Torture doesn't work. Film at 11.

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there's a fine line between interrogation and torture, an interrogated subject is much more likely to tell you something you dont already know then a subject who is tortured.

viable interrogation methods can be concluded by observation of the subject, and manipulation of their behaviours which can lead you to simple methods such as question and answer methods and lie detection and more complex methods such as hypnotism for volunteer information - depending on the relationship between interrogator and subject.

viable torture methods can generally only be question and answer, the information is inaccurate and relies on you already having in your posession key intormation to question the subject about - he will answer in desperation what you want to hear.

 

DR, this is the situation with a great many tools. Should we discard them all because they present a risk? This also presents the age-old dilemma of the value of a life, and the value of suffering. If you knew, 100%, that torturing a particular person terribly would save the lives of others, would you? How many? If one extends the use of torture in a statistical fashion, it approaches such a dilema. How often does it have to be effective to be worth using? How many lives need to be at risk? I can't present answers at the moment, and I'm betting neither can you.

The issue here is whether or not causing suffering is an evil. Jesus himself whipped a few people out of the Temple grounds once. Is suffering as a universal whole the result of evil as a universal whole? Yes, but that doesn't make it itself evil. This entire world is a result of evil as a universal whole in that, if there were no evil, this existence would not exist. That does not make the universe evil. I regret anything that causes suffering, but I would rather spank my child than see him/her grow up to be a criminal. I'm not saying torture is a 100% comparable case, but rather that the premise that it is evil is not certain by any means.

In part this is addressed above. How reliable does it need to be to be justifiable? 10%? 50%? 95%? How many lives need to be at risk?

Again, and to everyone here, I am not saying torture is justifiable, just that I'm not certain at the moment where it lands.

 

Isn't this precisely the problem though? When and how do you know you've reached that 100% certainty threshold? What one overzealous agent knows 100% may not be shared by his colleagues or supported by the facts. The Bush Administration simply knew 100% that this guy knew something, and they were wrong. Certainty is often assumed when emotions come into the equation. I can know 100% in my bones that X will occur if I don't do Y, but not only can I still be wrong, but if emotions factor in I'm even more likely to err out of desperation. You have to way the costs - strategically, ethically, emotionally - of any course of action. Torturing this man MAY provide the information we need, or, it may provide crap leads that waste our time, ensure the success of this comrades, or worse, traumatize the subject to the point where he's no use to anyone. This kind of situation strikes me as burning down a house to kill a rat.

I think that's the wrong question. If there are other effective methods of getting the information you want to know out of someone that don't involve actual torture, then I would think the only ethical thing to do is to try those first, and improve on those methods to increase their effectiveness. True, they are more difficult and take more time than pouring water up someone's nose until they almost drown. But they have ultimately proven to be more fruitful and far more ethical. As Drew said, better to deal with a friendly hostile.

The problem with this is, this is your child, and you always know your child did something to deserve a spanking. Would you spank someone else's child because they might have done something, or might have information about their friends doing something? Under what authority do you do that? And if you're wrong, are you guilty of assaulting a child?

 

And the problem with this line of reasoning is that you can justify anything with it.

Would you rape a terrorist's wife in order to get him to provide life-saving information that you knew he had? Son? Daughter? Infant?

Where we choose to draw the ethical line is basically arbitrary. I think 'no torture' is a nice place to draw that line.

 

You're missing my point. My point is to expand this on a statistical basis to an overarching rule on torture. Torture, as a general tool, does work sometimes, so you are essentially guaranteed to save isome lives with it. The question is, how many is worth it? How many torture events per life saved? If 1 out of every 10 torture sessions is statistically likely to save the lives of 100 US citizens, when no other method could, is it worth the other 9/10?

I think the better analogy is burning down a village to stop a plague. I agree that torture should always be a last-resort tactic, but torture succeeds where other methods fail.

No, there are a great many things that cannot be justified. Extending the suffering to those uninvolved is inexcusable. I would never threated the lives of a terrorist's innocent family to get information. I would never torture someone who wasn't a known member of a group known to threaten us (with all associated uncertainties of 'known').

Addressed above.

My problem is that my distinction between right and wrong is not arbitrary, but based on reasons both religious and logical. 'No torture' is a nice place to draw the line until you encounter a situation where torture is the only method likely to save lives.

 

Just about anything Jesus says.

Luke chapter 6.

27 But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you,

28 Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.

29 And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and him that taketh away thy cloak forbid not to take thy coat also.

30 Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again.

31 And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.

32 For if ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? for sinners also love those that love them.

33 And if ye do good to them which do good to you, what thank have ye? for sinners also do even the same.

34 And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye? for sinners also lend to sinners, to receive as much again.

35 But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.

36 Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.

37 Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven:


if that isn't against torture, I don't know what is

 

Since you seem so sure of this, could you provide an example? I have yet to see an example where tortured succeed in getting accurate information when no other method would lead to that information.

Again, the problem here is you are speaking about a hypothetical situation, so it makes it impossible to logically analyze. My gut feeling (and I try to avoid thinking with my gut) is that if toture only succeeded in yielding life-saving informaiton 1 out of 10 times, then no, it isn't justifiable. (In much the same way that I would argue I'd rather see a child-rapist go free than throw an innocent person in jail for that crime.)

They have determined that many of the detainees held for all those years at Gitmo were uninvolved in any terrorist activities. In fact, of the over 700 held, they think only a couple dozen were involved with anything. It does not appear that we do a particularly good job of being sure who is and isn't involved. If it is inexcusable to extend suffering to those uninvolved, then torture almost surely will accomplish exactly that.

Please list your metrics. (At the very least, the logical reasons should have metrics.)

 

I will repeat an earlier statement:

Hypotheticals people use to justify such actions are fiction and have no place in an intelligent discussion.​

I have yet to hear any data regarding the obtaining of accurate information from torture or the number of lives saved. And I had a top secret clearance with access to some intelligence reports. People base the validity of torture on fiction like '24' or stuff from Tom Clancy where good information is obtained.

The history of torture is much more sordid. The most famous cases come from Nazi Germany and the Inquisition where there was no 'information' to obtain, but rather 'confessions' of evil. I think those clearly show that at some point of pain a person will break down and admit to anything to get the pain to stop.

As far as how often good information is obtained; one in ten seems a bit overboard to me -- I would estimate one in a hundred to be conservative and the odds of obtaining good information may actually be much lower. Does one in a thousand justify the other 999? How many lives need to be saved to justify such numbers? Can any provide any metric that any lives have been saved from information gained in torture?

 

@ Nog,

But other methods can, and do. That's MY point, that I don't think you're getting. Why unnecessarily cross a moral line when we can achieve more fruitful results through other means?

Again - not necessarily.

 

The thing is, NOG, the other side of the coin is often omitted. What is the price of torture, in the majority of cases where it is not effective? You waste precious resources on information that is more likely than not to be wrong; thus, torture is even more risky than other methods in "do or die" situations like the ones usually given as a justification for it. With all the resources that, say, the US has for its intelligence gathering, I'd say that its main problem is not finding information but sorting through all the available information - which supposedly accounted for the low priority all those signals about bin Laden planning to attack on US soil received before 9/11.

It is usually argued that using torture may save lives - but it may and in fact is much more likely to doom them even if you only consider the chance that the information gained from it will be incomplete and incorrect. That is all completely apart from the entire moral argument, which is a viable reason into its own - but it is usually invoked, while the price of torture is usually omitted.

 

Umm, how about Thou Shalt Not Inflict Suffering? 'Love' thy neighbor, in Christ's terms, doesn't mean let him get away with anything. Quite the opposite. You're right that this is as close as the Bible gets to condemning torture, but it really doesn't quite get there. If this is against torture, which isn't clear at all, it is also against all forms of war and punishment, or so it would seem to me. Should Christians protest against the Justice System? Seek to bring down prisons? This exact passage has been used to justify anti-war movements, but even there it was challenged and questioned by just about everyone.

Remember, the second torture becomes about hate, you have lost the entire purpose of it, and probably any hope of getting useful information.

I believe the counter to the original article gave examples of information obtained from the subject only after torture. Information that later led to the arrest of other terrorists. Now, you can always claim that if they had just pressed the subject a little harder without torture, that if they had just asked the questions one more time first, he would have broken, but I think we'd all have a hard time believing that.

Then that's a problem with the current application of torture and imprisonment, but not the general principle. I've never said that Gitmo was a 100% pure and good exercise, not even close. I've even given criteria that would work to ensure that this exact thing didn't happen. The fact that the Bush administration didn't use it does not condemn torture as a practice, just this application of it.

The value of life. If one period of suffering, or even death, on the part of the perpetrators, saves multiple lives, I believe it is worth it. I won't get into numbers, as that's the exact problem, but that is my general position.


I hear a lot of you saying that torture doesn't work, or that odds are very low it will produce actionable and accurate information, but can you provide statistics? I also here a lot saying that there are other methods, that torture is never (or so it would seem) the last resort, but can you support those statements? If you can, I'll conceed the point, but I doubt it's that clear-cut.

I'll say this straight out. For torture to be implemented acceptably, I would require as a minimum:
1.) Verification of the identity and potential knowledge of te subject before torture begins (i.e. this really is Osama's second in command, and not his brother's neighbor across the street)
2.) Verification of the information provided afterword (i.e. just because he says Person X worked on it does not now give you reason to detain and torture Person X)
3.) An immediate threat, or a distinct indication that there is one (i.e. no fishin expeditions)
4.) Full and repeated attempts to obtain the information through other means
5.) That the torturers are not personally involved in anything related to this person (i.e. keep it professional)
6.) No involvement of outside individuals that are not themselves guilty of similar crimes (i.e. if you want to threaten his partner in the scheme, ok, but not his 6-year-old daughter)

 

NOG,
I have said it before that IMO the overwhelming majority of torture proponents habitually confuse interrogation and intelligence gathering with punishment - and do not, cannot, don't want to differentiate properly between what someone presumably subjectively deserves and what is effective, sensible or morally justified. I think that's the case with you, too.

Your assumption that torture works is an assumption based on other assumptions - that the person that is subjected to torture is guilty, and that this person does have information, all of which is again based on another assumption, that the interrogator knows that.

In war, as in all human endeavors, there is this element that Klausewitz called 'friction', or uncertainty and surprise. There rarely is perfect knowledge. It is unrealistic to expect perfect knowledge. It is foolish in the extreme to build a justification for torture based on such shaky ground.

 

Never threatening the lives of the innocent is a nice place to draw the line until you encounter a situation in which threatening--or actually harming--the innocent is the only method likely to save lives.

See? It's easy. Most arguments you can make in favor of torturing the guilty that can be used to support the torture of those dear to the guilty. Except, that is, those arguments that are basically about punishment, as Rags points out.

If the idea is to save lives, well, threatening the innocent does that. Hey, it was good enough for our forefathers when they firebombed scores of Japanese cities, wasn't it? It was good enough for us when we overthrew Saddam, wasn't it?

Oh, right, but murdering the innocent isn't the same as torturing them. It's better. Cleaner. And...what's that? I should stop hitting the strawman? But it's so much fun! I like it! Okay, okay. Fine. Spoilsport.

This is another thread, so I'll drop it. Except to say that I'm right and you're wrong and you know it and I know it and you know that I know that you know it.

T2,

Well, some people, maybe. I'm with the dean of West Point

/me appeals to authority

 

I think it's important to get some perspective on this whole torture policy business. There was an interesting exchange between DR and NOG on one of the other threads about what politics has been like during their respective lifetimes. Well, I can still remember living through the tail end of the Cold War, especially when Reagan was first elected and it seemed like the world was going to end any day. There was all the talk about the Nuclear Clock and how close it was to midnight (which was supposed to be Doomsday), and there was all those movies like War Games and Miracle Mile about "THE END."

At that time I can't recall any debate about an "official" national policy of torture. Even though it was the destruction of all mankind, I don't think any administration came out with a program quite like what we have had over some "terrorists" living in caves in the desert somewhere. I don't doubt for a minute that these guys are madmen and that they don't mean us harm. But I mean, get a grip.

The point is that the stakes were much, much, much higher than they are now and yet there has been all this hysteria coming from GWB, Cheney amd their minions. In fact, Cheney is still carrying on like some dsiplaced old woman. He still believes that if you kick over any rock there will be a bearded guy from the ME with a bomb. Which is the whole idea of "terror" in the first place; to make you "feel" like you are always in harms way, even when you clearly aren't. We really have to get some perspective on all this.

 

Chandos, there was no debate about torture because it was an accepted practice -- at least accepted in the sense it was never questioned.

 

I know there was an "unofficial" policy, depending on the agency (likein Vietnam). But I don't recall any documentation that revealed where it was official policy of an administration (like Reagan or Bush I), where torture was a "directive." I will do some research on this topic myself, which should be easy since it was so widespread. What did your military field manual say about the topic, T2?

 

One thing that characterizes the the pro torture argument is the sloppy reasoning.

It only starts on the flawed assumption that in the hypothetical scenarios, the ticking time bomb scenarios, the subject is the right one who does have critical information that can save innocent lives. The proponents hurry to argue that torture, while in itself abhorrent - it is justified in rare cases when the 'good outweigh the bad', i.e. the cost benefit analysis says that torture is the lesser evil, and thus, considering the greater good, the moral thing to do.

They miss, conflating intelligence gathering or investigation and punishment aside, two other salient point about torture - it's inherent logic and it's inherent dynamic.

The inherent logic dictates that torture is applied universally. Torture proponents make a cost-benefit analysis. In it, the greater good is always the greater good. In a cost-benefit analysis the greater good - say health, sanity, life of an innocent - always outweigh the lesser good - say individual health, sanity, life of a criminal or terrorist. Indeed, isn't the health, sanity, life of a terrorist - when weighed against the health, sanity, life of a platoon, a company, a city or a nation - or, conveniently abstract, the innocent - a small price to pay? Not only that these considerations start on the assumption of guilt - this is where friction and the human mind come into play. What if an interrogator misses an important piece of information? It means that they are better safe than sorry, after all, lives are at stake, or the security of the nation - it is for the greater good. Add to that pressure from above to get information, now. These are strong incentives to justify torture. The net result is that torture is always justified, because it could potentially yield valuable information and potentially save lives, even in case of mere suspicion. The inevitable result is the proliferation of torture. Enter Abu Ghraib.

The inherent dynamic of torture means, as torture coerced the confession out of an unwilling subject, that there can never be certainty that the subject told everything he knew, or told the truth. Thus the emphasis of torture shifts from gathering information to first breaking the subject and making it cooperative. That inevitably taints the information so extracted. The interrogator is aware of that. The assumption of guilt suggests that, if the subject is not spilling the beans under duress, it must be because he is a particularly hard nut - not because he doesn't know anything. If he doesn't talk, you haven't been tough enough. That is why torture is prone to excess. If some torture works, more torture works even better. The effect of this logic is evidenced by the numerous deaths in US custody that have been reported throughout the GWOT. Iirc there were about 100+ cases that internal army investigations classified as homicide.

Looking at the Nazi (or, say, Saddam's) practice of torture it can be said that torture has some utility as tool of terror. Yet it should give one pause, that despite the fact that Nazis routinely tortured resistance fighters and sent them to concentration camps, there was no shortage of volunteers for missions behind Nazi lines. The deterrent effect of torture, if that's what one aims on, appears to be limited. Torture apparently has the opposite effect and mobilizes the enemy. Maybe because it is abhorrent?

Torture as 'a measure of truth finding' has successfully only been employed by those who knew the answer to the questions posed in advance. Communist regimes applied it not to find out the truth but to extract confessions to prove of capitalist nefariousness - and to expose that in show trials. That's what the Manchurian candidates of the Korean War were all about. It is one of history's dark ironies that it was the Americans who drew lessons learned from Korea and taught them SERE school to prepare US personnel for the 'communist interrogation model' - and then applied them for 'truth finding' themselves. The greatest problem of the torturer is that he mirror-images and sees the enemy in light of of his world view. In other words, he projects on him his own worst nightmares. Considering the confessions of US POWs from Korea or Vietnam one can argue that that's exactly what the Commies did.

I argue that Americans mandating torture today are also largely chasing their own demons.

 

it seems to some people that torture is only evil when it is our troops being tortured, but justified to save lives when it is our forces doing the torturing

 

Ok, that should be your sig.

 

Ragusa, are you missing the links earlier in the thread? We have a case where torture worked! To then look at us and say that the idea that torture can work is an assumption based on assumptions is not just stupid, it's insulting.

Now, you can argue how frequently it works, and you can argue how reliably it works, and you can argue whether or not it is worth the cost, all of which are very viable dillemas, but don't tell me that torture does not work. It can and it has.

Amaster, that is a good arguement, but my restriciton of torture to those already involved has nothing to do with punishment. Rather, my logic in war is that war is inherrantly a thing completely devoid of civility or honor. It is a vast mar on any nation's sense of right and goodness, even when it is defensive. In that logic, there is essentially nothing you can do in war that is dishonorable except spread that war further. Biological weapons, so long as they are deployed in a way to avoid civillian casualties as much as possible, are a defensible weapon. As are chemical weapons. As are nuclear, either as fusion/fission, or as dirty bombs. The only problem presented by these weapons is that they are essentially impossible to contain and limit to only military targets. If I could engineer a disease that would only hit the enemy soldiers, I would have no problem with using it. However, any action that spreads the conflict beyond those already involved spreads that mar and is to be despised as much as the mar itself.

Basically, I have heard it said (can't remember who or the exact quote) that war is mankind willingly descening into madness. Once there, there is basically nothing that can be done that is any more wrong than you already are, save spreading it.

Chandos, I think you've actually brought up a good point that this debate has missed. Some of you seem to be focusing on the current issues with the Middle East when, really, that's the worst place to apply torture. One, that society is already used to a great deal of pain and suffering, much more than we are, on a regular basis. Two, that society has their determination backed up by a very powerful belief system. Torture is not terribly likely to work in those cases. Compare that to, for example, the Unibomber, or Cold War agents in Korea or Vietnam. Here, neither of the above are true. Also, the oft-referenced 'ticking timebomb' scenario, wherein everything will end within X hours if the subject doesn't talk, is also very unlikely to produce results. As long as the subject knows there is a definite time limit, they can 'wait it out' much more effectively. There is a known end. When the event to take place is months away, or the information is related to troop dispersals, arms and munitions, etc, torture has a much higher potential to work because the subject has no obvious expectation of it ending. Torture was used in the Cold War because it worked, and it wasn't questioned, because it worked and because the people were genuinely desperate.

Ragusa, you now seem to be limiting the arguement to a false construct. You claim a certain 'logic' behind the pro-torture arguement and then deconstruct it, yet your 'logic' presented has never once been used by anyone else in this debate. In fact, I have repeatedly spoken against using such logic. The fact that this logic is faulty does not invalidate torture because, at least as I discuss it, it isn't used to support torture.

Now, what the GWOT may be using to justify torture, and what their rules may be, I don't know. They may well be completely botching it.

Unfortunately, some people do see it that way, but that is based on a lack of sympaty for the enemy. It's like saying it's wrong for them to try to escape our prisons, but right for our POWs to escape their prisons. As has been frequently said in movies, the first duty of the prisoner is to escape. This is true regardless of who's side the prisoner is on. Anyone who doesn't understand this about their enemy is foolish and will probably be killed by that enemy.