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Originally Posted by aceventura3
"coerce" a confession, to "punish"..., do you really want to stand by that? That seems pretty vague.
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It's supposed to be all-inclusive to prevent any kind of torture. The last thing you want when authoring the definition of torture is to leave any loopholes. You don't want it to happen at all, ever. Unless you're sick, but sick people shouldn't really be allowed to author things like this.
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Originally Posted by aceventura3
What if a person has been trained and it does not cause that person "incredible" mental stress and "extreme" discomfort. How do we measure "incredible" and "extreme". Taking it to an extreme, if I had to watch Rachel Maddow's show for an extended period of time, I would be put under "incredible" mental stress. So far we are being very subjective, and it appears we don't know it torture until we can determine "ectreme" discomfort or "incredible" stress. what if we have a person who is willing to blow themselves up, how would waterboarding comparatively speaking be "increadible" stress, or "extreme" discomfort?
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It's childish to use hyperbole when talking about torture, Ace. Waterboarding is a singular experience, one unequatable to even drowning, but you're making jokes about Rachel Maddow? Have someone you trust waterboard you. It's not something that one can subjectively judge as perfectly fine just like having someone snap your arm isn't something one will subjectively judge. It's an experience that is the same regardless of who you are.
This isn't a game of theoretical states. It's real. It's happened, it's happening, and it will happen.
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Originally Posted by aceventura3
How do you reconcile your position above with the billions of people on this planet that react to things differently? You position here seems to defy what makes us unique humans.
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If I shoot you in the leg and then shoot someone else in the leg, no amount of uniqueness will dull the pain. It's the same.
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Originally Posted by aceventura3
Then if we do assume you are correct, I think it would be very simple to create of list of "torture" and "not torture", with no shades of gray, can you?
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There is a legal definition that one can visit when unsure. It's pretty clear.
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Originally Posted by aceventura3
Not effective? Doesn't that depend? Earlier you wrote about "extreme" discomfort and "incredible" mental stress, what if the threat puts a person into those conditions?
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No, it doesn't depend. For as long as humans have tortured for information, that information has been at the very best highly suspect and unreliable. That has never nor will ever change.
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[The conclusion of counterterrorist officials from agencies on both sides of the Atlantic] is unanimous: not only have coercive methods failed to generate significant and actionable intelligence, they have also caused the squandering of resources on a massive scale through false leads, chimerical plots, and unnecessary safety alerts—with Abu Zubaydah’s case one of the most glaring examples.
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Tortured Reasoning | vanityfair.com
Torture has no redeeming quality whatsoever.
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Originally Posted by aceventura3
Also, If "it" is not effective, what is?
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According to the people in the intelligence community, the most effective method for acquiring information from a detainee is positive reinforcement.
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Originally Posted by aceventura3
The point is - what is legal? So far, it is still not clear. waterboarding could be clearly defined as torture, what about being in a confined space with inspects? Some people live in highly inspect infected areas, and others have a phobia to insects, couldn't that be torture to one and "normal" to another?
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You're making this way too relative and theoretical, which is allowing you to distance yourself from the visceral and undeniable truth of the situation. Again, I invite you to have someone you trust waterboard you. Then, for comparison, get in a box filled with crickets. You'll figure it out quickly
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Originally Posted by aceventura3
This seems to contradict your earlier posts on torture. I would have thought torture would be very easy for you to identify when you saw it. I don't think law school... is needed. If it is needed, isn't that a problem for the CIA folks in the field needing to make decisions and act in some cases under short time pressures.
If I am your CIA agent and I creatively come up with a questioning method on the spot using what is available and a reasonable interpretation of the guidelines to save lives that you later deem slightly over the line how do you respond? Would I get the benefit of the doubt, do you throw the book at me to the full extent of your authority with no regard for the circumstances and the result?
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I'd not be able to tell you exactly what legal fate awaited you for torturing. That was my point. If I were AG, I'd tell you that waterboarding is torture, and that you'd be putting yourself in a very bad legal position for torturing, but consequences for people as high up as the CIA director aren't the same as they might be for Willravel or Aceventura. If I waterboarded someone, I'd go to jail. When the CIA does it, it can get covered up and made quite hazy.
The saving lives thing is irrelevant because, as I've said now hundreds of times on TFP, torture cannot yield reliable intelligence. You could just as easily cost lives as save them, and that's assuming you can even get the detainee to talk in anything other than gibberish. The idea that torturing a prisoner can save or has saved lives is ludicrous. If it weren't so disgusting, the idea would be laughable.
---------- Post added at 01:51 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:50 PM ----------
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Originally Posted by aceventura3
Both. I personally would not call waterboarding torture...
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You've never been waterboarded, so your opinion holds no weight. Go get waterboarded and we can have a real debate on the issue. I'm not exaggerating, it is nothing like what you would imagine.