Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder: No charges against CIA officials for torture
 

So President Obama is not going to pursue the illegal actions of the CIA. I'm not surprised by this, which again, I'll say flat out, I'm fine with torture, just like I'm fine with war. So for me, I don't find this outrageous or that the program no longer exists that it won't happen again in the future.

Was this the right move for President Obama? Should he have done something differently?

Well,

For one, consider the media field day that would occur if they went ahead with prosecution...

I think torture is always wrong, and it has generally been established that while torture is "great" for extracting false confessions, it is of extremely limited use to gain actual intelligence.

That said, this news is expected. And in any case, if prosecution was to ever come about, it should be against the people who wrote the new guidelines and their rationale.

1.

this would get into an extremely ugly area pretty quickly if there was a move against people who carried out torture--you'd end up with versions of the nuremburg defense---whaddya mean? i was just following orders.
i would expect that the political and institutional damage that would have been done was seen as outweighing the upside of positioning the united states as a country that actually does not torture because, you know, geneva convention, basic human rights--all that stuff which only really matters when adhering to them is a problem. when there's no pressure, when there's no crisis, it means nothing---well not nothing, but rather it is easy to adhere to such conventions and principles when there's no pressure from within not to.

and we all know that war crimes only happen in the context of regimes that loose wars. loosing a war is therefore the real crime.

so i think this decision is in principle kinda foul.

2.

at the same time, in pragmatic terms, i think the obama administration's systematic dismantling of the bush people's policy logic and legal framework that enabled this to happen is obviously a good thing. and the public repudiations of the policy a good thing.

but that isn't really the question.

=======

reframe.

if i may, i 'd like to try to open out the questions in the op a bit. this is complicated.

(a) *should* it in fact be the case that war crimes--crimes against humanity--are only actionable if a political regime looses a war.
what does that mean?
that there are no crimes against humanity possible by a "legitimate" regime?
but if it's functionally impossible to prosecute war crimes carried out by "legitimate"regimes, doesn't that amount to saying that there are no war crimes possible unless a regime looses a war?

and again--that means the real crime in our o-so-ethical global order is losing a war.
you want an example---think about the travesty that was the trail of saddam hussein.
now i'm not in any way arguing that he was not a brutal dictator--but think of the farce his trial was.
what clearer demonstration could you have that the crime really was loosing and the war crimes prosecution is in fact a mechanism used by those who win to break the political power of the regime they fought?

that seems fucked up.
doesn't it seem so to you?

what does that make a war crime?

o but it gets better:

(b) war crimes---crimes against humanity--are of an order that the legitimacy of a political regime that enacts them SHOULD be placed into serious question.

members of the political class within a given nation-state in a position like, say, obama's, find themselves trying to maintain the legitimacy of the system as a whole in significant measure because they occupy positions of power by virtue of it.

so they have no interest in triggering the kind of questions about legitimacy that would follow by prosecuting war crimes--torture is a war crime, extraorindary rendition arguably so, much of the treatment of prisoners arguably so, the separation of detainee from prisoner of war arguably so.

the reason that the legitimacy of a political regime that carries out such actions is placed in question fundamentally by any prosecution is simply that a political order in a modern state dovetails with a professional apparatus that is not politically appointed, that is permanent--the functionaries---and the prosecution of war crimes necessarily implicates not only the political leadership but the permanent apparatus of the state. there is something about the way things are done in the states IN GENERAL that is a Problem.

this seems to be the position the obama administration is basically arguing above--they aren't talking about state legitimacy though (why would they?)--instead they couch the argument in continuity of "national security"--but that's bullshit, really. but if you think about it, that they'd do this is expedient: why invite the questions that your actions are designed to avoid?


but this leads to a Problem.

(c) if that is the situation of, say, the obama administration (here as an example)--that they simultaneously want to condemn the practices of the bush people, dismantle their local conditions of possibility---but they also want to block basic questions as to the legitimacy of the political order itself which they now control...and if this is in general the position of ANY nation-state government---and this would be the basis for the argument that war crimes are only carried out by regimes that loose wars.

but there's another way to see this.
doesn't it follow that a national-level legal system, which is intertwined with the national-level legal system--is NOT in a position to make decisions about war crimes prosecutions?

should this be a question for the international war crimes tribunal to decide on?

if there were crimes against humanity, where is the iwct?



it's a tricky set of problems.
i'm not sure i've outlined them in the best way, but as i see it, there we are.

It's a shame that there wasn't some famous international trail that established precedent when it came to following illegal orders.

Ultimately, if this sort of prosecution (persecution) were to proceed it would lead right to the top (i.e. the I was just following orders always moves uphill).

I don't think *any* US administration is interested in pursuing that line of enquiry.

I always thought that this was a pipe dream. Never was going to happen

There's also some talk that the intelligence community would revolt against the Obama administration if it pursued prosecution.

Personally, I'm fine with taking this line of inquiry as high as it goes, and making it known whenever anyone puts national security at risk because of it (such as the intelligence community not cooperating with the Obama administration).

I realize that's too much to ask for most politicians though, so I can't get too outraged over this. Still disappointed though.

Willravel: Nuremberg only happened because Germany lost the war. Can you name a time where a similar thing happened without such a huge disparity of power? Watergate is close, I admit, but for whatever reasons, the public outrage just isn't there this time.

Regarding the question of immunity to CIA agents...I can understand why he did it...if he started a witch hunt within the CIA, he'd be in seriously deep shit. He would never get any loyalty from the CIA. That could be a huge problem.

And, while I agree that 'following orders' isn't an excuse for illegal behavior, I'd almost be ok with it if those giving the orders (Cheney, Bush), were actually prosecuted. Unfortunately, I can't see that happening.

i dont know if you saw these, but in case not and you're curious, here's a link to a the memos regarding torture that the obama administration released yesterday.
they're a sobering read.

Read the torture memos released by Barack Obama | World news | guardian.co.uk

I am not surprised no legal action is going to be taken against CIA officials who acted within the administrations' interpretation of the law. The root problem here is with the vague legal definition of torture that allows broad interpretation. The business of war and enemy interrogation is not pretty and in my view those in the business of doing the work to keep us safe want to be as effective as possible staying within the law. Whether we like it or can even stomach reading the memos, I think it was appropriate for the administration to issue more specific parameters for the men and women doing the work. I would hope that the current administration has already done the same thing if they disagree with the previous administrations interpretation of the law. And four years from now we can again act all grossed out and self righteous when we read those memos, because at the margins there will always be something average people will have a problem with, and that is why average people are not put in situations requiring exceptional ability or exceptional tolerance to perform certain tasks.

Mirriam-Websters definition of Torture:

1 a: anguish of body or mind : agony b: something that causes agony or pain
2: the infliction of intense pain (as from burning, crushing, or wounding) to punish, coerce, or afford sadistic pleasure
3: distortion or overrefinement of a meaning or an argument

I don't see how getting slapped counts as intense pain or agony. Ditto with everything else in the memo.


I think the interrogators were right to follow the directives/decisions from the Justice Department Lawyers. They were making detainees uncomfortable, but were not inflicting intense pain or anguish.

You can argue that what was done was not right, but I fail to see how the behavior meets the criteria for torture. To suggest that it does lessens the sacrifices of those who really are tortured...broken limbs, crushed bodies, etc.

And am I missing something in the Geneva conventions which makes them apply to non-signatories?

---------- Post added at 12:07 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:01 PM ----------

Also, I can tell you 100% that the military inflicts worse 'torture' on some of it's own troops during training.

If the methods outlined in the memos count as torture and are inexcusable under any circumstances, then the Military is going to have to explain why it is "torturing" rather than "training" soldiers.

And don't give me any nonsense about consent, because I promise you that no soldier is going to say "yeah, go ahead and slap the shit out of me."

I think it is amazing the lengths of moral relativism people go to in order to justify torture.

First, there was nothing "ambiguous" about what was being done here. This wasn't a good faith effort to determine the limits of the law, but a bad faith effort to subvert them.

The Bush administration had no problems calling the same things the US did torture when it was other nations doing it the exact same things.

And one must be either exercising selective reading or not have read at all to think that the only torture that was going on was slapping.

Waterboarding, slapping, sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, smashing heads against walls, stress positions, confinement in boxes, etc. are not just "slaps." There are over 100 recorded cases of detainees dying under interrogation, as well as several more cases of individuals being driven insane because of that, including American citizen Jose Padilla.

And even those very close to the interrogations admit that very little, if any, relevant intelligence came of it. If there is one thing these memos make clear is that the whole "ticking time bomb" scenario is false.

I'm satisfied with the Justice Dept's decision not to prosecute.

This isn't the Nuremberg scenario where these agents were just following orders. They're not going to be tried by an international tribunal, so the question of whether they're following orders is the incorrect one. It really comes down to this: Does it make sense for the Justice Department to retroactively prosecute these agents for doing things that this very same Justice Dept said was legal? Never mind the intelligence community revolting against the Administration, you'd have to deal with an already angry public who has now lost faith in a Justice Department who would prosecute individuals for doing things they said was perfectly legal.

The circus would surely be in town then.

What?

Dude, there is no moral relativism involved. It's a legal issue and only a legal issue. Torture is, by definition extremely painful (or it wouldn't be torture). The methods listed in that memo just dont' fit that bill. If detainees were actually being tortured beyond the treatment authorized then that is another issue. As for the number of detainees who have 'died' in custody, remember that many of them were already sick or wounded before they were picked up and are often on their way out the door already.

Some of those detainees who were "Tortured" were the primary producers of Intel on Al-Qaeda for quite some time. Those tactics were employed BECAUSE they were effective and were constantly refined and re-verified.

I can understand the argument that it wasn't right and shouldn't have been done I disagree, but it is absolutely a legitimate argument. I can even understand an argument saying the tactics should have been interpreted as illegal. What I don't understand is an argument which circumvents the issue by either pointing at people who were actually tortured (illegally) and/or misrepresents the effectiveness of the methods employed with absolutely no first hand (or even second or third) information whatsoever and no data (because none has been released, intelligence being one of those 'secret' type things) to support your claim.

Torture is not by definition "extremely painful." It can just as easily be about mental anguish, like with sleep deprivation, extended sensory deprivation, fake executions.

And the legal "rationale" used to approve these techniques is extremely weak, as anyone who has read them knows.

And the argument that only someone who has immediate knowledge of these situations can discuss them is total Bullshit with a capital B, and circular to boot. "We can torture because we know what we learned, but I can't tell you, so we will keep doing without anyone's interference."

But in any case, there have been numerous memos released about how people were actually saying that their ability to gather intelligence had been compromised due to the mental state of the detainee.

And in any case, just look at the numbers of people release and deemed not of interest after undergoing such treatment. So we know several innocent people were tortured, and yet this is all ok?

Ok, I don't recall reading anything which authorized fake executions.

Second, "Mental Anguish" is torture? Really?

Sleep deprivation not to exceed 48 hours isn't torture or college students cramming for a test wouldn't do it on a regular basis.

They are not slamming heads into a wall.

Sensory Deprivation is torture? I guess we should make sure they have HBO.

The food deprivation consisted of a tasteless but nutritionally complete liquid diet, not starvation.

It is my understanding that our government is only required to look out for the most basic needs of a detainee...he doesn't have to like the food he is given, it doesn't have to be on a regular schedule, he can be uncomfortable so long as he is not harmed. Those memos lay out exactly how far the CIA was able to go before they stepped over that line.

I know what you are saying about the mental state of the detainee...If the Afghans roll someone up and then rape him over and over again for a week before giving him to you then yeah, he is probably not going to be very usefull. But if you make someone drink a protein shake instead of eat a stake dinner I doubt he is going to be mentally 'broken' and useless. Also, if you administer corrections and whatnot willy-nilly and don't reward good behavior/punish bad, etc. then you make someone who is simply traumatized rather than cooperative. Also, the memo's require a psychologist to be present during all such interrogations to monitor and ensure that the methods are productive rather than counterproductive....Sounds to me like they were already addressing the issue you are worried about.



Edit: last thing. I was not implying that you were not free to discuss the issue. But rather that you were drawing conclusions you knew nothing about. Saying an interrogation method is ineffective when you don't even know how the method is employed is silly. It's like saying fast cars always kill people because you read about a NASCAR wreck. What I was saying about the information is that you would only have heard about the failures...there is no reason to keep that a secret. The people who rolled over as a result of these tactics and are giving good information would not be mentioned, even at the expense of making the method look like a failure. So even if the program were wildly successful beyond anyones imagination, the few people who did not provide information would be all the public is likely to ever learn about.

waterboarding is torture. there's not a whole lot of debate about that. sleep deprivation etc.---alot of these actions were developed in order to circumvent restrictions on torture. slapping etc--it's hard to say: taken in isolation, probably not; seen in the context of a systematic desensitization of the interrogators to limits that should have been placed on their actions, they're a problem.

i hear gordon liddy making the same kind of arguments outlined above concerning some of these actions--o pshaw they're not really torture according to some arbitrary manly man notion of what "real pain" is. and his move was the same as what you see above--isolate "slapping"and ask well, is that torture?

fact is that the bush administration attempted to fashion a legal rationale which circumvented international conventions of the treatment of prisoners to which the united states is a signatory; the bush administration attempted to fashion the narrowest possible interpretation of torture in order to justify actions in the name of----well what, really?---it's been known for a very long time that what torture is good at eliciting is whatever information will make the torture stop--that has nothing to do with accurate information--this is self-evident---look at the history of the french in algeria for fucks sake. the only way torture worked in that case was that is was applied to a huge population regardless of legal standing and was aimed at eliciting extremely narrow types of information and the accuracy of that information really wasn't important because it just fed back into the same operation. and in the end, this tactic not only did not work, but it was fundamental to political changes that caused the french to loose the war in algeria. it's a fools game.

anyway, there are problems with prosecuting bush administration officials for the policy-but i fundamentally do not think that the government of the united states is in a position to determine what actions of the previous version of the same government were and were not war crimes.
i think this should be tried by an international tribunal.
otherwise, it is functionally the case that a government that does not loose a war can do any fucking thing it decides is justified, and that the ONLY crime really is losing a war.
that, folks, is fucked up.

most of the factors folk have elicited to either be cool with or justify the obama administration's decision not to prosecute i already used as arguments against the idea that a national government is in a position to functionally prosecute itself for this kind of action.

and the question of what is and is not torture really is not for a messageboard debate to decide.
it's for a court.
there should be prosecution.

but i think the people who are responsible for the policy should be the ones facing charges. starting with rumsfeld.

People who are fine with torture are people who don't understand torture.

Other than pretty much agreeing with most of what roachboy has laid out of late, I want to say that the use of torture is an indication of a problematic moral failure. Within the context of war, it obliterates any possibility of "just" warfare.

Once you cross the line of bypassing human dignity, you have bypassed all hope for fighting for the greater good. If you cannot uphold your own values, it becomes unclear as to what exactly you're fighting for.

If America is okay with torture, it can be little better than many of the brutal dictatorships we've seen come and go. What else will we see as a means to an end?

I don't understand your Constitution to the letter, but I'd be rather surprised to learn that this kind of behaviour doesn't go against such an important document. That it does is indicative of a serious omission on the part of the framers and those involved in the amendments.

This is all bullshit, with all due respect.

Yes, "mental anguish" in all scare quotes you want, is torture. I guess you haven't read any of the released info on the mental condition of several of the detainees in GITMO, but hey, apparently literally driving someone insane is not torture.

And you either didn't read the memos or is intentionally trying to mislead. The memos authorize sleep deprivation up to 264 hours.

And sensory deprivation for months at a time is really just "going without HBO?"

The fact that you insist that "Im drawing conclusions I know nothing about" even as you distinctively mislead (intentionally or not) regarding the content of the memos that outline the methods of torture employed by the CIA is ironic to say the least. And your silence about stress positions, waterboarding, "walling" and other outlined techniques is telling.

And as far as the mental state of the tortured, it's not speculation on my part, it's based on the released information regarding Abu Zubaydah, Jose Padilla and others.

You keep talking as if you have some sort of insider knowledge that invalidates everything that has been publicly released, but unless you are a CIA agent with sufficient clearance to a- confirm the authenticity of whatever intelligence you've come across, and b- know the detailed state of those being tortured by the CIA, you really don't have any more insight than anyone else who's read the available reports.

And the memos currently released are exercises in extreme manipulation of the law to justify torture under current agreements. So much so that they cite as precedent decisions regarding building codes, but fail to mention the most basic precedent: that Japanese soldiers and officers were prosecuted and found guilty of torture for waterboarding during WWII.

And as far as personal experience with torture, I have an uncle who became an extreme schizophrenic and eventually was killed after he was extensively tortured by one of the puppet regimes in Latin America for being a student union leader, so don't assume whatever little experience you have is somehow unique and superior.

I'm sorry to hear that. My uncle was tortured, drained of blood to transfuse to wounded Japanese soldiers, beheaded, and tossed into a mass grave. This happened because he was an insurgent providing information to the rebels and Americans during the occupation of the Philippines by the Japanese.

Still doesn't affect my choice of finding torture acceptable. I don't condone it, won't do it, but it is part of the range of what happens when humans war with each other. I don't find killing acceptable either, but yet somehow that's part of what happens in war. It's not like it is a football or baseball game. To believe that war can be civilized or pussified is some manner is folly. War isn't pleasant. It isn't flowery. It isn't nice. It sucks and there is a lot at stake.

Sorry about your uncle as well.

The reason I mentioned that was not to try to "score" points and make people suddenly against torture, but because of the specific reason that Slims keeps claiming that somehow I shouldn't say anything here because somehow I know nothing of torture and its applications and consequences.

Ok, to be clear, I am not claiming to be CIA or anything similar.

I miss spoke about the sleep deprivation. It was my understanding that such incidents didn't last more than 48 hours straight, though they may be part of a longer cycle. The memo indicates different, however.


With regards to the waterboarding, the Japanese would routinely 'waterboard' our servicemen until they were unconscious. They would then revive them and repeat the process. The procedure that was OK'd by the Justice Dept. only allows for breathing to be 'somewhat' impeded for 20-40 seconds at a time in order to induce panic without actually drowning the person. Big difference, IMHO.

Jose Padilla was evaluated by a court-appointed psychologist who concluded he was and remains mentally competent...he was trying to play the crazy card so he wouldn't go to PMITA prison. Didn't work.

Abu Zubaydah was shot prior to his capture and appeared to be either mentally unstable to begin with or very cunning. How exactly did interrogators cripple him mentally? Seems to me like most of the trauma he experienced was during his capture rather than his interrogations.

As far as my "telling silence:" I mentioned walling when I stated that they are not banging the detainees head against a wall, as you stated. I never bothered to mention waterboarding as that is nothing but a panic inducer and hasnt' been authorized for use in a way that would actually cause any pain or damage. Am I really supposed to get upset because the CIA told a prisoner to lean against a wall and 'dont' move'?

Yes, I am equating sensory deprivation to missing HBO. Both these asshats were involved in attacks against either the United States or it's citizens. They also knew other people who were still on the loose and active. I have very little regard for their feelings. I think we should have (and we did) safeguard their physical well being, but they do not have to like their time in our prisons, feel comfortable, or be happy.


I already conceded the Memo's were on what appeared (to my non-lawyer eyes) to be weak legal justification. However, our country routinely stretches the law to the limit and it is not a crime to do so. Standing up in court and stating "I obeyed the letter of the law if not the spirit" is still a valid defense. The prosecution does not get a "Well we really meant for the law to mean this" rebuttal because it is completely irrelevant.

If you think we should coddle detainees more than we already do then fine, pass a law requiring us to do so. But don't storm after people who were acting in good faith to carry out what were (at least at the time) legal interrogations.

And the Memo's are not 'extreme manipulations to justify torture' as you state. Rather, they are a clarification on exactly what can be done without breaking the law by torturing someone. Big difference, like it or not.

---------- Post added at 12:15 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:09 AM ----------

Edit:

I have not implied that I have super secret access to anything.

What I have implied is that due to the nature of the beast you are only going to hear details about the people who were dead ends. Those who rolled over and gave up everything are not going to be talked about because the information they provided is likely involved in current ongoing operations.

My point was that you are only seeing the negative because the CIA is unable to come forward and mount an adequate defense and is not about to provide further information on the exact details of the interrogations.

You also mentioned in a very adamant way that the techniques outlined were unreliable and couldn't be trusted. That is also something which I would trust the judgment of the intelligence professionals over yours. I don't know why they felt these particular techniques would be effective, but they probably had good reasons.


Granted, straight up pulling fingernails is counterproductive for the obvious reason that the detainee will say anything to make the pain stop. Likewise if you are overly nice they have no incentive to talk. You have to provide interrogators with options in the middle for complex individuals with valuable information.


Lastly, your uncle is irrelevant with respect to the discussion.

---------- Post added at 12:22 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:15 AM ----------

Oh, and I didn't mention SERE specifically because I didn't want to be the guy who drags it into the discussion, but going back over the memos it is made quite clear that these techniques have been used on soldiers for years with no adverse effects.

What constitutes torture shouldn't be up for debate.
http://www.hrweb.org/legal/cat.html

Of course waterboarding is torture. It causes severe pain (unless you've had it done to you, you can't say it isn't "severe"), both physical and mental, and is intentionally inflicted to obtain information or to intimidate/coerce. It is torture. If you don't believe it is, ask yourself if police officers should be allowed to waterboard suspects. If you're anywhere near normal and haven't lost your very last connection with reality, you'll conclude that the police should not waterboard, therefore there's no reason the military or any other government or civilian individual or organization should be allowed to do it legally.

Torture is illegal. Torture is immoral. Torture cannot provide reliable results. Again, people who are fine with torture are people who don't understand torture.


And really, the "shit happens" take doesn't make any sense. Are you also fine with genocide? Rape? Child slavery? All of those other horrific things that are a "part of the range of what happens when humans war with each other"? "I'm fine with torture" really isn't even callous. It's quite literally indefensible.

Will, the police shouldn't be allowed to drop bombs on the houses of suspected criminals...The Military can and should when it is at War.

Water boarding does not involved pain, only panic. The Memo tells me so.

Also, I have passed out underwater several times, once in a full blown panic as I was trying to get back to the surface and could not. I can honestly say I was not in pain.

that's where you are mistaken Will. You'd like the world to be this flowery, zen, no trouble, utopia, I see it as it is, realistic.

I'm not happy that genocide happens, but there's damn little I can do about it. I can't stop it or prevent it from happening in the world. I can not support it. I can decry it. I can tell people that I don't like it. I can tell my government and other governments that it shouldn't be done. But I cannot stop it anymore than I can stop people from dying.

Because I see it in that manner, I believe it to be part of the ying and yang of the world. No great joy without great sorrow.

The US has not been "at war" since the 1940s. We have an authorization to use military force, but nowhere does that allow the torture of detainees, who are (in theory) waiting to be tried. The detainees are the same as a suspect being held by the police in that they've been captured but not tried or convicted. Until the person has been found guilty, it is not in line with established American principles present in our laws to punish them in any way.
If you'd like to be waterboarded under controlled conditions, I've done it twice now and had it done to me once.
You suffered. Suffering is mental pain. Mental pain is covered under the legal definition of torture.

Still, looking back, while waterboarding is intended to simulate drowning, it's much, much more disorienting, closer to being forced to drown upside down. It's a fairly unique experience. I'm serious when I say you need to experience it to judge it.

In case you're wondering, you need to put a plank of some kind into a bathtub, with the plank laying flat at the nozzle end and elevated at the opposite end. Lay down with your head under the nozzle, and have your arms and legs securely bound. Have someone you trust cover your eyes with duct tape and, as quickly as he can, wrap your face with cellophane and then pour several gallons of water on your chin heading downwards toward the drain. This should last 15-30 seconds. Because of the danger in the situation, you need to work out a signal of some kind that tells them to stop, and someone needs to be able to release you very quickly. I'd also suggest having someone trained in CPR on site just in case.

---------- Post added at 10:18 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:14 PM ----------

The world doesn't require torture for any reason whatsoever. It serves no function other than to inflict extreme pain. It has nothing at all to do with your erroneous idea that because the world is unfixable we shouldn't bother. From a purely pragmatic viewpoint, torture should not exist.
You don't decry it. You passively support it in making statements like "I'm fine with torture". You're not fine with torture even by your own words. You don't like it. You're not happy that it happens. I'll understand if your position is "I can't do anything to stop it", but that's not the same thing as "I'm fine with torture". I'm unable to do anything about AIDS in Africa, but I'm not even close to being fine with it.

And yet you still belittle whatever is described. As if the only alternative to torture is to put people on the four seasons all expenses paid...

Sensory deprivation included being kept in the absolute dark for months at a time, and using blacked out goggles whenever the prisoner had to be moved elsewhere.

With regards to waterboarding "just for a few seconds," once again you've shown you haven't even read the memos.

The memos have said that for a very long time waterboarding exceeded all limits established.

And I don't need to pass a law to ban torture. The US has already signed and ratified the treaties that ban them.

And whatever "good faith" the actual CIA interrogators had, the same certainly cannot be said about those who crafted these memos. Here is part of the "legal justification" provided by Steven Bradbury:

"By its terms, Article 16 [of the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment of Punishment] is limited to conduct within "territory under [United States] jurisdiction. We conclude that territory under United States jurisdiction includes, at most, areas over which the United States exercises at least de facto authority as the government. Based on CIA assurances, we understand that the interrogations do not take place in any such areas."

In other words: it's torture, but it's not really happening in the US...

Keep in mind, the point is not whether these things would get a conviction in a court of law, but I don't see how ANYONE can deny it's torture. Even the memos don't try to deny it, and simply try to find a loophole applicable. So if even you admit that the former administration had to "stretch the law" to make its torture program conform in some way with the treaties the US had ratified, I think that my point is made: that this wasn't a good faith effort to determine what they could do, but a bad faith effort to find all technicalities to make torture legal, and that things that even these people consider torture took place, and that it was significantly more than "slaps."

As far as the mental state of the prisoners:

Jose Padilla might not have been considered incompetent to stand trial, but his sentence took into account the "extensive mental anguish" he was suffering.

Zubaydah might have been already insane before, but that is not certain, and in any case it is clear by now that the Bush administration willingly overestimated the intelligence obtained from him, and especially the role of torture in obtaining that information. According to the released memos, the people who interrogated him thought they had everything they could have from him but were ordered to torture by people at the CIA headquarters! As the memo states"“although the on-scene interrogation team judged Zubaydah to be compliant, elements within C.I.A. headquarters still believed he was withholding information.”"

And then we have Al Qahtani, which according to the FBI ""was evidencing behavior consistent with extreme psychological trauma" due to torture.

And Omar Khadr, who now exhibits "delusions and hallucinations, suicidal behaviour and intense paranoia" and from whom the only known piece of intelligence obtained was the fingering of an innocent Canadian as a member of Al Qaeda, who then was sent to Syria and tortured for a year.

And the whole "ticking time bomb" scenario is shown as patently false, as the memos talk about the limits of torturing someone who has been under custody for 2, 3 years.

---------- Post added at 09:26 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:21 PM ----------


The definition of torture is not bound by pain. As we've covered already, even the US has prosecuted the Japanese for waterboarding. There is a very good reason why the declaration against torture uses "pain OR suffering."

And the memos also explicitly say that the goal of waterboarding is for the subject to feel his life is in imminent danger, and that he could die from it.

The memos even admits that some of the techniques described there were described by the state department as torture when other nations did it.

Heck, it was a staple of Khmer Rouge torture practices...

It's funny that the majority of people who wanted Bush and co. tried for war crimes seem to be ok or silent about this. Why Obama could have offered immunity, kept secret their identity through some plea deals some of the agents that would testify the orders came from above.

Just more hypocrisy.

Where is this majority of people who wanted Bush tried but are ok with "this?"

This thing where every political thread gets derailed by someone who comes up with "Obama worshipers this," "majority of Obama supporters that" without ever identifying who these mythical creatures with such blatant double standards are is getting tiresome.

It doesn't? You don't think that cruelty is a viable part of the range of humanity?

You only want the good to exist. I don't. I need to see the bad to appreciate the good. I need to know that there is evil and bad out there. I get to see examples of it every day.

I don't do ANY of those things I listed because the net effect is the same as me shaking my fist in the air. It don't change the song, it don't change the dance. People have been killing, maiming, and torturing each other since they learned how to pick up rocks and bash in skulls. It will continue after the dust of my bones blow into the winds.

So while you sit and be all aghast and abhorred by it all, I'll sit and enjoy my life as it's the one that I was lucky to have the die cast for.

"Viable"? That means capable of working successfully. Torture cannot succeed in the way those who use it want to succeed; it cannot yield reliable results. So no, it's not viable in any way.
I don't know what fortune cookie, yin-yang world you live in, but the rest of us generally struggle to make the world a better place. We wouldn't do that if the universe was magically maintaining some bizarre equilibrium between good and bad. You sound like a comic book villain. "You need me, Batman! Your good can only exist if my evil gives it meaning! HAHAHhahahahahAHAHH!!"
http://media.filmschoolrejects.com/i...dger-joker.jpg
Don't pretend like you're not involved. Your and my tax dollars go to fund a corrupt intelligence community that kidnaps, holds without trial, and tortures. You and every other person that passively accepts or even condones torture are partially responsible.
You're not arguing for your statement. You didn't say "I can't do shit about it", you said "I'm fine with torture". Defend the latter statement.
Ignorance may be bliss, but you're aware of what's happening. You're not ignorant of torture or rendition. You are in a position to cast at least some judgment on it, and your verdict is that you're fine with it. That position is indefensible.

My tax dollars fund a multitude of things that you and I know NOTHING about. Our consumer dollars go to fund multitudes of things that you and I know nothing about.

See, you want me to do something that I don't have to do. I don't have to argue for it. I don't have to defend the statement. I just have to state it. I say that torture is fine.

In fact, you need to do something more than I do. You need to accept that my opinion is valid and acceptable.

cyn--how about we make this into a bit more formal a game for a minute? just play along. it's fun at least for the duration of this post. maybe.

only if you restrict the argument to the fact that you can say it. ethically condoning torture seems pretty close to reprehensible. and this is an area wherein ethical and political considerations intertwine in a wholesale fashion.

so let's assume that is the case--your arguments, cyn, are essentially of two types: expediency and utility. expediency doesn't hold up real well in a space where ethical and poltical arguments are tangled, so i assume that in order to make that argument you presuppose that you can hold the two apart. see what i mean? so you'd ave to move on to argue that torture can be understood as a problem that does NOT involve an ethical dimension. but if you make that move, you repeat something of the position of the bush administration--which is a problematic position to find yourself backed into i would think given that i don't have the sense you were heading in that direction.

the utility argument can be made on ethical grounds--it's a classic ends justify the means statement, really. the main counter to that is that torture practices are not and cannot be justified on utility grounds because of the nature of the information they tend to elicit. you'd have to be in a position to argue that's not the case in respose. there'd be no ducking the question either--and if you can't make that argument work, your position collapses. because the counter-argument really is that not only can torture not be justified as a legitimate practice, and not only can it not be justified as an interrogation procedure, but that its use is COUNTERPRODUCTIVE on utilitarian grounds because it's consequences call into question the legitimacy of the political order that employs torture.

want an example? think about the political turmoil that surrounded the end of the 4th republic and setting up of the 5th republic in france.
de gaulle found himself entirely boxed in by the political shit-storm that followed from books like henri alleg's that outlined the french military's systematic use of torture on the algerian population. his solution was basically to concede the conflict to the fln---that in turn triggered a radical rightwing counter-revolution from the oas. the political damage done by the fact that the french state used torture--and that it got out--was extraorindary. and later, in books like gangrene, the fact that for some prisoners the torture would happen in paris, in the same building that the gestapo had used to torture suspected resistance members---it's not good.

so there's a history that militates pretty strongly against any utility arguments, and without a utility argument, i think you're position is in serious trouble.

i run this stuff out because i really don't see a way to justify the use of torture at all, anywhere, ever.

this is why i am as irritated as i am that the decision about whether to prosecute rests with the obama administration and not with an international tribunal, frankly.
i already ran out the arguments for such a tribunal...

anyway--your move.

just in todays news..

the story is a few pages long..here is page 1

in short, i believe medical professionals should remain partial irrespective of who's the employer

but when the governments paying the bills, who's going to say no?

also, heres a link to one of the torture memos in question. http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/se...ture_Memo1.pdf

I just don't like mentioning names because unless they directly mention mine, it's not a pissing game. I'm just trying to show the hypocrisy.

I never once say, it's a majority of Dems or a majority of GOP ers.I simply put forth the question and to me it is a viable one. There were people screaming for Bush's trial as a war criminal because of Gitmo and so on, yet when Obama has the chance and gives a free pass or in the case of warrantless wiretaps grabs the power and extends it, some (and to me it seems here, the vocal majority) the people decrying Bush for doing such things seem to be ok or making excuses or giving Obama a pass on those things.

To me, if you say it was wrong for one, you should be equal in your disgust and criticisms.... if you aren't you are a hypocrite.

Who's making excuses for Obama? Can you cite something or someone?

Let's start with ignoring Obama keeping the wiretaps.... NY Times talks about how evil they were under Bush but after reading the article, I fail to see where they mention Obama has kept them going. I don't know printing an article how W abused the program but not mentioning Obama is doing the same thing, kinda seems to me as ignoring the problem/whitewashing etc... no matter what it is it is in a form, IMHO, a way to let Obama off the hook for the same for the same abuses they yell W was taking.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/us...iretaps&st=cse

As I am getting ready for work I took the easy one first, I will gladly after work or tomorrow show they verbal/written excuses for Obama.

goddamn it, pan.

no-one's ignored the ongoing wiretap thing in the real world--maybe in your own private world things are different--but at this point, your private world really isn't that interesting.

so how about you try to figure a way to interact with thread so that every interaction is not the same as any other?
this cookie cutter shit is getting old.

"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?

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

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?

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?

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.

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

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?

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.

"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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

It bears repeating:
UN Convention Against Torture

I disagree. Enough said.

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?

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?

"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

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.

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

Obama opens door to prosecutions on interrogations

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 define torture differently than you do.

I think abusing people with no evidence to support that the person being questioned has specific information on a specific issue could be torture and would be a waste of time.

I think in order for us to understand each other we have to refine the questions. So basically I can honestly say I agree with you and then honestly say I disagree with you. I think randomly abusing prisoners to seek some random piece of information basically will not useful. On the other hand if you have a target who has specific information and that target is questioned with specificity with increasing severity eventually you will get the information you seek.


You have given no clear guidance to the basic questions on the table. When does it become torture and what makes it torture? If I had a clear answer to those questions, I would agree with you. The 'I know it when I see it' argument is not helpful for people like me, who see the world in 'black and white', I don't get the shades of gray stuff. Define it so I can understand it.

Again, you fail at reading and quite possibly comprehension.

Torture has a place. It exists. No matter how much you state that it doesn't and shouldn't it does.

Really? It cannot control? Seems like the Talilban had control over the people.

Seems like the House of Terror in Budapest the building that housed the KGB and the Nazis where unspeakable torture happened, seems to disagree having tortured and controlled its people from the 1940s until the 80s.

Torture controlled many people for decades. Looking at the length of the Spanish Inquisition 1480 - 1530, it seems to have again controlled people for a considerable length of time.

Torture is still used by 81 governments some openly admitting to torturing their citizens. http://thereport.amnesty.org/document/47

this is from a little further down the page in the same extract you posted, cyn.

I would volunteer for it, if it would save the life of a person I cared for. If I volunteer for it, how could you define it as torture?

In states that require grounds for divorce, they often use pain and suffering as a basis. We all know that is generic bull shit. So now you throw in "severe" and call it torture? All I am saying is that your guidance would be of no value to me. So you tell me not to waterboard, then I come up with something else, so the cycle goes on and on. Why can't you clearly define torture?

Drowning or having the sensation of drowning is unpleasant, but so are many other things. Earlier I stipulated that waterboarding was torture, then I went through what if's to try to get clarify some of the vague terms like "severe", "extreme" in the context of how you view the issue.
Here we go again. What is an "extended" period of time? I think when some people get baptized they get their heads dunk in water.

I have been asking you for clarification. Again if I were your CIA guy in the field, I would have no understanding of your view other than waterboarding being torture.

Is isolation torture?
Is sleep deprivation torture?
Is being subjected to extreme temperatures torture?
Is depriving someone of toilet paper torture?
Etc.
Etc.
Etc.

rb, that is a very poignant part of the book and lead me to many other books and reports on the Genovese effect.

I'm not believing that there is an order to the universe, I'm taking the position that it exists from the range of humanity. Humans can do beautiful wondrous things, and heinous and deplorable things. My statement isn't about world thinking or even group thinking because if I was doing either, I'd be sitting exactly next to you and your mode of thinking.

I'm again stating that in order for me to process it in a different understanding. I have not choice but to look at it holistically from 70,000 feet before I get into the weeds. History sides with me that it has and will happen again, more than likely in my lifetime. The questions for me aren't the knee jerk reaction, "It's wrong!" but to see and understand the rationalizations as to the "Why did that person/government make that choice to do so such a thing?"

That is probably a better way of explaining it. Just decrying the end action doesn't prevent future actions.

on that we agree, actually cyn--where the important question really is. how to prevent this. what can be done.

the difference really is in what the next move is when you or i try to think it out.

this is an interesting question and it gets really disturbing really quickly once you start to pursue it...maybe tonight i'll play around with it...

There's no need to explore impossible hypothetical situations. Torture was used on people that were kidnapped or captured in order to get intelligence to fight the GWOT, but in that function it proved to be at best unreliable and in truth a huge problem.
The UN clearly defines torture. Your getting hung up on adjectives isn't an issue of clarity, it's an issue of intellectual dishonesty. You're proposing that because the language isn't unreasonably clear there's a big gray area. There's not. Waterboarding is mental pain and is therefore torture.
Extended periods of time was intended to communicate "up until the point where the individual has run out of oxygen and is a few seconds from passing out". You see what I mean by unreasonably clear descriptions? I know you're feigning ignorance on the issue, that'd be clear to a blind person (a person unable to see due to a physical factor).
Isolation can become torture when it reaches a point of causing hallucinations, insomnia, attempts at suicide, speaking to people that aren't there, and shaking. Sleep deprivation has similar markers (minus insomnia, of course) and should never exceed 36 hours. The human body has temperature points at which it cannot function properly, and interrogation methods should never be within 15 degrees F of those temperatures for any period of time (I'm not a biologist, but I believe the extremes without proper protection are around 45 F and 110 F, which would mean no colder than 60 F and no hotter than 95 F). Depriving someone of toilet paper for more than maybe 12 hours without providing an alternate method of cleaning can cause the skin to become irritated and even can cause the skin to break which could lead to infection, so I'd say you should leave the TP in the room.

Keep em coming. I can do this all day long.

I get you. You're right, now that I'm re-reading your posts, we're more on the same road than it seems like. You're just on the road much further. I think that's why you're statements of it not being about utility etc, is because you've already moved past where I am and have invalidated those elements to help as a prevention method. In this context, since were post, it's harder for me to see it in the prevention light, but since I'm trying to strip away the emotional responses from it, I see you down the road.

Meanwhile, on an adjacent yet less abstract road...
In the context of the GWOT and the Bush Administration, torture represented desperation giving way to foolishness. That hardly justifies it. Something existing doesn't mean it has a place.
You think torture and torture alone kept "control" over the "people" of Afghanistan? No other factors there? No social and cultural factors? No religious factors? No economic factors? Are you really willing to sum up the Taliban situation in Afghanistan before the invasion as "it's torture, stupid"?
Same as above. Torture was implemented with the intention of intimidation, but was used with a host of other strategies. Can you perhaps find an instance where torture alone was used to control?

Step away from the coffee machine Beavis.

I not once ever said anything about GWOT and the Bush Administration being justified in using torture. It hasn't been a SINGLE post of mine.

You may not find that it has no place in your world. There are vast tracts of history you should not read since there's torture all over it.

Again, you're trying to oversimplify a larger point of view that I have into some internet meme that jives with you you live. I'm sorry but you'll not be able to do so with my points of view on this matter.

Really? Intimidation? Oh so it has a use.....

I never said you did, but this thread is about something specific: the GWOT and the US using torture, and, more specifically, accountability. When you said, waaay back in the OP, that you're fine with torture, you made that statement in the context of the article you linked, which was talking about accountability for torture. This conversation isn't happening in a vacuum regardless of how abstract the conversation gets.
I'm not making the case that torture hasn't happened, I'm making the case it has no function beyond selfish reasons like masochism and vengeance. It cannot do what it was supposedly used for in the GWOT, extracting intelligence. That alone should tell you that even though something may be used often, it isn't necessarily functional in what it's being used for.
"I'll say flat out, I'm fine with torture..." Can you reconcile this with you not approving of it's use in the GWOT?
I said the intention of intimidation. What was it earlier you said about reading comprehension?

Yes, I can reconcile it..... please read my above posts.

I'll say it again. "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."

Maybe I should try different languages because you're not understanding my point of view.

I've taken an extensive amount of time to write them. You've only taken moments to skim through them and pick out your leaps of understanding and conviction.

You're the one taking extreme leaps of logic and understanding, not me. I'm not the one parsing my sentences, you are. You continue to leapfrog your point of view through mine not making any sense whatsoever in the context of what I'm engaged in on my side of the discussion.

People judge by ACTIONS not intentions. Using torture for the "Intention of intimidation." Still works in my reading comprehension world. I'm not sure it works in yours. See, again, it has a use. I don't care how many nouns, adjectives, and adverbs you put in front of it, it still is torture and still has a function. It may not be a function that you agree with but the person who is implementing the acts of torture feels and understands that it has a function, that VALUE is what makes it happen and persist as an aspect of humanity.

Well, the course of action should be clear.

The buck starts with CIA agents and stops with Bush. What do you recommend, assuming waterboarding is torture and the evidence shows it was done and authorized? Do you suggest execution? Prison? What? Then do we go back and look at other administrations and do the same investigation, same punishment?

Investigation, arrests, prosecution, and then, assuming a guilty verdict, whatever punishment is appropriate under the law.

Under whose jurisdiction?
Should members of Congress, who may have been informed, be investigated and brought up on charges and face punishment as well, for being complicit?
Should the investigation include past administrations?
Would you allow foreign governments, under the UN jurisdiction convict and administer punishment to members of our CIA, and former member of our executive branch including a former President?

If all this is so clear, why is the Obama administration sending mixed signals? If I believed what you believed and what many in Obama's administration believes, my actions on this subject would be clear and with no doubt or hesitation on my part. Seems like, unlike you, Obama lacks convictions. I have a problem with that.

I believe the appropriate first step is congressional investigation of the CIA along with an internal military investigation.
That depends on the findings of the first investigations.
Same.
That depends on the outcomes of the US investigations. It would make sense to have independent oversight of the military and congressional investigations. Still, we can't simply assume that they will both be corrupt. The UN should only get involved if they can demonstrate systemic corruption of the investigations.
The Obama administration is made up of Democrats, and Democrats historically lack balls. If you remember, many Democrats were quick to sign the AUMF and Patriot Act, fearing they'd be labeled soft on terrorism if they didn't. Similarly, the Obama administration, quick to pick a fight with Afghanistan and Pakistan, is scared shitless they'll be labeled soft on terrorism. Instead of elevating the level of discourse by refusing to play the bullshit games, they are victimized by them over and over again. I remember watching Clinton scramble his fat ass toward the center time and again. We're seeing the same thing now.

I doubt I'll get to see a proud liberal president in my lifetime. It will be liberals forcing themselves to be centrists and chickenhawk conservatives for the rest of my days.

...and that's why I believe in reality, not some pink cloud sun kissed pipe dream. There are real world factors of human beings that come into play not just ideologies and dogmas, but actual psychology, sociology, and anthropology. Surely someone as collegiate schooled in the human being understands that.

I understand that making excuses for torture can enable torture. I learned about enabling in a collage psychology class.

decopage collage psychology?

You keep believing that I'm standing in Times Square holding up a sign saying "I heart Torture." :shakehead: I've not made a single excuse.

Your reading comprehension is just horrid these days. Stating that I am trying to understand the human condition enables torture is like saying that I enable great works of art and great engineering. Such extreme leaps of logic...maybe you should be Evel Knievel of logic because those are some extreme and daredevil leaps you're taking.