The Torture Thread
 

What do you think about torture? Is it moral/ethical/excusable? Is it a means to an end or the ends not justifying the means? Does it produce reliable intel that can save lives, or is the intel unreliable? Is the US using torture methods?

I don't think it's a good idea because, as I understand, not only does it not yield reliable intel but it also places the nation doing the torturing in a really bad place. When I think back to previous governments/administrations/parties that have used torture, I can't think of any of them being looked back on in a positive light, at least for the torturing. While I'm not privy to information from military interrogations that include torture techniques, it would seem that a prisoner tortured would give up any intelligence, reliable or not, just to end the torture.

I recently voiced my opposition to torture and got "but they're terrorists!" as a response. I think that a lot of people are comfortable with torture because 1) they don't have a problem with doing bad things to bad people, 2) they don't believe that the government is likely to label an innocent person as a terrorist, and 3) they believe that even if there's only a small chance of getting useful information, it's still the best/only way to get that information. The mentality is "We're being attacked and we must do whatever is necessary to defend ourselves. It's us or them."

I agree with you guys. Torture is absolutely wrong. What the Vietnamese and Japanese have done to our brave soldiers and other civilians is absolutely abhorrent. You are right. Why couldn't we get them to stop and why can't we bring them to justice?

Also, you are forgetting one important thing: torture of innocent people. Probably the ultimate injustice. That pretty much ends the conversation for me.

and also:

Waterboarding is torture
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/f...hitchens200808

And also we have an attorney general who is unwilling to say whether or not he thinks waterboarding is torture.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/...ing/index.html

I've heard similar things from people like what inBoil describes. It's difficult for me to imagine the long series of ethical boners that would lead someone to hold beliefs like that. You'd think that the compulsory reiterations of U.S. history that our education system requires for someone to achieve a high school diploma would inhibit people from holding such beliefs, but then a basic education is not something at all to be taken for granted.

Why is it that the people who don't trust the government to distribute food stamps equitably are so often the same people who blithely think the government should be trusted to torture?

There isn't really a "debate" over torture--at least not one that isn't lost by the pro side again and again and again. The only real debate that I see to be had is over why people who advocate torture are allowed to hold power, how they should be prosecuted, and what their punishment should entail (i.e. how many years in prison they should spend).

As long as it is someone else being tortured a lot of people are OK with it. When I say "somene else" I mean someone readily identifiable as "different" - in a western context that would be Muslims or Asians or random little brown people with funny accents. Doesn't matter what Amnesty International says, they're a bunch of commies anyway.

As soon as a western government starts torturing the middle classes, most of those who support torture will change their tune.

Could you define "boner" as you used it here? What I'm picturing is...interesting, but I doubt it's what you intended to convey.:hmm:

will: could you flesh this out a bit more in your own voice please?
i don't really understand what we're doing here.

i'm going to give you until tomorrow morning to address some of the links you've posted...

you know that this is a discussion forum, not a "link" forum...

if that is not done by tomorrow morning, i will delete this thread...

i get up awfully early...

make this a discussion and not a "hey, look at me, i can post links with the worst of them" thread...

and i will not accept any PMs...

Edited OP.

not pushy, just skeptical...

you've clarified...


oh, that's sweet!!!

ok, any of you guys who have posted in this thread know what's going on?

the OP is manipulating you...

be wary...

Getting back on track...
It seems there's a consensus so far.

I find it interesting, inBoil, that your characterization of those who support torture is quite the same as what my characterization might be, but I can't think of anyone who thinks that beyond talking heads. I suspect that's where I get my understanding of the phantom other side. What would someone like that think? Is it like what Billo or Rush might say? Or is there another explanation?

First, in regards to the OP, yeah... it's a pretty ugly situation. I think inBOIL pretty much nailed the top 3 reasons Americans allow it so easily to happen, though. Frankly, I think that torture does not have a place in modern society. I DO, however, believe that imprisonment does, maybe detaining folks outside of normal jurisdiction. Not indefinitely, but for an extended period in an effort to gather intelligence.

Second, wtf is with the recent staff attack on Will? I'm starting to sense some serious Gestapo overtones around here, especially in the Politics board. I'd really like a somewhat fuller explanation because I'm honestly shocked and appalled by the way things have been falling on this situation. Not that I've donated a LOT of money, but having donated money to the TFP, having been a fairly active member for some time and having brought in several referrals, I'd like to know wtf is going on. Anybody?

It's wrong under all circumstances and should be illegal in my opinion. Yet, the current administration continues to torture us all without fear of retribution. Oh, how bitter I am.

I think a lot of people don't think about torture in depth; they come up with the justifications I listed above, then move on having only scratched the surface.

Oh what the fuck will is banned again?

Jesus you guys, pick on him some more why dont ya?

Alright what's the reason this time? Why is Will banned?

Could a moderator please elaborate on Will's banning? Is he gone for good? Temporary?


Thanks

Thirded

I'll jump on the bandwagon.

Fourded.

for you guys to ban him..man thats torture

not sure what he's done but i think he's a great contributer to the forum and this place wouldnt be the same without him. just thought id throw that in.

as for torture, im all against it. the majority of the 'worst of the worst' in the war on terror those that have languished in gitmo for the past 7 years have been released.

who is to say that innocents are not caught up. the fact that the US wont even consider any form of compensation for the inhumane and unjust treatment of innocents is even worse.

who saw the omar khadr video last week. the canadian 15 year old who is being held in gitmo without proper care or councelling. hes probably 22 now and has spent what a third of his life in gimto so far. im not sure if it hit you guys, but i was almost in tears.

forget what he is accused of doing. for me to sit there and watch and listen to him rock like that, cry like a baby and call out 'Ya Umi" in arabic (translation: oh mother) is heart wrenching.

the psychological injuries are always worse than the physical ones.

Throwing grenades at US special Forces and killing them is a bad thing, so is having connections to Al Qaeda. Let him rot.

so try him in a fair and just manner (not in a kangaroo court like gitmo where you're judgements would be viewed as skewed) and if the evidence stands up then let him rot.

in saying that he was a minor, and i dont see any fair court letting him rot for good. besides, the amount of psychological trauma caused would probably be lifelong.

not sure if you know much about this kid. he moved to aghanistan with his parents and family at a young age. sure, his father was a confidant of OBL, but do you really expect a young impressionable teenager in those circumstances to revolt against the machine? i very much doubt it.


theres no way you'd let a juvenile rot like that.

torture is unspeakable, Injustice is worse.

nice troll

sorry to interrupt the broadcast.

i dont mean to be a prick, but seeing that your membership spans a good old less than a month here on TFP, i beg to differ with your judgements. i personally dont think you are in a position to judge willravel unless you have read his posts over the past few years which i am sure you have not.

sure, he didnt gel with everyone, but he did push peoples buttons which i dont think is necesarily a bad thing

but one one is asked to like everyone here, respect is the order of the day. so i dare say show some ARR EEY ESS PEE EEY CEE TEE.

Beat me to it, dlish. It needed saying.

Registration date does not forum attendance state.


Banned members come back. Lurkers decide to post.

you guys fed the troll!

I'm sure you had a great chance in the one day you've been here..

Wait a second.... will?

But they're so cute. :(

The UK, our closest ally, no longer finds the Bush administration to be credible when it comes to torture.

the UK House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee recently stated that "the UK can no longer rely on US assurances that it does not use torture, and we recommend that the Government does not rely on such assurances in the future."
WHen your best friend thinks you are immoral....what's left?

Military jurist bars some statements in case against former bin Laden driver
 

this is what happens when you torure terror suspects. gives them a chance to beat you at your own game. if he walks free, the current government has no one to blame but themselves.

I think indirect torture would work better than direct.

LS could yould elaborate on that?

what do you mean by indirect torture?

do you mean phychological warfare? if playing the childrens character 'Barney the dinosaur' music over and over and over again isnt phsychological warfare im not sure what is.

anyone read the book 'The men who stare at goats' by any chance? a book full of pych-ops, mind manipulation, phychological torture - all in the name of the defending the nation. i dont believe everything i read in that book but im sure parts of it were true.

I just figure that I would give up info a lot faster if my family were to be brought before me and my torturers would threaten me with chopping pieces of them off before my eyes.

If that falls under psychological torture, then sure.

id have to disagree with your methodology.

if family members are to bear the brunt of someone elses misdeeds, do you not think this is a little unfair? where is the justice where innocents are left alone?

besides this, do you not think that you would say goodbye to ever getting any reliable information from the family members who would hate you even more now?

this method can also be a type of coercion and could possibly fall under todays judgement and thus excluded as evidence, therefore futile.

I'm not arguing the fairness of what I suggested. I know it' not. I just said that it is that method that would make me give up info a lot more reliably than physical torture. But if the people I'm snitching on promised to kill my family if I talk, I might take the info to the grave. Then again, I've never been tortured.

When it comes to me personally, my worst envisioned torture would be to be responsible for the harm of loved ones.

I would think the self-preservation mechanism would be stronger. Threat of physical pain is both physical and psychological. Threat of physical pain to others is merely psychological, and not as hardwired as personal infliction either.

I don't know. While I'm not big on pain at all, it doesn't make me cringe quite like imagining a close family member sitting before me being skinned alive, or something along those lines. Yeah, it's an extreme, but whatever.

Like I said, I've never been tortured.

yes you have never been tortured by the looks of it. neither have i.

im not sure if you're actually endorsing the skinning of an innocent person in order to torture the actual suspect.

does that sound wrong or what? or am i just misreading?

Endorsing? No. Merely saying that it happens. Not the skinning (although I'm sure there are many people in the world who are not above it), but torturing a child or a relative in order to gain information from the suspect. And if it would have happened to me, I'd talk.

LS - it seems to me that you've arrived at a marginally more efficient way to extract information using a method that's entirely inefficient. I'm against torture because it's a shitty way to find out what you want. It's a great way to reinforce preconceived notions.

If anyone's ever studied the show trials of the late 30's USSR, you can see fantastic examples of what people will admit to under torture.

It's a useless tool, although I'll concede that certain methodologies (namely sleep deprivation) can actually produce results in some cases.

I'll agree on one point. It is an ineffective tool to obtain a confession. Most will confess to anything under torture.

Getting information, I'm not sure about. Information can be checked and if the person is lying...well, that'd be quite obvious. I'm not saying torture will work on everyone. Some people are quite resilient or believe in a cause higher than themselves. I think it would be easier to use drugs of some kind of get the info.

I can't believe we're talking about this aspect of torture within the context of the U.S. Is it even an issue? That the U.S. would do this (i.e. empower it or 'allow it to happen') "family oriented" style of torture would be the worst atrocity it has committed in recent years.

And you're 100% sure it hasn't happened in this country already?

No. But I stand by my statement either way. I wouldn't put it past them. A nation under threat and/or in decline can be a nasty thing. Morality and ethics are conveniences of the prosperous.

Glad we can agree on something. :)

The following link leads to a photograph on Wikileaks. It is extremely distubring, and features a detainee held by the US (possibly at US Bagram Theater Internment Facility in Afghanistan, though that has yet to be confirmed).
Image:Us-detainee-wired-2004-08-06.jpg - Wikileaks

This seems to be torture, and I cannot imagine there being an excuse for such treatment. Whether or not he could be characterized as a terrorist or insurgent strikes me as being immaterial to torture. I hope that we can end US torture policies.

I think i saw that guy at a bad Religion concert. that must be a couple hundred bucks worth of piercings right there. Bet he got a great deal on them. Anyone who read the last thread knows that I am a bit of a decenter on this topic. I do believe most of the reasons inBOIL stated apply to my views on this. Accept for number 2. I think the government will label anyone they want a terrorist or such if suits their needs, innocent or not. Mostly though, I don't have a huge problem with it for the simple fact that I really just don't like people and as a rule, don't really give a damn what happens to them. They stay out of my way, I'll stay out of theirs. As a form of interrogation, yes, it's unreliable at best. but some people need to be made an example of. If they could ever get their hands on Bin Ladden, I would hope they would put up the torture channel and have him on 24/7 for at least 3 months. Don't ask him shit. Just work him over. That would make me a happy camper.

Seems to be an unverified photo - where's the evidence this is a US torture victim?

One thing about a historical record of actual events is that the truth will eventually surface. During Bush's presidency some would have us believe that he acted unilaterally when it came to many issues including torture and that he was abusing his power without allowing congressional leaders to do their job of advise and consent. I was reading the WSJ this morning and cam across this editorial, they stat that congressional members were fully aware of questioning techniques used by the CIA. Here is a portion of the editorial.

What Congress Knew About 'Torture' - WSJ.com

i find the implementation of torture, the extraordinary rendition business--and the war in iraq as a whole for that matter--to be an indictment of the entire political class.

but it is still the case that the administration should be prosecuted for war crimes. let them prove this is that case, that they're not responsible for the policies they initiated. these are crimes against humanity---let them demonstrate their case.

Who do you want to bring the case? Democrats can't, I think the record may show complicity. The U.N., I would consider that a joke because the U.N. has no credibility in my view. Who?

Obama's appointment of Dawn Johnsen as DoJ Assistant AG for the Office of Legal Counsel (that gives advice to the Pres on the legality of proposed actions) is a step in the right direction, after John Woo et al.

ace...sounds like more open, accountable government to me.

There are words and there are actions. Let's revisit when she actually does something.

The words are much better than what we heard for the last eight years..."its legal if the president does it"

Who is that quote from?

the international war crimes tribunal would in principle have the authority.
and it really doesn't matter what us conservatives think about that---sorry--that there are american conservatives who have a Problem with international law is not really terribly important, particularly not in these circumstances.

i don't know if such a case could be prosecuted in domestic courts.

i think that the trial, where-ever it was held, would in itself go a long way toward correcting the political credibility of the united states. so i'd be in favor of the process even if in the end the bush people were able to weasel out of being convicted.

and i agree with dc about the appointments so far from obama--and the approach on the matter of transparency.

When was the last time they took any action on anything? Given what has gone on in the world how do you explain their inactivity? Where will they get the authority to take action on a former President and or his administration? How will they impose their will on the US?

I don't really expect answers to those questions, but those are the the questions that popped into my head as I read your post. My point is that charges of war crimes are for those without power. Do you think Democrats would go along with transferring "power" to a international war crimes tribunal?

Gonzales said something to that effect during hearings on the illegal warrantless wiretapping program.

Cheney said it in an interview with Mike Wallace last month, using the context of a "fighting a war" as justification(their context and justification for everything -- wiretapping, torture, rendition, etc) when there in fact has been no formal or legal declaration of war:

that's your view of what the effects of such an action would be, ace, and it cuts to a basic philosophical difference between us--i think nation-states are already functionally obsolete---you don't. so you see this as a problem of sovereignty, where i see it as a matter of accountability for crimes against humanity. and it should not be the case that the only parties who can commit such crimes are those who lose wars. that is your other argument, btw---if you don't lose a war, anything goes. i find that astonishing--even as it reflects the realpolitik of the moment. if law that has been promulgated to prevent crimes against humanity are to mean anything, they have to be applied based on actions themselves, not based on whether you win or lose a war and then actions.

The above has been historically true. Sure, powerful nations can impose self-punishment or punish individuals but in the end the only thing that matters is who has the power to impose their will on others when it comes to accountability. Only the foolish abdicate power when there is no need to.

in which case, any law that exists, any international convention or agreement there is which bans torture is nothing other than a cheap instrument to be used in the exercise of power. so any ethical argument against torture, any conclusion that the international community---including the united states----might enter into to prevent, to the greatest possible extent, a reversion to barbarism in the form of torture is only meaningful in that context.

because in the end what matters is not whether you torture people, but whether you win or lose a war. and torture only exists as an extension of losing a war.

that's funny.

The issue goes beyond winning or losing.

In the case of Bush, it was declaring a war, unilaterally, then asking your legal authorities to interpret the Constitution and/or acts of Congress in a manner that will provide a legal cover for any subsequent actions.

Even under the broadest interpretation, an "authorization for the use of military force" (granted by Congress) is not a declaration of war (as interpreted by Bush).
-----Added 6/1/2009 at 06 : 58 : 35-----
In 2004, the CIA Inspector General issued a report that “that some C.I.A.-approved interrogation procedures appeared to constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, as defined by the international Convention Against Torture.”

The Bush administration response....investigate the IG for not being "impartial"
Being a watchdog or whistle blower over the last eight years and putting the law above the politics of the "war on terror" was not a good career move...but there were some heroic bureaucrats.

ace.....a more complete historical record would show that the Democrats (and many Republicans) attempted on several occasions to enact leglslation that would prohibit water boarding.

In 2005, the Detainee Treatment Act with such prohibitions was enacted and signed by Bush.

Bush then acted unilaterally with a signing statement that in effect said he could ignore provisions of the law in times of war. (there's that old "times of war" justification again).

In 2006, in one of the Republicans last acts as majority, Congress enacted the Military Commissions Act, which included provisions amending the War Crimes Act drafted by the Bush administration. The amendment essentially prohibited the possibility of prosecution of political appointees, CIA officers, contractors and former military personnel, accused of torture under international (Geneva Conventions) standards. Nearly all Democrats voted against the amendment and nearly all Republicans voted for the amendment.

As a result, in 2007 and 2008, the Democrats introduced additional legislation that Bush vetoed.

Cherry-picking the historical record of actual events, ace? So much for your revisionist history now that more of the truth surfaced.