I might have an emotion-driven desire to hurt someone whose silence might cause harm to me or mine.
However, if we turn the question back on you, what is your considered answer? Knowing that torture has produced false intel that has led to horrendous errors in judgment, would you really wish to rely on torture to produce the information that would save you and yours? Or would you just be happy that even though your information was worthless or even counterproductive, at least you made someone suffer for it?
The losing side of an argument frequently finds sarcasm dumb. Just switch sides and you can be on the winning side of the argument too.
You have not demonstrated how the fact that it was a training exercise makes the fact that torture can extract information from pussy ass Navy SEALS within a matter of minutes any less relevant. Just because you can make a distinction does mean the difference is enough to make the 100% success rate meaningless.
Sure, torture can be abused to extract false confessions and shit like that. So what? Torture can also be used to punish political dissidents. The effect of torture when it is not being used to extract information says nothing about its ability to extract information.
In the first case the method of interrogation doesn’t matter, in the second case, the interrogators are not doing it right.
Please cite where I imply that torture leads to good information 100% of the time. I expressly state several times throughout this thread that torture is NOT a silver bullet. I expressly state several times throughout this thread that torture can be abused to extract false confessions and to intimidate political dissidents. I expressly state that torture cannot extract information that the prisoner does not have. I expressly state that torture will extract bad information from prisoners who don’t have any information because they don’t have any good information to give.
If you are reading my reference to those pussy ass Navy SEALS succumbing to torture 100% of the time to imply that torture has a 100% success rate whenever it is applied, then you are reading things that I am not writing.
But when Pussy ass Navy SEALS have information and we apply torture to those pussy ass Navy SEALS, those pussy ass Navy SEALS seem to give up that information 100% of the time within minutes of the torture being applied to those pussy ass Navy SEALS.
Your “fact” is actually opinion. It is clear to everyone reading this thread that I am stating a fact (100% of pussy ass Navy SEALS succumb to torture within minutes of torture being applied) and you are stating the opinion of others (this one dude who worked in the SERE program says its only a training exercise).
Once again, you try to paint me as being in favor of the use of torture. I think torture is horrible but I don’t think we need to engage in wishful thinking to prevent torture.
Once again, these are opinion. Expert opinions to be sure but there are plenty of expert opinions saying the opposite about torture. Or is the CIA not a valid expert on the use of torture?
How does the fact that SERE training is only make believe make the success rate likely to increase? If you are a Navy SEAL and you KNOW they won’t kill you are you more likely to give up or less likely to give up?
You can call it dumb all you want. But facts are stubborn things. 100% of pussy ass navy SEALS that undergo SERE training succumb to torture within minutes of the torture being applied. Sure, its a controlled environment and the interrogator KNOWS that the pussy ass Navy SEAL has the information he wants and he has the ability to rapidly determine if the information is correct but ultimately those pussy ass Navy SEALS are unable to resist the torture whereas they might be able to resist other forms of interrogation for more than a few minutes.
Yes, torture can certainly be misused (and frequently IS misused) and torture isn’t a silver bullet that will work in every situation. But its wishful thinking to say it doesn’t work.
Wait, are you saying that waterboarding ONLY works for extracting propaganda driven confessions, etc?
It may be that we will rarely be in a position where we KNOW that a prisoner knows something and be in a position to quickly determine the accuracy of that thing but it is not a null set.
If you captured someone who knew that I was a secret agent and I had full confidence in his loyalty and full confidence that you would not torture him (not just that you say you don’t torture people but that you actually in fact don’t torture people), I would consider completing my mission. If I knew you would torture him, I would get out of town as quickly as I could.
What interrogation method would you rely on to produce that reliable information?
What if the prisoner is a fanatic that refuses to respond to you or acknowledge your existence? My wife does this to me all the fucking time and no amount of cajoling or enticement can get her to say a fucking word until she is good and ready.
You are still not getting it. No one is saying that you are wrong on that, you are wrong on applying a training tool to real life. The rhetoric you are using does fail spectacularly.
The CIA failed to gain intelligence on the whole by using the reverse of SERE.
You tell me, the reality is that the SERE people involved did not report on what or how they confessed and there was the case of the tortured sailors that was used in part to create SERE, where they reported that they guys confessed alright, but it was to tell the commies that Barnie Google was their commander. So it is more likely that you have gone with the 100% result based on a urban rumor or as pointed before to results that can not be applicable in real life as what they did in real life was not really SERE, just like a few of your bits of “evidence” presented by you.
As noted before, it is becoming clear that you do not even have support for that 100% number. In any case you are still using the SERE training item out of context and that is a fact.
BTW the 100% success rate is indeed referring to controlled environments; indeed, pushing SERE in real life is taking a tool for training to resist torture and turning the success in the lab into a urban rumor when applied to real life.
And one simple reason is that, as was pointed many times before, in real life the ones torturing do not know before hand what information they are looking for; or more damningly, the ones being tortured do comply by confessing what the torturers want to hear.
Reverse engineering SERE leads to what SERE was made to train for. The torture then results into the compliance the communists expected to see for propaganda purpouses. Purposes that had little to do with gaining information.
I am not a trained interrogator, so I have no glib response regarding what technique I would use. However, since real life is not scripted by Cochran and Surnow, I will acknowledge the statements of members of Army Intelligence and the FBI that torture is the wrong approach against the claims of a handful of CIA guys who ignored the statements of people who knew what they were doing and used torture to extract false information.
you know the instructor knows what he wants you to say and he knows that you know. So you know he won’t stop until you say exactly it
you know nothing bad will happen to you if you do say it, in fact you know for a fact the exercise will stop then
you know there’s no point in not saying it, as it just means the exercise continues
it’s just a game. There are no consequences either way. You do not get points for lasting one more minute, but you might get seriously hurt.
you’re not paid enough for this shit
Compare to a real torture sesh where the interrogator can’t assess the truth of what you say, will keep torturing you no matter what you say “just to be sure” and might just kill you once they deem you’re past your usefulness to them.
You keep telling yourself that. It is clear that in the face of stubborn facts, you are choosing to ignore them as irrelevant when they are pretty squarely on point.
Really? What did the director of the CIA appointed by Bill Clinton have to say about that?
But sure, let have a battle of opinions to determine facts. :rolleyes:
Where do I EVER say that torture is 100% effective outside of the highly controlled circumstances we see in SERE training? But those very controlled circumstances do not make the 100% success rate at extracting information from pussy ass Navy SEALS irrelevant. You seem to think that these controlled circumstances makes the 100% success rate of extracting information from pussy ass Navy SEALS irrelevant because we don’t encounter those exact same circumstances with any frequency in real life.
I am pretty sure I have cited several sources for the 100% rate (or near enough to 100%).
Your cite does not support your statement. See where it says that waterboarding was used by the CIA because it was so fucking effective? The rest of the stuff is mostly moral arguments that you are trying to circumvent by claiming that torture doesn’t work so we don’t have to worry about morality.
I wouldn’t give a shit if you had mindreaders. I would continue the mission as long as I knew you didn’t torture your prisoners as long as the mission was something I could complete in a few days. If you tortured prisoners, then I would leave town within minutes.
You are choosing to believe one set of opinions that closely aligns with your deeply held beliefs and I am choosing another set of opinions that more closely aligns with the facts. As long as you understand that is what you are doing.
If it is dertmined that getting information will save lives and the information needs to be gotten quickly I think it is justified. I mostly say this because the troops have been known to turn prisoners over to the locals who are on our side and from what i understand not much torture is needed before they start talking.
You are the one doing that. And failing at that as usual.
Where do you ever? Right away in your following reply:
You are indeed shoe horning training with real conditions, that is your urban rumor. You are still attempting to make the certified dumb move to use that 100% artificial result and move it to the reality one in the discussion like if we were in a universe that forgets what sorry move you continue to make. The reverse use of SERE does not work as even the SERE experts reported.
And I did too, the reality was that the one making that claim was using also his opinion. An opinion that ignored the failures of reverse SERE used in real life. Because that fact is also ignored by you, whatever they reverse engineered and used was not SERE but the torture used to gain compliance by dictatorships or bad administrations for propaganda purposes. Not useful as information gathering.