Matthew Yglesias (October 10, 2007) - HRC on Torture (Foreign Policy)

. I wonder if conservatives will be happy about the idea of HRC-administered torture, on the grounds that they just really love torture, or, maybe, once it's being done by a politician they don't admire they'll start to see that there's a problem here.

They're more pro-torture than anti-HRC. Hard to believe you're actually wondering about this. Haven't most of the Republicans' comments on the Dem race indicated that HRC is the best of the lot?

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | October 10, 2007 7:24 PM

You seem to assume that conservatives see prinicple as something that applies whether or not it benefits themselves. For a conservative, there is no problem with supporting torture when it favors us but not supporting it when it favors them. The us and them is the organizing concept, nothing else.

Posted by Doug | October 10, 2007 7:26 PM

Hardly surprising. Bill Clinton supported pretty unconscionable expansions of executive power on his own behalf.

Posted by Antid Oto | October 10, 2007 7:28 PM

Yes, exactly. The answer is clearly the former. They want the U.S. to torture no matter who is doing the torturing (unless we start torturing people for being right-wing hacks who lie to the public).

It's other abuses of executive power that might convince them they went overboard. A well-timed indictment of a conservative donor and businessperson on the basis of secret information, say.

Posted by bob | October 10, 2007 7:29 PM

Hillary.
Pro-torture: check.
Pro-bomb Iran: check.
Pro-leave troops in Iraq: check.
Pro-Spend like Bush: check.

I haven't figured out yet what problem most Republicans have with Hillary other than her cackle.

Posted by jim | October 10, 2007 7:33 PM

Hardly surprising. Bill Clinton supported pretty unconscionable expansions of executive power on his own behalf.

Plus he had thirty-seven people murdered, or whatever. If you're gonna spout talking points, at least give some reference as to which one you're talking about.

Posted by James Gary | October 10, 2007 7:33 PM

Survey by Pew Research Center for the People & the Press Oct. 12-24, 2005; nationwide survey conducted among 2,006 adults

"Do you think the use of torture against suspected terrorists in order to gain important information can often be justified, sometimes be justified, rarely be justified, or never be justified?"

Often justified: 15%
Sometimes justified: 31%
Rarely justified: 17%
Never justified: 32%
Don't know/Refused: 5%

Most Americans seem to be more pro-torture than HRC.

Posted by Mixner | October 10, 2007 7:35 PM

Republicans in a new Clinton presidency will most definitely see *a* problem, but it will not be *the* problem. The Republican Party has for more than 15 years now constantly denied the legitimacy of any government, presidency, or administration, except their own. For them, the Party is the State. So their objection will not be to the fact of torture, or even the unexercised power to torture; it will be to everything that a new President Clinton does or can do. Of course, the same will be true if it's President Obama, Edwards, etc., etc.

Posted by spinozista | October 10, 2007 7:45 PM

Torture may be the singular worst issue to use public opinion to guide actual policy. A public reared on 24 and insert-action-movie-here has convinced Americans the best way to get info is to beat up the bad guys. Granted this almost never works.

Posted by lh | October 10, 2007 7:50 PM

for a little while I am ashamed to say I was wavering. Clinton is to be opposed. Actively. She is more Bush shit in Democratic garb.

Posted by della Rovere | October 10, 2007 7:54 PM

I think Clinton is clear here - "no torture." What am I missing? I have other problems with Clinton and the war, but no problem here.

Posted by Jennifer | October 10, 2007 8:00 PM

The answer for Ms. Clinton is very simple. No bimbos in the White House.

Posted by SLC | October 10, 2007 8:04 PM

Torture may be the singular worst issue to use public opinion to guide actual policy. A public reared on 24 and insert-action-movie-here has convinced Americans the best way to get info is to beat up the bad guys.

Yeah, that must be it. They've been brainwashed by popular culture.

Or not. If Osama ever manages to set off a nuke or a dirty bomb or a chemical weapon in an American city and sends a video promising that more such attacks are on the way, I suspect that most of what little public support there is for an absolute ban on torture would quickly disappear--even among lefties.

Posted by Mixner | October 10, 2007 8:07 PM

Absolute bans on anything are typically a bad deal. However, that doesn't mean that torture should be a day to day modus operandi. HRC has not said or done anything to make me believe torture would be any kind of last resort.

Posted by lh | October 10, 2007 8:39 PM

If she had said:
"Torture is a crime. When I am elected, torture will stop immediately. We will investigate and we will bring the torturers to justice"

the torture would have stopped by now and the whistle blowers would be emerging like rats off a sinking ship. Not a single CIA or military person would risk going to prison for life.

But no. "I don't really know what's going on, we'll have to see, when I'm president we'll try not to torture.The signal she sent was, keep it up, boys, I've got your back.

Posted by Bloix | October 10, 2007 8:44 PM

If she had said:
"Torture is a crime. When I am elected, torture will stop immediately. We will investigate and we will bring the torturers to justice"

the torture would have stopped by now and the whistle blowers would be emerging like rats off a sinking ship. Not a single CIA or military person would risk going to prison for life.

But no. "I don't really know what's going on, we'll have to see, when I'm president we'll try not to torture." The signal she sent was, keep it up, boys, I've got your back.

Posted by Bloix | October 10, 2007 8:45 PM

If Osama ever manages to set off a nuke or a dirty bomb or a chemical weapon in an American city and sends a video promising that more such attacks are on the way, I suspect that most of what little public support there is for an absolute ban on torture would quickly disappear--even among lefties.

I'm sick to death of hearing this kind of claptrap. Torture doesn't work. It doesn't yield useful info. Grow a fucking brain and listen to what the people who actually know about interrogation are saying. (Hint: they were summarily ignored by Rumsfeld et al.)

Posted by Bill | October 10, 2007 8:49 PM

Torture doesn't work.

Don't forget to close your eyes and click your heels three times whenever you say that.

Posted by Mixner | October 10, 2007 8:59 PM

Hmmm. I suspect that Hillary wants to retain the expanded powers of the President -- to imprison US citizens without a judicial hearing , to render them to foreign prisons like Gitmo, and to torture them -- in case Bill Clinton has another bimbo affair.

If she's elected, maybe her Secret Service detail and His Secret Service detail should sit down and talk. Work out the rules of engagement , so to speak.

Posted by Don Williams | October 10, 2007 8:59 PM

Bloix nails it.

To me, attempting to differentiate yourself from the Bush Administration by repeating the same line the Bush Administration gives--we will follow the law--isn't a terribly strong argument. Making it just seconds after you've carried the Bush Administration's water and pretended we don't know enough to condemn their current actions...well, that moves it from "not very strong" to "uh, are you trying to tell us something here?"

And frankly, I really doubt the Clinton machine's commitment to rule and order.

It pains me to point this out, but extraordinary rendition--outsourcing torture--didn't begin under Bush. It began under Clinton.

http://www.aclu.org/safefree/extraordinaryrendition/22203res20051206.html

Bloix is right. She's sending a signal. Are we listening?

Posted by anonymous | October 10, 2007 9:13 PM

MY - I wonder if conservatives will be happy about the idea of HRC-administered torture, on the grounds that they just really love torture, or, maybe, once it's being done by a politician they don't admire they'll start to see that there's a problem here.

They, and most of the Democrats weeping for terrorist rights the "evil Bush-Hitler" transgressed ...were quite happy with Bill Clinton's policy of no-trial Renditions of Jihadis to people that could more effectively interrogate in Jordan, Israel, France, Egypt, and Russia.

I see Hillary as a little more intelligent than the brainless dogmatics who want to ban coerced interrogations of people outside Geneva protections.
"Torture is anything the prisoner finds uncomfortable or humiliating! It is wrong under any circumstance to question someone against their will!"

To save your fellow soldiers? To get Jihadis out to down a plane? That just car bombed 200 Iraqi civilians? To stop an anthrax attack on 8 US cities that has already killed 600 people and sickened thousands?

"Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong in any circumstance. Better 100's of thousands of innocent Americans die than we ever torture or even interrogate anyone who doesn't want to talk!"

They remind me of anti-abortionists so smug in their moral absolutism.

Do you favor abortion if a 12-year old is raped? Do you favor abortion if the fetus has severe birth defects and will die an agonizing death if born?

"Abortion is baby-killing. It is wrong in any circumstance. It is murder and must be prosecuted severely."

Do you favor abortion if the mother will have major adverse physical health effects? How about if the woman will die if they do not abort?

"Abortion is baby-killing. It is wrong in any circumstance. People who get one or assist in any way are murderers who must be punished! How can I be clearer!!"

Anti-"torture" fanatics are like the anti-abortion fanatics. Mindless dogmatism. Sure there are no circumstances where abortion is moral or getting intelligence from the enemy and saving lives is permissable.

Posted by Chris Ford | October 10, 2007 9:15 PM

Former president Jimmy Carter isn't just suspicious that the US is using torture to extract intelligence from detainees -- he's absolutely convinced.
Asked by CNN's Wolf Blitzer if, by Carter's definition of the word, the United States had used torture during the Bush administration, the Nobel Peace Prize winner was adamant:

"I don't think it, I know it," he said. "Certainly."

Pressed by Blitzer on whether that meant that President Bush was lying, Carter was equally clear.

"The president is self-defning what we have done and authorized in the torture of prisoners," said Carter."Yes."

Earlier in the interview, Carter said Bush's denial this week that the US did not in fact torture detainees was "not an accurate statement if you use the international norms of torture as has always been honored in the last 60 years, since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was promulgated."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There, was that so goddamned difficult? Jimmy Carter has bigger balls then all the goddamned Democrats in D.C. combined. Speak truth to power. Bush should hang. Tonight.

Posted by steve duncan | October 10, 2007 9:17 PM

"Plus he had thirty-seven people murdered, or whatever. If you're gonna spout talking points, at least give some reference as to which one you're talking about."

Wait, are you claiming that Bill Clinton did not support expansions of presidential power? Leaving aside things like the line item veto, which was rejected by the supreme court in Clinton vs the city of New York, or his claim that sitting presidents are immune from lawsuits which was rejected by the court in Clinton v Jones, he definitely had a tendency to stretch the limits of his power. For one thing, he had a habit of bombing lots of countries we were not at war with. For another, he was a little too quick to allow excessive force domestically, as in the Waco calamity.

Posted by mad6798j | October 10, 2007 9:24 PM

I'll concede that it's not, in fact, clear what the administration has actually done or is doing. I think I have some idea, but I can see where HRC would be slower than I to believe what she reads on the internets.

My problem with her answer is not that she secretly wants to continue Bush's torture policies, but rather that she doesn't appear to have spent a lot of time thinking about the issue. It's not on her front burner. I and most of the commenters here probably know more about forced standing, waterboarding, etc. than HRC does.

What to make of that? I don't know. I hope she *gets* informed in the near future.

Posted by Anderson | October 10, 2007 9:24 PM

If America is going to continue torturing people it is all the more important that we elect people who will know how and when to use it.

If not Hillary then who would you want to have this power?

Just think, Hillary might appoint a special prosecutor to investigate republican corruption. Alberto Gonzales wouldn't last a minute on a waterboard before investigators got the truth out of him. It would be ironic using techiques he approved against him, but in a funny way.

Hillary is probably the only person running who, as President, would use torture judicially. I'm sure America would agree.

Posted by ken | October 10, 2007 9:27 PM

"Anti-"torture" fanatics are like the anti-abortion fanatics. Mindless dogmatism. Sure there are no circumstances where abortion is moral or getting intelligence from the enemy and saving lives is permissable."

It's a really srewed up world in which people who oppose the systematic use of torture against large groups of people, several of whom we now know to have been completely innocent are called fanatics.

Posted by mad6798j | October 10, 2007 9:28 PM

Wait, are you claiming that Bill Clinton did not support expansions of presidential power? ....the line item veto, which was rejected by the supreme court in Clinton vs the city of New York, or his claim that sitting presidents are immune from lawsuits which was rejected by the court in Clinton v Jones,...he had a habit of bombing lots of countries we were not at war with....the Waco calamity

You are so right. I remember when Clinton created the line item veto by secret executive fiat and had his toadlicker Attorney General make up legally wobbly rulings to justify it. (You'd think he wouldn't have had the chutzpah to pull that trick again with the "immunity from lawsuits" thing.) And of course, his deceit and incompetence in the Waco calamity led to billions of wasted dollars and tens of thousands of dead Iraqis.

Duly chastened, I hereby withdraw any assertion I might have made that the current administration might be worse.

Posted by James Gary | October 10, 2007 9:49 PM

At what point did I say Clinton was worse than Bush? Can you read?

Posted by mad6798j | October 10, 2007 9:55 PM

Here's the compromise for Chris Ford and his ilk: Torture must be against the law and be prosecuted rigorously in all cases. If it's really, truly vital to the nation's future and the lives of thousands* then presumably some people will be willing to accept the consequences of that prosecution. If no one is willing to accept them, then I think we can easily conclude it's not vital.

* I share however the sketicism that torture can ever produce trustworthy information. Torture victims from the days of the ancients down through the Inquisition and the KGB confessed to some extarordinary and often enough quite impossible and fantastical things, telling the torturers what they expected to hear. I rather think we'd be better off finding people with some degree of psychic ability and training them to ferret out secrets instead. It would work better and be cleaner.

Posted by Jonf | October 10, 2007 9:56 PM

You were being obnoxious to Oto, who pointed out that Clinton himself supported extensions of executive power, implying his "talking points" were untrue. I corrected you. What's your problem?

Besides, I didn't even mention clinton's own practices of extraordinary rendition.

Posted by mad6798j | October 10, 2007 10:00 PM

James Gary- of course she'd be better. But she's not the best of the candidates, and it's beginning to look like she won't be good enough. We need someone to rip out the corruption and the rot, to purge the fascists and sadists and crooks and shine the disinfectant of sunlight on the putrefying sores of our democracy. She's not going to do it. So the vermin will go to ground for 4 years or 8 years or whatever, and they'll let her balance the budget by raising taxes, then the next time around they'll come out again. They don't give up- they have to be killed with a stake through their cold black hearts. And she's not the one to do it.

Posted by bloix | October 10, 2007 10:03 PM

With the amount of torture that's gone on, there must have been a truly amazing number of nuclear time bombs planted in US cities. It's surprising that no word about any of them has leaked out.

Posted by KCinDC | October 10, 2007 10:05 PM

Jonf

Here's the compromise for Chris Ford and his ilk: Torture must be against the law and be prosecuted rigorously in all cases.

Good luck with that. An interrogator who extracted the information needed to locate a hidden terrorist nuke through five minutes of waterboarding would be a national hero. No prosecutor would file charges against him. No jury would convict him. No president would fail to pardon him. Well, maybe a president Jonf, but fortunately we don't have to worry about that.

I share however the sketicism that torture can ever produce trustworthy information.

We don't have to "trust" the information if we can verify it, as in the location of a ticking time bomb.

Posted by Mixner | October 10, 2007 10:07 PM

"At any rate, Clinton has long distinguished herself as unusually friendly to executive power for an opposition party legislator..."

Matt STILL doesn't get it...

It's amazing...

Matt! She's running FOR THAT EXECUTIVE POWER!

Wake the fuck up!

Jesus, you'd think he was on dope...

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | October 10, 2007 10:09 PM

So Mixner, we should base our laws regarding torture on a scenario that has never happened, and isn't likely to in the future?

Posted by mad6798j | October 10, 2007 10:17 PM

"To me, attempting to differentiate yourself from the Bush Administration by repeating the same line the Bush Administration gives--we will follow the law--isn't a terribly strong argument. Making it just seconds after you've carried the Bush Administration's water and pretended we don't know enough to condemn their current actions...well, that moves it from "not very strong" to "uh, are you trying to tell us something here?""

And that's exactly the point I made in the other thread. If you sound like the opposition, you're NOT going to BEAT the opposition.

Which means you're actually NOT "the opposition".

Which is precisely the point Matt seems determined to ignore.

There IS NO DIFFERENCE between the Democrats and the Republicans when it comes to "national security", i.e., war profiteering. They are, together, the "War Party".

Sure, the Democrats can say, "But we're great on gay rights, labor laws, the environment..." except of course for the environment of some other country they decide to bomb for "humanitarian reasons". But these "causes" - which are mostly simply different attempts to expand government power into other areas than "mere" war - are not enough to swing the voters when "the FEAR" is on them - like after 9/11.

Get a grip, people. Clinton was a "war President", Bush is a "war President" and HILLARY will be a "war President."

There are NO Presidents who AREN'T "war Presidents" - unless our "enemies" don't give them a chance to start one by some fortuitous circumstances.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | October 10, 2007 10:18 PM

"We don't have to "trust" the information if we can verify it, as in the location of a ticking time bomb."

Mixner, what are you going to say when said "national hero" waterboards some nuclear terrorist - and the terrorist hands him a load of bullshit, and the nuclear incident team ends up in Las Vegas when the bomb is actually in Miami, and the bomb goes off anyway?

Fucking moron. That outcome is at LEAST as likely as your "national hero." Is it not fucking OBVIOUS to you that you CANNOT verify information you do not KNOW from OTHER sources? ESPECIALLY in the "ticking bomb" scenario?

ESPECIALLY if said "national hero" RELIES on that procedure - which you obviously would since you trust it so much.

Nitwit.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | October 10, 2007 10:26 PM

I suspect that deep down Hillary actually thinks that she is going to be allowed to use the Double-Secret Dick Cheney Unitary Executive rules and powers. She really does not understand that the instant she take the oath of office the rules will change, the traditional media will be on her like flies on horse droppings, and even the Congressional Democrats will grow spine and start oversightin'. The Unitary Powers of the OVP will be put away safe and sound until a manly Republican can take them out and use them (say, Jeb in 2012?).

Cranky

Posted by Cranky Observer | October 10, 2007 10:26 PM

Dear JonF,

I think there is some legitimate debate though, about whether all physical pressure techniques count as torture. i think there is a morally relevant distinction between giving a suspect a bit of slapping around, and doing things like breaking bones, damaging vital organs, or seriously threatening the life, health or sanity of a prisoner.

I can't accept the legitimacy of torture, per se, but I don't think that all physical pressure rises to the level of torture. Certainly a great deal of what the US has been doing in Iraq does rise to the level of torture. However I am not certain if we ought to outlaw all coercive techniques as a blanket matter.

I also think we should acknowledge, even if we disagree with it, that there is a historic Christian argument in favor of the use of pain and physical pressure by the legal system, which revolves around the idea of physical suffering sometimes being necessary to provoke a spirit of repentance in the subject and to break their pride. (Simone Weil provides a sort of modern day version of the argument for redemption through suffering.) I wouldn't use this to justify torture, but I do think that it is a powerful argument and critique of too many twentieth century views of criminal justice. Since the whole Christian story is built around the narrative of (vicarious) redemption through suffering, I think I am bound to accept the idea at least in principle.

As a strictly pragmatic matter, it's worth bearing in mind that there is probably no country, not even 'liberal democracies', that has ever fought an insurgency (whether it was justified or not) strictly by the Marquess of Queensberry rules. Britain in Belfast, France in Algeria and Viet Nam, India in the Punjab, Sri Lanka in Jaffna, and don't even let's get started on Israel. Of course there's a legitimate question- if torture is necessary to win the War on Terror, then is this a war we should be winning, or even fighting in the first place.

Posted by Hector Dauphin-Gloire | October 10, 2007 10:47 PM

Hack,

Mixner, what are you going to say when said "national hero" waterboards some nuclear terrorist - and the terrorist hands him a load of bullshit, and the nuclear incident team ends up in Las Vegas when the bomb is actually in Miami, and the bomb goes off anyway?

The "nuclear incident team" never goes to Las Vegas. Immediately after the terrorist gives the address in Las Vegas the local police check it out and inform the interrogator that the information is false. The torture continues until the terrorist reveals the true location of the bomb. You are aware that there are these devices called "telephones" that allow government agents in one city to instantaneously communicate with government agents in other cities, aren't you?

Fucking moron.

Fracking walloon!

Is it not fucking OBVIOUS to you that you CANNOT verify information you do not KNOW from OTHER sources?

Of course you can. You verify the information "The bomb is in the warehouse at the corner of Bleeker and 1st" by checking out that location.

Posted by Mixner | October 10, 2007 10:50 PM

>>I see Hillary as a little more intelligent than the brainless dogmatics who want to ban coerced interrogations of people outside Geneva protections.

Ah, the pro-torture Hillary contingent awakens. Truly comic, but in a sad, pathetic, Lieberman way.

Just remember: Bush just isn't good at torture. Hillary knows how to triangulate and torture more judiciously. With retsin!

Posted by jim | October 10, 2007 10:55 PM

So Mixner, we should base our laws regarding torture on a scenario that has never happened, and isn't likely to in the future?

We don't know if it's ever happened, and we already have laws and policies designed to cover situations that have only happened rarely (e.g., the assassination of a president) or have never happened at all (e.g., a nuclear missle attack). I don't know why you think the fact that a situation is rare or unlikely means that we shouldn't prepare for it.

Posted by Mixner | October 10, 2007 10:57 PM

Mixner, you really are an incredible idiot.

You think the terrorist is going to just blurt out the location of the bomb, and then the cops are gonna call that city on the phone, and then they're gonna rush in and find that there's no bomb there...

and then they're going to do it all over again when the terrorist dumps more bullshit they have to go verify ALL OVER AGAIN...

...and again...and again...

until the bomb goes off.

My point was that it will take you time to verify that information - if you even can - and by that time, your "ticking bomb" ain't ticking any more.

Nitwit.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | October 10, 2007 11:13 PM

"I don't know why you think the fact that a situation is rare or unlikely means that we shouldn't prepare for it."

Ohhhh, I get it. We need to "prepare to torture" someone - not actually DO it.

Is that your brilliant notion?

How do we "prepare to torture" without actually "torturing" anybody?

Do we read a manual? Plenty of them around. by the way. Do we hold seminars on the proper methods of torture? Do we produce training films on the proper methods of torture? I think the School of the Americas was into that. Do we lay in a stock of needles, whips, chains, cigarette lighters, or maybe one of those carpet beaters from "Casino Royale"?

No, moron. What you're advocating here is simply that you want to torture anybody anytime for any reason your little heart desires, whether it's for a critical incident like the nuclear scenario or just to find out what Osama had for lunch.

Fuck you. You're a punk who thinks he's tough but he's got too much intellectual cowardice to actually call explicitly for torture as a matter of national policy because he knows nobody will take him seriously afterwards.

News flash - we don't take you seriously now.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | October 10, 2007 11:21 PM

"We don't know if it's ever happened, and we already have laws and policies designed to cover situations that have only happened rarely (e.g., the assassination of a president) or have never happened at all (e.g., a nuclear missle attack). I don't know why you think the fact that a situation is rare or unlikely means that we shouldn't prepare for it"

No, my point is we use torture routinely in circumstances that are not "ticking time bomb" situations. It's one thing to make an exception to that rather dubious scenario, but what about what actually happens every day?

Posted by mad6798j | October 10, 2007 11:24 PM

Hack,

You think the terrorist is going to just blurt out the location of the bomb, and then the cops are gonna call that city on the phone, and then they're gonna rush in and find that there's no bomb there...and then they're going to do it all over again when the terrorist dumps more bullshit they have to go verify ALL OVER AGAIN......and again...and again...

I don't think the terrorist would "just blurt out the location of the bomb." First, he would be threatened with torture. If that didn't work, he would be subjected to torture. The longer he remained silent, or the more times he gave false information, the more intense the torture would become.

My point was that it will take you time to verify that information -

So you're admitting that your previous claim that the information could not be verified is false. Verification would likely take little time. The interrogator's office could communicate instantaneously with local police, FBI agents, bomb squads, SWAT teams, military personnel, etc., in every major population center. Verification would likely take a matter of minutes.

if you even can - and by that time, your "ticking bomb" ain't ticking any more.

How do you know?

Posted by Mixner | October 10, 2007 11:30 PM

mad,

No, my point is we use torture routinely in circumstances that are not "ticking time bomb" situations.

I'm not advocating the use of torture in routine circumstances. I'm saying its use is justified as a last resort in rare circumstances to avert a large-scale catastrophe. That is, in "ticking time bomb"-type situations.

Posted by Mixner | October 10, 2007 11:45 PM

I'm always curious where the "ticking nuclear bomb" crowd will draw the line.

Suppose our terrorist isn't breaking under your torture, and time is ticking down. But you happen to have that terrorist's young child in your possession. Are you willing to torture the child on the chance that will make the terrorist talk? Toss in a little child rape? Suppose you have a couple of the terrorist's children handy. Will you kill one to prove you are serious? After all, time is ticking down ...

In the end, I think these hypotheticals will end up showing that these folks in truth don't really think torture is all that wrong. Which is why, in fact, they go ahead and torture even when there is no nuclear bomb ticking away.

By the way, I think it fundamentally misunderstands the evil of torture to argue that there is some sort of line to be drawn between attempting to break someone's will with a little pain versus with a lot of pain. The evil is basically the same: you are trying to use pain to make the person no longer capable of functioning as a rational being. And of course the whole point is that you have to cause them enough pain to make them break, and it is a little silly to imagine that will work with anything short of ... well, torture.

Posted by DTM | October 10, 2007 11:48 PM

I'm going to keep this brief. Your accusation "As Mark Kleiman says, this doesn't really wash and seems to indicate that she accepts the view that, for example, waterboarding which we definitely do know is happening maybe doesn't count as torture." is inconsistent with the actual qutation of Clinton. You seem to think that the word "seems" relieves you from any responsibility to present any argument or reasoning at all. The "laws we have passed" which Clinton promised to obey were enacted to make it clear that the Bush administrations abuses were illegal. I didn't notice you arguing that the laws were intended to legalize water boarding when they were debated. If you really believe what you wrote here, you would have done so.

I support Obama. I am not arguing with your appalling illogic because I want to help Clinton win the nomination.

This post falls so far below your usual standards that I am honestly shocked and dismayed. I can only hope that some unscrupulous enemy of yours has stolen your password and put the post up on your site to discredit you.

Posted by Robert Waldmann | October 10, 2007 11:52 PM

The correct answer: "No torture. Period." What the hell is going on in this country.

Posted by JC | October 10, 2007 11:53 PM

I also think we should acknowledge, even if we disagree with it, that there is a historic Christian argument in favor of the use of pain and physical pressure by the legal system, which revolves around the idea of physical suffering sometimes being necessary to provoke a spirit of repentance in the subject and to break their pride.

Whoa! That is not Christian at all! Yes, Christianity is about suffering, but you're supposed to be the martyr, not the dude who forces the other guy to be a martyr. Amongst the conservatives, the theocons, paleocons and traditionalists seem to be most likely to object to torture.

That's not to say that all corporal punishment as a deterrent to crime is beyond the pale, but talk of "being necessary to provoke a spirit of repentance in the subject and to break their pride", cannot be acknowledged as anything but inhuman. It may be a necessary evil for the state to take a person's property, liberty, or even life. But for the state to get into the business of breaking souls can never be acceptable. It is one thing to punish a person for performing an act. There is an infinite gulf between that and continuously punishing someone for not performing an act.

Posted by Consumatopia | October 10, 2007 11:53 PM

Alright I need to post here because there's a lot of smug behavior in these comments. I'm not advocating one side versus another but there's a lot of shitty assertions and misrepresentations being made.

Richard

Maybe you should actually respond to Mixner's point rather than making ludacris assertions. I'm not saying I support torture, but your refutation of Mixner is what basically amounts to "nu uh".

I think its especially ludacris to argue that torture is bad because we "cant verify the information" Every ticking time bomb scenario isn't

"OMG THERES FIVE MINTUES BEFORE A BOMB AHHH AHHH AHHH"

The argument for torture during time senstive situations implies that there is enough time to stop the attack. In any such case there would be enough time to verify the information.

Also this argument about false information has merit but isn't all that strong.

Sure you might torture someone and they might give you information. But they might not. Anytime you recieve 3rd party information whether it be an informant, a tip,etc you stand the risk of the information being false.

Also for every argument made that torture will not work because the person being tortured will give false information, the same argument could be made that the fear of more torture and worse torture for giving false information would go a long way to prevent this.

LOOK, I think there are a lot of good arguments against torture. But call those arguments what they are...MORAL arguments. I'm a lot more persuaded by the argument that torture is just morally wrong and should not be used rather than yelling, screaming, and calling people who might not agree with you bad names.

I Mixnor is right. It's easy to scream TORTURE IS BAD, but thats being disingeinious to the issue. The debate we need to be having more than whether we should or should not allow torture is what do we consider torture and where we draw that line.

Posted by Phil | October 10, 2007 11:59 PM

Oh, come on, now. You're telling me that because she weaseled a little bit in answering a question on the campaign trail you think she will continue torture? As opposed to perhaps just that she didn't plan to roll out her strategy right at that moment in the response to that question in that venue?

That's absurd. Clinton has spent her entire life working for progressive values. I don't pretend to know her, and I'm sure there are legitimate avenues to knock her around on, but I entertain no doubt but that she believes in human dignity at her core. This attack is a bridge too far.

Posted by Trickster | October 11, 2007 12:02 AM

I'm not advocating the use of torture in routine circumstances. I'm saying its use is justified as a last resort in rare circumstances to avert a large-scale catastrophe. That is, in "ticking time bomb"-type situations.

In stats they talk about "Type 1" and "Type 2" errors. You're worried about the Type 2 situation--a ticking large-scale bomb exists and torture will disarm it but we fail to torture. We are worried about the Type 1 situation--there is no bomb or there is a bomb but torture is useless in uncovering it but we torture anyway by mistake or malice. You can't just say we'll only torture when it's really necessary--law enforcement is human just like the rest of us. To say "we will torture when necessary" means "we will torture when it looks necessary", and those situations always overwhelm the ones in which it actually is necessary.

Posted by Consumatopia | October 11, 2007 12:16 AM

DTM,

Suppose our terrorist isn't breaking under your torture, and time is ticking down. But you happen to have that terrorist's young child in your possession. Are you willing to torture the child on the chance that will make the terrorist talk?

If the circumstances are sufficiently dire, yes. Are you willing to drop bombs on enemy cities in time of war, killing and maiming innocent civilians, including children? In WWII, we killed and injured hundreds of thousands of German and Japanese civilians in this way. Our sanctions policy against Iraq during the 1990s (discontinued only after we invaded in 2003) killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children.

By the way, I think it fundamentally misunderstands the evil of torture to argue that there is some sort of line to be drawn between attempting to break someone's will with a little pain versus with a lot of pain.

So you think the legal definition of torture should refer to the infliction of any level of pain, no matter how small, rather than "severe pain," as it does now?

Posted by Mixner | October 11, 2007 12:18 AM

JC note that Clinton's position is much stronger than yours. she said no torture but went on to also say follow the geneva conventions and the laws they have passed. They also ban "cruel inhuman and degrading treatment". Thus "No torture – abide by the Geneva conventions, abide by the laws we have passed," goes way beyond "no torture". Current law clearly declares torture to be a crime. Clinton, being a Senator, knows this and may have forgotten that some people (upthread) for example need to have that spelled out.

That is, given the law and the Geneva convention, Clinton clearly said she would not allow "enhanced interrogation" short of torture. The laws and the Geneva conventions make this clear. She may be lying, but she definitely did not say that anything short of torture is OK. Only someone who ignored the words "abide by the Geneva conventions, abide by the laws we have passed," or does not know what is written in the laws and the Geneva conventions can fail to understand that.

I think it is quite common for Senators to assume that people know what is written in a recently passed bill. This can lead to confusion, but it is not vague (the law is clear Bush just decided to ignore it).

Also it is quite common to react more to the style than the literal content of a statement. Clinton takes a while to get to the point. This gives the impression she is dodging the question. However, her final statement is as clear as the laws and the Geneva conventions and they are plenty clear.

Posted by Robert Waldmann | October 11, 2007 12:20 AM

Phil,

Of course, there are much more sophisticated pragmatic arguments about torture. Basically, the problem is that torture in the real world is not cost-free. For example, in addition to the false information problem (which is very often a real one in real world scenarios), there is the problem frequently cited by intelligence experts, which is that torture makes it harder for them to persuade other people to become voluntary sources of human intelligence. Indeed, torture may be counterproductive simply because it may undermine more effective means of interrogating the person you want to torture. The upshot is that even if you ignore the moral issues, in the real world you have to balance the possible benefits against the costs.

But in the end I agree with your point: it is always going to be possible to construct some sort of hypothetical to address any pragmatic argument, basically by building into the hypothetical whatever facts, however far-fetched, you need to raise the benefits and lower the costs until the balance comes out in favor of torturing.

Of course, playing with hypotheticals like this is a poor way to do things like construct laws, but I think it is a useful exercise insofar as it ends up revealing what I suggested above: that in truth, some people really don't think torture is all that wrong. So, they will be willing to torture if they think torture will serve a practical purpose.

Posted by DTM | October 11, 2007 12:21 AM

>>Clinton has spent her entire life working for progressive values.

Clinton has spent her entire life working to get either her husband or herself elected.

There. Fixed that for you.

Posted by jim | October 11, 2007 12:27 AM

Hi Consumatopia,

Well, I wouldn't necessarily disagree with you, especially since you don't claim that all corporal or capital punishment is beyond the pale. I cdon't believe in torture- particularly not when I think about the graphic details of torture. You're right, of course, about the 'theocons' (much as I hate that word). The Christian arguments I was referring to were the older ones. And the ones by later medievalists like Simone Weil, though I don't think she advocated torture, and apparently the death penalty only for rape.

Nevertheless, I think that 'redemption through suffering' is at the center of the Christian narrative, and is in its essence a powerful and true idea. Like all noble ideas, it lends itself to corruption, and in practice became corrupted on a grand scale. We should set limits on it to avoid things like torture and what the US has been doing in Iraq. But ultimately, I agree with Simone Weil that redemption through suffering needs to be something that the legal system of a just society takes account of and pays its respect to.

I suppose I was just pointing out that while torture is an evil thing, not all physical, corporal and even capital punishment is necessarily beyond the pale.

Posted by Hector Dauphin-Gloire | October 11, 2007 12:31 AM

We are worried about the Type 1 situation--there is no bomb or there is a bomb but torture is useless in uncovering it but we torture anyway by mistake or malice. You can't just say we'll only torture when it's really necessary--law enforcement is human just like the rest of us.

Yes, the torture might not work. Yes, the torture might work, but we still might not be able to disarm the bomb in time. Yes, we might torture innocents by mistake. Yes, the power might be abused. But so what? Objections of this kind also apply to every other kind of government action that harms people in some way. There are probably thousands of innocent people in our jails, wrongly convicted. Does that mean we should never imprison anyone at all? We probably dropped thousands of bombs during WWII that destroyed more lives than they saved. Does that mean we were wrong to fight WWII? Human beings are fallible. Information is imperfect. So you do the best you can. You don't say "It might fail or be abused, therefore we should never do it at all."

Posted by Mixner | October 11, 2007 12:32 AM

Mixner,

Just an aside, but I personally think it is wrong to deliberately kill civilians as a way of exerting pressure on a government to end a war. And yes I know we did it in WWII, but I think it was wrong.

Anyway, as I pointed out before, if you are trying to use pain to break someone's will, generally you will need to inflict a serious amount of pain on that person for your plan to work. So in the real world, if you are at all serious about using pain to break people, you will end up torturing them under the standard definition. But in any event, even if you do somehow stay short of torture, what you are doing likely is still going to end up being inhumane. Again, that is because the fundamental evil is the same (trying to make the person incapable of functioning as a human being).

Posted by DTM | October 11, 2007 12:32 AM

So Mixner, we should base our laws regarding torture on a scenario that has never happened, and isn't likely to in the future?
Posted by mad6798j

No, we should base it on the FACT that all organized militaries have employed people utilized as interrogators since the dawn of history. Most used coercive interrogation to exploit info from captured enemy. Which went from the "no physical harm" methods the US uses to beatings to death threats then to real torture. These methods then migrated to organs of domestic security in most states.

Perhaps you are familiar with them - detectives, prosecutors, lawyers that do cross on both suspects and witnesses..

Conversely, since the dawn of history, militaries, spy groups, revolutionary cells have learned to compartmentalize and have contingency plans ready in case of turncoats or capture by enemy soldiers forcing out all one of your own guys knows.
That is why people in those groups make contingency plans that assume the enemy will force the info out, because...as the motto of US SERE school goes everybody eventually talks, don't let that end your resisting the enemy in other ways Those include plans like spies will only last 4 hours before betraying the names of others in the cell, frequency codes need to be changed within 6 hours of a US Navy pilot being downed over enemy territory and likely to have survived.

Brainless dogmatics that say "torture never works" have only to look at what Israel, the North Vietnamese, the Philippine, and our own success rate is with interrogations. Everybody eventually breaks and reveals info the enemy wants.. Even John McCain, who while delusionally, and widely quoted and admired by fawning media and Lefties for saying "Torture Never Works", is documented in past writings as breaking and revealing what he knew to the NVA questioners in several sessions....maybe slipping in a lie now and then they didn't catch, maybe regaining his resistance later...but no doubt exists he talked and gave up accurate info..

**************************

The "ticking time bomb" is used in studies because it is an ethical hypothetical in debate that helps ethicists sort out those who will engage in a rational discussion from the moral absolutist fanatics on the fringes. Nuts that either claim blowtorches on jaywalkers would be constructive...To those fanatics saying enemy rights are so dear to them that NO TORTURE, EVER!! under any circumstances is justified, even if their solicitude for one terrorists causes a mass murder catastrophy that could have been prevented.

The ticking time bomb scenario, in risk analysis and mitigation strategy - is defined as a low probability, high consequence event. Like a reactor meltdown. But one, like with reactor safety, of such high consequence that it bounds the range of high consequence events any rational person would do everything to avoid.

A more realistic, far more frequent scenario, where Democrats and enemy rights lovers have already caused dead Americans in real life, is catching an Iraqi IED transporter and being blocked by lawyers from vigorously interrogating the terrorist to learn who paid him to transport the troop-killing bombs. Where he picked them up, who else was in the network.

*************************
Jonf

Here's the compromise for Chris Ford and his ilk: Torture must be against the law and be prosecuted rigorously in all cases.

You assume that interrogators would have such a high level of altruism for American strangers they don't know that they would accept wrecking their lives, their family's lives "for the good of the nation" if such conduct was illegal. Clutching a thin reed of hope that after they lose their career, their freedom, their life savings on defense lawyers - that some jury will nullify the charges IF they saved lives.

A more realistic scenario is that counter-terrorist agents will see if there is any personal risk to family or friends of the terorist group attacking a target they expect to be attacked - and get those special people out of harm's way. Then, after a major enemy-caused castastrophie, fully protected from anti-interogation laws Lefties foolishly got guillable Congressfolks to emotionally pass, there careers safe by inaction and letting the terrorist plot go on - go and testify to Congress and the media.

Yeah, we let American strangers die when we could have prevented it by questioning Hassim al-Duri on the anthrax weapon locations. Yeah, several thousand innocent strangers dead suck, but saving them was not worth the risk of us being branded criminals and rotting in jail the rest of our lives. Yeah, we had the guy for 2 weeks and tried to befriend him and show him the infidel enemy wasn't so bad and he should betray his honor, his tribes honor, betray Jihad and be enternally blocked from Paradise...but it didn't work. Sorry, tough cookies and all...we all feel real bad about the dead people we were blocked from saving so Hassim al-Duri wasn't humiliated or inconvenienced....Why yes, Congressman, if we had been allowed to use coercive interrogation techniques, our math and probability people tell us there was a 95% chance with a 95% confidence level in that chance probability that we would have broken al-Duri and forced him to tell us where the anthrax was before anyone died....Well, yeah, I think you in Congress have blood on your hands...We were just following the stupid law you forced on us because you cared more for the enemy than Americans..

Posted by Chris Ford | October 11, 2007 12:34 AM

Every ticking time bomb scenario isn't

"OMG THERES FIVE MINTUES BEFORE A BOMB AHHH AHHH AHHH"

The argument for torture during time senstive situations implies that there is enough time to stop the attack.

Yeah, and that just highlights the absurdity of the ticking nuke argument. It's time sensitive, but not too time sensitive. Given that our enemy has shown itself perfectly willing to engage in suicide attacks, it's not clear why we expect to find so many timers. Having some idiot push the button doesn't cost you anything but 72 imaginary virgins.

(Also the inherent slipperiness of how it always starts off talking about a nuke going off in a city but eventually it just becomes a regular bomb).

Sure you might torture someone and they might give you information. But they might not. Anytime you recieve 3rd party information whether it be an informant, a tip,etc you stand the risk of the information being false.

Also for every argument made that torture will not work because the person being tortured will give false information, the same argument could be made that the fear of more torture and worse torture for giving false information would go a long way to prevent this.

But fake torture info has a way of confirming itself. The tortured names some names. The torturer finds those guys and does his thing. Turns out it's just a bunch of folks named Khaled and Muhammad. They try to explain that to their torturer, but isn't that exactly what a terrorist would say? More names named. Pretty soon you've got a whole prison full of suspicious looking foreigners with inconsistent confessions. It would be really embarrassing if they got out and told everyone, wouldn't it? Better keep torturing.

Posted by Consumatopia | October 11, 2007 12:34 AM

Mixner,

Would you kill your son on the chance that you might save 100 people? 10,000?

Would you rape a 7-year-old in front of her terrorist father to stop the ticking time bomb? How about 10 7-year-olds?

What is your moral calculus here? And, of course, you won't acutally know at the time that you perform these actions that you will in fact save anyone.

How about a John Yoo example, direct from the Bush administration: would you crush the testicles of a child to get information from terrorists? He claims the President has the power to do this. I'm sure you agree.

If torture really works and is so effective "when it really counts," then why are you squeamish about it at all? What if a serial killer has a woman in a well in his basement and Hannibal knows who the serial killer is? Shouldn't we torture him, too? Why not?

The obvious point is that you simply don't know when you have a ticking time bomb and when you don't. Better safe than sorry, right? And the logic of torture spreads like a cancer. See Algeria.

Posted by jim | October 11, 2007 12:42 AM

Mixner,

By the way, I really am curious where you draw the line, and we haven't found it yet since you said you would deliberately torture and kill children in the ticking bomb scenario. So would you rape children? Mutilate them but leave them alive to keep screaming in pain?

And how many children are you willing to sacrifice? Suppose you know the bomb will kill a more or less representative 10,000 Americans. For example, how many "enemy" children will you kill to have some marginally better chance of saving those 10,000 Americans? 1 child? 10? 100? 9,999? Even more? Does it matter how likely it is your plan will work? Is there an equation?

Seriously, I am interested to know.

Posted by DTM | October 11, 2007 12:46 AM

DTM,

Just an aside, but I personally think it is wrong to deliberately kill civilians as a way of exerting pressure on a government to end a war. And yes I know we did it in WWII, but I think it was wrong.

I don't think it's an aside at all, I think it goes to the heart of the issue. And I wasn't referring only to intentional killing of civilians (though we certainly did some of that during WWII, as you say), but also civilians whose deaths and injuries are classified as "collateral damage"--unintended but foreseen consequences of an intentional act of combat. If you're willing to endorse a wartime bombing raid that you know will almost certainly have the effect of killing and injuring hundreds or thousands of children, then I don't think you have any credible basis for supporting a no-exceptions ban on torture.

Posted by Mixner | October 11, 2007 12:47 AM

I see jim beat me to some of the obvious questions.

Posted by DTM | October 11, 2007 12:48 AM

You don't say "It might fail or be abused, therefore we should never do it at all."

Well, if it fails and is abused so often that the expected costs of the policy outweigh the (rare) expected benefits, the policy should not be enacted.

And the expected costs are great. There's not merely the moral costs, which I'd claim are on the same scale as rape and sexual assualt. (Presumably no one's going to argue that we need a rape policy for ticking bombs).

There's the false confessions--which compound the human temptation to look for more information to retain our hypothesis rather than switch to a better hypothesis.

There's the strategic costs--it turns populations against us (imagine what would happen if we followed Chris Ford's advice and started torturing mass numbers of Iraqis to find a few IEDs.) It makes it harder to recruit double agents.

There's the tyrannical temptation problem--torture is more useful for scaring people, controlling populations, and silencing criticism than it is for intelligence. Even if you started doing it for legitimate reasons, the temptation to abuse it is overwhelming. (Even now people have been offered plea agreements on the grounds that they not talk about what happened to them during interrogations.)

If you want me to overrule all that, you're gonna have to give me something better than the plot of 24.

Posted by Consumatopia | October 11, 2007 12:53 AM

Mixner,

It is an aside because you are trying to change the subject from torture. And that becomes particularly clear when you start talking about collateral damage, rather than intentionally targeting civilians, because foreseeable side-effects raise notoriously complex problems in morality.

But what you are advocating is not a side-effect, but rather the intentional torturing of another human being until they break. And you also endorsed the torture of a child to get this person to break. So let's stick to that subject, and see where you actually do draw the line (if you are willing to draw any line at all).

Posted by DTM | October 11, 2007 12:53 AM

" there is a historic Christian argument in favor of the use of pain and physical pressure by the legal system"

Right. The Inquisition. Bring back the rack!

Posted by Bloix | October 11, 2007 12:55 AM

Consumatopia,

I wouldn't be too sure about your no-rape-policy presumption. Mixner has already endorsed torturing children, so I am not entirely sure rape is off the table. And it is not like raping enemies has been a particularly uncommon occurrence in human history. Basically, once humans stop seeing other humans as worthy of certain basic rights, they usually end up being willing to do pretty much anything you can imagine.

Posted by DTM | October 11, 2007 12:59 AM

jim,

Would you kill your son on the chance that you might save 100 people? 10,000?

I don't know. It would probably depend on the circumstances. If my son were aboard a hijacked plane that was being flown by terrorists into a crowded building (a la 9/11) and I were the president and had the authority to order the plane to be shot down before it reached the target, and I saw no other way of averting the catastrophe, I think probably would order that. Do you think shooting down the plane would be wrong?

What is your moral calculus here?

The consequences of acting (or not acting) in different ways, as best I can evaluate them.

Posted by Mixner | October 11, 2007 1:04 AM

Mixner,

So what if killing your son is not a side-effect? We are playing the contrived hypothetical game, so you have to be willing to play by the rules, which means dealing with the hypothetical as it is presented.

So in this hypothetical, you have to kill your son, with your bare hands while looking him in the eye, and you can't even explain to him why you are doing it. That is the only way to get the terrorist to talk (he is a sicko, but also keeps his promises, and he has made this a condition of talking).

Do you do it or not?

Posted by DTM | October 11, 2007 1:11 AM

Clearly we must immediately legalize torture, and rape while we're at it, and set up training for our interrogators in the best techniques for torturing, raping, and murdering children in front of their parents. Otherwise we could be unnecessarily vulnerable to ticking nukes and other 24 scenarios.

Posted by KCinDC | October 11, 2007 1:13 AM

DTM,

But what you are advocating is not a side-effect, but rather the intentional torturing of another human being until they break.

So what? Why don't consequences, as well as intent, matter to whether an act is right or wrong? Why isn't it wrong to intentionally drop a bomb that you know will almost certainly kill a thousand people and injure thousands more, even if you don't intend those deaths and injuries?

And some would argue that that distinction is meaningless, anyway. That if you intend an act then you intend the forseeable consequences of that act.

Posted by Mixner | October 11, 2007 1:15 AM

Even John McCain, who while delusionally, and widely quoted and admired by fawning media and Lefties for saying "Torture Never Works", is documented in past writings as breaking and revealing what he knew to the NVA questioners in several sessions....maybe slipping in a lie now and then they didn't catch, maybe regaining his resistance later...but no doubt exists he talked and gave up accurate info..

A teensy bit of accurate info

The punishment finally worked, McCain said. "Eventually, I gave them my ship's name and squadron number, and confirmed that my target had been the power plant."
Recalling how he gave up military information to his interrogators, McCain said: "I regret very much having done so. The information was of no real use to the Vietnamese, but the Code of Conduct for American Prisoners of War orders us to refrain from providing any information beyond our names, rank and serial number."

And a whole lot of misinformation. The Vietnamese were more interested in false confessions than intel, so I suppose torture "worked", but not in anyway useful for stopping terror.

The pro-torture crowd is so attached to this narrative where they are the only ones ready to see reality as it is, but their point of view definitely doesn't seem to correlate with knowledge or honesty.

Posted by Consumatopia | October 11, 2007 1:21 AM

Mixner,

In my experience there are no simple answers to your questions about side-effects. Again, people have struggled with these issues for centuries, and I wouldn't pretend to have a complete and quick solution to all such problems.

But please try to stick to the subject at hand. We are talking about what you would intentionally do to try to get information out of the terrorist in your ticking nuclear bomb scenario. We know you would torture the terrorist, and you would torture the terrorist's children. So where, if anywhere, would you actually draw the line?

Posted by DTM | October 11, 2007 1:22 AM

So I am going to leave this discussion, but I think it was quite helpful. Mixner was fine with giving straightforward answers to the questions of whether he would torture the terrorist or torture the terrorist's children. But when asked about what he would be willing to do to his own child, he tried to change the subject. I think if one reflects a bit, that is quite illuminating about what is going on in the minds of people who endorse torture.

Posted by DTM | October 11, 2007 1:30 AM

DTM,

I'm not going to keep answering an endless series of hypothetical questions. I think I've explained my position clearly. Yes, I think the torture of a child would be ethically justified if the circumstances were dire enough. Yes, I think killing members of my own family would be justified if the circumstances were dire enough.

I don't think you've clearly addressed the question of why you think torturing is always and everywhere wrong, but not the wartime killing and injuring of civilians. Could you clearly state the ethical principle or argument or standard on which your position is based?

Posted by Mixner | October 11, 2007 1:31 AM

I have to admit I don't understand what you're talking about Chris Ford. My point was that it's a bad idea to routinely torture large numbers of prisoners as a matter of policy. From there you went on an odd rant about prosecutors and defense attorneys doing cross examinations and John McCain breaking under torture. Yes I have heard of prosecutors, what does that have to do with the innocent people we have tortured?

Posted by mad6798j | October 11, 2007 1:37 AM

One of the many problems with the ticking time bomb hypothetical is that it assumes what it is trying to prove: torture works. The only problem with that is that our entire experience with torture proves the opposite: torture doesn't work. That is not to say that it can't hypothetically "work" ever -- just like giving candy and prostitutes to prisoners could hypothetically get you information out of them. But since experience has shown that it normally does not work and is, in fact, counterproductive (not to mention morally repugnant, etc.), civilized countries have abandoned the use of torture. Nazis and other fascists did not abandon it. We executed them for that.

>>If you're willing to endorse a wartime bombing raid that you know will almost certainly have the effect of killing and injuring hundreds or thousands of children, then I don't think you have any credible basis for supporting a no-exceptions ban on torture.

If you're willing to endorse the death penalty, which you know will almost certainly have the effect of killing some innocent people, then I don't think you have any credible basis for supporting a no-exceptions ban on the state murdering innocent people at the mall.

If you support wars, which you know will almost certainly involve mass rapes and crimes against humanity (as wars usually do), then I don't think you have any credible basis for supporting a no-exceptions ban on mass rape or crimes against humanity performed on women in prisons at the discretion of the state.

It isn't hard to come up with other examples of your kind of 'tortured' logic. Believe it or not, waging a war on a battlefield and interrogating a helpless prisoner who is entirely in your control are not analogous. Just like mistakenly and unintentionally executing an innocent man when meting out a punishment is not the same as deliberately murdering an innocent man on the street. You can support the death penalty without compromising your support for a no-exceptions ban on murdering people in the street without creating your fake conundrum.

Posted by jim | October 11, 2007 1:46 AM

consum,

Well, if it fails and is abused so often that the expected costs of the policy outweigh the (rare) expected benefits, the policy should not be enacted.

What policy, exactly, are you talking about here? Matthew Yglesias, for example, has previously proposed a policy of formally banning torture under all circumstances in law, but ignoring or circumventing the law in cases where the torture is later judged to have been justified (through the use of prosecutorial discretion, jury nullification, presidential pardon, etc.). Another policy, proposed by Alan Dershowitz, is to allow torture in law through the use of torture warrants issued by a judge. A third policy would be to allow torture without prior judicial approval under conditions defined by statute. A fourth policy would be an absolute legal ban with no exceptions or workarounds whatsoever (Jonf's "Torture must be against the law and be prosecuted rigorously in all cases.")

I'd love to see your cost-benefit analysis showing that the fourth policy is superior to the first three, and to any other policy that would involve some accommodation of torture in law.

Posted by Mixner | October 11, 2007 1:52 AM

Ok, last one:

If you support shooting a man in self-defense which results in his leg being amputated, how can you be against a no-execptions ban on amputating the legs of prisoners of war?!?

Sure is a head-scratcher and fake conundrum! I'm so morally confused now. Oh, well, Let the amputations commence!

Posted by jim | October 11, 2007 1:53 AM

Mixner said "Yes, I think the torture of a child would be ethically justified if the circumstances were dire enough. Yes, I think killing members of my own family would be justified if the circumstances were dire enough."

I guess that just proves you share the views of Stalin and other "ends justify the means" absolutists. Applying arithmetical units to human beings is nothing new. The Soviets perfected it. I encourage you to read "Darkness at Noon," a novel written about Stalin's torture chambers and purges. You echo the very 'rational' cost-benefit analysis of the communist torturers verbatim. It is hard to believe you aren't trying to parody it.

Lastly, jim just cleaned your clock.

Posted by Doug R | October 11, 2007 2:07 AM

jim,

Believe it or not, waging a war on a battlefield and interrogating a helpless prisoner who is entirely in your control are not analogous.

I didn't compare torture to waging war on a battlefield, I compared it to wartime bombing that kills civilians. And simply saying that they are "not analogous" does not explain what relevant differences you see between them that makes one always wrong but not the other.

And I'd still like to know if you think it would necessarily be wrong for a president to order the shooting down of a hijacked plane carrying his son. I gave you my answer, and since it was you who asked "Would you kill your son on the chance that you might save 10,000 people" I think you should answer your own question.

Posted by Mixner | October 11, 2007 2:11 AM

I'd love to see your cost-benefit analysis showing that the fourth policy is superior to the first three, and to any other policy that would involve some accommodation of torture in law.

The Yglesian position isn't really "accommodation of torture in law"", just a recognition that law is incomplete. An argument between the JonF position and the Yglesias one doesn't really interest me because I think both would be much better than the status quo or any other policy alternative.

If you're looking for the cost benefit analysis I already presented it to you here. To summarize, torture tends to mislead us, it turns everyone against us, it's a slippery slope to doing it for political reasons (as arguably is already implied by some of the sentencing/release agreements of a few former detainees), and it's just wrong in the same way that rape is just wrong.

That's deeper cost benefit than I've seen out of anyone pro-torture. Which tends to be how torture always works institionally--torture becomes an end in and of itself.

Posted by Consumatopia | October 11, 2007 2:13 AM

Why don't consequences, as well as intent, matter to whether an act is right or wrong?

Sometimes agreeing beforehand to bind yourself to following a rule regardless of consequences has advantages of its own that outweigh the advantages obtained by violating the rule.

Why isn't it wrong to intentionally drop a bomb that you know will almost certainly kill a thousand people and injure thousands more, even if you don't intend those deaths and injuries?

First of all, you're completely losing the consequences side of the argument.

Secondly, it's different certain kinds of coercion violate (rape, torture) violate the essence of people in ways that go beyond merely killing them. Admittedly, not all physical coercion reaches that level, but neither does all sexual assault.

I notice that you're choosing to answer the hypotheticals about killing and torture, but never about rape and sexual assault. Your analysis fails to account for why people consider certain acts unacceptable even in the midst of war.

Posted by Consumatopia | October 11, 2007 2:27 AM

consum,

The Yglesian position isn't really "accommodation of torture in law"", just a recognition that law is incomplete.

It's not technically an accommodation of torture in law. It is an accommodation of torture in policy. The policy is: "Let's write the law to say that we're banning all torture, but ignore or set aside the law in cases where the torture is later judged to have been justified."

If you're looking for the cost benefit analysis I already presented it to you here. To summarize, torture tends to mislead us, it turns everyone against us, it's a slippery slope to doing it for political reasons (as arguably is already implied by some of the sentencing/release agreements of a few former detainees), and it's just wrong in the same way that rape is just wrong.

Simply listing some potential costs of one policy is not a cost-benefit analysis. All the policies I described have costs and benefits. A cost-benefit analysis involves trying to quantify those costs and benefits in some way so that they can be compared in order to evaluate the relative merits of each policy.

Posted by Mixner | October 11, 2007 2:29 AM

consum,

Sometimes agreeing beforehand to bind yourself to following a rule regardless of consequences has advantages of its own that outweigh the advantages obtained by violating the rule.

So why agree to that for the rule "no torture, period," but not for the rule "no bombing of civilians, period?"

Secondly, it's different certain kinds of coercion violate (rape, torture) violate the essence of people in ways that go beyond merely killing them.

So five minutes of waterboarding of a convicted terrorist "violates his essence" and is therefore never ethical, but killing thousands of innocent children by blowing their limbs off and through other appalling physical injuries, many of which produce a slow, agonizing death, does not "violate their essence" and is therefore sometimes ethical?

Congratulations, I think you've just provided the best illustration yet of why your absolutist position on torture is so unpopular and ridiculous.

Posted by Mixner | October 11, 2007 2:42 AM

The policy is: "Let's write the law to say that we're banning all torture, but ignore or set aside the law in cases where the torture is later judged to have been justified."

I think Yglesias would force an explcit pardon or at least some public acknowledgment of the incident. Assuming the incidents are rare and public, the space between this and absolute de facto bans is narrow.

Simply listing some potential costs of one policy is not a cost-benefit analysis.

Explicit quantification is not necessary to be a cost-benefit analysis, and in this case wouldn't be remotely useful. In any event, I've provided way deeper analysis than you have--torture has huge expected costs with minimal expected benefit. You don't need numbers to see one is bigger than the other. You've failed to answer for these costs, which is as one would expect given that torture is frequently pointless sadism masquerading as consequentialism. It sure as hell isn't logic that lead you to the position you hold now.

Posted by Consumatopia | October 11, 2007 2:46 AM

So why agree to that for the rule "no torture, period," but not for the rule "no bombing of civilians, period?"

If the consequences of binding ourselves to "no bombing of civilians" are advantageous, than of course we should agree to it. However, I suspect binding ourselves to that would actually make things worse--e.g. enemies would work harder to intermix with civilians. I'm not committed to that, and some bindings of this sort make consequentialist sense (like "no first strike nuclear attack").

So five minutes of waterboarding of a convicted terrorist "violates his essence" and is therefore never ethical, but killing thousands of innocent children by blowing their limbs off and through other appalling physical injuries, many of which produce a slow, agonizing death, does not "violate their essence" and is therefore sometimes ethical?

There's no "five minutes of waterboarding"--if I give you a bomb location, you cannot verify that location in five minutes. The nature of torture is that it lasts as long as the terrorist lasts, so to commit yourself to a course of torture is to commit to an eternity of it. That's even assuming they're a terrorist.

But that's besides the point. You can start asking what degree of torture is permissible and when, but that's really the same as asking what degree of sexual assault is permissible and when. See how that polls. Five minutes of being stuck in a naked man-pyramid is certainly a less painful outcome than being blown apart, but guess which action more sane people consider more unacceptable in war?

Posted by Consumatopia | October 11, 2007 3:48 AM

It's amazing - well, not really, not to me, anyway - how many utterly stupid people there are posting here about torture.

"Maybe you should actually respond to Mixner's point rather than making ludacris assertions."

First of all, learn to spell "ludicrous"...

Second, I addressed his moronic points point by point. Apparently you can't read either - do you know SLC?

"I'm not saying I support torture, but your refutation of Mixner is what basically amounts to "nu uh"."

Yes, you DO support torture. You just don't have the balls to admit it, which is why you can't comprehend my point by point utter destruction of Mixner's nonsense.

"I think its especially ludacris to argue that torture is bad because we "cant verify the information" Every ticking time bomb scenario isn't

"OMG THERES FIVE MINTUES BEFORE A BOMB AHHH AHHH AHHH"

In other words, you're for torture when we have six months to defuse the bomb? Nice - where is the "ticking bomb" part of the "ticking bomb" scenario in YOUR scenario?

The whole point of the "ticking bomb" nonsense is that you supposedly DO NOT HAVE TIME to engage in either normal interrogation or any other means of determining the location of the bomb.

As I have repeatedly pointed out, THE best method of operating in a "no time" scenario is to directly threaten the individual with immediate death - NOT time-wasting torture which is by no means guaranteed to produce a result. Even my method is not guaranteed to produce a result, but it makes the situation perfectly clear and provides a stark choice to the individual.

"The argument for torture during time senstive situations implies that there is enough time to stop the attack."

No, it does not. It implies the exact opposite. The whole point is that there is no time to do anything else BUT torture. MY whole point is that if you do not have that kind of time, you DEFINITELY DO NOT have the kind of time it takes to torture someone.

Do try to make your scenarios make at least SOME sense.

"In any such case there would be enough time to verify the information."

To quote Mixner, "How do you know?"

MY point is that in a given situation, the terrorist can, if he is motivated, derail the investigation by giving REPEATED invalid information, ALL of which must be validated. This is the basic procedure for outlasting the "time to live" of intelligence. It doesn't get any better when the situation is a "ticking bomb" - in fact, it gets worse.

I find it difficult to comprehend how ANYBODY could be so stupid and illogical as not to comprehend this utterly obvious fact.

"Also this argument about false information has merit but isn't all that strong.

Sure you might torture someone and they might give you information. But they might not."

So, following the Dick Cheney "one percent rule", we should torture everybody and play the odds. Fine - then why don't we do that with EVERYTHING? Jay-walking, perhaps?

" Anytime you recieve 3rd party information whether it be an informant, a tip,etc you stand the risk of the information being false."

And I acknowledge that fact. The point is that torture does NOT make that situation any better by one iota. Whereas it DOES make the situation worse in many scenarios.

Here's the bottom line: torture is not efficient, and is not effective unless you are willing to go whole hog and institute a "reign of terror" to your enemies. In other words, you have to, like most idiot dictators, GUARANTEE torture if any opponent is caught. This is how most governments operate in the Third World - and how almost all governments have operated in history.

If this is what you are advocating, have the balls to say so.

But trying to hang a general policy on torture on the stupid "ticking bomb" scenario is just idiotic.

The bottom line is that you people simply want the US government to torture anybody you don't like. You are truly some of the most slavish, lame, wannabe SS guards that this country has ever produced. You're like the goons in New York who tortured that guy with a broom handle up his ass. I'll bet you supported that, too. Because I assure you, if you allow the US state to implement torture and condone it, sooner or later it will be YOUR ass that gets the broom handle.

I've been in Federal prison. I know what prison guards are like. I know what they do. Torture IS done in the US prison system. Abu Ghraib was no "aberration". It was done by people like you who believe that torture is useful and acceptable.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | October 11, 2007 4:35 AM

"If you're willing to endorse a wartime bombing raid that you know will almost certainly have the effect of killing and injuring hundreds or thousands of children, then I don't think you have any credible basis for supporting a no-exceptions ban on torture."

Mixner demonstrates his acceptance of war crimes as well as torture.

What next, Mixner? Genocide? What group would you like to exterminate using the most effective methods you can come up with?

I know who I would like to exterminate. And I will have those methods.

In the immortal words of Mel Brooks in "Blazing Saddles", "You - and the rest of your torture-loving, wannabe SS concentration camp guards and war criminals - watch your ass!"

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | October 11, 2007 4:38 AM

DTM hits it on the head:

"But in the end I agree with your point: it is always going to be possible to construct some sort of hypothetical to address any pragmatic argument, basically by building into the hypothetical whatever facts, however far-fetched, you need to raise the benefits and lower the costs until the balance comes out in favor of torturing.

Of course, playing with hypotheticals like this is a poor way to do things like construct laws, but I think it is a useful exercise insofar as it ends up revealing what I suggested above: that in truth, some people really don't think torture is all that wrong. So, they will be willing to torture if they think torture will serve a practical purpose."

Exactly my point. The "ticking bomb" scenario is just a cover story to avoid having to admit wanting to torture people, despite all the PRACTICAL negatives against it. And the scenario itself is just an exercise in justification.

It's the old "what if you could save the world by killing one innocent child" scenario? It is based on false premises and ignores the equal probability of an opposing outcome. It's a strictly logical fallacy. Not to mention having no relation to reality.

Which is why it appeals to the emotional wrecks who want to justify their malicious natures.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | October 11, 2007 4:47 AM

Mixner:

"There are probably thousands of innocent people in our jails, wrongly convicted. Does that mean we should never imprison anyone at all? We probably dropped thousands of bombs during WWII that destroyed more lives than they saved. Does that mean we were wrong to fight WWII? Human beings are fallible. Information is imperfect. So you do the best you can. You don't say "It might fail or be abused, therefore we should never do it at all."

Indeed, I do say it - at least for all of the examples you cite. The examples you cite are the incorrect way to go about things and invariably end up causing more harm than the alleged benefits and certainly more than alternative ways of handling the situations.

Bombing of cities is a war crime. Prisons are an ineffective way to deal with the causes of crime. War is an ineffective way to deal with conflict - and of course as an anarchist, I'm familiar with how the state justifies itself.

You are enamored of law enforcement, war, the bombing of civilians, and torture.

That makes you a serious statist scumbag and an idiot - not to mention a chimpanzee. Of course, that puts you in good company with at least ninety percent of the population of this country.

YOUR kind of scum is one reason WHY I'm a Tranhumanist.

Fortunately, your kind of scum will be dealt with in this century. But you can rest assured we won't bother to torture you. We'll just reduce you to your chemical elements and recycle you...or maybe just let you ooze into the dirt where you belong.

Is that "genocide?" Why would you care? You already support it. You have no "moral" arguments against our doing it. So your only complaint is that we'll do it to you and not the opposite.

Tough tit.

Have a nice day, chimpanzee.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | October 11, 2007 5:00 AM

Consumatopia hits it on the head more than he knows.

"Pretty soon you've got a whole prison full of suspicious looking foreigners with inconsistent confessions."

This is actually how Federal law enforcement works. They arrest some low-level drug dealer. Then they tell him that he'll do serious time unless he rats out all his relatives and friends, in which case they'll give him a "reduced sentence." So he does. Then they repeat the process. This gives them a guaranteed conviction, more prosecutions, and thus an excellent prosecution and conviction rate to build a career on to becoming...a judge in the Federal system.

This IS how Federal law enforcement works. And this is how it will work when torture is allowed. You're absolutely correct. Allow torture and sooner or later EVERYBODY is going to be tortured for minor infractions routinely.

And as we see from the people posting here, there are plenty of candidates for the position of torturer.

I recall years ago reading about a senior law enforcement individual who lobbied in favor of the death penalty. Then he shot his wife.

Guess what his sentence was...

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | October 11, 2007 5:07 AM

Mixner: "I'm not going to keep answering an endless series of hypothetical questions."

No, but you don't mind presenting your own list to back up your own hypothetical bullshit.

Which is precisely the point - "scenario construction" is not meaningful in constructing logical principles of action.

Christ, what an intellectually dishonest and intellectually cowardly asshole.

Little more than a troll.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | October 11, 2007 5:15 AM

Mixner:

"I don't think you've clearly addressed the question of why you think torturing is always and everywhere wrong, but not the wartime killing and injuring of civilians. Could you clearly state the ethical principle or argument or standard on which your position is based?"

Here's mine: the state in the form of a military killing civilians - even as "collateral damage" - is always incorrect (I don't deal in "right and wrong" per se - I'm not a moralist.) So is torture. And for the same reasons - they aren't efficient - and more importantly, not effective - means of conducting conflict.

I don't NEED an "ethical" or "moral" position to argue against both situations. There is simply no practical reason to engage in either policy - unless you're too stupid or too malicious to understand how other ways are more effective and efficient.

This is not to deny that "shit happens", If in some effective and efficient situation - say, a SWAT team trying to rescue hostages - and some idiot hostage stands up in the middle of the firefight despite being told to "stay down!" and gets killed, well, like I said, "shit happens". That's nature's way of eliminating the stupid. That is an ACCIDENT caused by an idiot and the person who shot him is not the one at fault, despite being the one laying down the fire. There are limits to human performance and sometimes that performance fails and somebody gets killed. This is what we call an "accident".

We have quite a legal body of opinion on what constitutes an "accident", what constitutes deliberate harm, and what constitutes fucking pig witlessness. Most of that legal opinion, however, is organized around justifying the state's actions and not the civilian's actions. Thus it is not a sound body of opinion. But it has generated specific statutes domestically and internationally which this country and some others have paid at least lip service to.

Dropping a two ton bomb with a kill radius of several blocks on an urban neighborhood where it can be reasonable assumed other persons than the targeted combatants are living can be precisely predicted to kill people who are not combatants. This is a war crime - NOT an accident by any stretch of the imagination. Most ignorant people seem to take this sort of thing for granted, because they are ignorant of the many ways a conflict can be pursued WITHOUT having to do this sort of thing.

The real problem always boils down to: nobody actually wants to FIGHT - they just want to KILL somebody else. I'm partial to that notion myself, However, in my mind, it's important to kill the actual ENEMY - not just a bunch of people standing around. But then, I'm not a state that sucks money out of its obedient taxpayers and this can afford to just produce millions of tons of bombs and then drop them around randomly to show how I'm "protecting my citizenry."

The distinction between war crime and true "collateral damage" should be obvious to anyone with an instant's education in logic.

And the reason it is a war crime should be that it is not rational in terms of the development of the human species to wander around killing people at random because you're too stupid to kill the right people. Nothing "moral" about it. It's just STUPID (and frequently malicious - and being malicious is a counterproductive emotional trait which also equates to STUPID.)

The arguments against torture are similar: it usually doesn't work for intelligence gathering - certainly not against motivated individuals who are well organized and have a plan to deal with the capture of any of their personnel - despite Chris Ford's conflation of torture for "confessions" with torture for intelligence - or torture for fun, apparently. It's time-consuming, costly, yields unreliable results, makes it harder to induce surrender, etc, etc.

No moral or ethnical arguments are necessary. Stupidity is as stupidity does. And both war crimes and torture are stupid. Only the STUPID, the IGNORANT and the MALICIOUS try to justify them.

Get a clue, Mixner. You and the rest of the morons here advocating torture and war crimes are FUCKING STUPID, IGNORANT and MALICIOUS.

And one of these years, we Transhumanists are going to take you out for being so.

Have a nice day, chimpanzee.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | October 11, 2007 5:40 AM

Richard

Do you feel the need to get online to insult people on messageboards because you lack the words to respond adequately or because you generally feel inadequate in your life?

Posted by Phil | October 11, 2007 7:04 AM

All the arguments above don't deal with the fact that Sullivan, Drum, Stoller et al went into atuomatic anti-Clinton mode. The brain was the last thing they used. It is so easy to pick on HRC and provide fatuous comments. Then, when the full text is released Sully and Drum still remain sceptical. Pinheads!

Posted by Alan | October 11, 2007 9:25 AM

Cleary, Mixner is a psychopath that jizz's his pants at the notion of someones balls getting electroshocked. Thats his problem, and he won't listen to reason. Torture is a bit like spanking, people don't do it because it works. People do it because it helps them deal with their frustration. When people cause you pain, you're a psychologically and physiologically wired to do whatever is required to stop that pain. You might tell the truth, and you might lie. Pain simply doesn't act like a truth serum, it acts like a 'OMGMYBALLSAREONFIREILLSAYANYTHING!!!!!" serum. You are just going to tell people whatever you think they want to hear. If you believe torture is actually an effective means of getting information, you must believe that the age of the inquisition must have been filled with witches and werewolves.

So-called 'ticking bomb' scenario's are actually the least effective times to use torture. You are on a set schedule, and the torture victim only needs to lie and send his torturer's on a wild goose chase for 30-40 minutes while the bomb goes off. The idea that a few punches or some dunking will actually get you the correct answer is foolish, at best.

Posted by Soullite | October 11, 2007 9:29 AM

I have to admit I don't understand what you're talking about Chris Ford. My point was that it's a bad idea to routinely torture large numbers of prisoners as a matter of policy. From there you went on an odd rant about prosecutors and defense attorneys doing cross examinations and John McCain breaking under torture. Yes I have heard of prosecutors, what does that have to do with the innocent people we have tortured?
Posted by mad6798j

1. In six years, with tens of thousands of radical Muslims captured in the status of unlawful combatants, under 100 of them have been reported to Congress as having had physically coercive interrogation means applied to them. Of that number, under 33 have had waterboarding. 11 of the 12 highest ranking and thus most fanatical Al Qaeda leaders, including KSM, the 9/11 Mastermind, resisted months of interrogation and finally broke within minutes of waterboarding. All then revealed extensive info later verified to be true. Including thwarted plots that saved thousands of American, UK, Italian, East Asian lives.

2. A measure of the strength and religious fanaticism of the enemy is that KSM now supposedly holds the record of 2 1/2 minutes before breaking and squealing like a bitch after waterboarding. Supposedly no American in the SERE program, SEALs, CIA has come close to that.

3. Prosecutors, judges, detectives, lawyers have to have interrogation skills, and also have to have coercive tools in order to do that job. So do military and national security investigators trying to save our lives from unlawful enemy combatants. Taking away use of those analogous tools the military, CIA needs will cripple their work as surely as you would cripple law enforcement and let thugs rule regions of America by banning judges use of contempt, prosecutors tool of loss of personal assets and freedom for perjury, etc.
That is the point.

4. McCain is frequently cited as "The Expert" because he has given his adulating media followers and Lefty friends the message that- as a former POW, he knows that "Torture Never Works".
The problem with that is McCain is lying his ass off.
He knows the names of the POWs that partially cooperated with the Vietnam communist captors like him, the names of those that revealed every they knew.
And though he knows full well the difference between real, permenantly damaging torture the Vietnamese practiced and the no lasting harm coercive interrogations the US uses, McCain insists on conflating the two.
Why does he sabotage the battle against Jihadi terrorists? Because McCain is Old SChool. He sees nothing wrong with killing 100s of thousands of civilians as long as he or people like him in jets are laying dumb iron bombs down over the countryside, but quails at the thought of a captured terrorist being kept too cold in a cell in order to gain life-saving info.

5. what does that have to do with the innocent people we have tortured?
Posted by mad6798j

Are you arguing that any of the less than 33 we waterboarded to save infidel lives, any of the less than 33, are actually innocent?
Are you arguing that waterboarding which people fully recover from in minutes with no physical harm is "torture"?
Is listening to rock and roll or being in solitary torture?
Do we have "moral" obligations to give full Geneva protections to those Jihadis that hold themselves outside all laws of humane warfare? Because we have no legal obligation to do so. Geneva is reciprocal.

(Meanwhile, in Pakistani Waziristan, reports are coming out of real torture. By Al Qaeda of captured Pak soldiers and civilians being tortured to death by burning or slow dismemberment. Then beheadings...
Don't confuse America or other mostly decent, law abiding peoples with the terrorists. The Pakis are slowly realizing the real nature of these barbarous Salafists and Takfiris, like the Sunni Arabs of Iraq, the Sunnis of Algeria, did.)

Posted by Chris Ford | October 11, 2007 1:16 PM

consum,

I think Yglesias would force an explcit pardon or at least some public acknowledgment of the incident. Assuming the incidents are rare and public, the space between this and absolute de facto bans is narrow.

How could you "force an explicit pardon" other than by making it part of the law? And I thought your position was that our policy on torture should be to ban it under all circumstances, with no exceptions or workarounds of that ban whatsoever. Are you now saying you endorse an Yglesias-style policy of selectively ignoring or setting aside the ban, as long as it's "narrow?"

Explicit quantification is not necessary to be a cost-benefit analysis, and in this case wouldn't be remotely useful.

Some kind of quantification is necessary, otherwise you have no basis for comparing different policies or asserting that costs outweigh benefits or vice versa. You haven't provided anything remotely resembling a cost-benefit analysis.

In any event, I've provided way deeper analysis than you have--torture has huge expected costs with minimal expected benefit.

No, you haven't provided any cost-benefit analysis at all. And you haven't produced any facts or evidence or argument to justify your claim of "minimal expected benefit." With respect to ticking time bomb cases, the claim is clearly absurd. You seriously believe that saving a million people from being blown up by a terrorist nuke is a "minimal" benefit, do you?

Posted by Mixner | October 11, 2007 1:16 PM

consum,

If the consequences of binding ourselves to "no bombing of civilians" are advantageous, than of course we should agree to it. However, I suspect binding ourselves to that would actually make things worse--e.g. enemies would work harder to intermix with civilians. I'm not committed to that, and some bindings of this sort make consequentialist sense (like "no first strike nuclear attack").

You still haven't explained how you have determined that "the consequences of binding ourselves" to a no-exceptions ban on torture is "advantageous," but that "the consequences of binding ourselves" to a no-exceptions ban on bombing civilians is not also "advantageous." If the former is advantageous, why isn't the latter? If the latter is not advantageous why isn't the former also not advantageous? You haven't described any clear difference between them that you think justifies a policy of an absolute ban on one but not the other.

There's no "five minutes of waterboarding"--if I give you a bomb location, you cannot verify that location in five minutes. The nature of torture is that it lasts as long as the terrorist lasts, so to commit yourself to a course of torture is to commit to an eternity of it.

Nonsense. You could "commit yourself" to whatever amount of torture you choose. And you have absolutely no idea how much or how little torture it would take to break a terrorist in a particular case. It might take only five minutes of torture, or it might take hours of torture, or he might never be broken at all. In some cases, even just a credible threat of torture may be sufficient to induce a terrorist to reveal the needed information. Unless the threat is made or the torture is applied, you don't know how effective it will be. Similar uncertainties apply to wartime bombing. Did we really need to firebomb Berlin, or nuke Nagasaki, to win the war? Did those attacks really save more lives than they destroyed? No one knows. But we did them anyway. Do you think these and similar bombings of civilians are examples of war crimes? Do you think Churchill and Roosevelt and Truman should have been hauled into court in Nuremburg and tried as war criminals for all the civilians they bombed to death?

Posted by Mixner | October 11, 2007 1:38 PM

As long as we are having a discussion, lets not forget that an interrogation objective that is perhaps even more important than thwarting the latest plot (playing defense on the Muslim Takfiris) is uncovering the networks, ripping away the Jihadis cloak of anonymity and their support network (playing offense).

It isn't as sexy as "ticking time bomb" scenarios posed by ethicists in academia and politicians, but we, if we are ever to defeat the networks, need to get info about who is behind captured unlawful enemy combatants.

Who recruited them. Who financed their murderous plans. Who provided the spiritual and technical advice they needed to be successful terrorists. Who supplied weapons and documents to them. Who assisted them in travels and who was in, and where their safehouses.
Then go after those "nodes in the network" and roll them up.
Basic counterterrorism. Which coerced interrogations play a vital part in. Find the financiers and you get more Takfiris nailed. You may find what multimillionaire Saudi Prince bankrolled ops or a terror-sanctioning Mullah - and help that Prince disappear.
To do that......To win against the Jihadists...You need effective interrogation techniques as part of the mix. You need to get that info in a timely fashion, and you need to realize that the enemy is highly motivated, fanatically regious and ideological and unlikely to be "turned" by friendly inducements. They are from an honor culture, convinced that betraying their own, their tribe, their mosque fellow cu-throats, their version of religion - is a direct path to hell.

These are people that regard the monetary rewards on the heads of their leaders - like the 25+ million reward on bin Laden that has been out there for 6 years - as a grave insult that would dishonor and disgrace not just the Muslim that went for the bounty, but all his family, all his tribe.

These are not Nazis at wars end that will talk on grounds they feel like friends with their captors over a table tennis game, or for a meal of plump sausages and sauerkraut...These Jihadis are hardcore thugs and religious true believers.

Posted by Chris Ford | October 11, 2007 1:43 PM

>> You haven't provided anything remotely resembling a cost-benefit analysis.

I realize it is a waste of breath on you, but doing a "cost-benefit analysis" on human beings in relation to torture and death is a sick enterprise -- an enterprise that communists and fascists 'perfected' in the 1930s.

>>Are you arguing that waterboarding which people fully recover from in minutes with no physical harm is "torture"?

Yes, all sane people argue that waterboarding is torture. We executed Japanese war criminals for waterboarding prisoners. It was the favorite torture method of the Khmer Rouge. You are in fine company, there. You seem to think that the definition of torture is "causes permanent damage to internal organs" or some such hogwash, which is merely one of the attempts of the Bush administration to redefine torture out of existence.

The Nazis would be honored to know that you two are attempting to carry on their fine tradition of "rationalizing" torture and other war crimes, by the way. Heil Hitler!

Oh, if you don't like being compared to Nazis, stop using their arguments. Pretty simple.

Posted by jim | October 11, 2007 3:56 PM

I realize it is a waste of breath on you, but doing a "cost-benefit analysis" on human beings in relation to torture and death is a sick enterprise -- an enterprise that communists and fascists 'perfected' in the 1930s.

So you keep saying, apparently unaware of the fact that such cost-benefit analysis informs many of our laws and policies. Not only for things like military operations (Does the military benefit of operation X justify the cost in civilian casualties?), but for more ordinary things like how much money to spend on research on one disease rather than another. The cold logic of trying to quantify the cost of death and different kinds of suffering so that different problems and policies may be evaluated and compared is routine in policy areas ranging from consumer product safety to biomedical research.

Posted by Mixner | October 11, 2007 4:18 PM

Hillary Clinton on torture:

The bill before us allows the admission into evidence of statements derived through cruel, inhuman and degrading interrogation. That sets a dangerous precedent that will endanger our own men and women in uniform overseas.

Will our enemies be less likely to surrender? Will informants be less likely to come forward? Will our soldiers be more likely to face torture if captured? Will the information we obtain be less reliable? These are the questions we should be asking. And based on what we know about warfare from listening to those who have fought for our country, the answers do not support this bill. [...]

Allowing coercive treatment and torturous actions toward prisoners not only violates the fundamental rule of law and the institutions of justice, not only will it fail to bear fruit in intelligence gathering, but it promotes radicalization. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's second-in-command, the architect of many of the attacks on our country and throughout Europe and the world, has said, over and over, that torture helps the cause of extremism - watering the seeds of jihad. [...]

This bill undermines the Geneva Conventions by allowing the President to issue Executive Orders to redefine what are permissible interrogation techniques. Have we fallen so low as to debate how much torture we are willing to stomach? By allowing this Administration to further stretch the definition of what is and is not torture, we lower our moral standards to those whom we despise, undermine the values of our flag wherever it flies, put our troops in danger, and jeopardize our moral strength in a conflict that cannot be won simply with military might.

Posted by Trickster | October 11, 2007 5:48 PM

Shorter Mixner: the cost-benefit analysis favours
legalizing murder, because if you knew this
kid was gonna grow up to be Hitler (which happens,
like, *all the time*) consequentialism might
favour shooting him.

Posted by Amit | October 11, 2007 7:17 PM

Only a person whose moral compass was thoroughly compromised by excessive academic speculation would not understand the moral distinction between intent and side-effect. Just because two actions have the same result does not mean that both actions are morally equivalent. Nearly everyone understands this almost reflexively, even if they can't provide an intellectual rationale for the distinction. Very many studies have been performed on this subject on individuals of varying backgrounds around the world.

Killing a child as a consequence of shooting down an airplane carrying a nuclear bomb is simply in no way morally equivalent to intentionally killing the child in order to make a terrorist tell you where a supposed bomb is located.

Consider:

Mixner could kill John and harvest his organs, thereby saving the lives of six individuals.

Mixner could re-route a runaway trolley carrying six passengers onto a track on which John is standing. If Bill re-routes the trolley, John dies. If he does nothing, the trolley will crash and all six passengers will die.

Nearly everyone (save individuals who have spent too much time debating Utilitarian philosophy) agrees that killing John in scenario one is morally repugnant and in scenario two is morally justified. Surely Mixner, with his slide rule in hand, will tell us that equivalent outcomes means these scenarios are morally the same and he would dutifully kill John in both instances.

Deliberate torture clearly lies in the first category and is morally wrong. There are gradations and degrees and drawing the line may not always be easy. Fortunately few fanatics such as Mixner tout their views openly, and hopefully very few actually exist.

Of course, neither of my hypotheticals is realistic. I would not argue that we construct our laws so as to accommodate obscure trolley-re-routing scenarios. The carefully constructed "ticking timebomb" scenario is likewise vanishingly unrealistic (for example, how is it possible to "know" that John knows the location of a nuclear bomb and that the bomb is "about" to go off while simultaneously not knowing where said bomb is located) and we should not construct our laws around such scenarios either.

Posted by Rob Mac | October 12, 2007 5:46 PM

I'll add mine to the chorus of voices concerned about HRC's fondness of expansive executive powers, including leaving herself wiggle room in her position on torture.

I'll also point out that these are her Democratic primary positions. Be wary of any wiggle room in her stated positions here - it's being left there for when she inevitably moves to the right during the general election. The poll numbers show that the general public has an appetite for torture and I don't think this is an issue she'd take a political hit for.

Posted by MattXIV | October 12, 2007 5:57 PM

How could you "force an explicit pardon" other than by making it part of the law?

Forcing an explicit pardon has nothing to do with a law (no law can force a prosecutor to bring charges), but is just a normative statement about what prosecutors ought to do.

And I thought your position was that our policy on torture should be to ban it under all circumstances, with no exceptions or workarounds of that ban whatsoever. Are you now saying you endorse an Yglesias-style policy of selectively ignoring or setting aside the ban, as long as it's "narrow?"

I'm not interested in discussing, as both the Yglesias absolute de jure ban policy and the purist's absolute de facto ban are at odds with both the status quo and your position.

I'm uncertain which is preferable. When I went white water rafting once, the guide explained what we should do if we fell out of the boat and didn't think there was any direction we should swim in to avoid undercut rocks. He prefixed that with "you'll be wrong, but here's what you should do". That line reflects the ambivalence I have about a president faced with a situation in which he or she thinks torture would help. He or she would probably be wrong, but if the president wants to be wrong, he should be wrong as Yglesias suggests.

Some kind of quantification is necessary, otherwise you have no basis for comparing different policies or asserting that costs outweigh benefits or vice versa.

All that's needed is an argument that one is way less than the other. And I provided that.

And you haven't produced any facts or evidence or argument to justify your claim of "minimal expected benefit." With respect to ticking time bomb cases, the claim is clearly absurd. You seriously believe that saving a million people from being blown up by a terrorist nuke is a "minimal" benefit, do you?

Expected benefit of a policy of doing X in situation Y is the benefit of X times the probability Y. The probability of the ticking nuke situation is very low. (Believing otherwise outside an episode of 24 is absurd). The probability of situation Z in which having this policy on the books causes us harm is near 1. That's all the quantification you could possible get or need of a situation like this.

You still haven't explained how you have determined that "the consequences of binding ourselves" to a no-exceptions ban on torture is "advantageous,"

You only just now asked for that, but you're in luck because I already answered it here

but that "the consequences of binding ourselves" to a no-exceptions ban on bombing civilians is not also "advantageous."

I'm simply not sure whether such a binding would be useful or not. Unlike with torture, collateral damage is defensible in utilitarian, consequentialist terms. For tactical, strategic, and bureaucratic reasons, torture policies make no sense. Not to mention that moral case.

If the former is advantageous, why isn't the latter? If the latter is not advantageous why isn't the former also not advantageous?

They are completely unlike policies and there is no reason why one being advantageous implies anything about the other.

You haven't described any clear difference between them that you think justifies a policy of an absolute ban on one but not the other.

Well, I hate to keep bringing this because you're afraid to talk about it, but even people who would regretfully tolerate collateral damage of war would still want an absolute ban on building nude cheerleader pyramids of prisoners. This is true even though I'd much rather be stuck in a nude pyramid of other prisoners than blown apart by a bomb. The reasons are about the same.

And you have absolutely no idea how much or how little torture it would take to break a terrorist in a particular case.

That's exactly what I was saying. You have no idea how much. Indeed, if there policy were merely "x minutes of torture maximum", that would be pretty easy for terrorists to overcome. (It takes longer than x to confirm the bomb location.) But this is kind of a distraction--let's pretend you're right on this narrow point. It would still hold for nude pyramids and pointing at penises.

Posted by Consumatopia | October 12, 2007 9:22 PM

consum,

Forcing an explicit pardon has nothing to do with a law (no law can force a prosecutor to bring charges), but is just a normative statement about what prosecutors ought to do.

Huh? Prosecutors don't have the power to pardon. That power is reserved to executives--state governors and the president. How would you force them to pardon?

I'm uncertain which is preferable.

So, in fact, you do think that, maybe, we should accommodate the use of torture in our policy. By keeping the ban in law, but ignoring or setting aside that law in cases where the torture is later deemed to have been justified.

And of course, that just raises the question of why such a policy is better than one that explicitly accommodates torture in law, through a requirement for a court-issued torture warrant or in some other way.

Posted by Mixner | October 12, 2007 9:39 PM

consum,

Expected benefit of a policy of doing X in situation Y is the benefit of X times the probability Y. The probability of the ticking nuke situation is very low. (Believing otherwise outside an episode of 24 is absurd). The probability of situation Z in which having this policy on the books causes us harm is near 1. That's all the quantification you could possible get or need of a situation like this.

Your description of how to calculate a benefit or cost here is a bit confused, but I think you're basically on the right track. The problem is that you're just making unsubstantiated assertions again about the values that go into that calculation. You offer no argument or evidence to support your claim that the probability of having "this policy" (by which I assume you mean any policy that allows for any kind of lawful torture) on the books causing harm is "near 1." You just assert it. And you ignore the crucial question of how much harm it would cause, which also needs to be factored into the cost calculation.

You're right that the probability of a ticking time bomb situation arising is low (although just how low would depend on how broadly the situation were defined), but the potential benefit is huge--perhaps millions of lives saved, if it involves a weapon of mass destruction. You could certainly try to make the case that even with that huge potential benefit, the probability is so low that the costs are greater. But you haven't made that case. You haven't even tried to make it. You just keep dogmatically insisting that it's true.

I'm simply not sure whether such a binding would be useful or not. Unlike with torture, collateral damage is defensible in utilitarian, consequentialist terms. For tactical, strategic, and bureaucratic reasons, torture policies make no sense. Not to mention that moral case.

Huh? Why do you think torture isn't also defensible in utilitarian, consequentialist terms? If you argue that wartime bombing is sometimes ethical because it can save more lives than it destroys, or more broadly because its total benefits to human welfare can exceed its total costs, why can't someone make the same argument regarding torture?

Posted by Mixner | October 12, 2007 10:07 PM

Prosecutors don't have the power to pardon.

Prosecutors can choose not to bring charges in the first place. Only the President can pardon. By "forcing a pardon" I just meant that charges should be brought but the President should pardon them (if you're gonna go that way).

By keeping the ban in law, but ignoring or setting aside that law in cases where the torture is later deemed to have been justified.

No, not ignoring or setting aside. The pardon has to public, official, on the record, and rare. And it's still probably a bad idea, but better than the status quo.

And of course, that just raises the question of why such a policy is better than one that explicitly accommodates torture in law, through a requirement for a court-issued torture warrant or in some other way.

That has already been explained. An explicit policy has costs and abuse potential beyond the implicit one. (The implicit one still has them, but they are worse in the explicit one.) The ticking nuke situation is so rare that adjusting formal policy to accommodate it would make things worse in more common cases.

Posted by Consumatopia | October 12, 2007 10:26 PM

You could certainly try to make the case that even with that huge potential benefit, the probability is so low that the costs are greater.

Given the elaborate weirdness of the situation (terrorists have a nuke, they put a timer on it rather than a suicide jihadist, we know about the bomb, but not where it is or how to stop it) I think this is common sense. I think this is the first time you've brought up this part of the calculation, though it's been a clear part of my argument from the beginning. You're just throwing out whatever you have to see what sticks, and I'm getting tired of it.

You offer no argument or evidence to support your claim that the probability of having "this policy" (by which I assume you mean any policy that allows for any kind of lawful torture) on the books causing harm is "near 1."

I did right here. It wasn't an absolute proof, but you've never really responded to that argument at all. I've given you argument, you've given me dogmatic assertion. You've never provided any arguments about probability whatsoever--whereas that's been the core of my argument this whole time. You can start talking about it now if you like, but first I'd like an apology for all the time you've wasted talking nonsense until now.

Why do you think torture isn't also defensible in utilitarian, consequentialist terms? If you argue that wartime bombing is sometimes ethical because it can save more lives than it destroys, or more broadly because its total benefits to human welfare can exceed its total costs, why can't someone make the same argument regarding torture?

Most of the argument I made here does not apply to collateral damage. I'm not saying you can't argue for either on utilitarian grounds, it's just that with torture it's really obvious that you'll lose. As you've lost. You didn't have to lose as embarassingly as you did, though.

I'm still interested in how you'd compare rape to collateral bomb damage. I mean, how utilitarian are you?

Posted by Consumatopia | October 12, 2007 10:48 PM

Prosecutors can choose not to bring charges in the first place. Only the President can pardon. By "forcing a pardon" I just meant that charges should be brought but the President should pardon them (if you're gonna go that way).

So let me get this straight: Torture is in every case without exception a terrible, horrible, evil thing that we should never, ever, EVER permit under any circumstances, and that we should punish harshly. Except when someone uses torture and we decide they were justified, in which case they should suffer no adverse consequences. And this position makes sense to you, does it?

Never mind. I give up trying to piece together any kind of coherent position from your conflicting statements.

Posted by Mixner | October 12, 2007 10:51 PM

And this position makes sense to you, does it?

I thought we were clear that there were two different positions here. In fact, there's really three. There's two consequentialist positions (de jure ban vs. de facto ban.) And there's a non-consequentialist position (torture, like rape, is always wrong).

Pointing to contradictions between different positions isn't really interesting--that's why they're different positions. I think my ambivalence between them is reasonable, and is completely unrelated to the flaws in your own reasoning.

Posted by Consumatopia | October 12, 2007 11:07 PM

HRC on Torture

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