Torture doesn't work

[GIGObuster]

@HoneyBadgerDC

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 ignoring that turning the prisioners to the locals only made the corruption of information worse, as pointed many times already they start talking allright, but they talk about what the torturers want to hear. The evidence points to torture in those rendering conditions gave us false evidence that helped justify the invasion of Iraq.

Extraordinary rendition

In 2002, captured Al Qaeda leader Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi was rendered to Egypt where he was allegedly tortured. The information he provided to his interrogators formed a fundamental part of the Bush administration case for attacking Iraq, alleging links between Al Qaeda and Iraq. Al-Libi later recanted his story and it is generally believed that his stories of contact between the Saddam Hussein regime and Al-Qaeda were fabricated to please his interrogators.[99]

The CIA Just Declassified the Document That Supposedly Justified the Iraq...

Just about 1/2 million dead in big part due to bad intelligence coming from torture.

[tomndebb]

@Damuri_Ajashi

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.

Nope. You are choosing to believe that training exercises designed for different purposes than to actually extract information are “facts” while the experiences of people who have conducted actual, successful interrogations are “opinions.” Nothing you have repeated ad nauseam about training exercises is actually a “fact” regarding torture. The FBI and Army Intelligence had years of actually interrogating prisoners. Due to the difference in missions, the CIA had almost no such experience. When matched to the frequent errors and false information that was “discovered” by the CIA or its “rendering” affiliates in other countries through torture, the facts say the torture is not an effective method of interrogation.

Has there ever been an occasion when torture provided accurate information? Probably. However its high rate of “false positive” results renders even an occasional “success” suspect and not worth pursuing.

Your claim to be using “facts” is based on your bait-and-switch practice of claiming that training exercises can be used to judge actual practice. Those are not facts, just your unsubstantiated opinion.

(And do yourself and your audience a favor and quit repeating your straw man sarcasm about pussy SEALs. No one is arguing that the SEALs are not tough enough. It is a dishonest argument that detracts from even the paucity of your claims.)

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@Kobal2

Of course you’re more likely to give up.

1. 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
2. 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
3. you know there’s no point in not saying it, as it just means the exercise continues
4. 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.
5. 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.

There is a reason I refer to those pussy ass Navy SEALS in that manner. Navy SEAL training is (by most accounts) more mentally demanding than physically demanding. Almost anyone accepted into the training program has the physical ability to complete it. These guys are mentally tough and serious about what they do. You seem to be making the argument that these pussy ass Navy SEALS are going to half ass this part of SERE training because, well, why the fuck not?

I agree that you can’t directly correlate the results from the controlled situation in SERE training with live fire situations. I don’t think that torture works 100% of the time in real life, no interrogation method does. But I think that the 100% success rate that torture has on pussy ass Navy SEALS under controlled conditions is strong evidence that torture works well enough (at least in some situations) that you can’t dismiss torture as not worth pursuing because it simply doesn’t work.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@GIGObuster

You are the one doing that. And failing at that as usual.

Wait. What FACTS have you presented? You have presented opinions and anecdotes. That’s about it.

[quote]
Where do you ever? Right away in your following reply:[/quoe]

You need to work on your reading skills if you think that statement is saying that torture always works.

You are indeed shoe horning training with real conditions, that is your urban rumor.

It doesn’t matter how inconvenient facts are to your argument. They will stubbornly remain facts. I never imply that the 100% success rate that torture has in extracting information from pussy ass Navy SEALS indicates that we would see this sort of success rate in the field. You are merely creating a straw man that is easier to refute.

I n the other hand don’t need to create a straw man because your statement is so ridiculous that no straw manning is necessary.

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.

“certified dumb move”? WTF is that? If you can use game theory of all fucking things as proof of ANYTHING in real life then I can certainly use actual results using real live pussy ass Navy SEALS and their pussy ass reaction to torture.

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.

WAIT!!! Are you contesting the results of SERE training or not? Because those results are fact not opinion. You seem to think that opinions in your favor are facts and facts that discredit your argument are opinions. That’s is not how we distinguish facts from opinions.

The mere fact that torture CAN be used to extract bad information is not an argument that torture ALWAYS extracts bad information. For example in SERE training, they try to extract very specific information from those pussy ass Navy SEALS and they in fact extract that specific information from those pussy ass Navy SEALS ~100% of the time… within a few minutes.

[GIGObuster]

mjYep still a dumb move as even the Colonel that trained in SERE told us already.

KLEINMAN: See, that‘s where the misunderstanding lies. At the very senior levels of government—surprisingly—the understandings of the complexities of interrogation is rare. It really is. It‘s probably shaped more by the television, “24,” than practitioners of the art.

There‘s a lot of people who don‘t see—don‘t understand the difference between a model that would train people to resist harsh interrogation and the purpose of that was to compel people to produce propaganda, and intelligence interrogation, which is designed to elicit cooperation intelligence—therefore, timely, accurate and comprehensive intelligence. They‘re very similar. They appear almost similar at the surface, but there‘s very, very profound differences and those two cannot be crossed.

MADDOW: I know that defenders of the Bush administration‘s interrogation program—and we now have a lot of evidence that it was a program—they say that these harsh techniques, these extreme techniques were only used in extremely controlled circumstances, on a very small number of people by only very highly-trained, skilled personnel, that it was an elite practice in essence. Does that accord with what you saw in Iraq and how you know these techniques were used?

**KLEINMAN: Not at all. First of all, it is not an elite practice. You know, enhanced interrogation technique - that term - would connote an elite program, an advanced program, one conducted by sophisticated practitioners. And nothing can be further from the truth. The best interrogators in this country understand how to interrogate and that‘s largely a relationship-based, culturally-elite finesse approach.

It‘s systematic and it‘s patient. And that‘s what produces information, to use, you know, SERE methods or to think that one can use physicality or heavy stress to obtain useful, reliable information is just a misnomer. It‘s not backed up by operational experience, and it is not backed up by one shred of scientific evidence.**

And that is not just opinion as much as you deny it. It is experience talking there, and from a SERE expert.

[tomndebb]

@Damuri_Ajashi

u seem to be making the argument that these pussy ass Navy SEALS are going to half ass this part of SERE training because, well, why the fuck not?

No one has made that argument.

That is a straw man, bordering on dishonest, and has now moved into the realm of trolling, being posted solely to get a rise out of other posters.

Stop it.

[ /Moderating ]

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@tomndebb

Nope. You are choosing to believe that training exercises designed for different purposes than to actually extract information are “facts” while the experiences of people who have conducted actual, successful interrogations are “opinions.”

You are picking and choosing which opinions you believe. Because there are plenty of people who were involved with the enhanced interrogation program who say it worked. In fact the Director of the CIA (appointed by Clinton) seems to think that it works. So there is no consensus among experts that torture does or doesn’t work unless you only rely on the experts that say torture doesn’t work.

What SERE training was designed for is only tangentially relevant. The fact of the matter is that torture was applied to pussy ass Navy SEALS and in 100% of those cases, the pussy ass Navy SEAL divulged information that they were told NOT to divulge and those pussy ass Navy SEALS gave up the information within a few minutes of being tortured.

Nothing you have repeated ad nauseam about training exercises is actually a “fact” regarding torture. The FBI and Army Intelligence had years of actually interrogating prisoners. Due to the difference in missions, the CIA had almost no such experience.

Wait, you are saying that the CIA doesn’t have experience interrogating prisoners? Are you fucking kidding me? You think the Central INTELLIGENCE Agency doesn’t do its share of interrogations? You sure you don’t want to revise that statement? Do you think the CIA is more likely to hand a prisoner over to army intelligence for interrogation or the army is more likely to hand a prisoner over to the CIA for interrogation?

Who do you think had more experience in torture?

When matched to the frequent errors and false information that was “discovered” by the CIA or its “rendering” affiliates in other countries through torture, the facts say the torture is not an effective method of interrogation.

Has there ever been an occasion when torture provided accurate information? Probably. However its high rate of “false positive” results renders even an occasional “success” suspect and not worth pursuing.

If that’s what we are getting then we are not doing it right.

Your claim to be using “facts” is based on your bait-and-switch practice of claiming that training exercises can be used to judge actual practice. Those are not facts, just your unsubstantiated opinion.

(And do yourself and your audience a favor and quit repeating your straw man sarcasm about pussy SEALs. No one is arguing that the SEALs are not tough enough. It is a dishonest argument that detracts from even the paucity of your claims.)
[/QUOTE]

[Jonathan_Chance]

That’s a warning for failure to obey instructions.

Keep it up. You can get more.

[Velocity]

I think this discussion is motivated largely by a “give them an inch and they’ll take a mile” mentality. Namely, people feel that it’s not just enough to say that torture is morally wrong (which it is.) They fear that if they say, “Torture is morally wrong, but it can work,” may open a crack in the door for torture to be advocated as justifiable.

[Velocity]

With regards to the Navy SEAL in SERE training argument (from which** Damuri Ajashi** has apparently been prohibited by the mods from mentioning further,) I would argue also that while training does not 100% replicate real life, it can indicate probable outcomes in real life.

So while making a basketball free thrown in practice is not the same as sinking a free throw in the NBA Finals with millions of spectators watching on television, I would still prefer a player who made 95% of free throws in practice rather than the one who only made 30% of free throws in practice.

[GIGObuster]

@Velocity

I think this discussion is motivated largely by a “give them an inch and they’ll take a mile” mentality. Namely, people feel that it’s not just enough to say that torture is morally wrong (which it is.) They fear that if they say, “Torture is morally wrong, but it can work,” may open a crack in the door for torture to be advocated as justifiable.

Again a false equivalence argument. Even tomndeb mentioned that it may work on ocasion. And even when declaring that torture does not work it is assumed that someone could get lucky.

As Politifact reported, in the OP no less, the bottom line is that the torture made during the Bush administration did not led us to much evidence to convict the arrested. And the evidence in favor of the anecdotes where the supporters of torture claimed it worked are doubtful or used out of context while denying even what the experts told us.

[GIGObuster]

@Velocity

With regards to the Navy SEAL in SERE training argument (from which** Damuri Ajashi** has apparently been prohibited by the mods from mentioning further,) I would argue also that while training does not 100% replicate real life, it can indicate probable outcomes in real life.

So while making a basketball free thrown in practice is not the same as sinking a free throw in the NBA Finals with millions of spectators watching on television, I would still prefer a player who made 95% of free throws in practice rather than the one who only made 30% of free throws in practice.

Looking at the OP it is clear that you are still ignore the levels of success that torture can get. Again, you are dealing here with a tool to train Seals that the very Seals are telling you was reversed to become what the training was made to resist. (Indeed, the reason why it was a dishonest argument is that it was not SERE, but the kind of torture that in the past told many nations that flying witches were real, delaying human progres by hundreds of yers IMHO) Torture that does not care about information but to make the tortured a tool of the torturing state.

[Fotheringay-Phipps]

@tomndebb

No one has made that argument.

That is a straw man, bordering on dishonest, and has now moved into the realm of trolling, being posted solely to get a rise out of other posters.

Stop it.

[ /Moderating ]

Is the “straw man” the descriptions of the Navy SEALs as “pussy ass” or the suggestion that Kobal2 said they were “going to half ass this part of SERE training because, well, why the fuck not?” Because the latter seems a pretty apt description of what he said AFAICT.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@tomndebb

Your claim to be using “facts” is based on your bait-and-switch practice of claiming that training exercises can be used to judge actual practice. Those are not facts, just your unsubstantiated opinion.

The FACT is that torture conducted during SERE training is 100% effective. That is a fact. What does it matter that this torture occurs during training or not? The FACT is that pussy ass Navy SEALS divulge information within minutes of being tortured 100% of the time. in light of that FACT, it is really weak sauce to say that this is 100% success rate is somehow irrelevant because it occurs during training.

(And do yourself and your audience a favor and quit repeating your straw man sarcasm about pussy SEALs. No one is arguing that the SEALs are not tough enough. It is a dishonest argument that detracts from even the paucity of your claims.)

OF COURSE its necessary when the arguments against the applicability of the 100% success rate when torture is used against these pussy ass Navy SEALS is that they aren’t really taking their training seriously because its “just an exercise” or “just a game” These are pussy ass Navy SEALS. They take their training seriously and they aren’t giving up that information within minutes of torture being applied just to move on to the next stage in their training. I appreciate that the facts are inconvenient to your argument but one fact is more powerful than all your opinions.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@tomndebb

No one has made that argument.

That is a straw man, bordering on dishonest, and has now moved into the realm of trolling, being posted solely to get a rise out of other posters.

Stop it.

[ /Moderating ]

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=19456936&postcount=553

1. 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
2. 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
3. you know there’s no point in not saying it, as it just means the exercise continues
4. 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.
5. you’re not paid enough for this shit

Nothing about this post can be construed to say that Navy SEALS are not taking their training seriously. That they are just half assing their training because, why the fuck not?

Should I point out a few “bordering on” dishonest posts from GIGObuster so you can moderate him as well?

[GIGObuster]

Not necessary as what it took place in real life was torture, not SERE. Again what an instructor of NAVY seals recounts:

MADDOW: I know that defenders of the Bush administration‘s interrogation program—and we now have a lot of evidence that it was a program—they say that these harsh techniques, these extreme techniques were only used in extremely controlled circumstances, on a very small number of people by only very highly-trained, skilled personnel, that it was an elite practice in essence. Does that accord with what you saw in Iraq and how you know these techniques were used?

COLONEL KLEINMAN: Not at all. First of all, it is not an elite practice. You know, enhanced interrogation technique - that term - would connote an elite program, an advanced program, one conducted by sophisticated practitioners. And nothing can be further from the truth. The best interrogators in this country understand how to interrogate and that‘s largely a relationship-based, culturally-elite finesse approach.

It‘s systematic and it‘s patient. And that‘s what produces information, to use, you know, SERE methods or to think that one can use physicality or heavy stress to obtain useful, reliable information is just a misnomer. It‘s not backed up by operational experience, and it is not backed up by one shred of scientific evidence.

And you are missing the point of what tomndeb is complaining, It is not only the insulting terms but that dishonest argument that attempt to use that 100% training result and ignore that it is not SERE what was used in the field. It was an alleged and an opinion of a CIA guy that advised in the end to not use the revere of SERE in the field.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@Jonathan_Chance

That’s a warning for failure to obey instructions.

Keep it up. You can get more.

What moderator instruction did I fail to obey?

I just saw TomnDebb’s moderator instruction and AFAICT, he is telling me not to claim that his side of the argument is saying that NAVY SEALS are half assing their training.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@Velocity

With regards to the Navy SEAL in SERE training argument (from which** Damuri Ajashi** has apparently been prohibited by the mods from mentioning further,) I would argue also that while training does not 100% replicate real life, it can indicate probable outcomes in real life.

So while making a basketball free thrown in practice is not the same as sinking a free throw in the NBA Finals with millions of spectators watching on television, I would still prefer a player who made 95% of free throws in practice rather than the one who only made 30% of free throws in practice.

Wait. What?!?! Is THAT what TomnDebb was saying? You’ve got to be kidding me. Tomndebb, say it isn’t so.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@GIGObuster

Again a false equivalence argument. Even tomndeb mentioned that it may work on ocasion. And even when declaring that torture does not work it is assumed that someone could get lucky.

As Politifact reported, in the OP no less, the bottom line is that the torture made during the Bush administration did not led us to much evidence to convict the arrested. And the evidence in favor of the anecdotes where the supporters of torture claimed it worked are doubtful or used out of context while denying even what the experts told us.

Despite the domain name, politifact is not actually fact. Its their determination of whether or not they believe an assertion.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@GIGObuster

Looking at the OP it is clear that you are still ignore the levels of success that torture can get. Again, you are dealing here with a tool to train Seals that the very Seals are telling you was reversed to become what the training was made to resist. (Indeed, the reason why it was a dishonest argument is that it was not SERE, but the kind of torture that in the past told many nations that flying witches were real, delaying human progres by hundreds of yers IMHO) Torture that does not care about information but to make the tortured a tool of the torturing state.

Once again, no one is saying that torture cannot be misused. But that does not mean that it doesn’t work.