Authoritative report documents US torture

[smackababy]

No, But 'I didn't murder that other person' isn't much of a defense for murder.

I am not exactly sure of your point, but if two people were murdered, I was charged for both, and my defense was that I couldn't have done one of them, that seems like being able to cast enough reasonable doubt for an acquittal.

The best estimates I've seen are about 90% - only 7 have been convicted. If memory serves, 600 have already been released, with fewer than 200 remaining and about half of them have been cleared for release - but Congress has blocked the fund for re-entry needed to release them.

Because released means innocent right? So, we've extracted (or didn't, doesn't matter) information from these individuals and released them.

Really, 'associate of an organization'. So, does that include a barber who cuts their hair, a milkman, someone who attends mosque with them, neighbors?

You know I was talking about real associates. Not someone who knew them in passing, but someone who might actually have inside information pertaining to the organization's plans. Someone who might have overheard a conversation. So, bin Laden's personal mail man, yes "torture" the fuck out of him.

How long does this 'might have information' last? After five years in detention, is there still a mission about to launch they can expose?

Are you under the impression 9/11 took a couple months to plan? They had people trained to fly planes. That is not a summer course.

How informed are you about the types of torture used and the harm done? I'm guessing not much at all?

I'd consider waterboarding a bit less extreme than sentencing a man to be paralyzed or the advocating of stoning people to death. Even the chopping off of hands.

So, you're happy for American prisoners to be tortured for information because they 'might' have information that ca save enemy lives, right?

Happy about it? Hell no. Do I understand it is done and will continue to be done despite the moral highground we pretend to take? Yes.

I would rather not take the high ground if it ensured the outcome. You can pretend we are being effective while being moral, I'll stay in the real world.

 

[Craig234]

I am not exactly sure of your point, but if two people were murdered, I was charged for both, and my defense was that I couldn't have done one of them, that seems like being able to cast enough reasonable doubt for an acquittal.

My point was that on the issue of torturing SOME people, your defense we didn't torture EVERYONE.

I was pointing that that's a pretty weak defense - like if you are charged with murdering one person, defending by saying you didn't murder a second person.

No one said everyone was tortured, but you defended agains that 'charge'.

Because released means innocent right? So, we've extracted (or didn't, doesn't matter) information from these individuals and released them.

Actually, it largely does. We still have the people detained who we can't charge for lack of evidence but we think are a danger.

You know I was talking about real associates. Not someone who knew them in passing, but someone who might actually have inside information pertaining to the organization's plans. Someone who might have overheard a conversation. So, bin Laden's personal mail man, yes "torture" the fuck out of him.

No, it was unclear who you are referring to. Almost anyone with any contact 'might' have overheard a conversation. Bottom line though, torture is immoral.

Are you under the impression 9/11 took a couple months to plan? They had people trained to fly planes. That is not a summer course.

No, it took longer than that. It didn't take 5 years. You didn't answer the question.

I'd consider waterboarding a bit less extreme than sentencing a man to be paralyzed or the advocating of stoning people to death. Even the chopping off of hands.

You didn't answer the question. Read the report I linked.

Happy about it? Hell no. Do I understand it is done and will continue to be done despite the moral highground we pretend to take? Yes.

I would rather not take the high ground if it ensured the outcome. You can pretend we are being effective while being moral, I'll stay in the real world.

First, I'm not pretending we're being effective while being moral. I'm saying to be moral whether or not it's 'effective'.

Second, you throw around the word 'pretend' casually making up the facts that your position is 'effective'. Again, read the report. Turns out, you're not.

You're not staying in the real world - you're pretending to be. I disagree with you if you WERE effective but you're not.

Let's see the evidence for all the lives saved by torture. The report has evidence of the opposite.

 

[SMOGZINN]

An act of torture perpetrated by a governmental official should always be a crime brought before a jury to decide if there were mitigating circumstances. The government official has GOT to have some skin in the game..... namely his own hide.

This I agree with. Torture is wrong. No matter how good your excuse it, it is still wrong. No matter how many lives it might save, no matter what the situation, it will always be wrong.

Nothing can make it the right answer, but sometimes under extreme situations, it is the only answer.

 

[davmat787]

This I agree with. Torture is wrong. No matter how good your excuse it, it is still wrong. No matter how many lives it might save, no matter what the situation, it will always be wrong.

Nothing can make it the right answer, but sometimes under extreme situations, it is the only answer.

Never say never.

To use the trite and often repeated scenario: FBI just captured a terrorist who admitted to planting a nuclear bomb in NY city, set to detonated in 8 hours. He will not disclose the location.

Are you saying torture would still be wrong in this case, when hundreds of thousands of your fellow citizens are about to be tortured themselves?

I only use this hollywood-esque example to illustrate a point.

 

[SMOGZINN]

Never say never.

To use the trite and often repeated scenario: FBI just captured a terrorist who admitted to planting a nuclear bomb in NY city, set to detonated in 8 hours. He will not disclose the location.

Are you saying torture would still be wrong in this case, when hundreds of thousands of your fellow citizens are about to be tortured themselves?

I only use this hollywood-esque example to illustrate a point.

Yes, absolutely wrong to torture him for the information. Might be the ONLY solution to the problem. But it is still ethically wrong. So, you have to decide how much your ethics are worth.

 

[woolfe9998]

I did not think I was equivocal with what I stated. I think it is a crime against humanity to have a government that condones torture under ANY circumstances. If individuals working for the government decide ON THEIR OWN AND AGAINST THE LAWS OF OUR NATION to torture in an attempt to save lives they may do so at their own legal peril. If their actions save the lives of millions of people, I am sure no jury in the world would convict them.

An act of torture perpetrated by a governmental official should always be a crime brought before a jury to decide if there were mitigating circumstances. The government official has GOT to have some skin in the game..... namely his own hide.

I'm not buying that it's morally wrong under all circumstances. Nor am I buying that it should be legally wrong in all circumstances. If someone had their finger on the nuclear trigger, killing that person before they flipped the switch is non-controversial. No one would even argue the point. But inflicting pain? All the sudden it becomes debatable.

 

[davmat787]

Yes, absolutely wrong to torture him for the information. Might be the ONLY solution to the problem. But it is still ethically wrong. So, you have to decide how much your ethics are worth.

If you held the sole authority to authorize or not authorize torture in that case, are you saying you would not authorize it, no matter what?

There is a good chance, but not 100% I grant you, that you could save hundreds of thousands of lives by doing so and extracting the location of the nuclear bomb.

If not, and the device goes off, one would figure the terrorist (remember, he is already in custody and admitted to planting the device) would be executed for the 258,232 murders he committed that day.

 

[Whiskey16]

Do you think we go around torturing everyone we see? Exactly how many innocent people do you think are / were in Gitmo?

Your defence for prejudicially rounding people up to sweat, exhaust, beat, etc., all to attain any tid-bits of information out of them has no honour nor respect in law nor the civilisation you inhabit:

Most Guantanamo detainees are innocent: ex-Bush official

Many detainees locked up in Guantanamo Bay were innocent men swept up by U.S. forces unable to distinguish enemies from noncombatants, a former Bush administration official said Thursday.

"There are still innocent people there," Republican Lawrence B. Wilkerson, former chief of staff to then-secretary of state Colin Powell, told the Associated Press. "Some have been there six or seven years."

Wilkerson, who first made the assertions in an internet posting on Tuesday, told the AP he learned from briefings and by communicating with military commanders that the U.S. soon realized many detainees held at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were innocent but nevertheless held them in hopes they could provide information for a "mosaic" of intelligence.

"It did not matter if a detainee were innocent. Indeed, because he lived in Afghanistan and was captured on or near the battle area, he must know something of importance," Wilkerson wrote in the blog.

He said intelligence analysts hoped to gather "sufficient information about a village, a region, or a group of individuals, that dots could be connected and terrorists or their plots could be identified."

Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel, said vetting on the battlefield during the early stages of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan was incompetent with no meaningful attempt to discriminate "who we were transporting to Cuba for detention and interrogation."

Many remain classified as unreleasable and yet have no charges against them, at present remaining in godforsaken custody into perpetuity at the hands of your state. Proud? Immorally ambivalent?

That is justification enough for me to stand behind enhanced interrogation techniques. We don't maim these guys. We don't use brutal, barbaric means to get information from them.

A euphemism for torture by despicable souls who desire torture yet recognise its many forms already defined by law so chose to get creative in propaganda all to sway an ignorant and vengeful populace and elected/appointed court officials their way.

 

[Whiskey16]

If not, and the device goes off, one would figure the terrorist (remember, he is already in custody and admitted to planting the device) would be executed for the 258,232 murders he committed that day.

State sanctioned capital punishment is also a barbaric action, and also more commonly practiced and accepted by the more regressive states in this world. The USA shares rather poor company.

The ticking-rime bomb scenario is a truly stupid argument to give a pathway for permissible torture.

Information can be rather worthless unless it can be verified or at least cross referenced with other sources. Any real world scenario with time limited interrogation of a lone bomber will not satisfy any '24' junky's fantasies.

People under time-limited duress most often will state what they feel will satisfy their interrogator's desire, all to end and relieve the torture. Highly unreliable information, though highly unreliable information satisfied the likes of the previous US administration that wished and practiced torture and gave us all the lame euphemism of enhanced interrogation techniques (EIT).

Here's what former CIA director Michael Hayden, Jose Rodriguez, who ran the agency’s National Clandestine Service, and John Rizzo, who served as the CIA’s chief legal officer, all had to say:

EITs were used to break the will to resist, not to extract information directly. Hayden acknowledged that prisoners might say anything to stop their suffering. (Like the other panelists, he insisted EITs weren't torture.) That’s why “we never asked anybody anything we didn’t know the answer to, while they were undergoing the enhanced interrogation techniques. The techniques were not designed to elicit truth in the moment.” Instead, EITs were used in a controlled setting, in which interrogators knew the answers and could be sure they were inflicting misery only when the prisoner said something false. The point was to create an illusion of godlike omniscience and omnipotence so that the prisoner would infer, falsely, that his captors always knew when he was lying or withholding information. More broadly, said Hayden, the goal was “to take someone who had come into our custody absolutely defiant and move them into a state or a zone of cooperation” by convincing them that “you are no longer in control of your destiny. You are in our hands.” Thereafter, the prisoner would cooperate without need for EITs. Rodriguez explained: “Once you got through the enhanced interrogation process, then the real interrogation began. … The knowledge base was so good that these people knew that we actually were not going to be fooled. It was an essential tool to validate that the people were being truthful. “

A ticking-time-bomb torture will return garbage for those refuse types who already have an inclination for the gutter and immoral practices.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

A euphemism for torture by despicable souls who desire torture yet recognise its many forms already defined by law so chose to get creative in propaganda all to sway an ignorant and vengeful populace and elected/appointed court officials their way.

This may come as a shock, but it is actually possible for someone to have a different viewpoint from you without automatically being a "despicable soul".

 

[Whiskey16]

This may come as a shock, but it is actually possible for someone to have a different viewpoint from you without automatically being a "despicable soul".

Yes, I standby my statement that those in the CIA, DoD, and Bush Administration who developed and authorised the program were DESPICABLE SOULS.

I said of those despicable souls who came up with the euphemism of Enhanced interrogation techniques. Regardless of attempt to reclassify it as beyond the scope of torture, EIC remains as torture within US law and of treaties the USA has signed.

Torture is immoral and criminal. Advocating and implementing that action is despicable.

Out of fragile politically partisan sensibilities, may not one define those who gave us such torture programs as "despicable?"

Therefore Charles, despicable souls were indeed those in the previous US administration who defined EIT's and authorised such implementation.

An adjective was appropriately used at a specific an non-prejudicial target. Unless, Charles, you wish to counter that torture is not despicable and it is entirely inappropriate to classify as despicable to intentionally inflict harm and suffering upon one under another's care and control?

 

[Whiskey16]

A euphemism for torture by despicable souls who desire torture yet recognise its many forms already defined by law so chose to get creative in propaganda all to sway an ignorant and vengeful populace and elected/appointed court officials their way.

Charles, rather than detract from this discussion, permit me to quickly elaborate upon the souls who sourced enhanced interrogation techniques:

The Torture Memos, sometimes called the Bybee Memo or 8/1/02 Interrogation Opinion, was a term originally applying to a set of three legal memoranda drafted by John Yoo as Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the United States (US) and signed by Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee, head of the Office of Legal Counsel of the United States Department of Justice. They advised the Central Intelligence Agency, the United States Department of Defense, and the President on the use of enhanced interrogation techniques: mental and physical torment and coercion such as prolonged sleep deprivation, binding in stress positions, and waterboarding, and stated that such acts widely regarded as torture might be legally permissible under an expansive interpretation of Presidential authority during the "War on Terror."

Yes, despicable souls were those source of that euphemism and the despicable torture program implementation.

A "differing viewpoint", to be sure.

May no character judgment be allowed against government officials?

It certainly should not be radical to dress down torture.

 

[Craig234]

Never say never.

To use the trite and often repeated scenario: FBI just captured a terrorist who admitted to planting a nuclear bomb in NY city, set to detonated in 8 hours. He will not disclose the location.

Are you saying torture would still be wrong in this case, when hundreds of thousands of your fellow citizens are about to be tortured themselves?

I only use this hollywood-esque example to illustrate a point.

You know, I really have a plan for terrorists after all this ticking time bomb.

Plant two, and tell them where one is.

 

[colonelciller]

I thought it was widely known that Bush had people waterboarded, beaten at Guantanamo Bay Prison, and that he was a blood thirsty war criminal who murdered more than 1mn innocent Iraqis and destabilized their country.

What is not so widely known is how Bush didn't seem to care about reports saying the attacks on 9/11/01 were to happen, if he didn't outright authorize them.

mainstream media avoids this issue like the plague, and when it cannot avoid it... obscures the issue.

also, Obama loves torture and extraordinary rendition even more than bush.

 

[colonelciller]

If you held the sole authority to authorize or not authorize torture in that case, are you saying you would not authorize it, no matter what?

There is a good chance, but not 100% I grant you, that you could save hundreds of thousands of lives by doing so and extracting the location of the nuclear bomb.

If not, and the device goes off, one would figure the terrorist (remember, he is already in custody and admitted to planting the device) would be executed for the 258,232 murders he committed that day.

 

[Craig234]

To those advocating torture to have whatever chance it provides to get information 'that might save lives'.

I'm going to ask you about following the logic you use.

First, how many potential saved lives are needed to justify it? We throw out 'two million' from a nuke. Where's the line? Uisng the police analogy one is fine - if a bad guy has a hostage and they need to kill him to save the hostage, they will. But how about a number of, say, six troops in a vehicle. OK to justify based on saving lives?

OK. Now take a village area in Afghanistan. Taliban are known to operate in the area. When troops leave, it's dominated by Taliban.

Villagers might know things that could help us find Taliban. That might save troops' lives - such as from that vehicle being blown up by an IED.

Villagers might not want to give that information - maybe sympathetic to the Taliban, maybe not wanting the Taliban to kill them for doing so in the near future.

(Edit to add a sentence I'd meant to include but didn't: assume our military has determined some villagers, we don't know which, can very likely provide info leading to the Taliban that will save lives).

So, here's the question. Isn't the torture of every man woman and child in that village area justifid by your logic?

It fits everything you said. It has a chance to save lives. So aren't we compelled to save those lives,using torture for the chance it offers to do so?

Using your own logic - not contradicting yourself from above - explain why it's not justified.

One thing you might want to argue is 'well many of them might know anything useful'. Let's put aside the inconsistency of that statement when the large majority of people in Gitmo were innocent and did not have useful information either. Let's say for the sake of discussion we're almost certainly a few of them do - we just don't know which ones.

Your 'logic' leads pretty inescabaly to an answer that we are obligated to torture civilians constantly in the name of saving Afghan and US military lives.

Don't like that answer? But why do you get to just reject your own logic?

What this little exercise does for one thing, is show you really are dehumanizing thousands of people so that torture on them 'doesn't matter' - and perhaps one of the few ways to get you to recognize you are doing so is with my question replacing them with people you still humanize. Hopefully it gets the point across.

Now in fact, for many people that dehumanization isn't all that hard to extend. But it hasn't for most readers here.

I was just watching a documentary on secretly recorded German prisoners of war in WWII talking to each other. One of them said on his second day arriving somewhere, they launched 16 bombs, and 8 hit Jewish homes. He siad he felt very bad about it, but decided orders are orders. On the third day, he didn't mind at all. On the fourth day, they started a practice of machine gunning Jews before breakfast for the entertainmnet, it was enjoyable. Pretty fast dehumanization.

Some American troops dehumanized all Vietnamese - gooks and others - all Iraqis - rags and others - and so on. I've heard Somalis were 'skinnies'.

We've seen pictures of the unusual troops who defiled bodies peeing on them, who laugh and keep trophies (there's a reason there are specific regulaitons against those trophies), the Abu Ghraib prison guards who did the humiliating things to prisoners laughing hilariously, posing for pictures, and much more. Not everyone acts to much on it but many are affected by that dehumaniztion.

We've heard the machine gunning helicoptor pilots laughing, 'make them dance' type comments as they machine gun targets on the ground.

As I recall, Israel banned torture then opened the door a tiny crack for worst cases - and found that doing so caused a huge use of it.

If I understood it correctly, just as the US court decided 'seprate but equal is inherently unequal', the Israeli court decided ANY authorization of torture would become broad use.

 

[woolfe9998]

Fortunately, extreme situations like the hypothetical I posed do not occur often, perhaps never. Hence, we need not worry that if we approve it in that situation, we're going to have the slippery slope fallacy that Craig worries over above. Arguments over where you draw the line are pointless because morality is not simple and moral absolutism is not a viable solution.

I contend that absolutely anyone would make that choice if 2 million lives are at stake. Craig included. Moral high ground in a discussion forum not withstanding. If we really want to talk about morality, then let's consider the moral character of someone who has the power to prevent the death of 2 million people and fails to act.

 

[colonelciller]

Fortunately, extreme situations like the hypothetical I posed do not occur often, perhaps never. Hence, we need not worry that if we approve it in that situation, we're going to have the slippery slope fallacy that Craig worries over above. Arguments over where you draw the line are pointless because morality is not simple and moral absolutism is not a viable solution.

I contend that absolutely anyone would make that choice if 2 million lives are at stake. Craig included. Moral high ground in a discussion forum not withstanding. If we really want to talk about morality, then let's consider the moral character of someone who has the power to prevent the death of 2 million people and fails to act.

this hypothetical is a derailing distraction from the real world issue of torture.
hollywood already wrote that script, it adds nothing

 

[Whiskey16]

If we really want to talk about morality, then let's consider the moral character of someone who has the power to prevent the death of 2 million people and fails to act.

How may you legislate this?

Or keep up with the TV rouge operative theme of wilfully committing a judgemental to a crime?

Craig passed examples of a minimum. A wrong to toss a die in the wishful hope of attacking a wrong. Though, convenient of you to ignore the presented reality of torture under such a scenario returning quite an untrustworthy response. Likely worthless Intel in return for a certain crime against one under your care.

Where may current laws and means be broke and by whom to commit a certainly despicable act?

Is torture not a certain despicable act?

You advocate it, then get on with specifics.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

Fortunately, extreme situations like the hypothetical I posed do not occur often, perhaps never. Hence, we need not worry that if we approve it in that situation, we're going to have the slippery slope fallacy that Craig worries over above. Arguments over where you draw the line are pointless because morality is not simple and moral absolutism is not a viable solution.

I contend that absolutely anyone would make that choice if 2 million lives are at stake. Craig included. Moral high ground in a discussion forum not withstanding. If we really want to talk about morality, then let's consider the moral character of someone who has the power to prevent the death of 2 million people and fails to act.

Interestingly enough, what you are saying here echoes pretty well the actual Supreme Court ruling in Israel that outlawed torture. IANAL, but my lay reading of it suggests that they essentially decided to ignore the "ticking timebomb" scenario, saying that it shouldn't be the basis for making policy. They acknowledged that that on the rare chance that it occurred, they expected that someone would probably ignore any rules against torture regardless, and that if there was sufficient evidence, that could be used as a reasonable defense after the fact.

A fairly reasonable combination of the legal maxim that hard cases make bad law, and an avoidance of both ends of the oversimplification spectrum ("we should never torture evar" on the one end and "it's always Jack Bauer" on the other.)

Yes, I standby my statement that those in the CIA, DoD, and Bush Administration who developed and authorised the program were DESPICABLE SOULS.

I read your comment as having been directed at smackababy for using the term. Apologies since that was apparently not your intention.

 

[Craig234]

Any takers who support torture that might save lives for my question in post 41?

 

[Craig234]

A euphemism for torture by despicable souls who desire torture yet recognise its many forms already defined by law so chose to get creative in propaganda all to sway an ignorant and vengeful populace and elected/appointed court officials their way.

These sorts of language manipulaitons to obtain popular support for bad things IMO are one of the 'weapons of mass destruction' in our society today, when politics has replaced guns for how power is handles and policy set. It's why I place Frank Luntz as one of the more evil people around us - his whole job is 'take an issue the people find morally repugnant and find just the right phrase that gets them to accept it'.

Oh, Bush is having a problem in the election because too many citizens have reservations about his slashing spending for the people to shift wealth to the rich? No problem - just have him repeat the phrase 'compassionate conservative' over and over, and 'moderates' will be seduced, 'oh, he does care, it's safe to vote for him'.

Want to break down the barrier between tax money and religious institutions to let them make a deal where the religious leaders turn churches into campaign offices and in exchange the leaders they support arrange for tax dollars to be redirected from government services into their pockets - 'faith-based initiatives' sounds so much nicer.

We could write a book about the Orwellian use of language - the tragedy is, how well it works, how many voters decide things so casually to be swayed by a phrase.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

Any takers who support torture that might save lives for my question in post 41?

Portraying someone who recognizes the potential need to use torture as a "torture supporter" strikes me as similar to those who portray pro-choice people as "being in favor of abortion".

My answer to your question is "no". Even among those who support torture in the event of ticking time bomb scenarios, I have never seen any advocation for torturing entire towns. As absurd as it is to boil down all torture situations to "ticking time bomb" scenarios, your attempt at reductio ad absurdum to dismiss those scenarios is equally absurd.

 

[davmat787]

 

[davmat787]

You advocate it, then get on with specifics.

I know this comment was not directed at me, but wolfe. I do want to say that no one is 'advocating' torture, period. Instead, merely pointing out some potential scenarios where people who are saying they would never ever condone it, in fact might just do so.

Using an extreme case to point that out merely serves to illustrate just how extreme WE would need the case to be for it to happen.