The Washington Monthly's put together a special issue on torture and why it's bad. Well worth reading on its own terms, and also the subject of an event tomorrow at the New America Foundation for those of you who are in DC.
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The Torture Issue
18 Mar 2008 04:35 pm
Comments (21)
Even if you don't think terrorists deserve any rights, torture still doesn't make sense, IMO. I firmly believe that it's counterproductive, in at least four ways:
1) Decreases ally support, including support from the moderate Muslim world that we need for intelligence
2) Justifies torture against our own soldiers
3) Gets wrong information (the whole "You'd throw your mom under the bus if you were waterboarded" idea)
4) Prolongs the fight: I think it was WW2, when enemies used to turn themselves over instead of fighting to the death because they knew they wouldn't be tortured
Torture is wrong against unlawful combatants outside Geneva, without exception! Even to save lives.
But killing or maiming innocent soldiers who comply with Geneva in wartime IS acceptable. With few exceptions. Even when it saves no lives. Dispatching prisoners or foe attempting surrender is acceptable if there is no way possible to retain them in secure custody until they can be handed off to rear ech soldiers.
Got it!
And if you are an innocent soldier, or a Muslim Jihadi out to kill civilians remember that you should find being slaughtered or having 3 of your 4 limbs blown off acceptable and preferred - compared to the HORRORS of 3 minutes of waterboarding or 3 days of sleep depravation. Your choice, if you had one should be clear in preferring death or maiming.
Got it!
And, if captured enemy cannot be coercively interrogated, remember your commanders orders that you should kill any soldier captured if they cannot be captured with undue risk or compromise of mission if they are of no intelligence value.
Got it!
I understand that if Lefties were in charge, GITMO would have never had so many prisoners. They would be dispatched, instead, if the attempt to take them prisoner for valuable info was blocked, and attempt to capture was then pure elevated risk, with no reward. Only prisoners taken per Geneva that offered formal surrender, and who could be taken in custdy safely and who would be believed to be willing to comply with all Geneva Rules as prisoners.
Got it!
Torture is wrong against unlawful combatants outside Geneva, without exception! Even to save lives.
But killing or maiming innocent soldiers who comply with Geneva in wartime IS acceptable. With few exceptions. Even when it saves no lives. Dispatching prisoners or foe attempting surrender is acceptable if there is no way possible to retain them in secure custody until they can be handed off to rear ech soldiers.
Got it!
And if you are an innocent soldier, or a Muslim Jihadi out to kill civilians remember that you should find being slaughtered or having 3 of your 4 limbs blown off acceptable and preferred - compared to the HORRORS of 3 minutes of waterboarding or 3 days of sleep depravation. Your choice, if you had one should be clear in preferring death or maiming.
Got it!
And, if captured enemy cannot be coercively interrogated, remember your commanders orders that you should kill any soldier captured if they cannot be captured with undue risk or compromise of mission if they are of no intelligence value.
Got it!
I understand that if Lefties were in charge, GITMO would have never had so many prisoners. They would be dispatched, instead, if the attempt to take them prisoner for valuable info was blocked, and attempt to capture was then pure elevated risk, with no reward. Only prisoners taken per Geneva that offered formal surrender, and who could be taken in custdy safely and who would be believed to be willing to comply with all Geneva Rules as prisoners.
Got it!
I'm still appalled that it's necessary to have a debate about whether we should torture. Twenty years ago nobody bothered to say that torture was wrong and torturers were monsters. It went without saying. It still should.
I'm still appalled that it's necessary to have a debate about whether we should torture.
I feel your pain. Your inability to persuade everyone else to adopt your anti-torture fundamentalism must be very frustrating for you.
It has never "gone without saying" that torture is always and everywhere unjustified. Only a small minority of people have ever believed that nonsense. Most people have more sense.
It has never "gone without saying" that torture is always and everywhere unjustified. Only a small minority of people have ever believed that nonsense.
Your hard-ass self may think this is naive as you sit on the couch eating cheetos and watching war movies, but it's been official U.S. policy through numerous previous wars. George Washington banned torture during the Revolution. The U.S. refused to use torture during WWII.
"Washington banned torture during the Revolution."
Yes, but Washington was terrorist loving hippie. As was Roosevelt. Of course they won their wars. But only a dirty hippie would think that winning the war is more important than torturing people. Dick Cheney knows better.
It has never "gone without saying" that torture is always and everywhere unjustified. Only a small minority of people have ever believed that nonsense. Most people have more sense.
24 is not a documentary, Mixner.
I'd be down with torture if I was 100% sure it would prevent another 9/11.
But that's exactly why I'm not down with torture. You're never 100% sure it'll work. Most of the evidence goes the other way, in fact.
it's been official U.S. policy through numerous previous wars.
No it hasn't. There's never even been a clear definition of torture, let alone a ban on it.
The U.S. refused to use torture during WWII.
You really are very naive. Who told you "the U.S. refused to use torture during WWII?"
mq - George Washington banned torture during the Revolution. The U.S. refused to use torture during WWII.
Posted by mq
Bullcrap on both accounts.
Washington was fine with killing illegal combatants within days of capture. The alternative to a "sort-drop" hanging Washington offered for unlawfuls, which took 20-30 minutes to agonizingly strangle the life out of a captured spy or enemy saboteur - was to talk.
As for WWII, the CIA, French DST, The Jews, KGB, and USA all worked after the war on more sophisticated methods of getting info from the enemy than the frequently used approaches of "kindness indoctrination" which sacrificed many extra months of time and lives to build rapport with enemy - vs. clubbing and beating life-saving info out of enemy.
Generally, now, those who oppose torture under any circumstances tend to be the extremely wealthy Elites, Jew and Gentile, that can't imagine a Draft would ever exist again and thus are happy to trade their side's lesser citizens rights so they can posture as morally superior.
The usual two "trolls for torture" pop up...
Give it up, morons. Torture has been demonstrated to be inefficient and unreliable in all circumstances outside trying to get false confessions from people. None of your babble changes that fact. Not to mention that the fact that you have to cite the Israelis, Nazis, KGB, CIA, and other low-life scumbags to bolster your case doesn't exactly help your cause any.
Hack - Give it up, morons. Torture has been demonstrated to be inefficient and unreliable in all circumstances outside trying to get false confessions from people.
Just psychological intimidation and plea bargaining effectively made you a bitch of the Federal Prison system, Hack. And if you had truly counted as a high value target and turned the screws on you, you would have blubbered out your whole sorry life's story. Imagine what an eager soap-fetching bitch you would have been for true pros in 18-25 nations intelligence services if they had had a crack at you.
I'd be down with torture if I was 100% sure it would prevent another 9/11.
I say we lock up everybody with a driver's license forever, that would prevent more than 40.000 US deaths with a 100% certainty.
per year!
One really has to enjoy the interplay between Mr. Hack and Mr. Ford. Unfortunately, it isn't very productive in getting at the question as to whether torture is effective.
1. Torture is clearly effective in obtaining false confessions, since the truth of the confession is irrelevant.
2. Torture to obtain information may be effective, provided that the information can be independently verified. The problem is that the torturee may not, in fact, have the information desired and hence will say anything to bring a halt to the procedure. The bottom line is that information obtained under torture which has no independent verification is worthless and in fact may be counterproductive if it has been invented.
I've got a question for our blood-lusting brethren and cistern here. How do you identify, pre-torture, people who have information worth torturing for? For all I know, people like Mixner and Chris Ford know where there's a nuke with a timer on it. (Maybe they're in it together. You never know. You just never know.) A timer that's scheduled to go off at 10:15 AM Wednesday March 19, 2008. They'll deny it vehemently, of course. Say that I'm being preposterous. Or worse. The sly bombers always have a plausible story and a pained expression. Especially the ones who know where there's a nuke with a timer on it. The evil, sly ones know how long we'll continue torturing before giving up because the New York Times has tied our hands.
Thanks once again to Mixner and chris ford for demonstrating that they share Osama bin Laden's moral code.
How do you identify, pre-torture, people who have information worth torturing for?
The same way you identify anyone else for interrogation.
You never know. You just never know.)
So what? You never know the man you executed or sent to jail for life really committed the crime. You never know the wartime bombing raid you just made on an enemy city, killing and maiming thousands of innocent civilians, will really achieve its military objectives. If your standard for taking action that harms people is is certainty you'll never do anything. That's why it's an absurd standard. Will innocent people sometimes be tortured for no good reason? Yes. Just as innocent people are sometimes executed or imprisoned for life. Just as innocent people are sometimes killed for no good reason in wartime.
Ford: "Just psychological intimidation and plea bargaining effectively made you a bitch of the Federal Prison system, Hack."
Actually, no. There was no psychological intimidation - unless you count the time they threw me in a holding cell naked claiming that I was suicidal - that didn't work at all for them. My attorney showed up and fucked that up for them.
There was also no plea bargain. It was an open and shut case against me, and we simply pled guilty to avoid drawing the inevitable out much longer. In that respect, my attorney wasn't very effective.
So, as usual, you're wrong on all counts.
And you're still totally wrong on torture.
The bottom line: if torture were effective, there wouldn't be any problem with terrorism or crime. Because everybody involved would already have confessed to everything, and everybody involved would be in prison.
That's not the case - even in those countries Ford cites.
So torture doesn't work. Q.E.D.
Psychotics like Ford and Mixner simply have emotional problems that they deal with by being blind fanatics and fantasists about violence. Inevitably they'll end up shooting their wife or some guy who cut them off on the freeway, and they'll end up in prison - where they'll get to see psychological and physical coercion in person.
That's assuming neither of them aren't already correctional officers - a truly psychotic bunch of assholes, the bottom of the barrel of law enforcement - which is already a hotbed of psychotics with emotional problems, as the New York and LA police departments have demonstrated repeatedly in the news over the years.
Comments closed April 01, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Torture is bad? Who would have thought? Oh yeah, pretty much all of us thought torture was bad ten years ago. But that was apparently only because other people were doing it.
Posted by fostert | March 18, 2008 4:51 PM