Torture doesn't work

GIGObuster · June 29, 2016, 9:04pm

What the evidence and experts in SERE report is that you are not even wrong.

SERE is a training tool to resist torture. Not a tool to gain information. And the evidence is clear that you do not now how useful you anecdotes are. I rather rely on what the SERE experts are telling us.

Damuri_Ajashi · June 30, 2016, 3:00pm

No shit and in this training where we are training those pussy ass Navy SEALS to resist torture, none of those fucking feeble pussy navy SEALS are able to resist torture for more than a few minutes.

Like I said I can cite experts saying that torture is an important arrow in our interrogation quiver. Opinions are not facts.

Anecdotes are not useful in supporting a statement that torture doesn’t work, only that it doesn’t work sometimes. Anecdotes are useful in supporting the statement that torture works sometimes. That’s why my anecdotes count and your don’t.

GIGObuster · June 30, 2016, 5:33pm

Clearly you do think that alcohol applied to cancer cells in the lab cure cancer.

There! End of history.

Unless one realizes how silly that is.

It is indeed more accurate to report that it may be so in the lab, but that it fails when applied to real life. And so it is why the SERE experts report that torture does not work for the issue at hand.

Damuri_Ajashi · July 1, 2016, 3:20pm

This is in no way analogouos to pouring alcohol on cancer cells and then declaring alcohol and effective cure for cancer. I don’t see how anyone could think that this is a reasonable analogy.

And it boggles the fucking mind that you would rely on fucking game theory of all things and discard “lab results” because its not “real world”

Monty · July 1, 2016, 3:55pm

“Game theory of all things”? Instead of being dismissive of a real and important science, you could improve your understanding of what GT is and is not by reading this for starters.

GIGObuster · July 1, 2016, 4:56pm

[QUOTE=Damuri Ajashi]
This is in no way analogouos to pouring alcohol on cancer cells and then declaring alcohol and effective cure for cancer. I don’t see how anyone could think that this is a reasonable analogy.

[/Quote]

As noted many times already, trainers and experts on SERE already think so. A training tool to resist torture was reverse engineered and perverted when used in real life. A tool that was not designed to gain information but compliance. So stop reaching for the tactic that we will all forget what was posted just hours ago. The op and the cites there are about torture not working to gain useful information.

[Quote=Damuri Ajashi]
useful
And it boggles the fucking mind that you would resly oIn fucking game theory of all things and discard “lab results” because its not “real world”
[/QUOTE]

It does sounds like that to you. Not to others that also show that you were also wrong on thinking that no one looks seriously to what I say or link to.

Damuri_Ajashi · July 2, 2016, 3:47pm

Yeah, I know very well what game theory is. I am not dismissing it as junk science but theorizing about logical actions of participants it is not any more “real world” than the 100% success rate that interrogators achieve against those pussy ass Navy SEALS when torture is applied for a few minutes.

If you actually know wtf game theory is, then you understand its limitations and how dependent the results are on the assumptions and “rules” that are imposed on the game. The results are highly sensitive to these things and if instead of assuming that the interrogator has no fucking clue who the prisoner is or what they know, if you assume that the interrogator KNOWS that the prisoner is a high ranking terrorist leader that has a shitload of information, it changes things. If the terrorist leader knows that the interrogator knows these things, THAT fact changes things. The application of game theory in that case was proof of nothing and if you know anything about game theory, you probably know that.

GIGObuster · July 2, 2016, 4:53pm

And again, hapily ignoring what the experts are telling about SERE does undermine everything you are telling us. Again, you are misusing a training tool by trying to shoe horn it into a discussion about how reliable torture is.

http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/torturingdemocracy/interviews/michael_gelles.html#seretechniques

There were other techniques and strategies being utilized and being implemented elsewhere, as ways of eliciting information that were beginning to funnel down from other agencies into DOD and into the law enforcement community. Techniques that we were hearing about -- not witnessing, not seeing, but hearing about as being proposed, which were quite contradictory, if you had any true understanding or insight into this adversary. And that would be SERE -- reverse engineering of the SERE tactics. 

**SERE is training for individuals to be prepared for, should they be captured. This is all done within a school context with the purposes of helping people develop some expectation of what could occur. Now, because they had used that, and had watched the stress, as you would imagine, associated with that in schools, reengineer that to use in interrogations. Absolutely ridiculous.**

Why?*

** It’s just completely out of context. Those types of tactics were used to prepare people to resist and evade. Now we were going to use them to elicit information?** It also was contradictory to all the concepts that helped us understand who the adversary was, and how we could elicit accurate, reliable information.

You are acting here as if the links and reports that showed experts and other people telling us that the game theorist was on the money regarding what took place in real life did not happen. But everyone else can check for themselves.

Regarding SERE Here is more from the experts interviewed in Torturing Democracy from PBS’s Frontline:

A lot of people objecting, and objecting, on the basis of it just doesn’t work?

I'll tell you. This is something that probably, you know -- it's one of those things my mother should never hear. There is the notion of some of these techniques -- and I do believe this -- just first of all, being immoral. There is a moral check on this. The other is that you don't want to engage in techniques and tactics like this, with an adversary, that might then in result cause those who capture our service people and our folks -- for it to be, then, condoned and used on them. **Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, we didn't believe it worked.

So if you really get down to the brass tacks, if these are strategies that we feel are not effective in eliciting accurate and reliable information, why would you risk all the other potential consequences, to include, justifiably, the moral argument? It's just not what we do as a country, and a nation.**

What SERE was designed to do was to provide training and opportunities for these folks and again, I'm not a SERE psychologist; I never served with SERE -- but to expose them to a variety of different environments and situations that would build their resiliency should they be captured. And it's done in a very controlled setting by highly trained professionals, and it is a I think been proven to be a critical asset in anyone's training who deploys into hostile territory.

The idea of using those techniques, then, in the interrogation setting, where you're in an uncontrolled setting, where the goal is not to build resiliency but to elicit information, because during a controlled setting with students those techniques were found in a mock exercise to elicit information. Again, without getting into detail, you can understand there's a very different context here. "I know I'm a student, I know that this is controlled, I know they're not going to hurt me, I know they're not going to kill me, I know that I've got to get through this exercise and how much of this am I going to really, you know, how much of this is really real?" Vice, when I take those techniques that I was using in a controlled setting with a detainee, you know, who has -- the purpose is to use them to elicit information. And the techniques themselves, which I think what we began to see in terms of some of the techniques, you know, where people were humiliated -- those aren't SERE techniques for all intents and purposes.

It led to this, what we call, "drift", and that was something also that we've spoken quite a bit about, I have, and Dave has, and I know Alberto Mora has, in regards to, when you begin to give some permission for the use and in this case, in my opinion, the inappropriate use of -- inappropriate application of techniques in a context they were never designed for. Things are going to begin to get out of hand. You don't have the same controls in place that you have in a SERE school setting, so where is it going to go?

And that was the whole argument about the coercive tactics, is they began to come into place, especially with the insight and experience, probably not the experience and exposure I had, to seeing these young folks -- 18, 19, 20 -- who were up against considerable challenges, to do interrogations of, in some cases, difficult people who either didn't know anything, who didn't want to talk, and who you were talking with through an interpreter. It could be a pretty volatile situation. How do you then really institute the controls over these types of tactics? How do you demonstrate how long someone stands in a stress position? How long is sensory deprivation or isolation going to lead to some of psychological sequelae. You don't know, and we don't know.

But we knew that the idea was to elicit accurate and reliable information. And we didn't really think that these techniques were going to achieve the goal that we wanted, which was accurate and reliable information that could be presented in a court of law, whether that would be a tribunal or that would be a hearing of some or sort or in US court.

A SERE student, even totally stressed, knows that he’s not going to be killed. Could the detainees understandably fear that they were going to be harmed, if not killed?

I would imagine that they would have been quite frightened about what the potential outcome was. I don't know that I could ever surmise -- I guess some of them may have feared that they might have died; there was clearly probably a lot of stress. But, remember now, there were there were different levels of the SERE techniques.

But they led, I think, to the thinking that we could begin to develop and utilize more coercive tactics to more expediently elicit information. And in all fairness to the people who were doing that thinking, despite the fact that I didn't necessarily agree with them, in fairness, their goal was to protect America. Their goal was to stop a terrorist attack. We don't want to see thousands of Americans again die in a US city, and if this is what it was going to take, this is what we were going to do. Now, I wouldn't argue with the fact that all of us never wanted to see any American die again in a US city, let alone the fact that we pain whenever there's an American killed in Afghanistan or Iraq. However, we didn't believe that this was the appropriate approach. That's really what it comes down to.

tomndebb · July 3, 2016, 1:27am

You keep repeating this nonsense. Do you actually believe it?

SEALS, being trained to resist torture are not actually trying to protect their buddies or defend a personal belief; they are undergoing an exercise. What sort of false information are they supposed to give out during that exercise?

Your “100% success rate” is bullshit. It indicates only that a bunch of guys who are told to undergo a certain amount of torture have no vested interest in actually putting up with the pain or misleading their tormentors for any length of time.

Damuri_Ajashi · July 4, 2016, 5:57pm

100% success rate in eliciting the desired information from those pussy ass Navy SEALS. What does it matter that SERE training is supposed to train those spussy ass Navy SEALS to resist torture. The torture that was used on them worked ~100% of the time, usually within minutes of being applied.

Spin that however you want. Link to a dozen anecdotes and expert opinions. Facts are stubborn things. 100% success rate extracting the dsired information from those pussy ass navy SEALS.

If you want to start a thread arguing the MORALITY of torture or whether they are a net positive in our effort to fight terrorism, then go start that thread. If you want to argue that torture doesn’t work, then you still haven’t been able to rebutt the fact that torture seems to work in military simulations with those pussy ass Navy SEALS. I really don’t see how the fact that the pussy ass a Navy SEALS Knew they weren’t going to be killed would make them MORE likely to give up their information like the pussies that they are.

Damuri_Ajashi · July 4, 2016, 6:01pm

Are you questioning my sincerity? Is it really that surprising that the 100% success rate that torture has in extracting information from pussy ass Navy SEALS is so convincing.

Yes, go ahead and tell us again how these pussy ass navy SEALS don’t really take their training seriously and are actually not as tough as random terrorists we pick up off the battle field or terrorist leaders.

Are you under the impression that we extract more false information from a prisoner with torture who actually has information than with other forms of interrogation?

Of course, those pussy ass Navy SEALS don’t actually give a shit and just half-ass it through their training (I believe half-assing shit is a prerequisite to being accepted into the SEAL training program).

The 100% success rate indicates that torture is so fucking unpleasant that people will give up whatever information they have within minutes even when those people are among he most mentally tough dudes that a country of 300 million people can produce.

tomndebb · July 4, 2016, 6:08pm

Your sarcasm is noted, as is your fixation on repeating such sarcasm that was dumb when first applied.

That out of the way, a training exercise is not real life, regardless how often you repeat the claim or make up reasons to invest it with more importance than it has.

We know that a number of tortures resulted in bad information being given to the CIA in the run up to Bush’s War. Whether those were the result of the victim carefully handing out bad information or the interrogators insisting on torturing the victim until they heard what they wanted to hear, the torture resulted in false intel.

I don’t care how many people in the U.S. military gave in to torture during a training exercise. Your “100%” claim is misleading because it implies that the torture would result in good information at (nearly) 100% of the time and we already know that that is false.

GIGObuster · July 4, 2016, 7:58pm

The fact that is more stubborn is that the very same people that worked with SERE reported that it is not a tool to gain information, but to resist torture. Indeed you are resorting to a talking point that only a conspiracy theorist would be proud to use, but it is clear that it is the only pathetic one you have left.

And clearly you do not care at all that there were NAVY seal instructors (Malcom Nance) that already told all how off base you are. Clearly you will also toss them under the bus if you had the chance, but sadly for you they already convinced most in power that they are correct and you are wrong.

The ARMY also would like to tell you that your insistance of using SERE to justify your “not even wrong” point is being used out of context and usually a failure to gain intelligence.

http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/torturingdemocracy/interviews/brittain_mallow.html

When did you realize, or your agents realize, that some of this had something to do with this SERE training?

The survival, evasion, resistance, and escape tactics. That took place in summer of 2002, the discussions. And I think -- I don't remember exactly how we first heard about it. I think we first heard about it from someone at Guantanamo, and they talked to us, and we discussed it up in the Task Force. And that's when I talked to Mike Gelles and some of our other advisors there. And we collectively, rather quickly, came to the conclusion that that was a false lead. That was a bad way to go. **SERE was designed as a training tactic. It was a way to approximate the pressures that a captured American might be placed under and to train him to be able to deal with some of his discomfort. It was not designed as a true elicitation tactic.**

And when you start talking about this phenomenon of experimentation and the chain of frustration, experimentation and then more, I think this is a prime example. Casting about for something that might work. "Well, how about a SERE tactic? I went through that school, and that put me under a lot of pressure, and might that work with these guys?" Again, it was designed as a training mechanism. It was not designed as an elicitation technique. It was not tested. It's never been tested to actually produce reliable results. And again, you have the same problems that I described before. You might simply evoke a response that might not produce reliable information. And is it right to do those same kinds of things to someone who's in detention, truly, and not someone who has signed up to take training? **People that go through the SERE training are all volunteers. And it's just that. It's a training mechanism. **

And it’s a training mechanism, as I understand it, that was modeled on the methods of governments whom we considered unethical at best, and people who tortured at worst.

That's where it was developed. It was developed basically in the Cold War as a result of persons being captured in Korea, and what we believed happened with them, what we believed was being done in Asia, what we believed was later done in southeast Asia with some of our captives.** So we were trying to design a training program that would help our people understand what kinds of things go on in their own heads when they're placed under those pressures. But I'm not sure how that translates into an elicitation tactic, a way of really getting the truth.**

In other words, getting information.

Right.

Indeed, using SERE to justify the idea that torture works is using a training tool out of context and it only makes your points look really dumb.

Ibn_Warraq · July 4, 2016, 8:26pm

tomndebb:

Your sarcasm is noted, as is your fixation on repeating such sarcasm that was dumb when first applied.

That out of the way, a training exercise is not real life, regardless how often you repeat the claim or make up reasons to invest it with more importance than it has.

We know that a number of tortures resulted in bad information being given to the CIA in the run up to Bush’s War. Whether those were the result of the victim carefully handing out bad information or the interrogators insisting on torturing the victim until they heard what they wanted to hear, the torture resulted in false intel.

I don’t care how many people in the U.S. military gave in to torture during a training exercise. Your “100%” claim is misleading because it implies that the torture would result in good information at (nearly) 100% of the time and we already know that that is false.

It’s also worth noting that the scenario he’s bringing up is highly unlikely to be terribly useful when determining how to interrogate individuals in the context he’s talking about.

To add to what you’re saying, though you might disagree, FWIW, having talked to people who were “tortured” both by SAVAK in Iran and at the Hanoi Hilton in Vietnam, yes when you put a person through an ocean of pain until they’ll tell you what you want to hear, they’ll tell you. However, those people I talked to weren’t being asked to give up valuable military information that they might or might not have or that could or couldn’t be confirmed right away, they were being asked to sign “confessions” to various “war crimes” or appear in propaganda videos or something similar.

GIGObuster · July 4, 2016, 9:04pm

I think one problem Ibn Warraq has is that he has ignored that the point he is making now was already mentioned before, Torture is effetive as a propaganda tool as it allows the enemy soldiers to be compliant for your propaganda efforts. But as it was noted before it has nothing to do about gaining information from the enemy.

Again the subject of the OP and Politifact is:

Clearly the subject has been about that, not about why dictators and bad USA administrations really used torture for.

Ibn_Warraq · July 4, 2016, 11:31pm

I agree. Damuri seems to disagree.

GIGObuster · July 5, 2016, 12:32am

Whoops, :smack: Sorry Ibn Warraq, yeah, I meant Damuri Ajashi there.

Velocity · July 5, 2016, 1:20am

For the people who claim that torture doesn’t work, how truly confident are you in it? Would you, in a real-life situation, feel truly, securely, confident about that premise?
(Some may glibly reply “Yes” for the sake of being glib, but I am asking for genuine, serious responses. Imagine that the penalty for the wrong assumption - in a real life your-fellow-spy-was-captured situation, for instance - could mean *your own *capture and death next.)

Czarcasm · July 5, 2016, 1:42am

And I could ask the same of you concerning the use of mindreaders and other woosters to gather information: Imagine the penalty if you assume that they are all full of crap-Dare you take that chance in a real life-or-death situation?

Ibn_Warraq · July 5, 2016, 1:56am

Hey no problem.

FWIW, I’ve certainly heard of “psychological pressure techniques” working which sound essentially like torture to me, unless one wants to a la John Yoo start drastically redefining how people view torture, but certainly the type of torture that Damuri seems to be describing works only for propaganda purposes or in situations that are unlikely to come up in real life and that allied interrogators are unlikely to encounter.

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Torture doesn't work

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