# Why the big deal over torture? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 7, 2009, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663 "2009-05-07T16:10:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2009, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663/41 "2009-05-07T20:02:18Z")
> [@Daddypants](#): > > Does anyone really think we will no longer use torture? We’ve probably been torturing enemies since the French and Indian War. And you know what? The enemy has tortured our soldiers. Sure, everyone says, “No we don’t torture.” But c’mon, do you really believe it? > > No one would think twice about this whole mess if those idiots at Abu Ghraib weren’t taking pictures and video. Stupid fucking morons. The pictures got out and the whole world saw the terrible things that had been done. And than we looked even worse than we already did; which goes back to not winning hearts and minds. So, we back peddle, close Guntanamo, make new laws, and apologize profusely to the rest of the world. But, were still fighting a war, and it won’t be the last. You think if we were to capture some more top Al-Qaida guys, they aren’t going to be tortured for information? You think asking nicely will get us the information we need. Torture doesn’t work. Haven’t you been reading along? Even if it did work, it’s evil. If you want America to be evil good for you. Just vote for Republicans. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![The\_Hamster\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8edcca/32.png) [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2009, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663/42 "2009-05-07T20:03:57Z")
> [@redshift](#): > > Oh I see what you did there! 😛 > > But to be honest, we don’t make that big of a deal of combat rape do we? I haven’t heard of any major news about that, and I’m pretty sure it must happen (it always does). You must have missed [this](http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/10/18/soldiers.court/index.html)then. It’s against the law for American soldiers to rape civilians and if they’re caught they’re court-martialed. Probably the reason that there’s less talk about rape in the media is because everyone agrees that it’s a crime. There aren’t any pundits loudly proclaiming that it’s absolutely essential that we rape to keep us safe, or trying to mince words about exactly how far a soldier has to put his penis inside an Iraqi girl before it stops being a “sexual intimidation technique” and becomes “rape”. ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2009, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663/43 "2009-05-07T20:04:39Z")
I’m not convinced that turture is such bad PR from the perspective of societies that themselves engage in torture as people assume. It’s a mistake to assume that people in very different cultures will react to things the same way you would. (This was, IMHO, the most fundamental mistake Bush & Co. made in invating Iraq.) While you might be horrified at the very notion of torture, people in many other cultures accept it, and these people might interpret your unwillingness to engage in it as wimpiness. I once read that one or more of the big Bolsheviks (inc. Stalin, IIRC) interpreted the relatively easy conditions of Czarist prisons as a sign of weakness, not of humaneness, and this increased his contempt for the regime and motivation to overthrow it. It’s definitely bad PR in Western Europe, no doubt about it. **Lemur** , your surrender scenario is plausable, but it could also work in the opposite direction. An army facing torturers that thought it would lose might be quicker to desert and/or panic & crumble than an army that thought the worst that can happen is for them to lose freedom for a bit. > [@xtisme](#): > > The biggest thing though is that there is a lot of room for abuse…and that this abuse has pretty obviously happened and been done in our names tends to piss people off. I agree that this is the biggest thing. Once you let the genie out of the bottle it’s very very hard to control. I recently read a book about the Gulag, and prisoners there were technically protected by all sorts of legal protections, but it was impossible to enforce as a practical matter. I imagine the first tentative steps under Bush were done with this or that safeguard, and on people that they at least had good reason to believe had significant information, but if you let that continue it’s almost inevitable that safeguards get loosened, and the practice expanded etc. ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2009, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663/44 "2009-05-07T20:05:16Z")
> [@redshift](#): > > But torture? Now we got to go on a witch hunt against every person involved. Say what? Last I heard what we were going to do _at most_ was slap the wrists of the prime instigators of our torture programs. Condoleezza might even get off without an indictment. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2009, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663/45 "2009-05-07T20:05:18Z")
> [@redshift](#): > > But torture? Now we got to go on a witch hunt against every person involved. See post #22. The people who gave the green light to torture made us all _less_ safe, including our military who is out there fighting for us, by doing so (probably in pursuit of false confessions to back up their bullshit excuses for a war…torture is good at getting false confessions). They also did so in violation of our laws. Do you suppose the law is only applied when convenient? Yes rape occurs in war. No it generally is not made much of a fuss about because it is covered under the UCMJ and a soldier caught doing it stands a good chance of a court martial. This would be akin to our government telling its soldiers to go ahead an rape, never mind the law, never mind the UCMJ. BIG difference. It is worth noting the Geneva Convention has the full force of law in the US (not to mention other statutes prohibiting torture). ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2009, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663/46 "2009-05-07T20:09:03Z")
Another reason is that it’s not like we had iron-clad convictions of the people we tortured, that proved they were actually materially involved with Al Qaeda (especially at Abu Ghraib). There were a LOT of innocent people in captivity at that and probably every prison we’re running, including Guantanamo. We were torturing people who had NO information about Al Qaeda, who had never even met an Al Qaeda member, who were basically sold to us by their personal enemies under the guise of being a terrorist. If you’re comfortable torturing people who may or may not be completely innocent, well good for you. I’d personally feel safer if people who thought that way were somehow “detained”, though. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2009, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663/47 "2009-05-07T20:10:46Z")
> [@Shamozzle](#): > > Yea, what the hell. Let’s just raze, rape and pillage like the good old days. Bring on the carpet bombing! Why endeavor to step forward? If we had ten divisions of such men, our problems in the Middle East would soon be over. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2009, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663/48 "2009-05-07T20:12:09Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > If we had ten divisions of such men, our problems in the Middle East would soon be over. Absolutely. Instead, we’d have big problems in the Midwest. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Hamster\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8edcca/32.png) [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2009, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663/49 "2009-05-07T20:14:27Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > If we had ten divisions of such men, our problems in the Middle East would soon be over. Your methods are unsound. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2009, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663/50 "2009-05-07T20:24:02Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > …While you might be horrified at the very notion of torture, people in many other cultures accept it, and these people might interpret your unwillingness to engage in it as wimpiness… You’ve a list of these “cultures”, do you? At your fingertips, then? These, then, are admirable people, you would have us emulate? ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2009, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663/51 "2009-05-07T20:55:19Z")
> [@redshift](#): > > But to be honest, we don’t make that big of a deal of combat rape do we? I haven’t heard of any major news about that, and I’m pretty sure it must happen (it always does). Only if you consider the death penalty to be not that big of a deal. [Here’s something recent](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-soldiers-accused-of-rape-and-murder-face-death-penalty-414645.html), [here’s](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_individuals_executed_by_the_United_States_military) a nice breakdown on the 160 executions carried out by the US military from 1942-61, the last time the military carried out the death penalty. The breakdown is > [@](#): > > Of the total, 106 were executed for murder (including 21 involving rape), 53 for rape and one for desertion (Eddie Slovik). What’s the UCMJ say about the penalty for rape today? [hmm?](http://usmilitary.about.com/od/punitivearticles/a/mcm120.htm) > [@](#): > > Maximum punishment. > > (1) Rape. Death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct. Sorry, but “I’m ignorant of it,” doesn’t mean the same thing as “we don’t make a big deal of it”. > [@](#): > > What I think is shocking is that we make more of a deal of torture than the way we treat natives (at least from a media standpoint). Since when? Is this another “I’m ignorant of it, so what I say must be true” statement of yours? I also wouldn’t use the word native to mean civilian, I mean these combatants we’re talking about torturing are natives themselves. > [@](#): > > But when torture of confirmed enemy combatants come into play, then we get into a big fuss about it and the entire American government moves to condemn it. What **confirmed** enemy combatants? Have you been paying attention to the number of people who have been released from Gitmo because they didn’t do anything? Again, you’re arguing from a position of ignorance and making absurd strokes with a broad brush. The people being tortured aren’t all confirmed enemy combatants, a larger deal isn’t made of torture than other mistreatment of civilians, and the entire US Government doesn’t move to condemn it. A rather substantial part moves to defend it or attempt to characterize our actions as not being torture. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2009, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663/52 "2009-05-07T21:23:00Z")
Besides all the other reasons, I’ll point out that torturing people by itself is enough to make us the bad guys. It’s enough to make us the people who _ **should** _ lose. > [@redshift](#): > > The authorities will not enforce it because they are, at least in part, benefiting from the information gained, and they also don’t want to create breaks in our intelligence agencies. They aren’t benefiting from the “information gained”. First, because torture is a rotten means of gaining information, second because torture dries up other sources of information ( people don’t willingly talk to torturers ), and third, because torture inundates the torturers with false information. > [@redshift](#): > > Are we ashamed of coming clean with what we do? We’re embarrassed in admitting that WE are the bad guys, yes. We are embarrassed to admit that our enemies are right to call us evil, to admit that the people who kill our soldiers are defending themselves against murderous torturers. > [@redshift](#): > > EDIT: **Lemur866** does give a very good argument. It does work in the cases where people are willing to surrender. But what about the radicals? Those who won’t give up no matter what, and who would not hesitate to do the same to us? And how many of them are “radicals” because of the way we have been acting ? I put “radical” in quotes because fighting to the death isn’t all that radical if you expect torture if you surrender. > [@Daddypants](#): > > You think if we were to capture some more top Al-Qaida guys, they aren’t going to be tortured for information? You think asking nicely will get us the information we need. We’ll torture them because we are barbaric, not because torture is effective. “Asking nicely” is much more effective than torture. Consider [Hanns Scharff](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanns_Scharff), also called “the Master Interrogator”, who extracted plenty of useful information from his prisoners without raising his voice, much less torturing them. Of course, that restraint was no doubt due to the well known liberal softness of his employers, the Nazis. > [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > It’s a mistake to assume that people in very different cultures will react to things the same way you would. Oh, please. I doubt that there’s a culture on Earth where people won’t react badly to torture by their enemies, including those that openly practice it themselves. We torture; and would we react to someone torturing and killing American soldiers, and videotaping it ? ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2009, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663/53 "2009-05-07T21:30:29Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > You’ve a list of these “cultures”, do you? I _sense_ your mockery of dear Leader. Desist, or we shall turn St. Paul into a sea of _nuclear fire!_ ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2009, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663/54 "2009-05-07T21:48:59Z")
> [@Squink](#): > > I _sense_ your mockery of dear Leader. Desist, or we shall turn St. Paul into a sea of _nuclear fire!_ It would be an improvement. **drop** , St Paul native ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2009, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663/55 "2009-05-07T22:23:29Z")
> [@redshift](#): > > Involving civilians (destruction of towns/rape/etc) of course is always a negative. They are not directly part of the fighting. But hey, you got to accept that its collateral damage. Actually, no, you don’t. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2009, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663/56 "2009-05-07T23:24:32Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > Actually, no, you don’t. Well, you do if you want to develop that kind and compassionate attitude towards humanity that lets you shrug off torturing people, not just as a (believed-to-be) necessary evil, but in fact a perfectly acceptible activity to be reacted to with a shrug. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2009, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663/57 "2009-05-07T23:58:41Z")
> [@Squink](#): > > I _sense_ your mockery of dear Leader. Desist, or we shall turn St. Paul into a sea of _nuclear fire!_ You’re going to have to be specific. I am a bit of a compulsive leader-mocker, so I’d need to know _which_ alpha-lemming before I could even consider compliance. ---
**Author:** ![yorick73](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/b5a626/32.png) [@yorick73](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yorick73)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2009, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663/58 "2009-05-08T00:42:20Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > You think the torture controversy is over a few guys that got slapped a couple of times? Yes, among other things including waterboarding and knocking a few heads against padded walls. Oh, and the belly slap! > [@Lemur866](#): > > Plenty of prisoners were tortured to death in American prisons. And the torture techniques used were those perfected in the Soviet Gulags, precisely because they typically didn’t leave marks. What exactly are you referring to? Does this have anything to do with the cases of “torture” since 9-11? > [@Lemur866](#): > > This is the key. It is easy to induce agonizing pain in a prisoner simply by shackling them in an uncomfortable position, or in a place that is too cold, or too hot, or without food, or without water. It won’t cause agonizing pain to be in an uncomfortable position for a short time, or to not have water for a short time, or to be too cold for a short time, or to be too hot for a short time. And so people like you don’t see what the big deal is…you’ve gone hours and hours without taking drink of water, so what’s the big deal? You’ve stayed awake for hours and hours, so what’s the big deal? You’ve been in an uncomfortable airline seat for hours and hours, so what’s the big deal? > > The big deal is that you simply continue the torture until it becomes a big deal. Thirst is no big deal, but surely you can see that after a few days with no water, thirst can become agonizing pain. The point is not the particular technique that causes agonizing pain, the point is that all these techniques are easily capable of causing agonizing pain if they are continued to the point of agony. What makes that so hard to understand? That’s the point of enhanced interrogation…pain or the expectation of pain. That doesn’t necessarily make it torture. Yes, if done long enough anything can be considered torture. There must be some bright line beyond which we call a certain activity torture. Did they go too far? Personally I don’t think so and neither did Nancy Pelosi. [http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2009/05/intelligence-re.html](http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2009/05/intelligence-re.html) ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2009, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663/59 "2009-05-08T01:09:42Z")
> [@yorick73](#): > > What exactly are you referring to? Does this have anything to do with the cases of “torture” since 9-11? He could be referring to reports such as this example: > [@](#): > > The deaths of Diliwar and Habibullah > > — In December 2002, two detainees were kiled while detained by CJTF-180 at Bagram. Though the techniques dio not appear to have been included in any written interrogation policy at Bagram, Army investigators concluded that the use of stress positions and sleep deprivation combined with other mistreatments at the hands of bagram personnel, caused or were direct contributing factors in the two homicides. [http://armed-services.senate.gov/Publications/Detainee%20Report%20Final\_April%2022%202009.pdf](http://armed-services.senate.gov/Publications/Detainee%20Report%20Final_April%2022%202009.pdf) pp 151-152 ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2009, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663/60 "2009-05-08T01:17:22Z")
> [@yorick73](#): > > Yes, among other things including waterboarding and knocking a few heads against padded walls. Oh, and the belly slap! I know what you mean! Abu Ghraib wasn’t any worse than some light-hearted frat house hazing, but without the beer. Those damn democrats dumbing down the definition of torture! I mean it’s not like we [killed](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4977986) anyone. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663.md?page=4)