Why not torture terrorists?

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@Runequester: Are you joking? These people are fighting us because they think we are evil. The worst possible thing to do would be to confirm that by torturing prisoners openly.

Seems to me we are torturing prisoners. We are sending them to countries which legally condone it and letting them torture the prisoner- or we're using all those "technically not torture" things like sleep deprivation, and that's torture in MY book.

Remember that whatever the media says, terrorisim is not a new warfare technique at all. Attacks on soft targets by technologically and/or numerically inferior forces are as old as war itself. In tribal warfare, if a weaker village was attacked by a stronger one, they might send men to burn down the enemy's habitation and kill their livestock, women, and children while the main force was off doing something else. The only new thing about terrorisim is the name. And also remember, ALLEGED terrorists. The sort who aren't tried, just held in incarceration for ever. The sort who are sometimes let go after years when the government realises that they are innocent, and to save face say that they just can't prove charges without showing sources.

 

RuneQuester I find your comments very offensive. Your country funds terrorism in N.Ireland but you don't hear of citizens from Ireland setting Americans on fire, shoving them into their embassy's and urinating on their dead bodies. If it was the other way round where N.Ireland funds al Qaeda I am that if I visited the US I would be punched in the face for my accent alone, but when a US citizen visits N.Ireland we still have an open mind and treat them well. I could take your stance on things to stop US funded terrorism, but I don't think I will.

During WW2 when the US set up bases in N.Ireland what did the Irish women do to deserve to be raped by US soldiers? Due to society back then, no-one would (and will still not) talk about it, and as far as I am aware no-one was punished for such things.

 

I shall endeavor to remain within the bounds of decorum. Just let me say that if, in order to save my children's lives, I had to torture someone, I'd do it in a heartbeat. The "ticking bomb" scenario is an extreme and possibly unrealistic one, but my vote is that the lives of the many outweigh the rights of the criminal. But I also agree that this is a very slippery slope to walk on.

 

How do you know hes a criminal?

Have you taken the draconion view that, if you're in the court you must be guilty, otherwise why would you be there?

 

@Lord Keldin Depaara:

Sometimes it's not as easy as you make it seem, though... several reasons:
- 1st: how do you know the person does have information that would, indeed, save lives?
- 2nd: how do you know you can extract that information, and not just a load of BS (one of the actual reasons some secret services in the 20th century discouraged torture)?
- 3rd - before you speak of rights of the criminal less important than lives of the many, you must make sure that the person in question is a criminal - something that, rumor goes, does not happen all the time in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.
- 4th: purely moral, and more of a note than an anti-torture reason: if you engage in something like torture, you have to be conscious that you automatically lose the moral high ground. Yes, it could lead to good ends - but in conventional morality it is cruel nonetheless, and on the same scale as practically anything your enemy can do.
To end, there's a quote that I don't remember where I read. It goes: "A rack can be used for good things, too; but how long before you begin to enjoy the screams?"

 

That is exactly the point.

Many Iraqis were dumped in places like Abu Ghraib and tortured because they were at the wrong place at the wrong time. Their interrogators, and much less their wardens, didn't really care.

How did that senile moron Senator Inhofe say?

Perhaps in his dreams. According to American military intelligence officers who spoke with the ICRC, 70% to 90% of the detainees in Iraq were there by mistake. The official US Army report on Abu Ghraib agrees with that estimate.

All the silly talk about that the guilty may deserve it makes us forget that bit about innocents being tortured.

 

Heh. The Fox show "24" just portrayed its upteenth scenario where torture was used to obtain vital, time-sensitive information: this time, the "hero" has to engage in some private, off-the-books torture, because of the intervention of a lawyer from "Amnesty Global," who was indirectly contacted by the terrorist mastermind for the very purpose of preventing the good guys from carrying through with their interrogation. In "24," this sort of thing happens every episode, and is always justified as a vital national interest...

 

Another moral question for you.

If the lives of your children \ loved one was\were at stake. And there is a chance that a person or group of people know something to save them, would you torture them?

Where would you draw the line, remember, there are at least 5 uncertainties in torture.

a) They may be innocent
b) They may not reveal anything anyway
c) They may not know anything
d) They may know something but not the right thing
e) They might just plain lie to make the torture stop.

What if there was a 10% chance? 50%...thats pretty high? How about 60? 70? Whats the lowest you would take. No one is ever 100% certain, I mean its not even 100% that Hitler was responsible for the holocaust, although thats another thread.

What if you have 1000 people, and 50 of them know something....is it aceptable.

 

Hard to make a judgment call here unless the scenario is a bit more specific...

BTW, if anyone's curious, so far Fox-approved methods of torture include:

1) verbal abuse, including threatening torture and murder
2) light physical abuse (slapping, punching, etc)
3) the use of drugs
4) the use of drugs along with isolation to cause fear
5) close range gunshot to the leg
6) something involving needles
7) breaking fingers one by one

Why, the secretary of defence even approves of torturing his own son! Hey, torture for everyone!

 

You guys should run a University ethics class. I never said that it was simple. I also don't go for institutionally condoned torture. All I know is that all sorts of ethics, morals, and other considerations go out the window when it comes to my loved ones. But such situations are, as has been noted, rare if not non-existent. I like the one quote (paraphrased here) by David Drake, referring to some of his experiences in Vietnam that he adapted for his "Hammers Slammers" stories:

"If you put a man in a life or death situation and give him a gun, he's going to do whatever he feels is necessary to stay alive, and if the ramifications of that bother you, then you should seriously reconsider putting him there."

 

I liked that Slammers anthology a lot. After I got over the "oh my god it makes Saving Private Ryan seem upbeat" aspect of it, anyway.