dippin

"Let's start with ignoring Obama keeping the wiretaps?"

Who is ignoring them?
Nytimes first news story on Obama and continuing the wiretap program was done on November 17, 2008!
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/wa...ef=todayspaper

And is that your example of this rampant hypocrisy?

roachboy

two new elements related to this mess.

first, appealing to that fine means-ends rationality that manages so many ethical questions, i give you:
Dick Cheney demands release of CIA memos proving torture 'success' | World news | guardian.co.uk

meanwhile, many human rights groups continue to press for criminal prosecution
and the obama administration continues walking the line it cannot really help but walk i suppose once the choice was made to demonstrate why nation-states cannot deal with prosecution of crimes against humanity carried by themselves...

Obama moves to calm CIA agents' fears over potential torture prosecution | World news | The Guardian

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Willravel

I saw this on Huffington this morning and thought of this thread. Is waterboarding torture? How long could you last?

Journalist bets he can endure 15 seconds of waterboarding
Watch this carefully. Notice that the man is only slightly at an angle, head down feet up. He lasts about 6 seconds.

You aren't in a position to judge waterboarding until you've been waterboarded. It's a singular and unique experience that can't be equated with things like holding your breath underwater or withstanding pain. It's altogether different.

aceventura3

I will go along with your logic for awhile and assume everything you have written is a given so far.

When does waterboarding become torture?

Is it torture at the same time for every person?

Is the threat of waterboarding torture?

Is describing waterboarding with a threat of it being done to a person torture?

Is being shown a videotape of someone being waterboarded with the threat of it being done to a person torture?

Is doing everything up the point of using water and not actually using the water torture?

Is putting a rag in someone mouth with no intent of waterboarding but when the person thinks they may be waterboarded actually torture?

Is being captured and thinking you may be waterboarded torture?

Pretend you are the AG and I am the Director of the CIA, and I have just asked you for clarification, what do you say?

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Willravel

It is torture when used to coerce a confession, to punish, or to seek pleasure. Because waterboarding causes incredible mental stress and extreme discomfort, a discomfort which is worse than many instances of actual pain, it causes substantial and real suffering. This suffering is mental pain, and mental pain is listed as one of the two circumstances for torture, the other of course being physical pain.
It is the same torture because the reaction to waterboarding is innate to virtually every person. It is a survival instinct in humans to a combination of disorientation and drowning. I am unaware of anyone without the understood reaction to waterboarding. If there is such a person, the torture would not be the same, but short of finding that person and demonstrating his immunity to the process, I'd have to say it's virtually the same for everyone.
No, but it's not an effective method of extracting information so I can't imagine it's use being necessary.
Same as above.
Same.
Same.
Same.
Same.
I'd suggest you use proven and legal techniques to extract intelligence instead of torture, and I'd warn you that should you ever be prosecuted for torturing it's entirely possible that there would be serious legal consequences for your decisions.

Then again I've never attended law school, never passed the bar, and I've never practiced law, so you'd probably want to take my recommendation with a grain of salt. My understanding of waterboarding and torture comes from what I learned of torture from professors, books, articles, and of course being waterboarded myself.

dippin

Well, considering that everything described in the memos goes far beyond what you are asking, I fail to see the relevance. In fact, the memos themselves outline waterboarding far beyond the extent that even the original ones allowed.

I don't think there is any gray area here that some republicans want to pretend there is.

What we have, from the memos, is waterboarding beyond even what those who were hellbent on authorizing them allowed, sometimes against people who the interrogators themselves thought were being cooperative, but were ordered to torture anyways, by people who were thousands of miles away from the interrogation room.

aceventura3

The relevance is in the fact that there can be a fine line between theoretical judgments and practical guidelines. If Will addresses the basic essence of the questions, at the margins how is he going to be different than the people in the Bush justice department? He will use his interpretation of how he understands the law and waterboarding and try to give me guidance. the obvious direction of my questioning leads to the fact that at some point someone with a lower tolerance than his can sit in judgment of his interpretation. Should he then be subject to prosecution? Should I, for following his guidance?

__________________
"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch."
"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion."
"If you live among wolves you have to act like one."
"A lady screams at the mouse but smiles at the wolf. A gentleman is a wolf who sends flowers."

Willravel

When you say lower tolerance are you talking about being waterboarded? Or are you speaking in generalities about what does or doesn't constitute any torture?

roachboy

ace, i don't see what you're arguing here. not even dick cheney is making the same claim you are--his justification for this is that, in his view, it "worked"---that this justification is tautological seems to be beside the point.

i have heard a similar line from gordon liddy though. but he's....well...he's gordon liddy.

i don't see that you have a leg to stand on, so i suspect you're playing some devil's advocate game or other.

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Willravel

I'm pretty sure he's going for the "torture is in the eye of the beholder, therefore nothing is torture" argument.

roachboy

Senior Bush figures could be prosecuted for torture, says Obama | World news | guardian.co.uk

well apparently that isn't at all how the administration sees things, and it sure as hell isn't how most human rights groups see things.
this afternoon, the obama administration revealed that some of the senior bushpeople who were responsible for outlining the rationale for torture may face prosecution. the argument is that this entire episode represents a "loss of moral compass"...

which it does.
as do the defenses of it.

we'll see what happens with this.
but the ground's shifted on the bush apologists pretty quickly here.


btw it's funny to compare the guardian's version to that of the ny times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/us...ef=global-home

here obama "leaves the door open for the formation of a commission to investigate" the use of "harsh interrogation techniques."

isn't that precious?

__________________
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spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

dksuddeth

lip service. what the people want to hear, but will never see happen. unless someone chooses to fall on a sword like Ollie North did.

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aceventura3

"coerce" a confession, to "punish"..., do you really want to stand by that? That seems pretty vague.

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?

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.

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?

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?

Also, If "it" is not effective, what is?

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 insect infected areas, and others have a phobia to insects, couldn't that be torture to one and "normal" to another?

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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"If you live among wolves you have to act like one."
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roachboy

i maintain that this is a demonstration of how and why it is the case that there really is only one crime against humanity in the present nation-state system, and that crime is losing a war.

the only way this would not be the case would be for an international tribunal to conduct this investigation, file charges, undertake the process, etc..

national sovereignty encounters its limits in areas like torture. the price of allowing it to be determinate is not acceptable.

__________________
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aceventura3

Both. I personally would not call waterboarding torture, you do. There may be things you consider torture that others don't. So there can be different tolerances to what torture is.

__________________
"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch."
"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion."
"If you live among wolves you have to act like one."
"A lady screams at the mouse but smiles at the wolf. A gentleman is a wolf who sends flowers."

dippin

Ace,
there is no gray area here, no matter how hard you try.

Legal precedent by American courts have deemed waterboarding torture.

And the CIA surpassed even whatever limits the Bush administration could legally justify.

---------- Post added at 12:37 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:34 PM ----------

What techniques you have never experienced that you consider or not to be torture are completely irrelevant.

Legal precedent considers waterboarding torture. The state department under Bush considered waterboarding when done by other nations to be torture.

And even the fickle legal justification provided by less than ethical attorneys was surpassed, so even by the lax limits set by the Bush administration that constitutes torture.

aceventura3

I am not arguing anything with my questions. I can formulate my argument for you after we see where the answers lead.


I have a one, but I am not Dick. What the point? I can't have a view unless Chaney shares it?

---------- Post added at 08:39 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:37 PM ----------

I am going for the - you can not define torture, so how the hell can you say a person is guilty of it until you do. Everything to this point has been vague and has lacked any clarity.

---------- Post added at 08:43 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:39 PM ----------

I tend to agree with this.

I can not imagine Democrats being so foolish as to let this issue be adjudicated by a counsel of other nations. To subject a prior administration to such a trial would be a joke.

__________________
"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch."
"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion."
"If you live among wolves you have to act like one."
"A lady screams at the mouse but smiles at the wolf. A gentleman is a wolf who sends flowers."

roachboy

ace, darling, it's fine that you personally don't think that waterboarding is torture. what's important is that your opinion has nothing to do with the legal situation that defines torture. what's even more important is that people who think the way you do are no longer in power. and more than that is that those people who were in power and who formulated policy based on thinking like yours should face prosecution. and i personally would hope that they'd pay a heavy price for that policy. and if you were among those people, i would be hoping that you faced significant criminal charges for implementing policy based on your way of thinking.

but that thinking divorced from power is not interesting. i think you have no coherent arguments and that your politcally motivated interest in systematically refusing to accept any criticism of the bush administration bespeaks more a psychological situation than a loss of moral compass. because without the power to implement policy, your moral compass is your problem.

i just hope you don't imagine waterboarding to be so removed from torture that you'd try it on your dog. but i don't think you'd treat your dog that way.

__________________
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spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

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Willravel

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.
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.
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.
There is a legal definition that one can visit when unsure. It's pretty clear.
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.

Tortured Reasoning | vanityfair.com

Torture has no redeeming quality whatsoever.
According to the people in the intelligence community, the most effective method for acquiring information from a detainee is positive reinforcement.
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
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 ----------

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.

aceventura3

What makes it torture? If that is defined then it can be applied to every type of questioning. If a 16 year-old kid gets pulled over by the police for alleged car theft and they cuff him, read him his rights, put him in the back seat of a police vehicle, they start to ask him questions in a loud stern voice, and say he is going to be taken in and he pisses his pants and then faints he so scared and under so much stress, based on what Will wrote that would be torture. He clearly had physical manifestations of extreme stress and he was being coerced. Then if he had to sit in his piss... I don't think that would be torture.

---------- Post added at 08:55 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:52 PM ----------

That is why I went to the AG to get guidelines. But if Will actually gave guidlines, then would it be o.k. for you to use those against him?

__________________
"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch."
"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion."
"If you live among wolves you have to act like one."
"A lady screams at the mouse but smiles at the wolf. A gentleman is a wolf who sends flowers."

Willravel

It bears repeating:
UN Convention Against Torture

aceventura3

I disagree. Enough said.

__________________
"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch."
"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion."
"If you live among wolves you have to act like one."
"A lady screams at the mouse but smiles at the wolf. A gentleman is a wolf who sends flowers."

dksuddeth

I have a real hard time understanding how anybody doesn't define waterboarding as torture. can you explain this to me? why it isn't torture in your opinion?

__________________
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Willravel

Maybe you'd also like to give me your opinion about a car you've never driven? I could go on for days about a Koenigsegg CCX, tell you how fast it'll get you to 60 or where the torques peak, what the drag coefficient is compared to the Carrera GT, how they're built by hand, but I can't really offer an informed opinion without driving one, can I?

samcol

"Water boarding is not torture." I can't even believe I'm reading this.

I can't trust a government who tortures, and I really can't trust a government who covers it up and lies about it. This is disgusting

How can we even trust a damn thing that comes out of the governments mouth? How many times does it take an Aphgan goat herder to get waterboarded before he claims to be with Al Qaida? Mark one for the good guys we got a terrorist... sheeeshh

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roachboy

by coincidence, this is the lead story in this mornings ny times...

ace, you in particular might recognize something in this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/us...ef=global-home

classic.
the solution to complexity in bushworld?
don't think too hard about it.
don't think about the past, don't worry too much about whether it works...just implement it.
thinking thin as paper.

but this raises a really ugly question.
cheney has been arguing that torture should be measured by whether it "works"---but it appears that this criterion was not high on the administration's agenda at the outset.

so what exactly lay behind the implementation of torture as a policy?
"a perfect storm of ignorance and enthusiasm"....

but beyond that, a vague idea that this might "work" to "prevent more attacks" buttressed by no reasearch whatsoever into the literature that torture produces the opposite effect, elliciting false information....so that seems implausible really. strange to find oneself in a position to rule out efficacy as a rational criterion, and to find oneself there because the degree of incompetence in the fashioning of the policy is so astonishingly high.

but if that's the case, then what's the motive?

revenge.

in which case any plausible claim to "moral compass" was out the fucking window from the start.

it gets harder and harder to accept the idea that "looking forward not back" means letting this shit slide.

__________________
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spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

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Martian

As a companion to roachboy's article, this popped up in my feed this morning.

Obama opens door to prosecutions on interrogations

__________________
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- Ben Harper, Show Me A Little Shame

aceventura3

This is just how I would define torture, I know it has no relevance to anyone but me.

Torture is the intentional infliction of physical or emotional harm with measurable and lasting damage to the individual for no other purpose than to inflict physical or emotional harm.

So, in my view - if the CIA had reason to believe a captive had needed information to help save lives, and they used waterboarding to get it; one, I would not consider it torture because they acted based on a reasonable belief they could obtain information; two, I would not consider it torture if the "damage" on the individual was not measurable. Perhaps ironically to some, I think a school yard bully could be more easily guilty of torture than military or CIA officials involved in war with enemy combatants.

---------- Post added at 03:42 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:31 PM ----------

I don't think I get your point. I don't doubt waterboarding is severely unpleasant. I could not do it to a human or animal and I would not want it done to me. However, there are many things that fall into that category. My list would be different than yours. I simply try to understand two things about your view of waterboarding:

1) When does it become torture?
2) What makes it torture?

If I understand your answers to those questions, I think it would be easy to then clearly define what you would consider torture. Right now if I am your CIA guy in the field I am more confused than when we started. First, there are vague terms like "extreme" and "severe", then there is the concept that what works is positive reinforcement. It is easy to say waterboarding is torture based on the 'I know it when I see it' theory. However, the issue is should people in the Bush administration be brought to trial for having the courage to try to define a vague concept. I think that is dangerous for all people in public service needing to make tough choices.

---------- Post added at 03:50 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:42 PM ----------

How about answering the question I presented to Will. Rather than being in disbelief, put yourself in the role of defining what torture is, what would be and what would not be acceptable to a CIA agent with a captive who you know has information regarding impending attacks intended to kill people you care about. You need the information and you need it now, what are you going to do? Positive reinforcement? You going to take him to get a latte, take a walk in the park, catch a movie, etc, to get the information?

Who has lied? I think you had people honestly wanting to do the right thing. They asked for guidance, the people who gave guidance gave their honest opinions. All of this was documented, no cover ups. What is not to trust? Even members of Congress were aware of what was going on.

---------- Post added at 03:55 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:50 PM ----------

I think the motive was to save lives.

I guess we do need Obama to release the information showing the successes and failures, all the results of the questioning.

__________________
"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch."
"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion."
"If you live among wolves you have to act like one."
"A lady screams at the mouse but smiles at the wolf. A gentleman is a wolf who sends flowers."

roachboy

ace, there is no mean-ends justification for torture.
there was no effort to understand even the most basic research on the effects of torture---see the ny times article from this morning i posted above---there was extensive us military research done after the korean war on the fact that torture elicits one kind of information, which is the desire for the torture to stop. that this has been obvious from the 18th century onward is something that is maybe a bit abstruse to expect the parochials from american conservatism to know about---but there's no excuse for not doing the basic legwork on the efficacy of the technique if one is to lend even the slightest credence to the argument you're trying to make.


you haven't a leg to stand on here, ace.

the well-meaning folk trying to accomplish a politically desirable goal so whaddya complaining about defense is a variant of the nuremberg defense. i am not at all sure that you want to continue aligning yourself with it. but hey, look it up for yourself. no problemo.

__________________
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spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

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Willravel

It's more than unpleasant, it causes suffering which is equivalent to what I would assume we might both consider torture, such as bone breaking. The problem is that you can't really understand how horrible waterboarding is until it's been done to you. That's my point.
When does something become torture? When it causes severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, it become torture. If you're unsure about the use of the word "severe", you'll have to get more specific. Waterboarding is torture. Why? Because it causes a similar or greater level of suffering to actually drowning. I'm sure you'd agree that dunking someone's head under water for extended periods of time is torture. If not, you may have lost perspective on the issue.
It takes cowardice to torture, not courage. Alberto Gonzales refused to define torture in order to aid the efforts to extract intelligence with the use of torture by our intelligence and military personnel. Much like Gonzales, you're equivocating on the definition of torture. The only reason one has to equivocate on the definition of torture is to try and excuse something they think many others might think of as torture.

Rekna

When is water boarding torture? When it is done to Americans, otherwise it is a harsh interrogation technique...

Cynthetiq

My apologies, but this has taken me quite some time to write to make sure I articulate exactly how and why I believe I am okay with torture.

The rubric you're holding is very different than the one that I'm holding.

I'm not even on that court rb, that's where everyone else's logic falls apart and cannot follow mine. You're all looking at this from the morality aspects, I'm looking at it from a more anthropological or sociological aspect. I'm not talking about the morality or the attempt at getting reliable information and the rest of the talking points you or willravel are setting up.

Simple logic example:

We agree that murder is bad.
We agree that killing is bad.
War involves killing and murdering, but killing and murder in that sense is okay since it's "the enemy."

In my mind there is disconnect where it's bad in one example, and "excusable" or "acceptable" in another. I cannot understand or process that easily, thus I believe that in its basic form, it has to be acceptable. It is the circumstances and other factors that change it from acceptable to not acceptable.

Torture happens to be part of the ability of the range that humans can and will lower themselves to in some fashion in given conditions just like with war. I find that acceptable as part of the range that humans can and will become given conditions and circumstances. Murder and torture happened before I was on the planet, and will continue to happen when I'm no longer walking the planet.

There is a utility. The human being wants to feel better about themselves in some fashion.

• Party A wishes to instill fear into party B.
• Party A wants to get information from party B.
• Party A wishes to be cruel to party B.
• Party A wished to exact revenge upon party B.
• Party A wishes to control party B.
• Party A tries to coerce allegiance from party B.

While the utility to you and I may be conceived incorrectly by Party A. It still is going to be a mode and methodology used by Party A. It has happened in the past, and will again happen in the future.

Following this same vein of thought, I am not surprised when any American politician is accused or is caught in some sort of corruption scandal. I again, accept that corruption is part of the range of behaviors that politicians can be caught within. I'm not surprised by this one bit, yet it seems that the American populace doesn't know it's own history. Yet somehow it's more abhorrent when it's an American politician.

Thus while you are correct with the idea that it's problematic for the administration or government that does such things, as people will attribute some sort of moral or ethics in their decision making. But I also submit that they themselves carry this on a daily basis until they can make a choice. People hold onto it and feel responsible or even to blame for such choices made by another individual.

Since we're allowed to elect, re-elect, or elect other individuals on a regular basis, and there is no "lifers" for any single position, I get the opportunity to apply what force I can within the mechanisms available to me at the appropriate times. I don't need to internalize, own any of their behaviors, or be responsible for them.

It is exactly what you say, it calls into "into question the legitimacy of the political order that employs torture." It speaks tomes to me about the people that support, the government that employs, and the individuals that ask or require of it's citizens to carry such things out. This is not just he actions themselves, but the manufactured products to support such things. This spider webs the discussion but people/companies aren't simple machines that just do one single action. There are many other things that they do. In essence one fail isn't complete fail, but most people attribute it as wholesale fail in their book. This is as you say that it doesn’t just happen within a vacuum.

People will parse it into digestible words and ideas, and it will continue. Governments will rationalize it and utilize it.

Other peoples in the world don't get such luxuries; government seems to be established and set, not changing within a lifetime or possibly several lifetimes. Again, as you stated it brings in question the legitimacy of the government, but that still doesn't change or alter it. We can call the Baath party or Taliban government illegitimate because it condoned and used torture, but it still didn't change much until someone came in with force and actually changed it. In order to do so, killed and maimed a few people along the way, all in the name of ending whatever illegitimate regime.

It doesn’t stop at the government level for me. It happens locally with police departments, with adults, and with children. There are numerous reports of torture from solid citizens in the police force and criminals, to children and other children. It’s hazing by fraternities, sororities, and gangs. It's bullying on the playground.

Here's why I believe it in this fashion. I will not allow someone to guilt me or make me feel bad because of someone else's actions. I'm not responsible for their actions, thus I am not responsible for the guilt and other feelings a third party is trying to foist upon me. The path your logic and will's is to try and express a manner in which I should feel bad for someone else's actions. I say, "No thank you. I'm fine with the way that it is." Traveling around the world to hear someone say, “That George Bush...” You know, I'm not responsible for his actions. I wasn't then and am still not.

This kind of human action is the kind that evokes some sort of emotional response from the reader/outsider. I reject that wholesale and do not accept any responsibility for it. Just like I don’t accept any responsibility for their achievements, I do not accept responsibility for their fails.

I came to this understanding after spending an evening in the Torture Museum in Prague, Czech Republic. There's more ways to torture people than what is listed in that declassified paper, and there's more that goes on than we see in the newspaper. It opened my eyes to just how horrific the human being can truly be. Reading about it doesn't come close to seeing the machines, and seeing woodcuts, drawings, or cut outs where your hands, arms, etc. all fit. It was a very sobering experience. Of course after that I had copious amounts of the Green Fairy with sugar and a spoon.

Further along I read the book , I understand that prosecution and removal of power of those that have committed such acts are next to impossible to prosecute in any meaningful way to inhibit future torture. Unlike other kinds of justice where there really is a sense of justice to the offended, this rarely happens in torture cases. Torture is around us all the time. It isn't just relegated to war, it is part and parcel sitting around us.

This is how I understand it and it doesn't pose a problem for me.

__________________
I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

Willravel

By that logic, you should be fine with everything done by someone that's not you. You should be fine with child prostitution, genocide, genital mutilation, ethnic cleansing, slavery, biological warfare and all of the other horrible things our species is capable of but you're not directly involved in. The problem with this attitude is that, widespread, it allows for these horrible things to happen. I'm sure you think the old Burke quote "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing" is an oversimplification, but I find it is a perfect critique of your inexcusable position. The "that's not my dog" position on suffering in the world is what passively allows said suffering. I know you don't want to hear it but you, Cynthetiq, are responsible for torturing. Passively, yes, but responsible none the less.

I wonder how many other people leave the torture museum thinking, "You know what? That wasn't so bad. Torture is just fine."

roachboy

thanks for that cyn...i'll probably make something else tonight when i've the leisure to think more expansively, but for the moment a couple quick points. first, i don't think that will and i are arguing in the same way---this is more a question of emphasis i suppose than anything else--but in my view this is a political & legal issue that has its force because it involves an ethical problem..but most of what i've been arguing sits on the first two levels moving into the third. where i take will to be arguing most from the second two and occaisonally sliding into the first.

it seems to me will engages more on the "how could you think that?" level where i see what i've been doing here working mostly along the lines that there are absolute prohibitions agreed to internationally against this kind of action because there's a history of proof that people can do horrific things to each other and that some of these things are simply unacceptable. so conventions were drawn up that define torture as a crime against humanity and outlaw it. because people in particular situations, locked into particular interests, can put aside nicities like the fact that the people they take to be threats are human beings and can treat them as if they were things, but things that can feel pain...there's abundant historical proof that torture degrades, dehumanizes BOTH the victim and the torturer--and what's worse that a political system capable of rationalizing torture itself can become inhuman. secondly, we live in an environment that calls itself civilized in part because it operates within sets of laws--the international ban on torture was in part passed as an indication that "we" desire a certain level of "civilization" and that this desire leads to renouncing certain actions as being antithetical with that idea. this is a political decision. so that's one point. there may be more to say about it, i dunno.

second point: the end justifies the means argument simply does not hold water. check out the ny times article from this morning's international edition i posted just a bit above here. the fact is that torture elicits one kind of information consistently--the desire that the torture stop. it is not an effective intelligence gathering tool--and the military knew as much, historians know as much--anyone who has looked into the sue of torture in a legal context knows as much. you have the history of the inquisition as a good, extended other example---know why there were no witch prosecutions in spain? because there was no agreement about a legal standard that would enable to court to determine whether the crime actually existed. but in other areas, thousands were executed as witches. how did that happen? you might wonder about the role of torture, which was part of the inquisitorial interrogation process, in generating the answers that the people applying the torture wanted to hear--not what happened, but what they wanted to hear. why? because in many cases, continuing the torture made death seem like a fine alternative.

so there is no utility argument to be made for using it.

the political Problems that are generated by a nation-state government prosecuting itself for using torture are of a different order---i think they're serious---but you can already see that the cat's out of the bag and i now doubt very seriously that it will be possible to NOT prosecute at least the people who developed this fucked up guidelines. and if that happens, i hope they are convicted.

but this is a real Problem. i find it interesting to watch the theater surrounding it. but think about the situation: the use of torture, the arguments which justify it, the fact that the bush administration undertook such a policy in ignorance of history, in ignorance of efficacy---it generates really big problems of legitimacy for the american state itself. how can that be justified on grounds of utility?

and trust me, if the legitimacy of a state is undermined adequate, it won't necessarily take some armed force to topple it. there are any number of instances of a state simply imploding. think the french revolution for one.

anyway, i have to stop there.
interesting stuff. difficult things to remain dispassionate about enough to make clear arguments.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Willravel

I don't think Cynth is making the ends justify the means argument, rb. He's saying that he consciously prevents himself from internalizing the fact that our government tortures and thus does not have an emotional response to it. Normally, I'd think this was a coping mechanism, something that someone might do to prevent emotionally breaking down, but Cynth has both the emotional maturity and the ability to dispassionately judge a situation, so that doesn't apply. His argument seems to be that because he is not directly responsible for torture, he doesn't feel it necessary to judge it. This is odd and highly suspect because countless times across thousands of posts Cynth has been more than willing to roll up his sleeves and pass judgment or even offer advice on things he's not even remotely connected with; things that allowed him to process a situation by utilizing sympathy and empathy and then, via that process, come to a conclusion.

roachboy

i don't want to speak for cyn---but i accounted for that before i started making a response. i don't buy the claim that torture carried out by a state apparatus can be thought about using the model of person A doing something that person W doesn't do and the Problem of torture is basically that some Outside Judge expects W to "feel guilty" about it. that evacuates the whole question as it actually is---so i routed things back the other way, and then ticked off problems one after the other. because torture represents a system-level political problem no matter what people inside the system may think on the question. this simply because of the legal context, the international context and the fact that "i don't really feel bad about this" is a minority position.

anyway, that's why the moves are as they are.
i could be wrong about the logic.
it's happened before. it'll happen again.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Cynthetiq

I'm as much responsible for torturing as you are for the dog that crapped on my sidewalk and the owner didn't pick it up.

I think you need to read what I wrote a bit more and see what kind of thought I've put into it. You're reading just one single little sound bite and passing all the rest of the thought that has gone into it.

I have never once said that I find that Bush's policies are something that I agree with. I've not said once I approve someone torturing someone else.

I've said that I find torture to be a mode and method that people use for various reasons and I'm fine with that.

rb, I get what you're saying but it again, obfuscates the position that I'm starting from. I agree, that people met in some foreign country and said they'd agree to do and not do certain things. I find that flawed because well, people tend agree not to do but do them anyways. It may not be in the immediate moment, but fovrever or in perpetuity is a long time. People tend to be fallible and again, do what and when they want based on many functions of utilty.

Will, if you look at things always from the top down, you'll never understand something from the bottom up.

So again, from my point of view, I've not even gotten to the point of the ethics and the morals. I've looked at and cited where and how it's been used, right or wrong it has been used to some effect. It inadvertently has an affect on society as a whole, for fear, control, etc. It may be rooted in false logic or premise, but it still is a mode that people do operate from and stand within.

Thus, your citing of my ability to roll up my sleeves and pass jugement, isn't a simple possibility here on the breadth of torture. From the simplistic points, the Geneva Conventions agreed to make it very simple cut and dry discussion for this instance. But as a whole for the entirety of torture, which is the line I am speaking from, it is not as simple.

__________________
I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

roachboy

the reason it seems to obfuscate the position you're starting from, cyn, is that i don't think it makes sense to start from that position.

it seemed to me when i responded to you initially that there were two different conversations happening that converged in some ways, but which were nonetheless different from each other. you're really talking more to will in this one than to me. but again the conversations overlap in some ways, so it's not surprising that there'd be a bit of confusion about it.

i'm not really concerned with whether you as an individual can justify torture as an ethical question. this because the situation is that the bush administration authorized the use of torture, wrote a series of legal positions that fashioned a rationale for it, and the fact that it happened generated a significant political Problem for the united states, one that continues to ramify, and as it does it poses other problems. these all happen at a level quite independent of what you or i might personally feel about the question of torture. it's involved with legal and political questions that operate at basically different scales than do questions of individual ethics.

the obvious connection is that one's individual position on the ethical questions--or other questions if you like--concerning torture inform the positions that one might take with respect to what the bush administration did. but if that's the way you want to go, then you're approaching it from a strange angle, which has more to do with a sense that you shouldn't have to take position x or y on the question. the reason it's strange is that i don't think that's being asked of you. but maybe will is asking that of you. it just isn't something i think particularly relevant--and that because (again) the situation at hand unfolds along dynamics and in registers quite independent of this sort of question, really.

anyway, two different conversations.
as often happens in debates, the real argument is not over the content of one's position but over the starting point from which that position is built. your position is internally consistent. i just don't think the place you start from makes sense situationally.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Willravel

I don't vote for that particular dog owner to walk his dog near your house nor do I pay taxes to fund his walks nor do I have a stake in the response to said shitting. But you know all of this. I'm left wondering why you'd intentionally use an incorrect illustration like this. Are you really ignorant to your role in torturing? You are many things, but naive isn't one of them.
"I don't approve of torture, but I'm fine with it". Where do you draw the line between approving of something and being fine with it? In what way are those different?
And if you look at something from the side, squinting your eyes a bit, you can find yourself taking two opposing positions on the same issue.
It is, of course, perfectly simple. Torture has no place but masochism or vengeance. Those are really the only functions it can adequately perform. It cannot yield reliable information, it cannot reliably coerce, and it cannot control. It has absolutely no functional use for military or intelligence. Beyond questioning it's function is judging it ethically, which is something you claim to have not done at all, despite saying you're fine with torture and that you don't approve of it.

Your position is at best unclear.

Cynthetiq

rb if I start where you guys start, I will guarantee to wind up in exactly the same position. In some ways I'm predisposed to that same position based on the ability of my gut logic, which again, the Geneva convention etc.

But the point of evolving thoughts and challenging one's own beliefs has to sometimes be really tried from a different rubric. This is why I stated it from the beginning that my thought on this is coming from a totally different angle.

If found a good link to an excerpt from the book:

__________________
I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.