Torture-- Let's Get Real

[Rodion Romanovich]

The burden of proof and explanation lies in the hands of the torturers, not in the hands of those against it.

"In war innocent people suffer", indeed. You might want to think about that before you start a war. You've killed, hurt and tortured more than ten times the amount terrorists kill in 20 years. Are those people less worth than Americans? Why this racism, fascism and immorality? What makes you think the children of today's Americans and Europeans won't suffer from these cruel barbaric acts, when finally - it must inevitably happen sometime in the future - todays victims get stronger in power than today's war criminals. Do you really want your children to suffer from the consequences of such actions? It would be cowardice to refuse to do the right thing of fear of what might happen to yourself or your children, but in this case it's immoral acts which will hurt yourselves and your children. Only an irrational, general without discipline and long term strategy would support such actions. Only by constantly destroying every attempt of the enemies, and the innocents who belong to the same people, to build up their strength and hope of a better future, can such a strategy work. Is there anything that can make people lose their meaning of life as much as constant sabotage of that kind? Is there anything that can make people, previously friends of America and Europe, enemies of these two?

Also, this torture is not helping anyone. Perhaps in the very short term it's a source of information. But being a good guy and getting support from locals is a more effective way of gaining information. People deliberately seeking for US officials to give them information is much more effective than taking in people and torturing them, often even innocents. Loyalty, popularity and free will informers is better. What you are doing with torture is both and immoral act, and an act that hurts the American people, and the struggle against terrorism in the world.

Lenin once said: "it's better to kill 100 innocent than letting 1 guilty escape". Is that principle of the Soviet communist dictatorship something the USA wishes to adopt by starting wars where innocents get killed? Let me quote a certain Bible passage (from Genesis), which I'm very fond of:

And Abraham came near, and said, Will you let destruction come on the upright with the sinners?
18:24 If by chance there are fifty upright men in the town, will you give the place to destruction and not have mercy on it because of the fifty upright men?
18:25 Let such a thing be far from you, to put the upright to death with the sinner: will not the judge of all the earth do right?
18:26 And the Lord said, If there are fifty upright men in the town, I will have mercy on it because of them.
18:27 And Abraham answering said, Truly, I who am only dust, have undertaken to put my thoughts before the Lord:
18:28 If by chance there are five less than fifty upright men, will you give up all the town to destruction because of these five? And he said, I will not give it to destruction if there are forty-five.
18:29 And again he said to him, By chance there may be forty there. And he said, I will not do it if there are forty.
18:30 And he said, Let not the Lord be angry with me if I say, What if there are thirty there? And he said, I will not do it if there are thirty.
18:31 And he said, See now, I have undertaken to put my thoughts before the Lord: what if there are twenty there? And he said, I will have mercy because of the twenty.
18:32 And he said, O let not the Lord be angry and I will say only one word more: by chance there may be ten there. And he said, I will have mercy because of the ten.

Just out of curiosity, I wonder why those who support torture do support it. For the information it gives? Then I'd like to discuss whether that really is such a good method of acquiring information. Whether it's moral or not is, in the end, not interesting for the leaders, who want to achieve results. I'll therefore not post anything more in this thread about my moral view on the subject, which is merely a matter of personal opinion. But I'm open for discussing the efficiency of this torture as a weapon in a war like the Iraq war. As mentioned, I find it very hard to believe it has any positive effect in terms of information acqurining, and no positive effect as scare tactics/setting examples (as it also strikes innocents - making examples lose all it's scare effect and replaces it by disgust among the public when innocents are by mistake struck by it).

[master of the puppets]

a fine and plausible quote for anyone even non christians as it depitcts that innocence is far rarer and to be coveted much more than the ability to kill a guilty.

you must remember that you are an american, you and you forefathers lived by a constitution that was different from all the rest and revolutionary in its design (or at least it was) and in that it states that there shall be no cruel or unusual punishments. i believe that this makes us the moral superiors, we as americans practicew civility, mercy to even those who do not deserve it. if we were to go lower than that, to throw such time honored distinctions to the dirt we become no better than them, we become the savage animals we despise. i see it better to keep being the best, to be higher than those we fight, cause we are americans.

...but i was born to late cause america has already corrupted itself...damnit.

[Idaho]

In the words of the great Jon Luc Picard:

It is a wonder that [torture] is still practiced at all. As a means of gathering information it is at best unreliable. And as a means of controlling someone it is ultimately self defeating.

[Del Arroyo]

LegioXXXUlpiaVictrix-- You are wrong on many counts.

First of all, since when has it been reasonable to consider the frequency and severity of American torture even remotely comparable to that which our enemies and indeed many non-Western governments, friendly and hostile, have used and still use around the world?

Second of all, it is undisputed statistical fact that the greater bulk of innocent casualties in Iraq have resulted from insurgent car bombs, suicide bombs, executions and reprisals.

Third of all, it is a serious logical error to place the full blame for the horror of the Iraq war onto the shoulders of the US. True, it would not have begun had we not invaded-- but its dogged continuation and its peculiarly gruesome nature cannot be blamed solely or even principally on the presence of US forces, but rather on the determined acts of terrorist and insurgent elements who most often have very little regard for the ultimate good of the Iraqi people and certainly have no interest in a reasonable peace. If you take that alongside the fact that Iraq was, although better than now, certainly not a wonderful place before the invasion, you may start to see the shades of gray which so delightfully color the world view of a reasonable thinking man.

Fourth of all, what is this crap about how we should be fearful of things to come? I can even refute this using your own incorrect logic and incorrect facts-- if the US is doing so many horrible things now, and that was without provocation, then what is there to make us believe that the motive for such cruelty would be revenge (or "justice"), rather than simple ability?

If you straighten your facts and your thinking out a little, you might come up with a better understanding of the situation.

..

And still no one has really adressed the question I was driving at. I am interested, though, in this notion that torture leads to bad or poor information-- can someone elaborate on that?

DA

[Slyspy]

Oh the different levels of torture? The nice kind and the bad kind? Pah!

[Rodion Romanovich]

@Del Arroyo: It's been a long time since I last saw, or heard, a series of propaganda statements as much like taking directly out of a rhetorics book as your post above. With all due respect, pretending I said things I didn't, without proof or arguments calling my facts wrong and writing it in a way as if it was common knowledge they were wrong, as in:

I can even refute this using your own incorrect logic and incorrect facts-- if the US is doing so many horrible things now, and that was without provocation, then what is there to make us believe that the motive for such cruelty would be revenge (or "justice"), rather than simple ability?"

where you're claiming the terrorists haven't been provoked in any way before, which is an incorrect statement. You know just as well as I do about the American broken promises about air support for shia and curdic rebellions against Saddam, and the weapons trade aimed at balancing Iran and Iraq equally in the Iran-Iraq war so that as many as possible would die on both sides. We also have a suspicious amount of oil leaving Iraq, and finally the prisoners who have without trial been put in the concentration camp Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

The following quotation is a typical attempt to change subject:

First of all, since when has it been reasonable to consider the frequency and severity of American torture even remotely comparable to that which our enemies and indeed many non-Western governments, friendly and hostile, have used and still use around the world?

The "I can steal cookies because he did" argument isn't valid in this case. The actual torture isn't in any way preventing these other governments, who use torture more, from carrying out their torture. The USA can choose to torture or not to torture, and choosing not to will both be morally correct and most benefitial for the American people, and the struggle against terrorism.

Another example of the annoying misquoting can be found in:

Third of all, it is a serious logical error to place the full blame for the horror of the Iraq war onto the shoulders of the US.

Again we're discussing Americas involvement. That's what the thread was apparently about - American torture, and the arguments for and against why Americans should use it or not. By claiming this immoral torture is inhumane and barbaric reveals nothing of one's view on who is to blame for this chaos and terror. One basic part of logic, which you apparently claim I know little about in this quote...

I can even refute this using your own incorrect logic

...is to not make conclusion just out of the blue, but based on information. You have no information on my view on who is to blame for the chaos and misery of these innocent people. Let me inform you, then, about my view on it. Europeans, Americans, and people of the Middle east have created this mess together. They could all, in several situations, have chosen better ways of acting, that would have resulted in a better situation today.

The lack of argumentation and any facts supporting your statements is also evident in the following passage:

but rather on the determined acts of terrorist and insurgent elements who most often have very little regard for the ultimate good of the Iraqi people and certainly have no interest in a reasonable peace.

This statement is the typical careless statement of ruling classes throughout history, to without further arguments calling any opposition "terrorism", "heresy", "insurgent elements" or "usurpers". As mentioned above, we have the US letting down the shias and curds by withdrawing air support and thereby luring them into a situation where Saddam carried out a gene gas massacre of them. We also have the Iran-Iraq war secret weapons trades aimed to maximize number of dead on both sides, and finally, of course, how the USA originally supported Saddam and made him able to become dictator of Iraq.

If you take that alongside the fact that Iraq was, although better than now, certainly not a wonderful place before the invasion, you may start to see the shades of gray which so delightfully color the world view of a reasonable thinking man.

The world community of intellectuals knew already before the invasion that this would be the result. Bush most likely also knew. The Iraq war is an affair of:
1. PR - making it look like active measures are taken against terrorism
2. oil
3. increasing western corporations influence in the Middle east
4. getting military bases and strengthen US control in the Middle east region

Fourth of all, what is this crap about how we should be fearful of things to come? I can even refute this using your own incorrect logic and incorrect facts-- if the US is doing so many horrible things now, and that was without provocation, then what is there to make us believe that the motive for such cruelty would be revenge (or "justice"), rather than simple ability?

See above, it isn't unprovoked. The US attack on Iraq, on the other hand, was unprovoked.

If you straighten your facts and your thinking out a little, you might come up with a better understanding of the situation.

It would be a lot easier if you at all gave some arguments for your opinion. It's quite difficult to understand where your "understanding" of the situation comes from, as it contradicts many commonly known historical facts, that I have demonstrated in this post.

And still no one has really adressed the question I was driving at. I am interested, though, in this notion that torture leads to bad or poor information-- can someone elaborate on that?

Perhaps you could also elaborate on why torture would result in better information than information through trust and popularity. Here's my motivation for why trust and popularity are so useful methods: simply because it would make locals (but not people like Zarqawi of course), want to provide useful information. It would of course also reduce the number of people available as recruiting material for terrorism. The result would be that the war would be a much quicker and easier business to win. He who can defeat his enemy without battle, is the greatest of all generals. The main enemy in this case is the group effect. No rebellion can be successful without sufficient numbers.

[Xiahou]

Perhaps you could, instead, elaborate on why torture would result in better information than information through trust and popularity, which would also have the positive effect of the enemy combattants stopping to fight. As you seem so certain of your standpoint, you must, surely, have some very good arguments that support that torture would be such a useful weapon in this war.

Sorry, that's just comical.... we capture Zarqawi and he says "You know what? Since you guys are so popular and trustworthy, I'm just going to tell you everything I know!"
In fact, I probably shouldnt even have said "captured" surely, he would've just turned himself in to an enemy that was popular and trustworth.

Think of all the lives that could've been saved in WW2- the Japanese probably just bombed Pearl Harbor because the US wasnt popular enough.

Do you know what the average Shiite would do to Saddam if they were given 5 minutes alone with him? Do you think they care if we're mean to some bigshot terrorist leader who's been blowing up their policemen? Your entire argument is fallacious. As I've said, no one is seriously advocating the rounding up of Iraqis off the street and sticking them with cattle prods until one of them tells us something. What we're discussing is what to do with high-value terrorists that we're able to capture to get them to give us actionable intel on their organization.

[Rodion Romanovich]

As I've said, no one is seriously advocating the rounding up of Iraqis off the street and sticking them with cattle prods until one of them tells us something. What we're discussing is what to do with high-value terrorists that we're able to capture to get them to give us actionable intel on their organization.

Like the innocent German citizen that was kidnapped and tortured? That's what I'm talking about. The usage of torture on innocents. If the innocent knows nothing, they can go on for half a year without getting any information. It's not very pleasant to have to suffer torture for half a year.

Fine, hopefully you who are in favor of the torture have some top secret reason for why torture is good to use, a reason which would be politically fatal to say aloud. In any case I gain nothing from a discussion that turns into a debate without proper argumentation, where attempts are made at silencing the arguments of the opposition by jokes and misquoting. I'm for discussion and Socratic analysis, not for parliament style debating. Have fun with this thread, I'm outta here... Just don't come and torture me...

[A.Saturnus]

Can anyone explain to me why, morally, torture should be forbidden in our war in Iraq (I could say War on Terror, but that term really doesn't apply to our current situation).

The question why something is immoral is meaningless. Torturing is immoral for the same reason that it is immoral for your neighbour to break into your house and steal things or harm you. There either is a morality or there´s none, 'why' is not a question that can be applied to it.

[Spetulhu]

Sorry, that's just comical.... we capture Zarqawi and he says "You know what? Since you guys are so popular and trustworthy, I'm just going to tell you everything I know!"
In fact, I probably shouldnt even have said "captured" surely, he would've just turned himself in to an enemy that was popular and trustworth.

Sure, a guy like that isn't going to tell you anything useful just because you're nice to him. But is he going to tell the truth to avoid torture? And will anyone believe him?

Why aren't you using torture in your own judicial system if it's such a great idea?

[Tribesman]

oh well , a couple of weeks in boot camp and your instuctors still havn't given you the run down on torture Del ?
It isn't nice , and it isn't allowed because it isn't nice , so you can come out with oh but war isn't nice anyway , but that is irrelevant .if your instructors are failing to teach you properly can we expect to see your smiling face being held up to the media as an example of a rotten apple that isn't really representative of the miltary and its long establised values ?

[Kralizec]

McCain says that information gathered through torture is not useful at all, and he has first hand experience.

Even if it does yield intelligence, it's still comes down to "the end justifies the means". Allowing torture on anyone means abandoning one of the principles by wich the USA claimed the higher moral ground. By allowing torture on suspects you do not only set a precedent, you're also opening the door for worse. It's like a stairway, where the first tread downwards is the most difficult. When you're a tread lower, you realise it wasn't that hard- and what you gained from it certainly is welcome. When you realise there's more further down, you take another tread down. Then another one, and another one, till you either reach the very bottom or fall from the stairs and break your neck, but by that time absolutely nobody's going to feel sorry for you anymore. Principles should never be sacrificed like that. Every step downwards, every erosion invites the next one.

Torture is wrong.

[Taffy_is_a_Taff]

do Chinese burns and nipple twisters count as torture?

[Xiahou]

McCain says that information gathered through torture is not useful at all, and he has first hand experience.

Two points. 1. He's wrong, torture can be very effective. 2. We're not contemplating torture anyway.

[Slyspy]

Sure, a guy like that isn't going to tell you anything useful just because you're nice to him. But is he going to tell the truth to avoid torture? And will anyone believe him?

Why aren't you using torture in your own judicial system if it's such a great idea?

That last question is the important one.

[master of the puppets]

torture only gets you false information, bad publicity, and the official status of a barbaric monster, so never use it for getting imformation or intimidation, its stupid. but as punishment...if you are absolutely sure of there crime, like saddam, or bin laden, or paris hilton, or hitler, TORTURE EM!!! cause they deserve it