Torture-- Let's Get Real

[Xiahou]

Yes very interesting Del , a thoroughly modern development of the ancient and noble craft of witchfinding .
You tie someone up then hold them underwater until they are nearly drowned then you pull them out and ask them if they practice the black arts and are responsible for milk yields going down , you repeat the practice until they either drown or admit that thay are really the devil incarnate and not only have they been secretly milking the cows and selling it to the local guild of badger botherers , but they also once knew a cat who said his name was Julian and Julian had once known a newt who applied for a pilots licence for a commercial broomstick , but the newt (whose name was Ralph BTW) aroused suspicions because he never asked how to land the broomstick .
Very nice , and very reliable .

Geez man, that's not waterboarding... where did you hear that? It's when you put someone on a board, tilt it upsidedown, with their head partially submerged (not the face). Then, you place a damp cloth over the nose & mouth and proceed to pour water on their face. As some water seeps through, and due to the overall situation (upside down, partially submerged, ect) it apparently creates a very real and very frightening sensation of drowning without significant risk of actually drowning (since the lungs are actually elevated above the head and water cant easily flow into them). I'm not saying that's much nicer, mind you, but lets be accurate at least.

JINGSHAN, Hubei Province: A man who served 11 years in prison after being wrongly convicted of murdering his wife was officially cleared yesterday.

She Xianglin, 39, walked free following the pronouncement of the Jingshan County People's Court, the same body which in 1998 sentenced him to a 15-year jail term.

The original conviction came based on a confession which She says was extracted under police torture.

The miscarriage of justice came to light when She's wife, Zhang Zaiyu, the supposed victim of She's "crime," resurfaced late last month after being missing for 11 years.

The same thing happens in the US under coercive police interrogations- I've seen video of police officers lying/threatening/browbeating someone until they confess, only to be freed later. Clearly, torture for the purposes of making someone confess to doing something is going to regularly give false results.

However, if someone started waterboarding you for specific information- like your bank PIN numbers- how long do you think it would take for you to give up the information?

[Soulforged]

The same thing happens in the US under coercive police interrogations- I've seen video of police officers lying/threatening/browbeating someone until they confess, only to be freed later. Clearly, torture for the purposes of making someone confess to doing something is going to regularly give false results.

The police acted wrong. And you're wrong about the use of torture, it's irrelevant if you can get results or not, the probability of the result being -how can I call it?...- "biased" or totally created out of the nothing, is enough for any court to dismiss it, and it's enough for the law to presume it like biased or created. You can argue about how many cases it worked, but it will be for naught.

[Xiahou]

As I've said, I agree that it's pointless to use it to elicit confessions or even in any part of a criminal prosecution. The only use it could and has had is when it's used in a very specific, directed manner for intelligence purposes.

Now...I'm sure that none of you are advocating dissection of limbs, pain stretching or hot coals...but where DO you pull the line? Questioning with exessive psychological pressure can too be considered torture in many cases, like with police investigators who're to enthusiastic and forget to go by the book. I'm no expert, but it seems to me that could be almost as effective. And when dealing with high risk suspects, you could justify stretching the definition of "acceptable tactics" by quite a bit- but not to justify stuff like waterboarding or hot coals.

I think that's what is really unfortunate here. The Bush administration has had many opportunities to refine and limit the scope of their use of coercive interrogations so as to protect it's use for the high-value targets. Yet, they missed opportunity after opportunity thinking they could keep their carte blanche and now they've been stuck with the McCain ammendment because of it. A big screw up by the administration, imo.

[Lemur]

The Bush administration has had many opportunities to refine and limit the scope of their use of coercive interrogations so as to protect it's use for the high-value targets.

If you've been reading any of the first-hand accounts from guys who were conducting/facilitating interrogations in Iraq and Afghanistan, you must know that this lack of clarity has hit the ground. Some guys use dogs. The SEALS get a lot of props from the other interrogators for inducing hypothermia without killing the subjects. (Well, they did kill and photograph one, but we'll have to chalk that up to the odds.)

I was reading one soldier's account, saying basically that when he heard Rumsfeld talking on-air about how soldiers should never use dogs or torture techniques, he nearly peed his fatigues. Everybody he worked with was using such techniques.

The torture problem is systemic, and it's not being used just with high-value targets. And it's not being used just for time-sensitive data. What we have is a leadership problem, a classic failure to provide clear direction. If the McCain amendment is what it takes to clear this mess up, then so be it.

[Xiahou]

The torture problem is systemic, and it's not being used just with high-value targets. And it's not being used just for time-sensitive data. What we have is a leadership problem, a classic failure to provide clear direction. If the McCain amendment is what it takes to clear this mess up, then so be it.

That's almost exactly what I'm saying. Bush had many opportunities to outline some clear rules on detainee treatment- he decided not to and because of his unwillingness to compromise, we're now totally losing what can be an important intelligence gathering technique due to his stubborness. McCain is grandstanding, as usual (he's a presidential candidate afterall)- but Bush all but brought these new regulations on himself. He's facing the same problem with the Patriot Act, imo. Instead of allowing time for debate on it's provisions he tried to stifle it by ramming it through at the last possible minute and sabotaging any short-term extensions. Again in this case, his brinkmanship seems like it's going to blow up in his face and leave him without any of the provisions once it expires.

[Duke of Gloucester]

I am not sure about the assertion that there is never any "why" to moral arguments. You do have to start with certain axioms, but you can deduce moral positions from the axioms.

For example if you accept that equality of human beings and the requirement that punishment should not be applied without "due process" it is difficult to justify torture of those not convicted of any offence.

However a stronger argument against torture is enlightened self-interest. Apart from the terrible affect on the victim, torture dehumanises the perpetrator. It is unwise to allow those with a judicial or quasi-judicial function to become inured to violence and cruelty. If they are acting this way towards those who many agree "deserve" it today, who will they be torturing tomorrow? If we empower them to act outside the normal judicial process because we perceive that the risk is worth it, we may find that, later, they are extending the powers they have been given.

I would assert that you can only agree that torture is justified if you accept that, in some circumstances, torturing you would be acceptable. If not, you have to ask yourself what makes you different and special.

[English assassin]

Even if we feel that the "biological" why questions for morality are uninteresting (and I'm not sure why we would) it seems to me that the fact that we can choose between different moralities suggests we have some sense of a "why" behind them.

A Roman, for instance, would see nothing incompatible with his morality in owning a slave, and yet in our current morality the idea that a human being can be the legal property of another human being is profoundly immoral.

How can we make these judgements without having an idea of a why behind our moral judgements? Or is AS going to slip out of this one by defining my "why" for choosing between different moralities as his "morality"?

If he does its going to be impossible to argue further because as every parent of a two year old knows if you push a chain of why questions far enough you always end up with a "just because".