That’s pretty much my point, Tom. Torture works but it’s wrong. And because it’s wrong we shouldn’t use it.
But arguing that we shouldn’t use torture because it doesn’t work is a bad argument. Any argument based on false premises is subject to being dismissed. If you argue that the reason why we shouldn’t use torture is because it doesn’t work, then the rebuttal is that it does work so there’s no reason not to use it.
So we should use a true argument like we shouldn’t support torture because it’s immoral and then our position won’t be subject to rebuttal.
(The intelligence gathering faults of the Bush administration is another issue. They were just bad intelligence gatherers because they sought to proceed to a pre-determined conclusion rather than obtain information and then form conclusions based on that information. Sure, some of the methods they misused involved torture. But they also misused plenty of other methods.)
We should not use it because it is immoral BUT we can also say “it does not work”, meaning it works much worse than proponents want to believe and, in the small measure that it might work, it is contraindicated by the negative effects.
You could say a nail clipper “works” for cutting the grass but I think “does not work” is what most people would agree on.
Let me know if I’m getting your point or going astray:
That’s pretty much my point, Tom. [Warrantless household searches] work but [searching someone’s house without enough probable cause to get a warrant] is wrong. And because [random searching of the populace] is wrong we shouldn’t use it.
But arguing that we shouldn’t use [random or mere hunch-based searching to find criminals] because doing so [won’t occasionally find evidence of a criminal act] is a bad argument. Any argument based on false premises is subject to being dismissed. If you argue that the reason why we shouldn’t [randomly search] is because it [won’t find anything], then the rebuttal is that [random searches do occasiona[ly] work so there’s no reason not to [perform them].
Basically, there are two prime reasons (in this thread) not to torture: it’s per se wrong; it’s ineffective. One can, with a straight face and one’s humanity intact, completely reject the latter yet be firmly against using torture in any circumstance because of the former.
As an example of a less-than-sensationalized situation where torture may actually work and, if one didn’t have moral qualms with its use, appropriate. XKCD.
Because you-- the generic “you” who is the government torturer in your hypothetical scenario-- are, as previously established, a dick. And you have no fear of official consequences, because… how did you put it?
So you can torture them any which way you want to, because until somebody leaks the photos of you letting dogs gnaw off your victims’ genitals, you won’t be held accountable for your record of failures.
Okay then, feel free to revisit your earlier scenario, with the terrorist organization and Disneyland on Thursday, with that procedure in mind.
Remember, they actually don’t know anything, so they can’t ever give you a complete true statement. Meanwhile, you don’t know that they don’t know anything, and so will continue to torture them until they give you a complete true statement. Does your literature give you any hints as to the potential flaws in this approach?
But you’ve just told me that you yourself can use techniques to conduct an interrogation in a way that will obtain information. You’ve offered a bunch of literature and claim that it backs you up.
So if you can conduct a legitimate, non-torture interrogation in a way that gives verifiable results… why do you need to torture people?
Now you tell me, O professional interrogator: what happens in a situation exactly like the one you outlined earlier, where the mystery terrorist is arriving in Atlanta on Thursday to destroy Disneyland, and you’ve picked up a member of that organization… and you can’t use torture? What happens then?
Do you actually crack any of those books and try to use some of those non-torture techniques? Do you attempt to do the job that you’re getting paid for? Or do you just give up? Or do you employ “real-world” clandestine techniques, and then work to make sure the public never finds out about it?
You claim you do non-torture interrogations all the time. You claim they obtain accurate results. Congratulations, you’ve just argued away any need to ever sanction torture.
In hindsight, that last post of mine may have been obstructively confrontational. I apologize, Little Nemo.
My problem is that, while you claim that torture works, you haven’t cited any instances in which it actually has worked. Just asserting that it happens in “the real world,” and the public never finds out about it, is not a very compelling argument in my opinion. I have no doubt that in the thousands of years and hundreds of countries in which torture has been employed, some information has been accurate. But enough to make the practice worthwhile? Despite all the confessions over the centuries, it appears that there probably were no real witches.
Do the authors you cited claim that torture works? Do they evaluate its rate of success in relation to non-torture methods of interrogation?
Wait a minute. You’ve lost me. Why are you working on the notion that the Tom Brown result is more appropriate to pass on to your boss than the Bob Smith or the Pete Jones results?
Those of sound morals say we shouldn’t torture people because it’s utterly evil. The bit about it producing inaccurate results is just a line to try to convince those who are too morally bankrupt to understand this fact. It may be a true line, but it’s still not the real reason.
(To clarify: I’m not trying to accuse the OP of being morally bankrupt for asking a hypothetical question. Now, certain members of the Bush administration, on the other hand . . . . )
Because the Tom Brown information is linked to the Atlanta information and the Thursday information - information we already knew was true (and the victim didn’t know we knew). The fact that we know the information he gave us about the date and destination was true would indicate that the information he also gave us about the name and plan is equally true. Keep in mind, the victim doesn’t know what we know - he’s not going to be able to randomly guess what we know and tell us just that and mix it in with a bunch of lies. As I’ve said this has nothing specific to do with torture; it’s a general interrogation technique for determing whether or not somebody is telling the truth.
If you look at a lot of pro-life organizational literature, you’ll often see the claim that having an abortion increase your chances of getting cancer. Reputable objective groups like the New England Journal of Medicine, The National Breast Cancer Coalition, The American Cancer Society, and the World Health Organization say that isn’t true - there’s no link between abortions and cancer. But the pro-life people apparently decided that telling people that abortions were immoral wasn’t working. So they told them it causes cancer instead.
You don’t see people talking about intelligence they gathered by torture for the same reason you don’t see people talking about intelligence they gathered by spies or bribing people or breaking codes or photo recon satellites or tapping phones or anything else. Because the organizations that gather intelligence like to keep their secrets secret. When they find out information they don’t talk about it.
Are you serious? Do you really think those are torture manuals? For the record, none of those books advocate torture in any manner.
I use psychology when I interrogate people. But not everyone has my gift (or my advantage that the people I interrogate aren’t all that smart). Less intelligent people might see the appeal of not having to spend hours in a match of wits when they can get the same results within thirty minutes with some pliers and a chisel.
While that is certainly true, there have been many publicized cases of successful intelligence gathered by spies, and bribes, and code-breaking, and satellite photography, and phone-tapping. Whole shelves of books, from the Civil War to WWII to the Cuban Missile Crisis to the present day, have been written on these very subjects, their uses and misuses. I am fairly sure that there have been many successes documented. So where are the successful torture anecdotes?
I didn’t intend to suggest that those books advocated torture. But as previously noted, saying that torture works isn’t the same as advocating torture. If the authors are experts on interrogation techniques, it seems reasonable that they would have professional opinions on the subject. I thought that at least one of those books would have an historical or international summary of such interrogation methods and their effectiveness.
These histories were written about western intelligence agencies and up until the last eight years, these agencies did not use torture (or at least didn’t admit to it). The regimes that used torture for intelligence work like Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, China, Iran, North Korea, etc. don’t publish books about their intelligence agencies.
Well then perhaps we are talking past each other. You offered a hypothetical scenario that included torture, and asked why it wouldn’t work. You also said the claim that torture doesn’t work is “disingenuous.” Now you’re saying it’s unnecessary. I admit to being confused by the nuances of your argument.
There are a bunch of interrogation methods that work. Torture is one method that works. But it’s immoral. So we should use one of the other methods that work.
True. One of the few things worse than being tortured for information is being tortured for information you genuinely don’t have.
But it wouldn’t invalidate the interrogation. A person who doesn’t know anything would not be able to randomly make up the kind of true information he’d need to convince his torturer he was revealing true secrets. So the torturer would not believe anything the victim said.