The Big Obama Administration Thread

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Torture is OK when we do it to the enemy, but not OK when the enemy does it to us. It's not a hard concept to grasp.

 

That seems to be the general consensus among the American right Count.

Edit: Actually thought you were being ironic count but after perusing a few of your posts I have come to the conclusion that you meant every word. At least you are honest and open which very few are who share your mindset and there are quite a few of them.

 

This is only true because it is a logical contradiction. If you consent to it, it isn't rape. Period. The definition of rape requires a lack of consent. No matter how rough it is, if both parties consent without coersion, then it cannot possibly be rape.

 

Martaug - The intent was "evil," in regards that it was to inflict "torture." Take a gander for yourself:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22530

IMO, it is Andrews and his organization, The National Review Institute, that is guilty of the "worst" hypocrasy. The political hacks at the NRI and AEI, like Andrews, are essentially the base from which a criminal like Cheney can attempt to justify the last 8 years of illegal and failed policy of the GWB/Cheney regime, while he makes a desperate attempt to keep himself out of jail.

It is more than likely Cheney's office that ordered torture on prisoners in an attempt to find political cover for the "motives" that moved the American regime to invade Iraq.

Ah, hypocrisy? Mr Andrews does not have to look any further than the front of his own face to find it.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-05-13/cheneys-role-deepens/

 

Actually I think it can, if you are supposedly unable to effectively give and withhold consent. Isn't that basically how statutory rape idea works? Also, I've heard of people claiming that they were drunk at the time and thus not able to refuse sex, they were raped.

 

If the military forced recruits to undergo waterboarding or other forms of "extreme drownproofing" then it would be torture, no question. But as has been stated before, no one is forced to undergo those forms of training -- they volunteer, knowing full well what the training entails. Even after they volunteer, it is my understanding that at any time they can call it quits and the procedure is stopped.

In a torture situation, the person undergoing it cannot call it quits.

Doctors re-break bones all the time. But because it's being done for a medical purpose and with the consent of the patient (or the patient's legal guardians) that's not torture, either.

Shaman, regarding this:

I am not saying that the torture that Bush and his ilk is something to be "waved off" as something minor like jaywalking. What I am saying is that Bush has a screen of lawyers, cronies, and assorted weird legal defenses that make conviction unlikely. That being the case, any prosecutor worth his salt must weigh the possibility of success before he lays charges. To use the rape example others were using:

John Doe rapes his wife, Jane. Everybody knows John's an <animal's rectum> but the physical evidence is insufficient. Plus, John is friends with Hubert T. Getzimhoff, the best defense lawyer in the state. The prosecutor knows this. He knows that what minimal physical evidence they do gather will be challenged by old Hubert and tossed out by the judge. The prosecutor knows from his years of experience that under these circumstances a conviction will never happen.

The prosecutor is deeply sickened by the rape and is not one of those "these things happen" kind of guy, but he knows that there is no chance in hell of a conviction. He is also working under the constraints of a budget. He has no logical choice but to put his resources into other prosecutions that have a chance of success. It's not that he condones the rape, it's just that the legal system as presently constituted cannot guarantee the conviction of every criminal. It's sad but true.

 

This may or may not be true, but I would prefer to see such a determination made by the highly qualified legal professionals of our justice department, rather than a bunch of laymen in an internet forum without access to all the details of the case.

Actually, you can. You simply refuse to recognize the difference between a dictionary definition and a criminal one. They are often different and, yes, consent is part of what makes that so.

This is just a distraction -- and a bad one at that. Unlike the procedures undergone in SERE training, intentionally shooting someone -- unless in self defense -- is almost always illegal (I can think of a few exceptions to even this). This is not true of every law on our books. Our laws factor in details like intent, context and consent when determining whether an action is criminal or not. This is but one of many reasons that the winner of the Indy 500 doesn't get arrested for speeding after the event. That you choose to willfully ignore the difference between a dictionary definition and a legal definition -- and the fact that context in such instances does matter -- is not my problem.

Ragusa said it best, though.

The bold is mine, but that is, in short, what you are purposefully ignoring.

Personal attacks again? You have conceded defeat.

 

I don't know what's worse. The right wingers who are too myopic to admit that waterboarding is torture, or the left wingers who are unwilling to torture captured insurgents to save the lives of their countrymen.

 

Option #3: Those who torture people for their own political gain.

 

That statement is made on a very debatable premise. We do not know how many (American) lives were saved by torture, just as we don't know how many (American) lives were lost because of it. The same torture (admittedly, when it became known) at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib motivated many to join the insurgency in the first place, support it with funds or other cooperation, or at least not join the other side earlier. If we are playing a guessing game, we should look at both sides. Just as an example of how some people have a very different opinion on the usefulness of torture, give http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...y-killed-more-americans-than-911-1674396.html a look.

That is all completely outside the entire should we do it moral argument, by the way, as well as beyond the issue of whether Brad's countrymen are worth more than Badr's. Which, by the way, are also very important issues that should be addressed.

@LKD: the thing is, this is not simply one of God-knows-how-many severe crimes happening in Bumtown county, NH. First, this is a case where something happened in the highest circles of authority, and much too public - and encompassing - not to investigate or to put on the shelf in favor of investigating more pressing concerns. Even if we only go after Cheney, having a VP involved in massive abuse of power and undermining constitutional statutes is a pretty big issue to give up on without even trying.

Also, there is the issue of legitimizing a crime. Everyone knows (or at least is supposed to know) that rape is wrong; in this case people in the Bush administration stated that theirs was the right course, with the implied addition that it does not matter what X (X being anything from Geneva to the US Constitution) states. In your case, the rapist does not go around town bragging that someone finally had the guts to do what had to be done, that the d..n cow deserved it and should know better than to question her man. In this case, Cheney seems to be more active now than he was as a VP. If the justice department does not do anything it would seem, at least to me, that it was tacitly acknowledging him to be in the right.

 

Why do you feel the need to so grossly over-simplify the argument? While I most assuredly do believe that we shouldn't torture because we signed a treaty saying we wouldn't torture -- and I make no bones about that fact -- we most assuredly do not have any reason to believe that we will save lives by torturing people.

While it is technically possible to generate actionable intelligence using torture, we also know that the "leads" we generate are far more likely to be false ones -- and that we won't be able to separate the wheat from the chaff until we have followed both the good and bad leads fully. This is a problem, since our intelligence community doesn't have enough resources to follow all the leads it has as it is.

Any time we follow a new information source, we divert resources away from another. By forcing us to divert resources away from higher value information sources, following the leads generated by torture could very well cost more lives than it saves.

 

Oh wow, you're not being condescending, are you? Should I cry to the administrator?

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Relevance? I simply pointed out that left wingers are unwilling to employ torture, even when it will most likely save lives. It's really ridiculous that in this day and age, we inconvenience ourselves to such a degree in order to treat our enemies from a rival homo sapien population fairly, which costs us the lives of our own citizens/soldiers in the process.

Also note that posting speculation that the torture America practiced at Gitmo and Abu Gharaib resulted in a net loss of lives is not an indictment against torture in any shape or form. Even if the figures did clearly demonstrate that more lives had been lost due to the torture at Gitmo and Gharaib, that simply demonstrates that torture, *as the U.S.A interrogators practiced it* resulted in a net loss of life. Torture, when utilised correctly and against the appropriate individuals, can indeed extract information which assists in ensuring the security and safety of your countrymen. This is undeniable.

Why should I care about their opinions? Are their opinions more valid than mine? Hardly! If anything, they are less valid.

Which we should. There's the enemy, go destroy it. The enemy has information you need to protect your citizens? Obtain it by any means necessary. No ***** footing around.

 

Truthfully, no, I don't think I am. I honestly feel you are grossly over-simplifying the issue and have asked why you feel the need to reduce an issue rife with grey areas and value judgments to a false hypothetical about whether we should torture terror suspects or let innocent people die....and I said as much.

As I continued in that response, that is not the situation we are dealing with. While I don't agree with all of the arguments posited, the arguments from both sides of the fence are many and varied, and reducing them to such a simple (and, as I mentioned in that prior post, demonstrably false) hypothetical works as a disservice to both sides of the equation and adding little of substance to the debate. As to whether or not you wish to report my post to an administrator, that's entirely up to you. I'm not ashamed of what I said.

 

And I honestly felt you made a false comment on the other thread, but that didn't stop several people screaming foul when I simply stated 'False'. If my 'false' comment is perceived to be condescending, then the remark 'Why do you feel the need to so grossly over-simplify the argument?' should be considered to be likewise for the sake of consistency.

I know that you feel totally triumphant, baiting me with snide remarks and rolley eyed emoticons in the hopes that I'll retaliate and be banned, but you're not winning any debate points.

 

You still haven't responded to this:

The sentence you take issue with was but one part of a larger response. Ignore it if you will, but I elaborated and explained exactly why I considered your comments to be a gross over-simplification -- and I used a lot more than one word to do so. To get back on topic, if you wish to respond to this argument, I'd be happy to hear what you think and perhaps we'll even find some common ground. If not, that's fine, too.

 

Indeed. You followed a condescending remark with a vacuous argument. In otherwords, if you want to get away with being a smart ass, just bury your bad attitude and pomposity in other material. And no, I won't be responding to you in any future posts. Go play your passive-aggressive little games on some other poor sap.

 

Hmm, this was strange enough to be almost sarcastic. Yes, of course, human population A could, if powerful enough, do whatever it wants to human population B. Definitely, it has been done before. The grisly details of this are what contributed to the popular opinion against torture, whether the Inquisition, Stalinist purges, WWII death camps, etc. In most cases, mind you, it was more useful in extracting what the torturer wanted to hear rather than the truth. Learning from others' experience is not ridiculous. BTW, as far as most countries' attitudes towards torture go, "this day and age" has included both world wars, where the soldiers of most countries - some of which had endured a lot more devastation than any country, other than perhaps Iraq, did during the post-9/11 conflict - considered torture morally abhorrent. Oh, and not effective. If you think that the current conflict is more dire than WWII so that it should negate moral imperatives kept then, there is little more than we could say to each other.

Not only is it not undeniable, but it is also completely unproven - and something can only be considered undeniable iwhen first proven enough times to be beyond a shadow of doubt. It has not. If you want to prove something - such as torture works, the onus of responsibility is on you. Your belief does not make it right, any more than belief that the Earth is flat made it so. Of course, if you decide to believe no matter what anyone tells, that's fine for you. At times, however, having reality on your side is useful as well.

Also, there is the issue of torture not being the only method that can extract information. Sure, if utilized correctly (whatever that is) and against the correct individuals (of course, you need to first divine who those are) it may yield valuable information. However, there are other techniques for that as well. Your position implies that torture has been proven to be more effective than any of those in extracting valuable information, and as far as I know it has not.

To you, perhaps. From outside - unless you can claim to having more experience with investigation and interrogation than that - they are more valid than the opinion of random bloke #21568122 on the Net. I guess Sherwood Moran didn't know the least bit either.

 

Summary, and an attempt to get back on topic

That appears to be your problem. Opinions are not equally valid. There is what you opine about, and then there is reality and experience. If all opinions were equally valid, there would be no point in vocational training. Arguably, an interrogator's view, informed by a decade of experience in law enforcement and intelligence, is more informed than yours on the matter of interrogation and the utility of torture.

​

• 9/11 - and Bush's problem:
  
  In 9/11 a serious intelligence failure manifested itself. There was an intelligence gap on Al Qaeda. For more than a decade long US intelligence services had neglected to or failed in or to develop intelligence on Al Qaeda and to penetrate their network. After 9/11 US intelligence knew little about the enemy. For the government, the problem was having scraps of intelligence indicating that al Qaeda might have a nuke, but they couldn't say whether those scraps were accurate. This lack of knowledge led directly to extreme measures. Knowing little, the administration reverted to worst casing. So they cast a wide net to get as much information as possible as quickly as possible. For that end, no action was out of the question, so long as it promised quick answers. Quite obviously, torture initially was an emergency measure.
  
  It was quite clear even at that time that it was illegal and a violation of absolute prohibitions in US domestic and international law. The president is sworn to protect the Constitution. This means protecting the physical security of the United States “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Protecting the principles of the declaration and the Constitution are meaningless without regime preservation and defending the nation. I will give them that they acted with the intent to protect American lives. That doesn't mean that it was legal, or legally justified. Still, I can comprehend why people want to forgive the Bush administration their initial response, though I don't share that view.
  
  Still, my real problem lies with what they did after the initial crisis was overcome, and that is what I consider the unforgivable sins and real crimes of the Bush administration: They took an emergency measure - illegal but perhaps somehow justified through the extraordinary circumstances - and perpetuated it into a policy and beyond the emergency. Worse, they went on to deny the exceptional nature of what they did, and proclaimed the legality of their measures against their better knowledge. That is nothing else but hubris.
  .
• Torture and the ticking time bomb, again ...
  
  So, again, let's assume we know that a certain individual knows where there is a nuke ticking somewhere in a major American city, and the individual refused to give the information. Torture might work or might not work, but would it be moral to protect that individual’s rights while allowing hundreds of thousands to die? Many would argue that in this case, torture is a moral imperative.
  
  Well, knowing a bomb had been planted, knowing who knew that the bomb had been planted, and needing only to apply torture to extract this information is "24". This hypothetical sort of torture was not the issue. The administration knew much less than that about the extent of the threat from al Qaeda. If you know that an individual is loaded with information, torture might be a useful tool. But if you have so much intelligence that you already know enough to identify that the individual is loaded with information, then you have come pretty close to winning the intelligence war. That’s not when you use torture.
  
  When the Bush administration officials ordered torture they did not know what they needed to know: They did not know who was of value and who wasn’t, and they did not know how much time they had. Thus, torture was not used as a precise tool, but used indiscriminately. On a fishing expedition you know you will be following many false leads, and when you employ torture, you will be torturing many people with little or noting to tell you. Torture then is not only a waste of time, but a violation of decency. It also undermines good intelligence. After a while, rounding up suspects in a dragnet and trying to whack intelligence out of them becomes a substitute for competent intelligence gathering that can potentially blind a service, even more so as people will tell you what they think you want to hear to make torture stop.
  .
• 'The worst of the worst', 'it's not torture' and other fairy tales
  
  Let's dispense, once and for all, with the idiotic assumption that everyone in Guantanamo or Bagram, or wherever actually is a terrorist. Some certainly are, but there are many others who were guilty of nothing more than being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Many of those are in prison because a junior intelligence analyst decided on the basis of probability that they probably were terrorists. In numerous cases repeated judgements by review boards have recommended release, but to no avail.
  
  Another thing to dispense with, once and for all, is that the techniques the US used are not torture. Of course they are. Water boarding is torture. The other techniques, if not for themselves already, clearly amount to torture cumulatively and over extended periods of time. It takes considerable (brazenly wilful) ignorance and lack of imagination to claim that subjects who are shackled to the floor or ceiling in a cell, in painful positions, wet and cold without adequate clothing, hungry, hassled by guards with dogs and subjected to random mild beatings, isolated, under sensory deprivation, deprived of sleep and/or exposed to massive noise, for days or weeks, are not agonising. While the treatment of detainees could have been worse, it was terrible nonetheless. As for the severity, it is worth to recall that people have died in US custody as a result of such treatment.
  .
• Why and where Bush failed (IMO, anyway):
  
  Admittedly, Bush was handed an impossible situation on Sept. 11, after just nine months in office. After 9/11 the country demanded protection, and given the intelligence shambles Bush inherited, he used the tools he had, and hoped they were good enough, and to be safe, he added torture as a desperate stopgap measure. The problem with exceptional measures like torture is that it is useful, at best, in extraordinary situations. Torture, in the hands of bureaucracies in due course becomes the routine. The memos are the evidence of this routinisation. What began as a response to the unprecedented became a standard operating procedure.
  
  At a certain point, however, the emergency was over as US intelligence had, with the aid of allied intelligence agencies, developed an increasingly coherent picture of al Qaeda and was able to start taking a significant toll on them. Extraordinary measures were no longer essential. Bush had an opportunity to move beyond the emergency. He didn’t. That is his great failure of leadership in this matter.
  
  I don't know to which extent Cheney prevented a normalisation after the 9/11 crisis had been overcome. I know that he wants the president to have as free a hand as possible. Considering his office's enthusiasm for executive discretion under the the theory of the 'unitary executive branch' everything points to them seeing the torture issue having considerable utility towards the advancement of the political goal behind that theory.

 

The concept of prioritizing the welfare of your tribe over that of rival tribes is strange to you? It's not only commonsense (eg. one values the lives of their family over the lives of strangers), it is also has an evolutionary basis.

Precisely.

Careful, you're starting to sound all preachy like Tipper Gore.

Logic fallacy on your behalf. Simply because torture has been abused in show trials does not automatically preclude it from being a legitimate means of extracting information.

Experience shows us that if an individual knows something you want to know, torturing them is an effective means of extracting that information. Common sense also supports experience. Every man and woman has a breaking point, it's just a matter of how much stress you are willing to apply.

Argumentum ad populum logic fallacy. Simply because a majority hold an opinion is not evidence that said opinion is valid. Added to which, you have failed to provide any statistical data to demonstrate that the 'majority' find torture morally abhorrent.

Wrong. Torture has been shown, time and time again, to be an effective means of extracting information.

Ahh, I see. You're shifting the goal posts. I could post examples until the cows come home, but it wouldn't be enough.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2009/04/23/torture/

What are the alternatives?

Wait, you are aware that you just *agreed* with me? You previously disputed my claim that torture works, and now you admit that it may yield valuable information? Why are you on my case then?

No, it doesn't. Either you're setting up a strawman, or I was being vague. I'm simply claiming that torture can be effective at extracting desirable information, although personally I think it should only be used as a last resort, with interrogation tactics starting light (eg. sleep deprivation, blasting the suspect with Bon Jovi music) and progressing to more hardcore stuff such as waterboarding, maintaining uncomfortable positions etc.

Of course my own opinion is more valid than everyone else's, that's the nature of subjectivity.

 

How very astute. The point about subjectivity is that that is only valid to you. That limits its utility.

Subjectivity creates truths by the mere fact of asserting them. Subjectivity has a bad reputation for having been used as a cover for arbitrariness, or obstinacy. You see subjectivity and objectivity often clash in court, where subjectivity, if unsupported by facts, loses a lot.