Has it occured to anyone else? If it becomes widely known amongst our enemies, real and potential, that we are likely to torture for information…doesn’t that dramaticly increase the likelihood that said enemy will fight to the death rather than surrender? Isn’t it obvious that a man who can reasonably expect decent treatment at the hands of his captors is more likely to surrender?
How many of our soldiers lives are thereby put at risk?
Do you really think the idea of a dirty bomb being used is paranoia?
I happen to think the idea is much more likely than of huge numbers of innocent people being tortured.
Let’s try this…Five terrorists are captured in a house. Three of them know something that needs to be revealed. All five are waterboarded. Are the two that knew nothing “innocent”? Or are they reaping the rewards of their association and behavior? Maybe one of them is just a suicide-bomber recruit. How innocent is he?
We can play hypothetical tennis all day long. Do I support torturing innocent people? No. Is it possible someone will be waterboarded because they are captured in a scenario like I just put forth? Of course. Is it your assertion that we give up the opportunity to extract life-saving information because we don’t want to be mean to someone who is committed to killing as many of us as possible?
Dying for Allah is the ultimate honor for them. The hardcore people who are going to possess the information we need will not surrender regardless of our information extraction policy.
You said be brutally frank, right? Well, not so good. A little, what?..flatfooted? Needs a little…oh, I don’t know…je nes se quois? If Little Green Footballs had their own version of the Daily Show, it might fly there. But I’m not to judge, don’t have much in the way of the sarcastic arts.
But my point wasn’t actually mockish, it was more along the lines of suggesting that such dramatic demands for immediacy were, well, dramatic. If the terrorist has information that would save my kids, and I have to have it in fifteen minutes, would I torture him? Of course, and no jury in the world would convict me! In the most extreme of circumstances savagery can be justified.
That is not anything like establishing it as an acceptable practice.
I agree with you on this. I don’t want it done every day either. Perhaps we should use Bill Clinton’s abortion criteria…safe, legal and rare. The instances should be few and far between for these methods. But if they are needed, I want them to be used.
And by the way, please explain the name change for me that you’ve used the past couple of times. I thought the mods frowned on that by the way…should we get the waterboard ready for you, luci?
Your scenario is a specific, highly limited circumstance that is very similar to propositions put forward many times in this forum and that have generally been shown to be lacking, and you are carefully avoiding addressing my main point. I am not arguing that “we don’t want to be mean to someone who is committed to killing as many of us as possible”, I am arguing that we don’t want to be mean to people about whom we have no clear idea of guilt or innocence.
You state that you do not support torturing innocent people, but it seems to me that you clearly assert that at least a few innocent people being tortured doesn’t matter, as long as the knowledge that torture is being carried out satisfies your need for an abstract feeling of security.
Look, I understand your wanting to have total security at any cost that does not have to be borne by you alone. I simply cannot agree with your blind belief that the US government, given the power to utilize torture as an officially authorized interrogation technique, will somehow magically use it only on the guilty, unlike any other government in history that has officially codified such techniques.
Lastly, I presume this is an easy decision for you because you have never experienced torture or lengthy captivity without legal recourse, and are reasonably sure that some aspect of your citizenship and position insulates you from ever being treated in such a fashion. I hope that remains the case, but I submit that if you or members of your family would ever have the misfortune, as so many outside the US have, of being subject to torture by a state apparatus, you’d be singing an entirely different tune.
Oh, no! No, not that! I’ll talk! It was Barzini, all along!
While I read through this thead’s maze of arguments, I stopped and thought about the big picture and nearly became physically ill.
I just can’t believe we are seriously discussing whether or not it’s a good idea to torture people.
I’m disgusted beyond belief that my country has arrived at this point, and that there are those who use civilized words in an effort to justify animalistic behavior. I thought that we, as a nation, were better than this.
It’s almost comical how we have - knowingly - become that which we despise in others.
The way I see it is the United States is being threatened from two directions. On the one side, terrorists are trying to attack us to undermine our political system and international affairs - on the other side, people in this country are trying to set up a secret police state, which will undermine our political system much more thoroughly albeit less dramatically.
These are people who sneer at the “reality based community”, who think they can define their own reality. I expect they think that if someone is tortured into a confession, he must be guilty because he confessed.
Entertainment and intimidation. That’s what torture is about, mostly.
Torturers and those who support torture are not innocent, they are monsters. You appear determined to make the terrorists right; to prove that we really are the “Great Satan”.
Because we don’t care if he’s “high value” or not. Or because we want him to “confirm” something that we want to be true. Or because he’s the wrong race or religion or sexuality. Or for the sheer fun of it.
More likely to intimidate their parents. They’ll probably molest the kids too, again.
The rule is “whomever the President feels like.”
No, it’s predictable; I’d say tens or hundreds of thousands.
You get the answers you want, not the true ones. Yes, if you torture enough people you can often make them submit; not because you are getting good information, but because everybody is too terrified to do anything beyond keep their head down and stay alive. That’s terrified as in terrorism, but of course terrorism is OK if we are the terrorists. I also disagree with you that no one likes the idea; most Americans don’t care, and most of the rest are gloating sadists.
We already are, or we would not do what we have done.
Because it doesn’t matter if you have anything to hide; they’ll torture you anyway in order to make you confess to your nonexistent crimes.
No, but it’s too trivial to torture someone over. Not that torture would stop one being used anyway. Torture doesn’t make people speak the truth, it just makes them say what you want.
Why ?
:rolleyes: Which means that no one who is tortured will deserve to be tortured, by your own “logic”.
Moderator’s Warning: Do not alter another poster’s username to be an insult outside of the Pit; and do not make alterations to what another poster has said (including to their user name) inside the quote tags.
Does anyone remember, it seems only weeks ago, that *whether there was * a US policy of torturing its prisoners was presented as a debateable proposition. It’s nicely demonstrative that those who formerly sought to argue the point are now silent, yet hold to their political views.
Look on the bright side, we don’t hear any more of that guff about the US being a light on the hill, a nation under god, or having honor in its military. Which is really rather surprising, given how attached the culture seems to have been to those pretty phrases.
I wonder how long before “fight them here, so we don’t get airsick going over there” or however it goes, is similarly dislodged from the playbook of the committed politico?
No malice was intended, but I recognize I am not always considerate of delicate sensibilities.
Too much of Twain, not adequate Austen.
A question for Evil One. Since you and your family are at way more danger from violent criminals than they are from terrorists, do you agree that such techniques - knuckle chopping, waterboarding - should also be applied to criminal suspects in the US to make them reveal details of their accomplices and crime networks?
If the use of torture by the US is ok to save innocent US lives, is it ok for other countries to utilize torture to save the innocent lives of its citizens?
If yes, then would it then be ok for a country under attack or threat of potential attack by the US to torture US citizens in order to stop or minimize its civillian casualities?
If we utilize torture, wouldn’t our complaints of other countries utilizing torture be hypocritical?
If saving innocent US lives is the criteria for making torture acceptable, why not apply to domestic criminals and domestic terrorists as well?
Well I heard from giant robot chickens on the moon that it’s possible to get useful information from Republicans by attaching phone wires to their genitals, so I think we should do that. A lot. Ain’t it horrible how these conservatives oppose attaching phone wires to the genitals of Republicans? Don’t they care at all about protecting the chillllll-druuuuuun?
No, I do not. I think such a practice should be reserved for people who are involved in planning and execution of terrorist attacks that could kill hundreds if not thousands of people.
Why do you make such a distinction?
So we should torture everyone involved in the conquest of Iraq ? “Shock and Awe” was terrorism with a dramatic name. Kidnapping and torturing people is pretty terroristic itself.
To be consistant, shouldn’t the torturers all torture each other ?