Personally I would be inclined to support this type of pressure if several conditions are met. Including that it be used for gleaning information about future attacks, as opposed to collecting evidence of past crimes. Also that there be some degree of assurance that the guys being tortured actually have the information necessary. I’m unsure how these might be enforced. (Perhaps give people the option of suing if they are not).
And I would think the standards do not need to be particularly high before administering a truth serum. Frankly, I don’t have many qualms at all about it’s use. (Though I’m unaware of how effective these are - perhaps someone can fill me in).
I don’t like the idea of merely extraditing the guys to face torture back home, though. Seems hypocritical to me.
What do others think? And also, a factual question - what has been the attitude of the US towards other countries that practice these forms of torture? (I believe Israel practices this type of torture, though I think they’ve been moving away from it in recent years).
I am also depressed by your idea of paying innocent people to compensate them for being tortured.
I realise that you are rightly disgusted by terrorism. But this is the start of a slippery slope, that ends with Muslim (or Asian) shops being fire-bombed ‘because THEY did it’.
The British have used unpleasant interrogation techniques on IRA suspects.
This was promptly used to raise money from US supporters. it certainly didn’t solve the Irish crisis.
Imagine the propaganda value of a terrorist telling potential supporters “The USA uses torture on our freedom fighters.”
In a Washington Post article about this issue, we get this tidbit
So here we have a member of Bush the Elder’s administration advocating that we drop the Fifth Amendment. That wouldn’t be disturbing except that many of Bush the Second’s advisors come from the same group. I wouldn’t have been surprised if that quote had come from Ashcroft.
I can’t see how we can allow ourselves to sink to the level of torture, and then be able to claim that we have the moral high ground. It is extremely important that we stand on our principles, especially when we are under a crisis. If we cave in to our fears and begin to act in a way contrary to our beliefs and ideas, then we’ve lost all we once stood for: life, liberty and justice for all.
It is true that our country has not always lived up to our stated goals, but we have made progress. We must stand firm in that progress and not allow those principles to erode. We must continue to strive towards the full embrace of all our tenets of freedom for all humanity. It is right and good.
I have qualms against it. And my qualms aren’t against a criminal or terrorist getting what’s coming to them, it’s the idea that an innocent person may get caught up in the process.
Homebrew, you made quite a jump from Thornburgh’s quote, which to my eye merely recognizes the difficulties involved in due process, to claiming that he wishes to “drop the Fifth Amendment.”
The truth of the matter is that due process sometimes does strangle us. Any time a patently guilty person is released because of an evidentiary ruling, it would be fair to say that “due process strangles us.” This is a far cry from advocating the removal of due process, and an even farther cry from advocating the removal of the Fifth Amendment.
We have accepted such “strangulation” because the overall benefits gained from living in such an open society have been worthwhile.
But do you really believe the state of the law now, today, is as it has always been? Did you know that “due process” now requires that the government give the defense any information it has indicating the accused might be innocent?
But until 1963, that was NOT a requirement of due process. Brady v. Maryland came along and added a fundamental right to accused criminals, under the penumbra of “due process.”
The words to the Constitution didn’t change. So who was right? Does due process really require that?
My point is that there seems to be a subtext in what you’re saying - that now is forever, that the due-process rights we have today are exactly what we should have.
And I’m saying that for the majority of the country’s history, they were different. And if the pendulum would swing back the other way, and remove some due process rights added by relatively recent case law, that’s not objectively wrong.
Somehow, the last couple of posts seem to have taken the discussion in the direction of the use of torture in criminal laws. I doubt if this is the main focus of the current change in thinking, and is not what I would support, as I noted in the OP.
As I see it, the use of this torture would be to force terrorists to tell of impending terrorist attacks that they are aware of, which can then be prevented. Or to provide information about the terrorist networks that they are a part of, which can be put to use in monitoring and combating those networks.
The main problem from my perspective is the possibility of torturing people who genuinely do not know the answers.
I’m not sure what you mean by this. I am not advocating deliberately torturing innocent people and then paying them for it. I am casting about for something that would deter law enforcement from lowering the standard of certainty that they apply before deciding to torture someone, and wonder if lawsuits would be an effective deterrent.
I disagree with this.
I doubt if it would be too high. Among other things, most terrorists and their potential supporters are from societies that don’t object to law enforcement torture anyway.
You may take it as read that I have ethical objections to the use of torture… but there are also practical ones. The result of torture (or “high-pressure interrogation techniques”, or whatever weaselly euphemism is being used) is not that the victim breaks down and confesses the truth, but that the victim breaks down and tells the torturers what they want to hear. (Cites? Any witchcraft trial.)
As a means of obtaining a confession, torture has few equals; as a means of obtaining the truth, it is supremely worthless.
Perhaps I’m reading too much into Thornburgh’s comments. I concede that. However, I think his quote shows a general dislike of “due process”.
Agreed.
I never said that. In fact I stated that our history is not perfect. We’ve made mistakes, but we are progressing. I am proud that we don’t condone torture. I think there are other problems within our judicial system that will eventually be corrected also.
In my opinion, yes. I’d call it progress towards true justice.
I’ve conceded that I may have read too much into Thornburg’s comments. But I think you are now misreading mine. Now is not forever. I’m certain that our understanding of due process will change, hopefully for the better.
Here’s where a debate could begin on specifics. I won’t put words into your mouth, but I suspect you don’t agree with Brady v. Maryland. I do. I want my government to act in good faith, not to supress evidence, and not to torture.
Until Gideon v. Wainwright,also in 1963, states weren’t required to provide legal counsel for the poor except in murder cases. I think that decision was progress, too.
Now, back to the OP, as IzzyR, my ideas of whether something is allowed in criminal cases or in trying to twart terrorism is the same. You acknowledge the possibility of torturing the wrong person, and find that a problem. I want to go a step more and say that torture is wrong. Period.
Torture is difficult. First, we’d need to train people how to do it. Torture can be physically and emotionally stressful on the torturer, and not everyone has a suitable personality for it. Also, in unskilled hands, torture is ineffective. Torture isn’t just the indiscriminate infliction of pain. It’s the use of pain or discomfort, or the threat of pain or discomfort to get information. I don’t know that we have anyone trained in the FBI to do that.
The other problem with torture is that, too often, the tortured person is likely to tell his torturers what he thinks the torturers want to hear, instead of the actual facts.
I am unalterably opposed to torture on moral grounds, and, as SW because it seems worthless. I can’t at the moment think of a case of torture where the intent wasn’t more to inflict punishment, or carry out a revenge fantasy, than to obtain the truth under interrogation.
So, anyone got a cite for a case in which torture provided critical information that was simply impossible to obtain otherwise? Not that this would prove a need for torture; just that I can’t think of any.
I am also completely opposed to the sort of human butchery that torture requires, despite the fact that torture appeals to my sense of cruelty. However, the argument that “prisoners will just tell torturers what they want to hear” is worthless.
It is an argument from intuition without any evidentiary foundation.
Are you suspicious when someone tells you exactly what you want to hear? I certainly am. Nothing so puts me on my guard as flattery. If my bullshit detection instincts were honed by interrogation training, I have every reason to believe that I would be rather competent and detecting such kinds of fabrications.
Using torture to extract information about future attacks can be verified. If the information proves to be incorrect or misleading, the prisoner can be subjected to more intense excruciation.
Could you clarify on what grounds it is that you believe that torture is wrong? If you are merely saying that it is worthless as a practical matter, as others are suggesting, then we disagree about a practical matter (as with regards to whether a “slippery slope” must exist). But it sounds like you are saying that torture is inherently wrong in all cases. I wonder why that would be. Are the lives of people who might be saved by torturing one terrorist worth less than the comfort of the terrorist?
And I don’t know how you could fail to distinguish between criminal cases and thwarting terrorism. In a criminal case, the benefit to society is indirect and abstract, while the torture is direct and real. In a terrorism (or indeed any other future criminal activity) the benefit too is direct and real.
I don’t see the objection by Captain Amazing on the grounds that we don’t know how to do it. It should be learned, like any other new technique.
I agree with Maeglin about the ability to verify information through other sources. The response by El_Kabong did not address the point at hand, which was people saying what the interrogator wanted to hear. The idea that a prisoner might not know the answer is a separate issue, as has been discussed previously. But the fact that some prisoners might not know the information would not make all torture useless.
I don’t know of specific examples of torture being useful. But I believe the opinion of “professionals” tends to be that it is (when it is not used it is on moral grounds AFAIK), so I think the burden of proof should be on those who would deny its effectiveness. From reading stories of societies in which torture was used (e.g. Nazi Germany, Communist Russia) my impression is that the individuals who would not give over their information under torture were the exception rather than the rule. Also, experience with human nature on an individual level (school authorities, parents, child bullies etc.) suggests that threats of punishment for not revealing information can be effective.
I did mention witchcraft trials… gawdalone knows how many instances of people confessing to things that they didn’t do, or even things that were flat-out impossible.
There are many more recent examples - I recall Solzhenitsyn goes into the extortion of confessions in some detail in volume 1 of The Gulag Archipelago. Instances of extorted confessions are routinely reported by human rights groups such as Amnesty International to this very day. And extorted confessions are not treated as reliable in any judicial system that’s genuinely concerned with detecting truth.
So, hypothetically, if person X is brought to you as a terrorist suspect… if he says, “No, I am not a terrorist”, will you believe him, because he isn’t flattering you? I do not believe that, historically, torturers have proceeded on this basis.
Conversely, if he says, “Yes, I am a terrorist”, what do you do then? Presumably, you question him further as to the extent of his misdeeds. If he gives you an answer you don’t believe, you apply pain until he changes it. But the only criterion to be satisfied is whether you, personally, accept the answer - its objective truth doesn’t figure into the equation. So you have no reliable measure of whether your victim is telling the truth, or lying to avoid pain.
Torture victims will, basically, tell you things until you stop torturing them. If you are competent at detecting fabrications, you just give your victims a greater incentive to come up with a convincing story. Ultimately, they will convince you, or die under the abuse. You still have no guarantee they’ll tell you the truth.
So, if an innocent person is compelled to make up a story in order to make you stop torturing them, and you later find the story to be false, your answer is to torture them harder… but you still have no guarantee they will tell you the truth. In fact, if they are innocent, and you don’t accept that as an answer, then your proposed method only guarantees they’ll tell you more lies. And you wind up devoting resources to investigating those lies - resources which you may well need elsewhere to counter a real threat.
I would not go as far as Maeglin with regards to “bullshit detection instincts”, and I will even concede that torture is imperfect (much as are most other techniques used by law enforcement). But I don’t think your example here is valid.
In the case of witches, or any other example of confessions obtained by torture, the goal of the torturer is not to find out the truth. He already believes himself to know the truth - his objective is to get the victim to blurt of the words he wants him to say. By contrast, in our hypothetical case here, the interrogators are trying to find out the truth - it will do them no good to get the torturee to provide false information that will only lead law enforcement astray.
pldennison
I’m not sure if you meant your post seriously or if you were being facetious. If the former, I would point out that we are not discussing emulating Nazi Germany or Communist Russia in all aspects - I am only using the experience of those societies to make a point about the practical efficiency of torture. The morality of this torture can be discussed on its own merits.