I don’t know of a regime that didn’t end up abusing torture either (I don’t know if you have been following the thread but that is a point I brought up for why we shouldn’t use torture) but that doesn’t mean they started out abusing torture. It doesn’t mean that torture is designed to extract false confessions.
WTF does WMDs have to do with anything? What we have is a partisan one sided report. You might as well just call it the DNC report on torture. Most of the report is classified and all we see are conclusions and you seem to think that a statement of conclusions is clear and convincing evidence of… something.
You see that word OPINION in the link. That should be your first clue. All the opinion in the world doesn’t equal fact no matter HOW much you want it to.
I don’t know how often I have to tell you that anecdotes are not research. You cannot ever approach a comprehensive representative dataset of torture and its results because its not the sort of thing that get publicized by torturers.
Yeah, that’s the senate report again.:rolleyes:
The minority response wasn’t science either. It was for the most part a list of objections to the report.
The Senate opened the investigation in march of 2009 and the Republicans withdrew their participation by September. The investigation continued for another 5 years without Republican participation before the report was published. It was the product of a partisan exercise by one side of the argument.
Oh for fuck’s sake.
The fact is, if you allow the CIA to torture people, you’ll get worse results. That’s what “torture doesn’t work” means.
“Torture doesn’t work” means that regimes that use torture as a method of gathering information get worse results than regimes that don’t use torture.
We’re not talking about theoretical hero-torturers, because in any regime that allows torture such people don’t run the torture chambers. The torture chambers are invariably, without exception, run by people who enjoy torture. It can’t happen any other way.
We’re not talking about theoretical torturers who never ask leading questions, because such people don’t exist. Look at Velocity’s objections above. “Where is bin Laden?” “In a cave in Peru.” “Liar! More torture for you!” “Uh, in a cave in Afghanistan?” “Yes, good answer. No torture for a while while we check it out.”
Of course the torturer has an idea of what response is plausible. And so of course the torture victim can only give the torturer information that the torturer already believes could be true. If the victim can get the torture to stop for a while by giving plausible answers, he will give plausible answers whether those answers are true or false. Any time the torturer stops the torture is a reward for the victim. The only answer for the torturer then is to continue the torture even when given a plausible answer. So then how does the victim get the torture to stop? If they can’t get the torture to stop by giving the torturer an answer that pleases him, then telling the truth is of no value to the victim.
And of course, in real life it always turns out that information is not really interesting to the torturers. Take that guy we waterboarded 100 times. Did they believe that after resisting for 99 waterboardings, on the 100th time he’d finally crack? No, the explicit purpose was to instill what they called “learned helplessness”. That is, break the victim’s will completely, Room 101 style.
You create the torture apparatus, and people are fed into the torture apparatus, willy-nilly. And they must be guilty, because otherwise why would you torture them? And it turns out that they admit to everything! See, torture works!
And this is what you people who advocate torture want. The ultimate fascist dream of complete subjection of the human will to the greater power of the State. Information is irrelevant, it is not the point of torture.
So knowing this, should we allow torture? This is what torture “working” MEANS. When you say torture works, this is what you are arguing for. This is the future you are creating for the human race. You look upon it and pronounce it desirable.
:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
Very :rolleyes: when one realizes that this was posted already:
Then, on April 3, 2014, the SSCI voted 11–3.
Someone should tell Susan Collins that she is a Democrat now according to the poster. 
(He should realize that it was the Republicans in the minority report that took their ball and went home, other Republicans took their place. This point of “no Republicans in the report pass 2009” is even more wrong than radioactive yellow cake.
And even more roll eyes are for his other points regarding the dismissal of the justifications of the Iraq War, torture had a lot to do with that as thanks to torture the past administration got false evidence to justify the invasion.
And then more :rolleyes:
If no basic investigation of the errors and bad intelligence obtained with torture in the past is not considered it would be like you demanding that they apply values to the model blindly in the study. No one is going to follow your “advice”
You are the one depending on anecdotes, BTW the past opinion there was from a contributor to FOX news, that was not only using his opinion but he also told us that he interviewed several experts that told him why he is coming to what he is telling us there about the Bush administration not listening to the experts.
The reality is that the past administration only was listening to cranks, and they reached for the most ignorant solutions to the terrorism issue, “solutions” like excessive surveillance of American citizens, finding justifications for the war, using torture, and many other dumb items.
No, that is not what people mean when they say "torture simply doesn’t work. There is no implied nuance at play. This is an attempt to forestall debate entirely by saying that there is nothing on the benefits side of the cost benefit analysis because torture simply doesn’t work.
Voting for something says nothing about your involvement before the vote. It was the product of partisan efforts.
The thing is that you CAN rely on anecdotes to refute categorical statements. You CANNOT rely on anecdotes to MAKE categorical statements.
:rolleyes:
Your opinions are worthless due to your endless moving of the goalposts. Going from a vote from a vote of of 9–6 with one independent and one Republican, to a vote of (much later) 11-3 demonstrate involvement. The reality is that you only showed that you are depending on right wing sources of information for your dumb statement here and those sources continue to repeat the meme of the minority guys leaving and calling that “all” leaving when it is clear that not all Republicans did.
The fact is that you were also demonstratively wrong when claiming that they had stop any involvement after 2009.
And finally, you should realize (well everybody else, as this does not depend on you getting convinced) that no one will follow your foot stomping, there is plenty of precedent, evidence and almost all do understand that statements like “anti-vaccine people are loopy” “Homeopathy does not work” “Pseudoscience does not work” and “torture does not work” are valid ones.
That many can find exceptions does not deny the overall evidence, and once again "claiming that “torture works” is the misleading statement since it is just based on anecdotes and not the overall evidence, we already do know that your anecdote coming from the military guy you quoted as evidence came later to tell us all that “torture does not work” because he did look at the evidence and not just your sorry anecdotary from the partisan right wing.
Of course you are wrong:
“As a result of the Attorney General’s investigation, the Republican minority on the SSCI concluded that many witnesses were unlikely to participate in the investigation for fear of criminal liability.[3] Citing the Attorney General investigation as their reason, the Republican minority of the SSCI withdrew their participation from the investigation in September 2009.[”
Or is having one Republican voting in favor of releasing the executive summary of the report the same thing as participation to you?
You seem to think that the statement “torture simply doesn’t work” was intended to be a shorthand statement that really means to say that "sure torture CAN work and sure it almost always works in situations like SERE training where the torturer knows that the prisoner has verifiable information and the prisoner knows that the torturer knows and there is no evidence that it is any less effective at extracting information than any other method of interrogation; but torture is counterproductive to the overall effort of fighting terrorism (if people know we are using it) and torture can be abused and [insert all the moral arguments here].
But, you are wrong. The statement was clearly intended to be categorical or close to categorical. If you read through the thread, you can almost see the evolution of the definition of the phrase “torture simply doesn’t work” to go from, broken clock, lottery chances of working arguments to counterproductivity arguments, to all sorts of other mealy mouthed weaseling. You’ve lost and you just can’t handle losing on the internet.
Your opinion, because it is not based on facts.
The evidence here is clear, I used logic and the fact is that you did told us that all republican involvement was not there, hence you moving the goalposts now as your ignorance was not supported, your say so does indeed imply that the Republicans did not keep an eye nor accepted the conclusions of the report. When in reality the cite you use is talking about the group of republicans that formed the minority report. Those are not all Republicans. Other Republicans decided not to follow the minority group in rejecting the report.
http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/sites/default/files/SSCI-Report-FAQ-FINAL.pdf
As pointed, she may had been the only one early on, but it is clear that after a revision (that logic should tell you that the revisions were requested by the Republicans that remaining involved in looking if the report was valid, and then prominent Republicans voted in favor or supported the conclusions.
piffle, clearly you did lose in your attempts at making “torture works” to be as valid. As pointed many times before that remains a very misleading statement, because we are talking about real life, not training.
On the other hand, when saying “torture doesn’t work” it is a declaration that most closely fit reality and real life. And once again, the one that you pointed at as a supporter of your views came later to tell us that:
http://jamesjoyner.com/2014/12/torture-doesnt-work-the-cia-torture-reports-long-shadow/
You are strawmanning by claiming that I see a shorthand, no, I see a statement that is closer to the truth and most people do know that while there could be training and rare exceptions there is no good reason to not use such declaration.
Perhaps I should be using a different word because there are clearly Republicans who are anti-torture no matter what types. The point is that there was only one point of view present during the 5 years the report was being created. This is about as convincing as a report by the American petroleum institute on global warming that is composed entirely of anecdotes and the opinions of people who don’t believe in global warming.
Or are you saying that because it was written at the behest of a senate committee it has some sort of added evidentiary value?
I thought the vote was to release the report not a vote in support of the conclusions. 
Please, I also do know about the tactics of the global warming deniers, suffice to say that I see a lot of their arguments in your effort over here.
As John McCain had a personal encounter with torture I defer to him.
And no, you can not like FOX news put a (D) next to his name, he is a Republican Senator.
Again, I only needed to show that you were wrong about your say so that after 2009 there was no Republican involvement, voting in favor to release the report and to support it was for sure not backed by all republicans, much to their shame, but a few of them realized that partisanship was not a good thing nor a good reason to use in defense of the indefensible.
I have an anecdote for every anecdote you have. I have a consistent result obtained when we use torture against those whimpy navy SEALS. They ALWAYS give up their code and they almost always do it in under a few minutes. You really think that they’re just mailing it in?
I did a search for Joyner in this thread and I don’t see where I point to Joyner as an expert. The first use of the name that I see is on April 19th in post 304. Did I mention him sometime before that? I generally try not to quote “experts” because there is a bias that makes it easier for anti-torture people to be vocal and there is pressure to be anti-torture in the public sphere.
But fine, if you want to say that “torture doesn’t” work REALLY means that torture is counterproductive even if it does in fact produce information then I am happy to let you believe that you haven’t suffered a withering defeat on the internet.
Do you think that there are times when torture is more effective than asking nicely? Or asked another way, are there times when torture can be effective (if we ignore the secondary effects of torture on our society and reputation)? Or is torture never effective in doing anything but sending us on wild goose chases and getting false confessions?
I know you want to dismiss the SERE training because it is so fucking damning but until you can explain how we are able to extract information from trained navy SEALS but cannot use it effectively against prisoners, you have a pretty large hole in your argument. No amount of whining, name calling, shouting or foot staming is going to make that go away.
ROFLMAO
So did I, will you defer to me?
Like I said, maybe partisan in the Democrat Republican is not the right phraseology. But the report was written with only one side of the argument participating in its creation.
Fine if you want to say that voting for something is involvement in a project that took 5 years with only one side of the argument participating in its creation, then sure. :rolleyes:
Are you under the impression that I am defending torture? I am not. I am calling bullshit on a tactic that is intended to circumvent any debate on torture.
As to point out to one sorry example of what I see here in the arguments like the global warming deniers use:
We already saw how you threw under the bus people like James Joiner, just because he looked at the evidence and told us now that “torture doesn’t work”. I saw that same old scene when climate change deniers pushed scientists like Muller when he “was going to investigate the fraudulent research being made by the climate scientists”, only to be tossed under the bus by the climate change denierswhen Muller actually came with more evidence to report that the deniers were wrong.
**Not coincidentally **Donald Trump also follows the crank climate change deniers, as he is with the ones that still mistakenly think that torture is a good idea.