland terrorism where the British Government used torture (milder than waterboarding, but still…) and all they did was create martyrs and prolong the conflict.)
Oh and torture is morally reprehensible.
But if you delight in using it, why don’t you bring in the children of suspected terrorists and torture them in front of their parent. I’m sure that would be far more effective. What parent would keep quiet as you peeled the skin off their child?
As I recall, we did have children raped and attacked by dogs in front of their parents at Abu Ghraib.
You seriously don’t see his point? You don’t see that what you suggest leads to widespread torture that consequently needs to be executed by a professionalized organization?
We have names for countries that do such things; *democracy *isn’t one of them.
It’s doublespeak because you’re twisting a horrible atrocity, mass torture, making it sound like a harmless bit of procedural police work.
“Multiple attestations” = destroying lives and inflicting unspeakable pain.
That’s a new one on me. Sickening if true. Do you have a cite?
-XT
I didn’t mean to imply that everyone we tortured was actually guilty of a crime. I know we detained many innocent people. What I meant was that a few of the more high profile detainess are most likely guilty of SOMETHING. Not to say that that makes them OK to torture.
I agree that torture is morally reprehensible. I was merely trying to see it from the other side.
Neither of those cites says anything remotely like what you claim they say.
The first one is basically a quick trip through the history of ass-covering for torture. We learn a few specifics about how the CIA and the Bush Administration each tried to set things up so that they could blame the other when their crimes came to light. At no point does that article say that the CIA or anybody else ever garnered a single piece of information from torture.
The second one is just as irrelevant. It’s about former CIA Director Michael Hayden testifying before Congress. In that testimony, he was mostly interested in insisting that he stopped the practice of waterboarding, and vigorously denying that he ever used torture. So obviously his testimony does not back up your pro-torture arguments.
What he does say is that “harsh interrogation techniques … successfully got the maximum amount of information, particularly out of the Abu Zubaydahs, the Khalid Sheik Muhammeds.” (Who knew there were more than one of those guys?)
Even assuming that we could trust Hayden–which we can’t, because he has a long history of lying and cover-ups related to torture–this tells us nothing. “The maximum amount of information”, but information about what? It could be information about daffodil prices, for all that we know. At no point does Hayden say or suggest in any way that ‘harsh interrogation techniques’ produced any information that was in any way relevant to terrorism or the military.
Furthermore, Der Trihs was specifically asking you to provide information about the torture techniques used in Iraq. Neither of those articles even mentions Iraq.
So to summarize, we’re back to square one. You claim that “Torture as a means of information gathering is essentially always useful.” The reality is that torture is never useful. There is no instance in the entire history of the human race when anyone has garnered any useful information at all from torture. Not one. And your bogus, irrelevant cites prove that fact more thoroughly than I could ever hope to.
By the way, for those who want some sold, expert proof that torture can never produce useful information, I’ve got some. The CIA cites Dr. James Horne’s research as proof that sleep deprivation is a useful technique for extracting information, but they’re lying as usual. Horne himself is now speaking out and making it very clear that you cannot get useful information by that means. Read all about it here:
http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2009/04/prof-james-horne-on-the-memos.html
Obviously, an armchair general with his six pack in one hand and fondue fork in the other spouting contradictions. Imprisonment is torture employed to extract correct answers at parole hearings.
Torturing terrorists, use it or lose it.
This should be followed by execution and burial with swine offal.
And our brave lads, convicted of murdering innocent civilians? Do these same stern standards apply, or are you inclined to be more understanding?
You have to watch out when waving about a fondue fork…you could take out someone eye that way!
-XT
Oh come on-you cannot drop something like that into a thread without a cite.
Put me down in “not torture” group. Torture is simply wrong and should be banned as a matter of principle regardless of whether or not it’s effective.