Of course there is a winning position. You torture someone who would have killed you given the chance, you get information to save peoples lives, the person you would have otherwise murdered has a sore ass but is still alive, win win win. Torture seems like it might be a better answer than war actually. We use non-lethal methods of capturing our enemy, torture those we think have info which will help us capture the rest, we put everyone in Gitmo.. they can have their 3 squares, a copy of the Koran... we live, they live, we can all smoke pot and be happy!
Of course there is a winning position. You torture someone who would have killed you given the chance, you get information to save peoples lives, the person you would have otherwise murdered has a sore ass but is still alive, win win win. Torture seems like it might be a better answer than war actually. We use non-lethal methods of capturing our enemy, torture those we think have info which will help us capture the rest, we put everyone in Gitmo.. they can have their 3 squares, a copy of the Koran... we live, they live, we can all smoke pot and be happy!
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jonks
Lifer
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yeah, except that the information you got was of dubious quality because the guy said anything to get the torture to stop, you caused a few thousand more people to join the jihad against you because they see a world power legitimizing torture against muslims, and now those people conduct hundreds more terrorist attacks killing thousands more than would otherwise have died. Oh, and you threw out all of our American values in the process becoming no better than the enemy. Win win. Yeah.
Can you prove that no torture victim ever gave them false information in the hope of stopping the torture?
Can you prove that no one subjected to their torture ever intentionally gave them false information to lure them into a trap?
Can you prove any cost-benefit ratio where the value of some particular piece of information outweighed the cost of all of the false leads?
George Bush and Dick Cheney are already among the tyrannical criminal torturers of history. Do you want history to remember the United States of America with such illustrious torturers as the nazi Germany, Stalin's gulags, Pol Pat and North Vietnam?
Is that the legacy you would leave your children and grandchildren? :shocked:
You're a lying, immoral, sub-human piece of shit!
1. Your criminal EX-Traitor In Chief and his gang of thugs tortured innocent captives along with whoever was guilty. If you realy believe torture is OK, I can only hope YOU will be the next one they believe has information they want. It won't matter whether it's true, but maybe you'll learn something useful from the experience.
2. Assuming the person you want to torture has useful information, the vast majority of interrogation experts agree that torture produces NO useful, reliable information. You can't prove otherwise.
3. You have no way to guarantee that your victim will survive.
YOU are a disgrace to the United States of America and to humanity. :thumbsdown: :|
jonks
Lifer
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There will always be extremists. You can reduce their number even if you can't eliminate all of them. War against one people will certainly inflame certain populations with similar cultural practices, but most people understand the difference between war (justified or not) and a systematic legalized practice of torture.
The war in Iraq no doubt drew al qaeda and its sympathizers to the region, but the interrogator I posted earlier also spoke about the many fighters that came solely because of the abuses at abu ghraib and guantanamo. If you have the ability to prevent those people from actively joining military opposition, and if the intel gained from torture is of dubious quality, and also happens to be illegal, then it doesn't make practical sense to do it.
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I am not trying to justify torture. I am stating that is has been used and worked to provide the information desired. It is up to the people that obtain the info to determine the validity and/or relevance.
I provided you an example that you requested.
Resistance cells were exposed and destroyed due to prisoners captured by the Germans / Italians in occupied Europe and also by the Japanese in the Pacific.
Whether those on the other side of the fence have ever did such a thing; I have no idea. Probably so; but not documented.
And I challenge your assertion. You didn't answer my questions that would establish whether it actually provided "the information desired." For the information to be useful, it would have to be confirmed and validated before it was needed. I'm sure a lot of time was lost chasing misinformation, and that it was costly to them. At least, I hope so.
Bottom line -- I don't give a rat's ass. There is no HUMAN justification for torture. We will never defeat evil by becoming the evil we seek to defeat. If we do, we lose our humanity, and who wins the battle of the moment is meaningless.
I will not concede the point or dignify the proposition that torture is useful, let alone acceptable or excusable, in any way, for any alleged "reason."
I'm not sure the fact that it has worked to obtain information is all that relevant to the discussion all by itself. It's success rate in terms of providing accurate information would be a much better way to argue whether it works or not. And that success rate should be compared against all other interrogation methods to see if torturing people really provides any advantage in information gathering.
The real problem with the debate is that we don't HAVE that kind of information. Judging how productive torture is would seem to be a difficult problem for the public part of the debate at least, so I'm not sure it should be part of the public debate at all. It's a red herring, since very few people engaging in the debate can prove their case about the effectiveness of torture one way or the other...and more importantly, nobody can disprove their point either.
And it may not have been your intention, but it honestly sounds like you're justifying torture to me. You're saying that an issue we need to consider with the torture debate is that it has worked before, which seems like a misleading thing to consider without a broader context.
dphantom
Diamond Member
- Jan 14, 2005
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Just prior to D-Day, Operation Jericho was launched at the request of French Resistance and other intelligence agencies. The purpose was to attack teh prison at Amiens to free French resistance leaders who had intimate knowledge of D-Day plans. At the time, the Germans did not know who they had.
The mission was approved because French reistance cells in northern France were rapidly being rolled up by German Gestapo units based often on coerced intelligence. For you Harvey, coerced means EIT or "torture".
The mission was successfully carried out by 21 and 487 Squadrons of the RAF.
I am also not condoning torture. But, there may be times when as wrong as it is, it may be the right thing to do. That does not make us the same evil as our enemies. Max hastings in his book Armaggedon makes some valid observations as he closes his work regarding the "evils" British and America as well as Soviet and German military perpetrated on each other and on civilians. You would do well to read his work to see what the difference is between pure evil and evil committed on behalf of a just cause.
Obviously. Look at public approval ratings in this country for killing terrorists on the battlefield vs bringing them to secret prisons and torturing them. The difference is astounding, and that's among people who are all predisposed to dislike the terrorists to begin with (and don't give me that "lefties support the terrorists" bullshit). Or for that matter, consider the opposite scenario. For Americans, every soldier who is killed by a terrorist by an IED or a bullet pisses us off, but what REALLY makes us want to just carpet bomb Mecca is when Americans are captured, tortured and then executed on video.
Atomic Playboy
Lifer
- Feb 6, 2007
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Did I misread what you just wrote? You seem to claim that the Nazi Gestapo used torture on French prisoners to extract information on the French resistance, and the French were worried about the torture being used on their officers who were being held. Your justification for torture is that the Nazis found it effective? Could you have a less persuasive argument? Why not just go full out and claim that we should fly planes into our enemies since it was so effective for the 9/11 hijackers? You're using the actions of one of the most universally despised groups in human history to craft our policy. That just doesn't seem all that persuasive to me.
And I would simply respond by saying that "the ends justify the means" is a pretty terrible argument, not matter how thick of a book it takes to make it. In this particular case, America is worth defending because we're a country that values freedom, justice and equality...or more specifically, doesn't spy on its citizens, indefinitely imprison people in secret and without trial, or torture prisoners. Do you disagree that those are values that make this nation worth defending in the first place? If so, can we set aside those values to fight a threat without losing part of who we are in the process? Torture is "wrong", but it's not JUST wrong...embracing evil ideas, even on behalf of just causes, tarnishes the cause itself. If we're not careful, we may do a better job destroying America than the terrorists every could.
Which is my other problem with this debate...even if I agreed that extraordinary threats justify extraordinary measures to fight them, do terrorists really represent such a threat that it's worth jeopardizing who we are as a country to fight them? Terrorists are popularized as trying to "destroy America", but if that's even their goal, I'd say they dramatically overestimate their ability to do so. It's fine to have an abstract discussion, but "there may be situations where torture is the right thing to do" is NOT an argument for it being acceptable in our current situation. Even the government's justification seems to fall a little flat. According to government officials, information obtained through torture allowed us to round up some other terrorists...that seems pretty weak compared to the ticking time bomb scenario so often used as a scenario to justify torture.
Well Atomic Playboy got your factual presentation right, even if he (apparently) misunderstood the point you were trying to make.
But just what WAS that point? Assuming your facts are right, you demonstrated that torture was effective for the German Gestapo obtaining intelligence from French prisoners...so if you're argument isn't "See, it worked for the Nazis" what exactly IS your point?
- Oct 30, 2000
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Axis powers were able to destroy resistance groups because they tortured a group member to obtain other names and or plans.
Allied infiltration agents that were being dropped in to support such groups were captured as a result of such interrogations.
Information desired was the names of members and/or tactical information. That information was provided and acted on successfully.
Without the names of members, the groups would not have been able to be destroyed after a member was captured.
Ambushes require advance information - where was the info obtained from?
At what cost to them? You still can't establish that they could have gotten possibly better information, sooner, by other means, and I still won't concede the point that it was worth what it cost them in time lost to misdirection, let alone their humanity.
Who ended up winning the war?
I'm honestly not sure why you guys are debating THIS particular point. Surely an argument against torture doesn't have to take the position that it has never worked to obtain actionable intelligence from anyone, ever, in the history of the world.
And instead of paying attention to how effective it may or may not have been in the past, I'm extremely disturbed by the fact that the example you found to demonstrate that torture can work is from the Nazi Gestapo. While there may be a lesson to take away from how effective they found it, it's also worth considering, I think, that they found it acceptable to use in the first place. Because generally I think we'd like to stay out of select groups that include Nazis. Of course the fact that Nazis tortured people doesn't, by itself, make it morally wrong. But if they're the ONLY kinds of people doing it, we might want to reconsider just how evil an act we're really engaging in here.
CallMeJoe
Diamond Member
- Jul 30, 2004
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I hope you realize that the "enhanced interrogation techniques" used were modeled after those used by North Korea and North Vietnam to obtain confessions from captured Americans.
Unless you think Lt. Cmdr McCain really was an infamous Air Pirate who intentionally targeted North Vietnamese civilians, you have to question the value of the confessions obtained under these circumstances...
Unless you think Lt. Cmdr McCain really was an infamous Air Pirate who intentionally targeted North Vietnamese civilians, you have to question the value of the confessions obtained under these circumstances...
Why is this such an issue. No one had their limbs chopped off or was executed or electrocuted. OK stop doing it. Why does this subject inflame so many people. ~12,000 murders a year in the US, no one cares. ~35,000 auto deaths, no one cares. But go to Iraq and unseat a dictator and all hell breaks loose. Sadam was good man just like Kim Jung-il is a great humanatarian who should remain in power. And, Afghanistan - that war is ok. More troops over there but don't waterboard. Find a new subject to beat to death.
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Both of us are stating the torture has been used in recent history to accomplish intended aims.
And the possiblity of torture being used has affected policy.
Neither one of us has stated that it is justified.
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