Dammit, no fair! 
Oh yeah, I’d sacrifice my principles in a heart-beat if that was the downside. The Constitution isn’t a suicide pact.
Sua
SuaSponte
I can’t argue with your position - seems to boil down to a matter of personal preference (i.e. do you prefer to suffer from Consequence A or Consequence B), and you seem to acknowledge (in your recent response to spoke-) that your position would depend on how severe the actual danger was.
I would point out though, that your analogies are not accurate. In the cases you cite, you would have to place many cameras and many police in offices in order to prevent relatively few crimes. Surely if one camera would prevent one crime we would place it. The reason we don’t have cameras in homes is because though a camera is preferable to a crime, the vast majority of the cameras will not be preventing everything, but will still be invading privacy. So the judgement of society is that it is worth it accept the few crimes rather than the many cameras.
By contrast, in this case it is likely that the ratio of lives saved to torture committed is significantly higher (or could be, if done properly). I think The Ryan may have been making this point, and if so, your response was inadequate. There is no policy that would allow for putting a camera in only TheRyan’s home, and in any event the likelihood of a crime being committed in his home is small (AFAIK :D). If there was good reason to suspect that a crime would be committed in his home the police might just be able to get a warrant for the camera.
But you might conceivably dispute this, and say that torture too is ineffective and will prevent relatively few crimes. This is the position of others in this thread.
And again, this only deals with the analogy, and whether it is inconsistent oppose cameras in every home while supporting torture. Buit independantly of the analogy, if people think the tradeoff is simply not worth making, that’s their prerogative.
Zenster:
Even in your pretty rarefied scenario, I’m not sure I see how torture is the best solution.
If you have little time to get the information and save the millions, how can you hope to break them in such a short period?
Get somebody in an isolated and controlled environment, for even a short period of time, and there’s all kinds of ways to trick and manipulate them psychologically.
Why go after the body when your target’s the mind?
Shoulda more clearly seperated my points-
1-Mannix and Panati find that torture can be used to extract confessions-whether or not the subject is guilty or even has enough knowledge of the crime to make an accurate confession.
2-When it comes to gaining information (who are the other members of your cell? What is your next target? etc), torture is nearly useless.
Spoke-You say that torture is effective? Cite.
Second, torture of a prisoner is a deliberate act. Civilian deaths due to bombings are accidental. The armed forces spend a great deal of time and money to hit the right targets. I do not consider the deaths of Afghani civilians “necessary”. Neither does the military. If they did, they would be carpet bombing the cities.
I have absolutely no problem with your statement. Yes, use every means available in the exact scenario provided. I hope that people notice that my hypothetical situation does not deal with the extraction of evidence from suspects. It deals with obtaining information from known participants.
To be utterly brutal I think that the prosect of having body parts violently amputated moving from small to large could quickly induce canary-like coluratura from a conspirator. If not they would deserve it anyway for nuclear terror.
That is pretty brutal. If I was in the terrorist’s shoes, that will fill me with hate, and convince me further of the righteousness of my cause. Worse than that, it make me determined to punish those who had done what they did to me, and I’d be even more resolved to make sure I gave away nothing. Even further, such trauma and the entailing shock would make me unreachable to my tormentors as I’d have given up hope and just be waiting for death.
Your argument seems bloodthirsty and brutal just for the sake of it, which I have a problem with. We sink that far and we’re no better than the terrorists.
It also seems a bad choice as the likelihood of getting results is poor compared to other possibilities.
I’m still unclear - is your second point also from Mannix and Panati?
Also, regarding your previous post that truth serum is not more effective than getting people drunk - is law enforcement currently allowed to get people drunk? This too sounds like a good idea.
IzzyR-Yes, the second point is also from those 2 authors.
IIRC, Israeli police can legally deprive a suspect of sleep. Getting an Islamic suspect drunk would be a violation of the laws of Islam. This would anger the mainstream Islamic community.
The purpose of truth serum or sleep deprivation is to disorient the subject. Hopefully, they will become confused enough that their defense mechanisms drop and they answer your questions. However, if the main thought in the suspect’s mind is ‘I hate you people. I want you dead. I’m not telling you jack!’, that’s still all you’ll get.
Let me begin by saying again that I do not advocate torture. However, I think you are mistaken in your conclusion that torture is not effective. Oppose torture on moral grounds, if you wish, but not on the ground that it doesn’t work.
The Wall Street Journal article cited above provides pretty good anecdotal evidence as to the effectiveness of physical torture combined with psychological ploys.
Also try this link, written in 1956 by Joost A. M. Meerloo, M.D., Instructor in Psychiatry, Columbia University, who was himself a victim of Nazi torture while a member of the Dutch resistance.
In the link, he describes how torture breaks all but the very strongest victims. The torture he describes is not just physical, but psychological.
Sample blurbs:
In addition, I have heard John McCain, also a victim of torture, offer his opinion on more than one occasion that everyone “breaks” under torture. McCain’s statements were part of television interviews, so I do not have a link.
As between your experts and mine, I think maybe we should listen to the ones with first-hand experience.
It appears that the folks in the thread have mistaken my comments as an endoresement of torture. I advised watching the film as caution before making easy decisions one way or the other. The French effectively used torture in breaking up a system of cells structured rather as al-Qaeda. And with good reason, the Algerian
experience had immense influence in the region.
Immense. One can learn quite a lot about the
situation from studying Algeria.
However, that effective use of torture came at a
terrible price for a democratic society. Was it worth
it? Would it be worth it for us? Very difficult to
answer. I would not exclude it, but neither would I
embrace it. Those arguing for embracing torture
should come to terms with what that means. Watch the
movie, read about the terror that was Algeria…
Which is why I so readily agree with you. I wish not for a reality where such measures are the norm. I only believe that we are faced with a situation where we must confront the possibility that such facts may indeed be the (very undesirable) case.
Scylla, please contribute your wisdom to the “Credible Deterrent” thread.
He has also told of events where torture failed. Another POW had managed to sew an American flag from pieces of clothing. Every morning, the soldiers would salute the flag. The guards discovered the flage and destroryed it. The soldier who had made the flag was taken from the cell. When he was returned, he was bruised, bleeding and had obviously been beaten. As soon as the guards left, the man began to make another flag.
That’s our American spirit.
We will always prevail. At any cost.
We are at war, and we need to do what it takes to survive.
How quickly some forget about 5000 Americans buried under the rubble at the World Trade Center.
We did not ask for this. We live and let live.
Until we are pushed too far.
They are not through with us.
When we were at war with Germany in World War II, our enemies were just as dead whether they were tortured to death or were blown to bits by a bombing raid.
Torture is a combination of psychological and physical challenges inflicted upon a suspect.
As already cited, it is quite effective.
I am surprised no one has yet mentioned that we use it already anyway. Ever heard of the CIA?
My family’s lives and of course I feel all American’s
lives are worth any measure to maintain a secure
homeland.
If we used torture we would become what they want us to be. 'Nuff said.
All they want us to be is dead.
Actually they couldn’t care less about our lifestyle.
What they really want is a free “Palestine”.
Not defending them by any means.
We should be able to choose who our friends are
without fear of terrorism.
They appear to be counting on the fact that we are unwilling to defend our way of life by any means necessary. Hence they know we will not torture suspects nor attack them with nuclear weapons.
The question then becomes whether we are going to humor them in order to keep our consciences clear.
Was there a point to this?
How about turning suspected terrorists over to the Prince George’s County Police Department and allowing the detectives to question them? Go back about 2-3 months and read the metro section of the Washington Post newspaper. One man was convicted of killing his wife (can’t remember his name) solely on the basis of his confession. This confession was obtained by 36+ hours of continuous interrogation, sleep deprivation, and threats by the detectives in the case. The man was exonerated when detectives from another jurisdiction caught the real perpetrator. He is now suing the Prince George’s County police department, in hopes of forcing them to change their methods. The situation is so bad that the chief prosecutor refuses to put one particular detective on the witness stand because he lies constantly, and a commission is being readied to examine the situation. Again, go back and read the metro section of the Washington Post newspaper to capture the details. I’ll bet the information is extracted in record time.
It’s called a rant newbie.
Okay, so I’ve only posted 19 times, 20 now.
I think your question was rhetorical but just in case.
I am all for torture as a means to gather intelligence.
Not so somebody can yell out that the butler did it.
But to build a data base of information that will help us defend against other possible atrocities.
I think terrorists deserve it too.
Very interesting article in today’s NY Times: All Suicide Bombers Are Not Alike
Ends off with this: