It is fine indeed as if it had not been seen as good by no Republicans then an accusation of partisanship would be valid, The reality is that they did read the report and the changes made by 2014 were made at the request of the Republicans that still remained. By any sense of the word, that was involvement indeed. The real partisanship then was shown by the minority group that decided to listen to the cranks and they only decided that it was better to support the ignorance of their constituents rather than show leadership.
Again: as many already showed, even the ones that you pointed out in support of your view agree that “torture doesn’t work”. And the bullshit only goes to the ones that attempt to claim that the contrarian tactic is ok.
DM, Based on your SERE research, if you want to change your statement to ‘torture works when we give the subject the information we want to extract, tell them not to tell us, then torture them to get them to tell us the information we already told them’ I don’t think you’ll find an argument here. In the real world, the problem is ‘what do you do with that information’? Unless it can be quickly tested for accuracy, it is basically useless, and could actually hamper an investigation.
I can’t find the post you are referring to. I did a word search but I can’t find the posts where I hold up Joyner as the authority on torture only to throw him under the bus when he recanted?
I generally don’t give a shit what people SAY about torture, particularly people whoa re subject to political pressure. There are few incentives to publicly defend the efficacy of torture and many reasons to denounce it as “not working”
Climate change is science. I can literally point you to hundreds of SCIENTIFIC articles and studies. The lack of efficacy of torture is based entirely on opinions and anecdotes. The closest thing you have to science is an article using game theory. GAME THEORY… are you fucking kidding me?
Throwing game theory in my face while ignoring the ACTUAL results of thousands of ACTUAL torture sessions on Navy SEALS is pretty laughable.
Who here thinks torture is a good idea?
See this is the problem with your entire argument. This debate is about whether or not torture works and your argument has been about whether or not torture is a good idea. You don’t want there to be any wiggle room on the second point so you insist that you are correct on the first point.
Of course you are wrong. If you were correct then this statement wouldn’t be followed with statements about false confessions and other instances where it actually didn’t work.
We don’t need to give the prisoner the information for torture to work. The proper statement is that torture works ~100% of the time when we KNOW the prisoner has the information, the prisoner KNOWS we know he has the information and we have a way of verifying the information for accuracy.
Many of the criticisms about the quality of information gained through torture is true of information gained through ANY interrogation method. I don’t see why torture would produce less accurate information than other interrogation methods. Torture is more likely to produce false information from people who don’t actually know anything so torture imposes a cost when you torture the ignorant but the notion that torture only works when you give them the information you hope to torture out of them is retarded.
You are the one that is fucking kidding, you already admitted that game theory is a valid tool.
No, what it is laughable that you keep on missing the point, training is not real life and there were already cites that showed that the SERE training was used and failed to deliver, just as the professor using game theory predicted.
The point stands, the evidence presented showed that claiming that “torture works” is the bullshit, saying “Torture doesn’t work” is much more closer to the facts and general usage.
BTW it is clear that the reason why you do not let go is that indeed you insist that “torture works” is valid to use while at the same time you insist that I’m talking about torture never working, you are only relying on a straw man.
Wow, let the record show that you are not even aware of the sources you used to claim in this very same thread that you were “wining the discussion”. A source that BTW had no political pressure to change his mind.
Just because it might work in some platonic ideal sytem–like, you know, a game where soldiers undergoing SERE training were given a code phrase, and then waterboarded, and could give the code phrase to make it stop–doesn’t mean it works as a reliable method of getting information.
What do you want?
Do you think, if we tortured prisoners, we’d be better off as a country? Yes, or no?
We’d be worse off, for a list of reasons as long as your arm. Would there be an occasional success thrown in there? Maybe. Who gives a fuck? The negatives outweigh the positives by such a drastic amount that anyone who gives the matter some honest thought could easily see that torture would leave the country weaker rather than stronger.
So now what? Just because I can come up with a convoluted scenario where I kill a baby to stop WWIII that doesn’t mean we allow cops to kill babies whenever they like.
It’s fucking moronic that you would keep defending torture as something that would make America more safe, and the only reason you won’t authorize torture is because you’ve got some ethical objection to it. But it would be fucking awesome if only we could do it! But we can’t. But what if we could! It would be so awesome! If only…if only…
Yes, of course. It is a valid tool given its constraints. In this case those constraints are the underlying assumptions. Game theory generally assumes that everyone behaves rationally and makes rational decisions. Then the “rules” of the game are set and everything that results from game theory is dependent on those assumptions being true. In your case the assumptions are that the interrogator has NO IDEA if the prisoner knows anything or how determined the prisoner is likely to be; you also assume that the prisoner has no idea what whether the interrogator will stop torturing them if they give up any information they might have. In THAT case, then yes a rational prisoner with valuable information will have no rational reason to give up the information because the interrogator will have no reason to ever stop torturing them, ever. So yes there is a set of facts under which torture will not work if you have rational prisoners and torturers.
You have nothing but anecdotes and opinions. A report written by people who are opposed to torture and thousands of pages of classified information that were not released with the report.
I never said torture always works. I said that torture can work. Then your side went off on broken clocks and lotteries. Your side said “torture simply doesn’t work” I guess that’s true if you read that statement so that you really mean that “torture simply doesn’t work, in the sense that its counterproductive and sometimes lead to false confessions and here are a few anecdotes about when it failed miserably and there are some people who say it doesn’t work” Then sure I guess you’re right.
I never made a categorical statement about the efficacy of torture. You did. Torture CAN work in some circumstances and might work better than most methods of interrogation in those cases. That doesn’t mean I support torture, I just oppose the bullshit argument that torture simply doesn’t work because that is just a mechanism that those opposed to torture are using to circumvent any debate that might occur because torture does in fact work in some situations.
OK, I didn’t find that in the word search because it doesn’t include joyner’s name. I was not holding joyner out as the authority on Torture. I was googling for an example of when torture worked because I only need on example to undermine your categorical statement that “torture simply doesn’t work” I went on to find other examples and unless they all recanted, you are in no better position because one of my examples was from a guy that later decided that it was in his best interest to say that torture doesn’t work.
In which case these pussy Navy SEALS give up their password 100% of the time within minutes. Fucking pussy Navy SEALS can’t even put up with a few minutes of torture when torture doesn’t even work in real life.
Reliable? What method are you saying is so much more reliable that torture? Torture yields more false information than other interrogation methods but might be able to extract information from a non-cooperating prisoner where asking nicely won’t
No, I think it would take us one giant step closer to when we prove the gun nuts right about our need for the second amendment.
Torture destroys the character of the people who do it. It corrupts the institutions that condone it and it undermines the will of a free people. Torture is horrible for many many reasons.
I don’t think even the full throated supporters of torture thinks we should allow the indiscriminate use of torture.
I have more than a simple ethical objection to it. I don’t oppose torture merely because I find it morally repugnant. I oppose it because it would severely damage our society and our democracy. Maybe it is ME that is being too nuanced because everyone seems to think I like torture or think its a great idea. I don’t.
Are you saying that if we capture the head of terrorist organization, we will not KNOW that he has some specific information? Are you saying that this will not be apparent to the prisoner? Are you saying that none of this information is verifiable?
Do you really think that the efficacy of torture is limited to the specific circumstances of SERE training?
Nope, it just shows that you were wrong and that there are no easy pickings for your side.
A side that in reality is very silly as it is not something that people that deal with this issue thinks it is important. And as for recanting you are still only showing all that you can not deal with the issue that training is not real life.
Wrong, in reality the theory does explain that on many of the situations the irrational will take over, such as torturing the people that are already giving you information.
And that was revealed that it took place in real life.
Why you can learn, at least you dropped “the Republicans never did it” In any case the report pointed to real cases that undermine what you are saying.
Lets us remember that your effort was to make the misleading and real bullshit line that “torture works” to be viable if one of your examples was valid. No one would go for such a definition and many experts have come forth to report that “torture doesn’t work” is an appropriate thing to say even if exceptions exist, because the exceptions are not as abundant as you think they are.
Straw man again, look in the dictionary for the word “exception” we are really just dealing with your sorry efforts to make “torture works” to be valid by using a definition that is bullshit indeed.
Since it was already shown that SERE did not work in real life you are even more wrong, again the bullshit argument is to try to make “torture works” to be a valid statement by using dumb arguments.
Yes of course, examples of torture working are rare if you choose to ignore very example of torture working.
You deny that torture worked in Algeria even though it helped to root out the leaders of the FLN in Algeria because the French eventually lost in Algeria. That is the sort of non sequitor you have been relying on to maintain the fiction that “torture simply doesn’t work” Who gives a shit what someone in the chain of command says 40 years later. The fact of the matter is that they used torture to find members of FLN.
You entirely dismiss the evidence of the efficacy of torture on those pussy Navy SEALS during SERE training because the conditions are too artificial?!?!?! And the you hold up fucking GAME THEORY as evidence of torture working? :ROFLMAO:
You ignore the fact that the Russians were able to recover hostages from Hezbollah by torturing the relatives of Hezbollah leaders. Torture can make people do things they don’t want to do and say things they don’t want to say. Yes this includes false confessions and you are likely to get a lot of bad information if you are interrogating someone who doesn’t know anything, OTOH, asking nicely might not work very well with some of these terrorists.
That was not just me, the general in charge of the operation reported later that indeed torture was not necessary, and it did more harm than good.
Not working, thank you very much.
And again, even you accepted that it is a valid scientific tool as issues like this one have to depend on models where it would be unethical to do a real life experiment, unfortunately the real experiment was done and it confirmed what game theory told us.
And again, you are only willfully ignoring that it was cited already that SERE failed in real life.
Straw man, that may be one exception, but once again there was not much evidence to support it. In snopes they started there by calling it a urban rumor BTW. What they did was more akin to murder rather than torture.
Bottom line: you are indeed not having good evidence or irrelevant for real life training, (and it has to be noted that this does betray your repeated demands that you are not in favor of torture) that they are exceptions is likely, but exceptions that prove the rule.