Is there any question that waterboarding is torture? Someone at the “Straight Dope” forums decided to investigate this question by waterboarding himself:
I am incredibly fit and training for a 100 mile endurance run. The main thing about such an event is ability to tolerate pain. I am good at this. I am trained.
I also have experience with free-diving from my college days. I once held my breath for 4 minutes and two seconds. Once, while training as a lifeguard I swam laps without breathing until I passed out, so that I could know my limits.
First he tried out “simple” waterboarding, and then tried it with a wet rag preventing him frmo breating through his mouth:
I can see where this would get very unpleasant if you lost control, but still, not terrible, not torture, per se in my book. It wasn’t as bad as my vasectomy or last root canal…
Then he tried it the way the pros do it, with saran wrap:
Next up is saran wrap. The idea is that you wrap saran wrap around the mouth in several layers, and poke a hole in the mouth area, and then waterboard away. I didn’t reall see how this was an improvement on the rag technique, and so far I would categorize waterboarding as simply unpleasant rather than torture, but I’ve come this far so I might as well go on.
Now, those of you who know me will know that I am both enamored of my own toughness and prone to hyperbole. The former, I feel that I am justifiably proud of. The latter may be a truth in many cases, but this is the simple fact:
It took me ten minutes to recover my senses once I tried this. I was shuddering in a corner, convinced I narrowly escaped killing myself.
But remember, Republican attorney generals just can’t tell if it’s torture or not.
Seems pretty clear to me it’s torture. Reminds me of how the cops in Chicago used to beat people by putting a telephone book up against their heads and then whack them with a night stick. The phone book spreads out the impact so that there’s no tell-tale marks, but the impact is still quite effective. Although even that could leave long-term physical effects, which from what I’ve heard waterboarding doesn’t generally do (presuming the subject doesn’t get hit by a secondary effect, such as a heart attack).
I’ve got no problem with ID’ing waterboarding as torture. I don’t know the legal definition of torture, but from a common sense viewpoint it seems like it’s torture to me. The more interesting question to my mind is whether or not it’s a) justifiable and b) effective under any circumstances.
There are certainly circumstances in wartime where getting information rapidly can save numerous lives. Torture generally is viewed as undesirable not only from a moral viewpoint but from a tactical viewpoint – information gained by torture tends to be unreliable. But the feedback I’ve seen is that this technique has obtained reliable information at times. So – are there circumstances (and don’t forget we’re talking wartime, not criminal investigations) where this kind of thing is justifiable?
But the feedback I’ve seen is that this technique has obtained reliable information at times.
Examples? Also, if it acceptable for “us” to torture prisoners to get information if it would save the lives of “our” soldiers, is it also ok for “them” to torture prisoners for the same reason?
The more interesting question to my mind is whether or not it’s a) justifiable and b) effective under any circumstances.
Gahhh! How can people still be asking this question?
It’s well known that torture is never justifiable. Well, not if you are a moral, ethical person. It’s also well known that torture is not effective in eliciting information. Torture will, however, allow you to get the victim to tell you anything that you want them to tell you. For example, you can get them to confess their heresy! Fun for the whole Inquisition!
Here’s another interesting question in the same vein. Is it a) justifiable and b) effective under any circumstances to give smallpox infected blankets to people?
@Jake Squid
If you twist the circumstances enough, you can find a justification for anything. What if you could go back in time and send smallpox blankets to Hitler and Stalin when they were still young and forming their plans? If you say “no”, I think a few million dead innocents might disagree, if they hadn’t been brutally massacred. Obviously, this is an academic, complex, contrived example.
Likewise, there may be similarly complex circumstances where torture is justified. My problem with it is more that allowing for those obscure circumstances is a wedge that leads the vicious, nasty justifications of torture used the world over. It is better to simply ban it outright than to lend it any form of legitimacy.
What if you could go back in time and send smallpox blankets to Hitler and Stalin when they were still young and forming their plans?
The first smallpox vaccines were used in the 18th century and Europeans are adapted to survive smallpox relatively often anyway. In short, not much would happen if you did send them.
If you twist the circumstances enough, you can find a justification for anything.
Sure, and that’s my point. I’m sure that many people could (and can) find a justification for torturing people into admitting heresy. That doesn’t mean that it is moral nor does it mean that it is effective in finding heretics.
In short, not much would happen if you did send them.
It depends who you send them to. Jefferey Amherst was quite satisfied with the results.
I don’t think that’s an interesting question at all. I think it’s a really sick question. And one that those of us in the civilized world settled a long time ago.
Here’s an interesting question: Is there any argument for torture that can’t also be used to support rape and murder in the quest for information? How about raping and murdering someone’s family?
Here’s another one: On what basis do those who torture (or support torture) consider themselves better than any others who torture, rape, murder, and fly airplanes into buildings?
Jefferey Amherst was quite satisfied with the results.
Amherst sent blankets to people from an unvaccinated population that had no evolutionary experience with smallpox. Hitler and Stalin were both probably vaccinated as children and even if they weren’t Europeans who contract smallpox survive the majority of the time. It wouldn’t be a reliable method of offing those particular two examples of evil leaders. Send malaria laden mosquitos or something instead. Or limit the collateral damage by shooting them instead of farting around with indirect assassination. Although it’s not clear to me that the lack of Hitler or Stalin would actually stop fascism or the dictatorial arm of communism from rising to power. Though it might happen in some other manner. What if all that assassinating Hitler does is causes the Nazis to come to power with Goering at their head?
Dianne,
You seem to have left out a very important sentence from your quote of my comment. That is:
It depends who you send them to.
Sure, without that sentence your response makes good sense. With that sentence – which was in the comment you were responding to – your response seems to be something of a non- sequitur.
Given that most of the folks we’re currently torturing aren’t Europeans…
Also, my reading on smallpox is that they haven’t vaccinated for small pox in over 30 years and the smallpox vaccine is good for 10 to 20 years protection. This is why the idea of terrorists using biological weapons (particularly smallpox) was so scary in the wake of 9/11.
With that sentence – which was in the comment you were responding to – your response seems to be something of a non- sequitur.
How? I thought you were suggesting sending smallpox blankets to Hitler and Stalin (two probably vaccinated Europeans) as a way to try to assassinate them prior to their respective rises to power. Did I misunderstand altogether? Well, I would consider it a bad idea either way. Quite apart from the possibility that you could alter history for the worse (eg the alternate and possibly saner leader of the Nazis theory), what had the 18 year old Hitler or Stalin done to merit being murdered horribly? The whole idea of executing people for the crimes they may one day commit gives me a headache. Which is, perhaps, part of your point.
Don’t let fear of smallpox keep you up nights. If it ever happened, we could get people vaccinated pretty quickly. Worry about pandemic flu if you really want to worry about an infectious disease. Nature is the greatest bioterrorist the world has yet known.
How? I thought you were suggesting sending smallpox blankets to Hitler and Stalin (two probably vaccinated Europeans) as a way to try to assassinate them prior to their respective rises to power. Did I misunderstand altogether?
Nope. I never said or implied anything of the sort. I think you are thinking of Silenced is Foo’s comment. And then I thought you were responding directly to me (because of what you quoted) and then we spiraled on down talking about two different things.
Phew, that clears this exchange up for me.
The whole idea of executing people for the crimes they may one day commit gives me a headache. Which is, perhaps, part of your point.
Again, that goes to SiF’s hypothetical question. My point is that both the known ineffectiveness of torture for gleaning new info and the immorality of torture on its own make it abhorrent. The fact that people who read as much as RonF does can still ask the question is sickening. I don’t know if it’s because people want to be able to justify horrible vengeance or that they’re really that dumb. Either way, it’s depressing.
Don’t let fear of smallpox keep you up nights. If it ever happened, we could get people vaccinated pretty quickly.
We could now. 6 years ago, not so much. We were way understocked on the vaccine in 2001. By early 2003 we had enough, IIRC.
@Dianne
You misattribute the post – I was the one who proposed the “Time-Travelling Smallpox for Megacidal Dictators” program. And yes, it was silly of me to forget that they likely were vaccinated for smallpox. In that case, may I propose Pol Pot? With the condition that he is actively planning and beginning to implement his megacidal plans, and that there is some miraculously decent individual waiting on the wings to take his place, and that you get a pony, and a car, and a ponycar, and so on and so forth.
At any rate, there are cases in which horribly violent acts are considered self-defense, something I’m sure we can all agree is a decent and ethical idea. It obviously makes sense to shoot a man who is in the active active process of murdering numerous people – if someone had gunned down the Columbine killers or the V-Tech killer in-progress, I doubt anyone would have claimed that the shooter was unethical in doing so. At that point, we admit that violence is acceptable if it is critical to save lives from the person against whom we are violent. And it is doubtless possible that torture and smallpox blankets could fall under the same ethical justification.
This is different from saying “yes, I can come up with a flimsy justification that could be used to hoodwink the masses into accepting torture”. What I mean is that torture is acceptable under the basic premise of self-defense (assuming that it is effective, used as last-resort, and levelled directly at the agressor and not a proxy, and a host of other complex conditions).
My point, however, is that even if there is an ethical justification for torture that should be reasonable to people who believe in an ethical theory that includes the possibility of self-defense, torture should STILL be illegal, because the determination of that standard of self-defense is extremely subjective.
The classic example is the ticking bomb scenario. It’s obviously contrived and fictitious, but relevant either way, because a war can be thought of as a million “ticking bomb lite” scenarios. Every captive is potentially a source of information that could save lives.
Consider the ticking bomb scenario closely. The typical version is that your captive planted a bomb and is the only one who knows where it is. Time is short, and the only way to save countless innocents is to extract the information from him. Let’s say you’ve tried everything else and your only remaining option is torture. Do you torture him? Or do you fail to defend the people that he is actively in the process of murdering?
Personally, I think torture is justified in that case. It’s no different from shooting the Virginia Tech or Columbine killers in-process. It’s rescuing their victims.
Now, you’ll notice that the scenario is freakishly contrived. Conservatives who come out in support of torture hand-wave this away. I argue the opposite. I say that the fact that it is contrived is the important part.
The trick happens when you start making looser and looser scenarios. What if the bomb may be harmless? What if you’re not sure if he knows? What if he’s not responsible for the bomb?
Torture CAN be justifiable, but the justification sits on the top of a very slippery slope. Legalizing justifiable torture will lead to large amounts of unjust torture. So, for pragmatic reasons, I feel torture should be unconditionally illegal.
Torture CAN be justifiable, but the justification sits on the top of a very slippery slope.
Look, now you’re doing it, too. Torture CANNOT be justifiable. “Why not?” I hear you cry.
Torture cannot be justified because torture is not effective at extracting new information If you torture somebody, they’ll eventually tell you everything that you want to hear. They will not tell you everything that they know.
If you’re going to claim that torture can be justifiable, show the proof that torture is effective at extracting vital information. I believe that you’ll fail in your attempt. Hell, our experienced interrogators say that torture is ineffective. But, noooooooo, we just can’t let the idea that our vengeance may be only horrible vengeance exist. We need to justify our vengeance as useful on some other level. Well, you can justify it just as well as I can justify that time that I threw that enormous rock at another kid’s head. That is, not at all.
Well, it works fine on “24”.
(that was a joke)
For an example of the effectiveness of torture, read about Jose Padilla. He told them all sorts of things that he thought they wanted to hear. He told them nothing new. He is no longer a rational human being.
Even if torture was effective, it would still be immoral. Running medical experiments on unwilling living people can be and has been effective. Yet it is illegal because it is immoral. There is no (ethical or moral) justification for it.
I’m not sure whether the “never ethical” issue applies to realistic or theoretical situations. As in the often stated ‘ticking bomb’ case, for example. In that type of hypothetical where
1) it is conclusively known that the accused possesses the information sought. E.g., the accused admits they planted said bomb, and can prove it.
2) it is conclusively known that a harm exists (the bomb has been discovered); 3) conclusively known time pressures make it difficult to obtain the information through any other means (the bomb is ‘ticking’ with 5 minutes left, and
4) there is a huge cost to other humans that cannot be avoided by other means (“many,” “hundreds”, or “thousands” of those much-cited “innocent lives”, but in any case too many to be evacuated safely before the bomb detonates; the bomb cannot otherwise be disarmed, etc)
I could accept torture in that intentionally contrived scenario. (Jake, are you saying that you would not consider it to be either the most moral, or an equally moral, choice as compared to letting the bomb go off? I’m curious.)
But that’s about as contrived as you can get. Let’s look at all of those criteria:
1) Conclusive knowledge that there’s something there to “extract.” Well, I sure dont trust the government on this one. Do you? We’re all happy to rush to judgment of various folks, each in our own way (and I admit I’m not immune…) would you base torture on some cop’s “gut feeling” taht she knew something? On a “difficult to fake” fingerprint? On a physical resemblance? On the fact that you work for, and therefore might have possibly learned something about the moves of, a terrorist?
2) Conclusive knowledge that a harm exists. Again, we tend to know less about this at the onset, which is where the moral decision lies. We may know some nebulous “attack plan,” or some nebulous “desire to harm” but that doesn’t meet the criteria of #2 ,especially when we look at….
3) conclusively known time pressures. Again, how do we know this? We might THINK there’s an attack planned tomorrow, but that doesn’t satisfy the criteria. How do we know we can’t elicit an answer before then? Especially if we don’t know when “then” is?
4) No other alternative taht doesn’t involve human lives lost. This can be the biggy. So what if a building blows up? build another. The only thing that could even theoretically justify torture would be people dying.
Well, Sailorman, unless you add that there is conclusive evidence that torture is an effective way to extract information, I would say that torture in your contrived scenario is less moral than just letting the bomb go off. The reason I say that is, given the evidence on the efficacy of torture, torturing the suspect results in the immorality of the explosion PLUS the immorality of torture. So, yes, torturing the subject is worse than doing nothing. Also, there are other interrogation methods that are more likely to get the info – even given the time pressure in this case – and so you add the immorality of choosing vengeance over possibly getting the info that you’re looking for. Lose, lose, lose.
IOW, I have a hard time accepting, even in the contrived scenario, that, “No other alternative that doesn’t involve human lives lost.” If you have time for torture, you have time for more humane methods of interrogation. Or are we so off into fantasy with the scenario that calling on Superman is a rational solution? Once you say that no other alternative exists, we’re no longer in our reality.
Duh. Sorry for the misattribution and other confusion, SiF and Jake Squid.
SiF (because yours is the last I looked at closely) & others,
The ticking time bomb scenario is a red herring. It is so wrong on so many levels. It assumes that torture is effective at extracting vital information. It isn’t. It’s even worse in the ticking time bomb scenario, even if you believe that torture is effective, since the perp/torture victim knows that if he can just hold out for an hour or two, kablooie! And he can hold out by giving false info & having his captors take the time to check it out.
So, ticking time bomb scenario = incredibly stupid/irrelevant for the following reasons:
1) Torture is not an effective way to extract information
2) Even if torture was effective, the torture victim need only hold out for an hour or two.
3) Even if torture was effective, the torture victim need only give false information to stall for the time needed for the bomb to detonate.
Can we stop with the TTBScenario now? Thanks.
It’s a hypothetical, Jake. It’s obviously contrived, because it’s designed to illustrate a particular point by using a very specific situation in a very limited universe. You just have to learn to accept that they are useful tools for exploring a moral position. As my professors used to say, “don’t fight the hypothetical, just answer it.”
I suspect you’re uncomfortable because you are trying to remain on the moral high ground of “absolutely never” instead of saying that there exists a possibility, no matter how remote, that it would ever be justified. And yes, this hypothetical and the upcoming followup questions are intentionally designed to try to break that claim–what did you expect when you said “never?”
So.
First of all, when I see this:
I see that you appear to be assigning a utility of zero. The evidence isn’t that torture is completely useless*, it’s that it isn’t as useful as some people think. If the lives saved are numerous enough, then even a low efficacy can be justified.
Or can’t it, in your ideal world? Is there no number at which it would become appropriate?
Next: methods. What I read you as saying is that even given the “5 minutes to get the information or we all die” scenario, there are other methods of extracting the information that are more effective than torture. I’m not trying to be obtuse, but what methods are you talking about?
*From what i have read on torture, it is considered to be a bad way to extract information from soft targets. It’s a horrible way to “fish” for information, for a variety of reasons both practical and ethical. And obviously if the victim knows what you want to hear, or what you believe to be true, they’ll say that.
But I have not seen anything more detailed that addresses what might be called specific information questioning where lies are traceable. That is a distinct kind of questioning.
General questioning like ‘what can you tell us about ____” or “what are your plans?” is difficult to obtain through a hostile person. Specific questioning that can’t be verified, like “what color was the light when you crossed the street” is difficult to obtain as well.
But specific questioning that can be verified by the captors, like, say, “what is your computer encryption password” or “where did you bury the body” seems in a different category. I’m not in favor of using torture to obtain it, but I am not so sure that what I’ve read suggests that this information isn’t obtainable, in part, by torture. So your assumption that it is entirely ineffective may be a bit off.
The utility of torture approaches zero, even for verifiable intelligence, in a short-term situation. The bomb explodes in an hour? How long will it take to verify the info that was given?
The utility of torture is slightly higher, even for verifiable intelligence, in a long-term situation. The victim will say anything and everything to make the torture stop. Most of it will be what the victim thinks you want to hear. Plus the longer it goes on, the more likely the victim is to lose rationality and coherence. The ratio of made up stuff to truth gets larger as time passes.
The evidence of the effectiveness of torture isn’t merely “…[not] as useful as some people think.” The evidence is that torture provides very little useful, actionable intelligence.
More effective form of interrogation? Long term, the standard interrogation methods used by US intelligence for at least the last 60 years. Check out how we interrogated the Nazis that we spirited back to NJ for an example. The self-perpetuating world of espionage is another place to look for how and how effectively we interrogate people.
Short term, same deal. Appeal to the suspect’s conscience. It works surprisingly often.
Your examples of “what is the password” are a lot more realistic (for the torture fans out there) than is the TTBScenario. But, even there, it may actually take less time for software to crack the security than torture would. There are other options.
It’s not that torture has zero effectiveness, it’s just that it’s effectiveness is so low as to not be an acceptable trade off for the horror/immorality. It is in no way a reliable way to extract information.
But, yes. My answer is still, “Never.” Just as is my answer to, “Is it ever acceptable to do medical experimentation on unwilling or unknowing people?”
There are some things that are out of bounds of my morality. Those are two of them. I don’t doubt that some/many people disagree with me on both of those. But I really can’t see a scenario that makes either of them morally acceptable. Neither can be self-defense. Either has the possibility (however likely or slight) of saving more lives. Neither can be justified on that basis.
Is there no number at which it would become appropriate?
I think that I may have already answered this, but I want to do my best to actually address your questions. No, there is no number at which it would become appropriate.
I think a point worth making is that in the case of a ‘Ticking Time-Bomb’ scenario, it really doesn’t matter whether torture is legal or not. if that’s what’s needed to stop the bomb, the authorities will engage in torture . . . and if it was really needed to stop the bomb, they’ll either never be charged or will be charged and acquitted.
I think this is as it should be.
We legislate towards the most common case.
‘Killing someone’ is totally moral and justifiable too, if it’s in self-defense or to save an innocent third party he’s going to kill . . . and yet murder is illegal, which seems right to me. Let’s keep torture illegal, and force torturers to justify their actions on a case-by-case basis. If things are really as dire as they claim, it should be a snap.
If things aren’t as dire, and instead they just kind of want to torture a lot of people routinely (as I suspect), well, they’ll have a harder time of things.
—Myca
No doubt about it, that sounds painful and horrendous.
One more reason I, for one, will never commit a terrorist act against the United States.
Diane asks, “Examples?”
Here in a story about the destroyed CIA tapes in which it is alleged that at least once the technique resulted in useful information.
Allegations are not proof, but it certainly bears (and will certainly be subjected to) investigation. Other examples are offered in the Wiki entry for “waterboarding”.
And as I said in my first post, yes; torture is generally not a good tactical idea because the subject will at some point simply tell you whatever you want to hear so that you stop. But that’s a far cry from saying that they’ll never tell you the truth and you’ll never get useful information or that you’ll always be able to get it faster in other ways. Thirty-five seconds is pretty quick.
Morally? The morality of torture is highly questionable. But if the report is true, I wonder what the relatives of the people who would have been killed in those Al-Queda attacks would say. Or the people themselves.
Also, if it acceptable for “us” to torture prisoners to get information if it would save the lives of “our” soldiers, is it also ok for “them” to torture prisoners for the same reason?
They already do. Hell, they grab swords and cut prisoners’ heads off for the sin of being infidels and for the propaganda value. So I’m not too worried about equivalencies here. The people we capture and interrogate tend to survive. The people they capture tend to die. Equivalencies in prisoner treatment does not seem to be a motivating factor in how Al-Queda et. al. treat their prisoners, or else Al-Queda would be jailing prisoners, not killing them.
BTW; in passing, I’m curious about why you put “us” and “them” in quotes?
Ooh, looks like a nasty typo there. Here, let me fix it for you:
“One more reason I, for one, will never be kidnapped by a bounty hunter off the streets of a foreign country, held without trial or the ability to examine the evidence (if any) against myself, and tortured despite my pleas of innocence, tortured until my will snaps and I confess to anything they want me to confess to.”
or maybe
“One more reason I, for one, will never have the bad luck to be a family member of someone accused (but not convicted) of a terrorist act against the United States, since in several cases family members were threatened with rape and torture in order to gain the cooperation of their relatives.”
Hope that helps.
One more reason I, for one, will never commit a terrorist act against the United States.
I will never commit a terrorist act against the United States* or any other country because I believe it both immoral and bad tactics. But if I were considering committing a terrorist act, the threat of waterboarding if caught wouldn’t deter me.
*Unless the definition of “terrorist act” gets broadened to include things like hiding Islamic neighbors when the government comes to take them away to concentration camps or voting or something similar. Which I’m not expecting. Well, maybe if Huckabee wins, but not otherwise.
And as I said in my first post, yes; torture is generally not a good tactical idea because the subject will at some point simply tell you whatever you want to hear so that you stop. But that’s a far cry from saying that they’ll never tell you the truth and you’ll never get useful information or that you’ll always be able to get it faster in other ways. Thirty-five seconds is pretty quick.
And there were alternative methods to get that information. Alternatives that were not torture and have a long history of being more efficacious than torture. 35 seconds, if I understand correctly, was the amount of time it took him to scream that he’d tell them anything – not the amount of time it took him to start reeling off info about planned attacks.
I’m also skeptical (I’ve become a lot more skeptical over the years of similar claims w/ no proof) of the claim that he provided info that prevented dozens of attacks. Where was the news about the arrests and/or operations that, based on Zubaydah’s info, prevented the actual attacks. I’ve noticed that we make the claim of prevented attacks frequently, but never provide any details at all. I imagine, since it’s been years, that Zubaydah is no longer providing pertinent, actionable intelligence and that revealing details about the operations that prevented the attacks he informed us of years ago will no longer compromise any security. Can we see some evidence now?
But, in the end, we had alternative and long-proven methods to gain this information. America chose torture. I am ashamed.
Let’s try Ye Olde Trolley Problem…
Dr. Supervillan has hidden a nuclear bomb in a city. He is threatening to detonate it unless you torture a specific innocent person, who is tied up in front of you. If you do perform the requested torture, he will render the bomb harmless. Assuming that Dr. Supervillain will keep his word, is it moral to perform the requested torture?
See also: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/in-defense-of-torture_b_8993.html
(You have to get into a pretty ridiculous scenario before torture starts making moral sense. Basically, as far as I can tell, the best real-life policy is to ban it outright, and suggest that if anyone does find himself in such a bizarre situation, he might as well break the law and face the consequences, as did the shipwrecked English sailors who were found guilty of murder but had their sentences commuted.)
To quote Major Sherwood F. Moran (one of the great US interregators.)
“One of our interpreters at a certain base was told that, when a prisoner is to be interviewed, he should be marched in, with military personnel on either side of him; the national flag of the conqueror should be on display, to give the prisoner a sense of the dignity and majesty of the conqueror’s country, and that he should stand at attention, etc. In this atmosphere the interpreter, according to instructions, attempted to interrogate the prisoner. The prisoner replied courteously but firmly, “I am a citizen of Japan. As such I will tell you anything you wish to know about my own personal life and the like, but I cannot tell you anything about military matters.” In other words, he was made so conscious of his present position and that he was a captured soldier vs. enemy Intelligence, that they played right into his hands! Well, that was zero in results. But later this same interpreter took this prisoner and talked with him in a friendly and informal manner, giving him cigarettes and some tea or coffee, with the result that he opened up perfectly naturally and told everything that was wanted, so far as his intelligence and knowledge made information available.” (his report can be found here.)
Having read many accounts on the various interrogation methods available I personally believe that torture is not only the least effective and the least humane, but also among the slowest even when it is effective. (Nobody is going to start the torture game at the waterboarding level… I hope.) The main problem is that we haven’t been training people in proper interrogation methods and have a general distrust of people who know arabic or the culture.
Chief actually demonstrates why all this “ticking bomb” stuff is nonsense.
It’s a mere rhetorical ploy. The proponents of torture don’t actually care about whether it produces intel. Ticking bomb scenarios are so rare as to serve only as hypotheticals for philospohy classes, not meaningful bases for intel doctrine. In the real world, interrogation involves a long process of talking. And it works pretty well.
The real game here is that the proponents do not want to use torture to extract intel. As Chief expressed, they want to use it to intimidate foes who are not afraid to die.
This would be, I suppose, the Tepes doctrine (after Vlad the Impaler). It belongs, along with the Daniel Pipes school of village-scale collective punishment, in the discard pile of palpably evil foreign policy ideas.
Obsidian Wings had a nice series of posts in November about the pointless nature of the hypothetical ticking time bomb situations in torture discussions. I mean, sure, you can debate about torturing an Irish king who can only be killed if you stab him in the thigh while waterboarding him and having a goat sing in his presence at sunrise during a thunderstorm, and he’s the only guy who knows where the bomb that’ll blow up Munich in 24 hours is, but how likely is that to happen? Has there ever been a real ticking time bomb situation?
Compare that to all the torture that’s really happening right now, and what it’s used for. We don’t need hypotheticals to justify or condemn torture when we have real torture going on, and it’s situations like that which should be discussed.
We are fighting people with an authoritarian mindset (the same mindset “we” have, so I’m not being judgmental).
In order to defeat them, it is necessary to convince them that we are (a) able and (b) willing to do horrible things to them. More specifically, it is necessary to convince a (sometimes) small group of (almost always) men that we are willing and able to do those horrible things directly to them – not just, “we’ll blow up Munich” but “we’ll blow up Munich if it will take you out also, because you’re the real target.”
In most previous wars, this was not difficult. The war itself was horrible enough. We were going to bomb Munich anyway. The Nazi leaders have no illusions about us having compunctions about blowing them up; they fight only as long as they believe they can reasonably avoid this fate, for example, by winning conventionally or by blowing up OUR small group of deciders.
The Iraq War is not sufficiently horrible to create this psychological perception in our enemies’ leadership. It is horrible – far too many people have died and are dying – but we are not deploying the type of mass force unleashed in previous wars. No fleets of bombers have turned Baghdad into ash, no super-weapons have been dropped to vaporize entire cities. It is clear to our enemies that we are NOT willing to burn down the entire house to get the three fleas; they can hide among civilians and know that we have to come hunt them down.
But having hunted them down, what is more, our enemies are not people for whom the prospect of mere physical death is extremely demotivational. They are, however, people for whom honor, face, machismo, standing – call it cockiness, if you like – is extremely important. They CAN be demotivated by the prospect of psychological humiliation and failure.
Torture produces this psychological effect. Our enemies know that if they are captured, it is not a comfy POW camp that awaits them, but waterboarding and God knows what else. Like the brave experimenter who self-waterboarded, they know that if they are caught, they will be broken and humiliated, period.
It is not particularly material that their breaking is not likely to yield substantial intelligence information. As others have said, that information could be gotten much more effectively through other methods, and is. The people we are waterboarding are not people who we are convinced have vital information we need in order to win the war. They are people who, by example, demonstrate to their peers among our enemies’ leadership that the consequences of continuing to make war against the United States are humiliation and debasement. To fight against the United States is to be broken and unmanned.
In mass wars, we tortured wholesale, burning entire cities alive to demonstrate to the cities’ owners that they and all they possessed were subject to our hostile power. In this war, we are torturing retail, targeting specific individuals in relatively small numbers, to demonstrate to the individual’s contact network that to be subject to our hostile power is an awful thing. This is no more (and no less) awful than our actions in previous wars.
Ah, honesty at last. Let’s see how this BDSM role-playing works out.
Gee Robert, I guess our practice of torturing random Afgani taxi drivers to death is why Al Qaeda and the Taliban have disbanded and the Iraq War was resolved by the revelations of rampant prisoner torture and murder at Abu Graib. Oh wait.
The monstrous practice of terror bombing in the second world war (Dresden, Tokyo, so many others burnt to the ground to terrorize the populace) did not win WWII (you can make an argument for Hiroshima and Nagisaki ending the Pacific front, but the firebombing manifestly did not terrorize either the Germans or the Japanese into surrendering, nor for that matter did the London air raids terrorize Britain into surrendering earlier in the war). The monstrous practice of torturing prisoners has not won the war in Iraq, nor has it won the war against Al Qaeda or the Taliban. Torturing prisoners demonstrates our evilness and serves as recruiting and funding posters for the Insurgency, Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
Your version of realpolitik is both disgusting and a dismal failure.
It’s a mere rhetorical ploy. The proponents of torture don’t actually care about whether it produces intel.
I fail to see where you or anyone else has given evidence that supports such a blanket statement.
Ticking bomb scenarios are so rare as to serve only as hypotheticals for philospohy classes, not meaningful bases for intel doctrine.
How do you know? You are that familiar with the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan and various other places in the world that you can authoritatively say that the incidence of such scenarios doesn’t exist?
Thomas, TSID said:
In the real world, interrogation involves a long process of talking. And it works pretty well.
True. But to extend this to mean that a long process of talking is the only effective means of interrogation makes no allowance for any situation where there is a time constraint. That’s consistent with your assertion that such cases do not exist. I suspect that it’s inconsistent with reality, however.
And there were alternative methods to get that information. Alternatives that were not torture and have a long history of being more efficacious than torture. 35 seconds, if I understand correctly, was the amount of time it took him to scream that he’d tell them anything – not the amount of time it took him to start reeling off info about planned attacks.
If you have a citation on how quickly this guy gave out what information, I’d like to see it. The citations I’ve seen haven’t mentioned that either way.
I’m also skeptical (I’ve become a lot more skeptical over the years of similar claims w/ no proof) of the claim that he provided info that prevented dozens of attacks.
Skepticism is a good thing, especially here. I offer no blank check to anyone who simply asserts a claim that waterboarding in a given instance was necessary. This kind of thing should be reviewed outside the organization that does them.
Where was the news about the arrests and/or operations that, based on Zubaydah’s info, prevented the actual attacks. I’ve noticed that we make the claim of prevented attacks frequently, but never provide any details at all.
If you read the milblogs you’ll see plenty of reports of arrests and operations preventing attacks. I doubt, though, that it’s wise practice to tie specific actions to the interrogation of particular captives.
I imagine, since it’s been years, that Zubaydah is no longer providing pertinent, actionable intelligence and that revealing details about the operations that prevented the attacks he informed us of years ago will no longer compromise any security. Can we see some evidence now?
I wouldn’t make those assumptions. There are still probably plenty of people in Iraq who were players for one side or another back then who are still in the game.
But, in the end, we had alternative and long-proven methods to gain this information.
I think that you are disregarding some quite-possible scenarios to justify this statement.
Lisa said:
Compare that to all the torture that’s really happening right now, and what it’s used for. We don’t need hypotheticals to justify or condemn torture when we have real torture going on, and it’s situations like that which should be discussed.
That’s a fine idea! Let’s discuss the the amount of torture going on now, and what it’s being used for, on all sides of the conflict. How much torture do you think Coalition forces are using, and why? And how much torture do you think Al-Queda and other opposition forces are using, and why?
Ron, no one can prove that the ticking bomb scenario has never happened. It’s impossible to prove a negative. It’s up to people who want to torture legally to prove that the ticking bomb scenario has ever existed.
Why does it matter how much torture Al-Queda uses? I mean, it matters in many ways, but why does it matter to a discussion of the legitimacy of us using torture?
At least no one here is claiming that waterboarding isn’t clearly torture… which means that no one here could be attorney general.
I find it mind boggling and disgusting that we have reached the point where Republicans can blithely argue that torture is a good thing.
RonF,
Your position is not the default position that requires evidence to refute. Your position is so far from the default position that I think it is hard for most of the rest of us to react with anything other than revulsion at your arguments. Nonetheless, if you wish to continue arguing that the US should rescind its laws forbidding torture, rescind its recognition of torture as a war crime, rescind its recognition of systematic torture of prisoners as a crime against humanity, and become even more of a pariah state than it already is, then the onus is on you to explain why we should reject more than a century of US legal and military practice, not on the rest of us to explain why torture has been and is rejected by all decent human beings.
If you have evidence of multiple times when torture has saved thousands of lives, please present it. If you don’t have that evidence (and no, the television show 24 does not count, no matter how much influence it has had on the practices of our torturers and the justifications that Americans now make for being a nation of torturers, no matter how much the military has asked the producers of the show to please stop corrupting the minds of Americans), and you don’t, then please recognize that your advocacy for torture has no rational basis. What other basis it has, I can hardly imagine. Maybe you argue for it out of blood lust. Maybe you argue for it out of partisan loyalty. I really can’t guess.
I am ashamed on your behalf. I am ashamed to live in a nation where arguing in favor of torture has become normal. I am horrified to think that you are someone in a position to have an influence on large numbers of children.
BTW, RonF =/ Robert.
Thomas, if I’m against torture, yet unwilling to categorically say that there exists no situation where torture would ever be appropriate, does that mean I’m a “proponent of torture” in your view? I am curious as to whether you intend to lump me, or Myca for example, into the same category as Robert.
The evidence stuff seems strained either way. It seems reasonable to believe that if we knew that torture WAS NOT effective, and we were torturing people anyway, the government would do its damndest to hide the evidence of such.
Similarly, we all know that much of the worth of political and military intel is that the other side doesn’t know you have it… so if we knew that torture WAS effective, we would probably also hide the evidence of such. For a long time.
As a result, asking people to “produce evidence to prove” either the efficacy or inefficacy of torture seems like a sophist’s ploy, unless one or more of us happen to be a head of CIA or otherwise situated to have access to the answer.
Sailorman,
The government has been doing its damnedest to hide the fact that we are torturing prisoners. It just hasn’t been completely successful. It is also noteworthy that it has not been the people who actually know how to get information from prisoners who have advocated for being allowed to use torture. Instead, the order to torture has repeatedly come down from the top.
Personally, I think that being against torture but unwilling to state that there is no circumstance ever in which torture would be utilitarian in some short term sense is very different from both Robert’s strongly pro-torture position and RonF’s less strongly pro-torture position. I’m not clear on what your position is, and I do disagree with Myca’s position (personally, I think that if some freakish circumstance arose in which it was abundantly clear that torture was the only way to reliably extract critical information that would save thousands of lives – and I am unable to come up with a hypothetical that obeys what we know about torture that matches this description, but ignoring that and just accepting the hypothetical – that the torturer should be willing to sacrifice 10-20 years of their life in prison along with their human decency), but there is a vast difference between Myca’s position and the idea that torture should be legalized and merely subject to review to make sure that it was productive.
I do agree with Thomas that ticking time bomb hypotheticals tell us very little about the utility or legitimacy of torture, and that the little that they can tell us (to get a hypothetical in which torture is morally justified requires creating a completely ridiculous hypothetical) is not the use they have been being put to in this country for the past 6 years, but I think you are misreading him if you think that he is saying that no one could possibly find ticking time bomb hypotheticals interesting except torture advocates.
The fact that we live in a time and place where somebody could believe that they are a reasonable and moral human being while espousing the filth of comment #32 really, really depresses me. I can say with all conviction that comment 32 can only come from, at best, a morally corrupt person. Unfortunately, those reprehensible views are held by a significant enough portion of both the powers in government and the population at large to allow them to be proudly proclaimed.
Wow. “Torture is something we should do,” arguments. Sad. Very, very sad.
Aside from the personal attack, which I’d really rather you avoid, I think saying “comment 32 can only come from, at best, a morally corrupt person” misses what should be the central point — which is not individual corruption, but society’s.
After all, it’s not only Robert who is now in favor of torture. Virtually his entire party’s leadership class — apart from McCain (and Huckabee? I don’t know what Huckabee’s position is) — have become torture boosters. And this is widely acceptable in our society. No one becomes unelectable by advocating torture, the way I assume they would if they explicitly advocated rape or child abuse.
That can only happen in a morally corrupt society. It’s only in the current insane context, when years of corrupt rule have eaten away at our society’s sense of right and wrong, that people can lose their moral compass enough to say that we really should be torturing our enemies.
World War II: The United States directly inflicts hundreds of thousands of casualties, and indirectly kills millions more. At home, we establish concentration camps containing hundreds of thousands of people, mostly our citizens, on the sole basis of their ethnic origin. In the field, our troops brutalize and torture enemy soldiers on a regular, informal, and largely uncontrolled basis – more to work out their own aggressions than for any real purpose. A large part of our grand strategy involves creating conditions of starvation among the civilian population of our enemies.
Iraq War, sixty years later: The US inflicts perhaps direct casualties at perhaps 10% of the rate of former wars, while still indirectly killing far too many. We establish detention camps for a few thousand individuals, mostly not citizens, identified largely, though not infallibly, on the basis of their actual associations with terrorists. In the field, our troops comport themselves to a substantially superior behavioral standard, and torture becomes the instrument of a relatively small group, applied for gruesome but real reasons of the national interest. A large part of our strategy consists of building infrastructure for the nation we’ve occupied.
This, by you, represents a decline in morality? It seems like an improvement to me. The body piles are smaller.
War is always and everywhere horrible. Finding waterboarding horrible is believable. Finding waterboarding to be a huge decline from the golden era of concentration camps and nuclear bombings is a bit too precious for belief. YMMV.
Aside from the personal attack, which I’d really rather you avoid…
You’re right. I apologize for the personal attack.
That can only happen in a morally corrupt society.
This is correct and what I was trying to say with my line about significant proportions of the populace. I should have waited longer to be able to more coherently and politely state my thoughts.
Iraq War, sixty years later…
Oh, of course, our troops behave so much better today than did our troops during WWII. A claim for which you will provide cites?
You forgot to mention the orders from the FDR admin to use torture during interrogations and you forgot to mention the FDR admin publicly minimizing torture as nothing more than hazing pranks. Thank heavens the US is much more moral these days.
BTW, I never said anything about a decline in morality. “Decline in morality” is the catchphrase that those in the “Family Values” camp use.
What I said is that your position is morally corrupt. I said that I am ashamed that the US has chosen torture over other, more reliable, methods of interrogation. A little bit different than what I’ll generously call your misinterpretation of my comment.
I was responding to Amp, not to you, Jake. He’s claiming that exposure to our wicked leaders has led society to abandon its ideals. I’m asking him when, exactly, those ideals were in play.
If you want to compare and contrast executive orders, though, let’s compare Bush’s interrogation XO to FDR’s 9066. Tell me how you rank those morally.
Robert, why do you hate America so much?
FDR’s 9066 was also clearly immoral. I’d be nearly as disgusted by comments if they were advocating such a position as I am by your comments advocating a policy of torture.
If I had to rank them, I’d rank torture as worse than detention. I’d rank torture as far, far worse than detention. It’s not even close. How would you rank them?
I think putting 120,000 of our citizens in concentration camps is much worse than waterboarding, what, 12,000 suspected or known Al-Qaeda fighters. It’s not even close.
Okay, so we both agree that detaining our citizens in camps is immoral. Now, if we could only come to some sort of agreement about torture…
Or abortion.
War is always terrible, and war always involves atrocities. But WW2 was not a war of choice. We could very easily have avoided the casualties, direct and indirect (if it’s indirect are they less dead?), of the Iraq War, and we should have.
In general, though, one of Robert’s points is well taken; we’ve always sucked. The willingness of Americans to be all rah-rah for torture isn’t a new corruption, it’s just a new and shiny wrinkle on the same old corruption.
Regarding abortion:
There can be legitimate disagreement on whether or not a fetus is a person. I don’t think there’s any legitimate disagreement on whether or not the people we’re torturing are people, however. It’s just that some of us favor torturing them anyway.
But WW2 was not a war of choice.
Sure it was, for the US at least.
If we don’t care that a fascist regime dominates the Middle East, why would we care that a fascist regime dominates Europe? Neither the Germans nor the Japanese had serious territorial ambitions or capabilities in North America, and neither harbored any serious ideological hatred of America. Hell, Hitler hoped that the Anglos would align with him out of racist sympathies. The Japanese just wanted to be left alone to pursue their intramural regional aggressions and to secure raw materials.
If you want to argue that the Nazi ideology itself represented a serious threat that the West had no choice but to deal with in one way or another, regardless of the geopolitical concerns of the moment, then I will agree with you – and I’ll ask why the same ideology, which was inculcated into Iraq by the actual Nazis, suddenly is no longer something we have to deal with in Iraq.
Nor am I sure why “war of choice” is a moral metric that somehow absolves or condemns. If the Canadians attack us, and we feel it’s necessary to inter Canadian nationals, that’s OK – but if we attack them, it’s morally wrong? It seems like if it’s wrong, it’s wrong.
I wouldn’t characterize this as “we’ve always sucked”, however. We’ve usually been willing to do what it takes to win wars; we’ve also, generally, done it while maintaining a higher moral plane. They behead, we waterboard. That’s usually a pragmatic decision, though. In war you cannot afford to be “good”, you’d be defeated inside a week. But we often can afford to be the least evil of the vicious bastards in contention, and that does pay dividends.
Ron, no one can prove that the ticking bomb scenario has never happened. It’s impossible to prove a negative.
I agree. But it seems that there are posters here who disagree with you – who state that the “ticking time bomb” scenario can’t really happen, is barely even useful as a hypothetical, and is mainly used to mask the real motives of torturers and their supporters. Apparently they can prove a negative.
It’s up to people who want to torture legally to prove that the ticking bomb scenario has ever existed.
I would say that use of this kind of technique should be highly restricted and would have to be reserved for a point in time where the people who want to use it would have to justify it if at all possible before the fact and very definitely after the fact that they used it because a “ticking time-bomb” scenario in fact existed.
Anybody who claims there’s ever been a ticking time bomb scenario is lying. Plain and simple. Hi, Army interrogator here. It’s bullshit. So, too, is the notion that torture works. All it does is get conservative asshole chickenhawks off. Robert might talk about what he thinks works, but he’s wrong, plain and simple. Torture doesn’t work. The bullshit macho approach doesn’t work. What works, plain and simple, is this: building rapport. Conversation. Medical care. Let them think you’re weak, let them overestimate you—-great! Even better! All that flag and might shit does not work. I spent a year over there. Let them think I’m blonde and small and stupid! Even better! Let them slip. No muss, no fuss, no nightmares later.
In order to defeat them, it is necessary to convince them that we are (a) able and (b) willing to do horrible things to them. More specifically, it is necessary to convince a (sometimes) small group of (almost always) men that we are willing and able to do those horrible things directly to them – not just, “we’ll blow up Munich” but “we’ll blow up Munich if it will take you out also, because you’re the real target.”
Yeah, because they know what our ideals are, and to see us violating them doesn’t confirm their prejudices at all. You know this how, Robert?
But having hunted them down, what is more, our enemies are not people for whom the prospect of mere physical death is extremely demotivational. They are, however, people for whom honor, face, machismo, standing – call it cockiness, if you like – is extremely important. They CAN be demotivated by the prospect of psychological humiliation and failure.
That’s funny. I’ve found them to be disarmingly human. Again, Robert, you know this how? From repeatedly watching 24, which promotes this type of bullshit with every episode? Any interrogator worth their salt will tell you that interrogation is not a fast or easy process. Furthermore, these guys know what our standards are supposed to be and they know what the Geneva Convention is. Violate that and they know and they also know they’ve broken you. That gives them strength. I’ve lost count of the number of guys I’ve had who underestimated me becuase I was little, blonde, and female. Let them think I’m stupid. Then they slip, and I can sleep at night. Arab guys are often exceedingly courteous to women they don’t know. They can also be a little arrogant. I’ve used that more times than I can count. They never knew.
Torture produces this psychological effect. Our enemies know that if they are captured, it is not a comfy POW camp that awaits them, but waterboarding and God knows what else. Like the brave experimenter who self-waterboarded, they know that if they are caught, they will be broken and humiliated, period.
God, you’re a revolting, disgusting excuse for a human being. I’ve been to war and I think torture is a horrible abuse for human rights. What’s your fucking excuse?
It is not particularly material that their breaking is not likely to yield substantial intelligence information. As others have said, that information could be gotten much more effectively through other methods, and is. The people we are waterboarding are not people who we are convinced have vital information we need in order to win the war. They are people who, by example, demonstrate to their peers among our enemies’ leadership that the consequences of continuing to make war against the United States are humiliation and debasement. To fight against the United States is to be broken and unmanned.
Hey, it doesn’t MATTER if we get shit from torturing our enemies! It doesn’t matter if they’re innocent! It doesn’t matter if they know anything! Torture ’em anyway! Never mind that the US should stand for something beyond brutality and inhumanity. I swore an oath, three times, to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. I had to study the Geneva Conventions to do my job. You disgust me.
In mass wars, we tortured wholesale, burning entire cities alive to demonstrate to the cities’ owners that they and all they possessed were subject to our hostile power. In this war, we are torturing retail, targeting specific individuals in relatively small numbers, to demonstrate to the individual’s contact network that to be subject to our hostile power is an awful thing. This is no more (and no less) awful than our actions in previous wars.
Are you jerking off over this? Because I can think of no other reason to justify the way you slaver over the prospect of torturing and killing people.
I’ve been in the military sixteen years and I’ve been to twenty different countries and speak two other languages fluently. I can speak politely in two others. I served as an Army interrogaotor in Iraq and was in combat and returned injured and ill. I studied the Geneva Convention as part of my training and learned as part of my training that the first thing that you tried was decency and coffee and Gummi bears. That worked. I got RPGs and mortars and other ordnance off the street in Iraq. I got a medal. More than that, I came home with the idea that the Iraqis—-from the ordinary people I spoke to every day to the insurgents I interrogated—were human beings, and that recognition allowed me to cling to my own humanity as well. I find Robert’s justifications of torture to be an insult to the job I did, the men and women I served with, and the people of Iraq whom I met and spoke with. This is beyond disgusting.
Oh, yeah, and Robert? Who gives a flying fuck about FDR versus today? We’re not discussing FDR, but good job on trying to change the subject when you’re losing. Being an asshole is not something one judges by degree, unless one fractions the worth of real people. Let’s see…120,000 Japanese=12,000 waterboarding victims? Um, no. Does that mean that sexually abusing 120,000 women versus raping 12,000 is okay? Torture is torture. They’re wrong in and of themselves. You don’t get to bargain with human rights.
I can’t understand why this shit is even being debated on a supposedly liberal blog.
When I was there, between the April and August 04 uprisings, we took a guy captive who had killed five British contractors. The Ukes took custody of him and roughed him up. We then received custody of him from them and reimbursed him for the belongings the Ukes had stolen: cell phone, briefcase, etc., etc., We could not make a good enough case to charge him.
Later on we received word from informants: he was on the street, marvelling at how we had treated him, amazed that he had not been beaten or abused.
We noticed an upturn in tips after that.
We got a lot of complaints about the Ukes while we were there. Bribes, brutality, the whole bit. We got to be the good cops, and when we got ambushed, it was Iraqi civilians who tried to save us, not because they were afraid of us, but because we’d helped them, because we’d cared, because we’d listened, becuase we’d helped them find Saddam’s mass graves and more. As a woman, I have to say, too, that both men and women sought me out with the expectation that gender roles would be obeyed. Those expectations got me a lot of information.
Am I biased? I’m biased indeed because I think the American military is composed of decent men and women, and because after sixteen years I think they deserve recognition. Robert might slaver at the thought of torture but no one who’s decent does. And that ought to tell you everything you need to know.
ginmar, outside of a “ticking time bomb” scenario, I won’t challenge your statements about what works and what doesn’t; I’m inclined to agree with you. I have a technical question, however:
Furthermore, these guys know what our standards are supposed to be and they know what the Geneva Convention is. … I had to study the Geneva Conventions to do my job.
Help me out here with something, then. It was my understanding that under the Geneva Conventions, people who are not wearing a uniform and are not participating in combat as part of a state’s military are illegal combatants, not prisoners of war, and the standards for their treatment on the basis of the Geneva Conventions (as opposed to what we do because of our own standards or the “here’s what works” standard) are such that they can just about be shot out of hand. Can you expand on this?
Ginmar, I don’t think torture works to gather information. (Or at least, it doesn’t work nearly as well over multiple attempts as other methods; everything works sometimes.) I think it works to demoralize the people we’re fighting against, which leads to their surrender.
Robert, it doesn’t demoralize them. They know what standard we’re supposed to abide by, and to see us violating it strengthens their resolve. I won’t justify it in practical terms. It’s wrong. Period.
RonF, under the GC, the convention was to grant status rather than not in the interest of humanity. The practical convention is very simple: torture does not work, and either makes a monster of the torturer, or destroys them entirely. Humanity works with most of the people you’re going to deal with. It’s not fast, but then again neither is terrorism. Unless you catch OBL himself, you’re not going to catch anybody who knows shit. Abu Zubaydah himself turned out to be a low level paranoid schizophrenic. What a great catch! And we tortured somebody instead of giving him medication.
If you read the linked article, you’d have read that after a certain point, waterboarding evokes an entirely involuntary response. Torture. It doesn’t get any simpler than that.
Also, Robert, you’re ignoring all the rest of the stuff I commented on. It’s a habit of yours I’ve noticed, as many of the people I interrogated attempted to do the same thing. You’d be amazed how far you get by simply demanding that somebody answer the question you asked, not the question they were comfortable asking. You had a great deal to say about motivations and justifications for torture. I shot them all down. Now you’re silent on the subject. There’s a message there. I’ve been doing this job too damned long not to notice that silence.
Ginmar, other than correcting basic misperceptions or misstatements that you have or make, there is no point in me discussing things with you. You don’t answer questions directed at you, and your hostility to anyone not sharing your basic assumptions and worldview is such that no conversation is possible. Accordingly, I spend my time in other ways.
Translation: you nailed me and I don’t want to address my own fallacies so I’ll blame it all on you and Amp will let me get away with it as usual. I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about and so I’ll scuttle away, whining that somebody is being mean to me, while everything I said gets ignored.
You disgusting little fuck. What a coward you are. You only post here because Amp will never ban you, no matter what you do or say. Go jerk off while you’re whining about how mean I am. I don’t know why I bother with you. You’re about the worst most dishonest anti-feminist troll there is and Amp lets you get away with it.
Don’t bother banning me. I should have known better than to waste my time here, where Robert gets to jerk off while Amp lets him. I’m done. Happy now, guys? Feminist space my ass.
Yeah, that there, pretty much. And I’ve been banned here, btw, so you’ll need to find some other rhetorical hook to hang yourself on.
Gee, I notice you’re not addressing any of my points. That’s the second time. And if you’re banned, how are you commenting? I’m sure Amp slapped you gently on the wrist and sent you to bed without dessert. Poor dear.
Now address the points I brought up or shut the fuck up. I’m not wasting my time on your bullshit and what you usually do is ignore shit when you get called on it.
Well, here’s your call. Address it or shut up.
I see shutting up appears to be the option taken. So, according to the reasoning tactics of the right—to which Robert claims allegiance—-that means I win.
Sure, Robert, slink off with your tail between your legs.
Banned in the past.
So you’re being dishonest.
Again.
Three times you haven’t addressed my points. One time you’ve been freshly dishonest.
No, I’m not being dishonest. You’re not reading well, or I’m not writing well. I said “I’ve been banned”, meaning that (in the past) the act of banning has happened to me. I didn’t mean I was banned now; obviously, if that were true, these comments wouldn’t be appearing.
I believe Ginmar said Amp would never ban you. This has, to my knowledge, thus far been born out.
Also, I didn’t see Ginmar duck any questions. I did see you ignore an awful lot of evidence meted out by someone in a position to know about the subject.
I’ve banned Robert from threads, and on one occasion that I recall I banned him from “Alas” temporarily. If people want to discuss this matter further, please take it to an open thread.
Robert, as far as I can tell there is a widespread belief among Americans that American soldiers, if captured, will be tortured and killed.
Has this led the US to be demoralized and surrender?
Mandolin: I discussed things with Ginmar many, many times on this blog and others, back in the before time, in the long long ago. That’s the you-dont-answer-questions context. I believe I explained why I wasn’t going to engage her, other than to correct basic errors of fact for the elucidation of other readers. I believe her responses demonstrate the “why” of that quite adequately.
Amp: No, it hasn’t, I think because our soldiers don’t think like their soldiers. But I will admit that I don’t really know whether the lack of demoralization comes from the fact that they capture very few of our troops, or from the cultural difference.
Robert, as far as I can tell you’re making up nonsense in order to make excuses for torture. Some folks are urging me to end this discussion, but I’m not prepared to do that yet, because I am curious to know how torture advocates justify their views.
Because it seems to me that torture is used kind of a lot in wars, and has been for a long time; but it doesn’t actually seem to end wars or end resistance movements. (It’s a widespread belief among Palestinians that captured Palestinians are tortured; has this led militant Palestinians to give up attacking Israelis?)
Can you cite legitimate, scholarly evidence that torture brings about surrender of non-captured troops, or of military or political leadership?
And if you couldn’t find any evidence that torture ends wars sooner, would that make you change your mind about advocating torture?
I’ve just gotta say, I admire Ginmar a whole heck of a lot. Thank you Ginmar fro coming on and posting your views eloquently in the face of the almost incoherent, personal attacking opposition.
RonF-
I’m sorry I may be misinterpreting your post, but are you saying that we should go outside the Geneva conventions with a citizen of another country who has not had a chance for a fair trial? (Outside an imagined extreme scenario that is.)Or are you saying that we should torture those that we can out of “principal” because they’re “bad men?” There’s already proof out there that you’ll get less reliable testimony slower than you would get with a more humanitarian effort.
Sorry once again, I just don’t understand what you were asking in your last post.
[scratches head] For the average person in a war, I don’t think a threat of torture is greater than the threat of getting killed, at least not in the abstract. People don’t particularly want to die, or be maimed, or get diseased, or burned, or any of the variety of other horrible things that happen in a war.
Obviously they don’t want to be tortured either, but to provide any significant deterrent effect it would have to be unusually common, wouldn’t it? If anything, the main thing that threats of torture would do is to prevent folks from surrendering or otherwise fighting to the death, I’d imagine.
So not only is torture-as-planned-retribution amoral, but I don’t see how it would work.
Can you cite legitimate, scholarly evidence that torture brings about surrender of non-captured troops, or of military or political leadership?
Nope.
And if you couldn’t find any evidence that torture ends wars sooner, would that make you change your mind about advocating torture?
Nope. Absence of evidence, etc.
But if you found evidence that torture prolongs wars, or that my opinion of the psychological underpinnings of Al Qaeda leadership is wrong, then I would change my mind about the current case.
By the way, I don’t “advocate” torture. That is, I’m not saying “this torture policy is great stuff – this is how we should do everything!” I’m not worked to tears about the thought of terrorists getting rough treatment, but if I thought we could win without it, then I would think we shouldn’t use it.
My post was an attempt to put torture in its proper context. It isn’t being used as an instrument of intelligence gathering (and so its lack of effectiveness in that regard is largely immaterial), but as an instrument of war. It is as an instrument of war that it should be judged.
Sailorman: The opinion of the average member of our enemy class is not relevant. They aren’t the decision-makers.
“Amp: No, it hasn’t, I think because our soldiers don’t think like their soldiers. ”
Translation: WE are not like THEM. Othering at it’s best. This is bullshit Robert. Why do you think they are so fundamentally different? It’s exactly because in your mind, you’ve been able to make “THEM” so completely different from “US” that enables you to treat them in inhumane ways (well, figuratively at least since you are advocating that Torture is ok, not that you specifically are doing the torturing).
Whatever works I guess. Dehumanization comes first, usually, doesn’t it?
What ginmar said, especially about how it would embolden and stengthen the resolve of the people it was used against.
Since someone argued the use of it as an effective demoralizing tool.
As for accurate information, it’s useless and would most likely yield false information because the person being tortured will just tell the torturer what they want to hear to get it to stop.
How many confessions in the United States that were coerced or worse had to be thrown out because they were false? Hundreds at least, in Illinois alone. And torture was used in many cases certainly in the 1970s and 1980s by homicide detectives in Chicago and Philadelphia and other agencies which led to case law being established regarding the use of torture in police interrogations. I don’t think those confessions provided information either but they were just what the police ordered b/c all they wanted was “confessions” to close their cases.
I’m bringing this up because this is why torture is sold on Americans as being this great tool to use abroad, to get information under the so-called ticking time bomb scenario or because the ends justify the means. And arguing that it’s inhumane clearly isn’t going to work because I’m wondering how many people even view the “others” as human at all. This country does love its “othering” of other people especially people of color and all.
As for the posting, I’m sure self-inflicted “water boarding” is terrible, but it’s not the same thing as being tortured b/c it’s not just a physical act, it’s mostly psychological and it’s probably the threats of more of the same and other torture along with other factors that make it much worse that a comparison between the two isn’t really useful.
I do not understand the whole “false confession” thing.
Yes, people will basically say what you want them to say. This means that their commentary on known past events isn’t valuable, right? An “I did it” confession is worthless under torture; so is a “she [a person you don’t like] did it” accusation. That’s why coerced confessions are bad, (and that incidentally is also part of why plea-agreement-in-exchange-for-testimony agreements are also bad, though obviously they involve the threat of jail, not torture.)
But i read things like this:
and it seems like people are confusing that sort of confession with one of “unknown facts”. Like i wrote above. There’s a difference between “was this building a safe house?” and “where is the location of the other safe house that we can’t find to date?” There’s a difference between “did you assassinate Bob?” and “who is due to be assassinated next, and when, and where?”
This distinction has nothing to do with torture per se, as there are all sorts of ways (see, e.g., Ginmar’s post) to “coerce” information out of someone. But it remains an important distinction.
Ginmar, that’s a fascinating post. Have you ever run into someone who was high-level enough, dedicated enough, and/or smart enough, that your interrogation tactics wouldn’t work on them? I’m referring to the admittedly-stereotypical person who “would rather die than help the U.S.” Or does that construct not really exist at all?
Jerad:
What I’m asking is what the standards are in the Geneva Conventions for classifying captives as prisoners of war, illegal combatants, or other classifications, and what the standards under the Geneva Convention are for treatment of those people.
It is my understanding that people operating under the name of Al-Queda would fall under the classification of “illegal combatants”, as opposed to “prisoners of war”. It is further my understanding that under the Geneva Conventions, “illegal combatants” can be treated much differently than “prisoners of war”.
I ask this because often in threads about matters such as this there are accusations that the U.S. has not observed the Geneva Conventions. I have been told by defenders of the U.S.’s actions that these accusations are false because they depend on applying the standards of treatment for “prisoners of war” to “illegal combatants”. Since ginmar says that she has studied them carefully, and hardly seems to be an Administration stooge, I thought she’d be a good person to ask.
That is quite different from advocating that the U.S. take advantage of those differences in any specific fashion.
Ginmar:
“RonF, under the GC, the convention was to grant status rather than not in the interest of humanity.”
I understand that; but it’s my understanding that there are specific classifications in the Geneva Conventions for people who behave on behalf of particular kinds of parties and in particular ways; while everyone has a status, people in uniform and who are members of state-sponsored armed forces have a different status than people who do their best to blend in with the civilian population and who are acting on their own behalf or on behalf of a non-state actor. Furthermore, it’s my understanding that there are different constraints on how people with different status can be treated. I was hoping you could shed some light on the specifics of that.
The practical convention is very simple: torture does not work, and either makes a monster of the torturer, or destroys them entirely. Humanity works with most of the people you’re going to deal with. It’s not fast, but then again neither is terrorism.
I am certainly willing to agree that torture is not a tool to be used unless absolutely necessary. You state that it’s never absolutely necessary; I’m not so sure. But I do think that in the long run, it’ll make a difference on the street when people say “How about we cooperate with the guys who treat people decently when they interrogate them instead of with the guys who cut heads off.” And that we should be the former, not the latter.
Unless you catch OBL himself, you’re not going to catch anybody who knows shit. Abu Zubaydah himself turned out to be a low level paranoid schizophrenic.
Well, Abu Zubaydah may well have not known shit, but I’d argue with your blanket statement that only OBL himself knows anything. Someone’s got to be distributing the money, buying the arms, handling the strategies and logistics of arms distribution and usage, etc. I rather doubt OBL is running the whole show at a detailed level.
If you read the linked article, you’d have read that after a certain point, waterboarding evokes an entirely involuntary response. Torture. It doesn’t get any simpler than that.
I don’t dispute that. But that begs the question of where that certain point is, and whether a situation can exist (or has at any time) where sufficient useful information before that point is reached can be extracted such that it justifies using that method to get it. I’m not going to say where that is, including where = 0; but I’m equally suspicious of anyone who says they do know where it is, including both those who say where = 5 minutes, where = 1 hour, or where = 0.
I have to agree with RonF – sad as it is (and I believe it is an idiotic omission) my understanding is that the Geneva convention has very little discussion with what to do with a non-uniform rebellion.
There are sections covering uniformed military. There are sections elevating the status of a uniformed, regionalized rebellion to be equivalent to a real military (which, iirc, the USA never ratified – another tragedy). There are sections dealing with non-combatant civilians. However, there is very very little language discussing the handling of non-uniformed, non-military fighters.
Which is not to say that the actions of the US military are excusable – far from it. But the Geneva convention may not apply to many of the obviously-unethical acts they are taking.
Is it a careless omission or a deliberate one? Is it that dealing with non-State actors is just out of the scope or mission that the Geneva Conventions were intended to cover? Or, is it simply that the writers didn’t want to grant rights to such people and intended all along that they could be treated in any way the States involved wanted to.
After all, the Geneva Conventions are a set of agreements among States. Since non-State actors by definition were not eligible to participate in the agreement, it’s hardly surprising that their interests would be neglected. Or actively opposed.
I’m not worked to tears about the thought of terrorists getting rough treatment
How about non-terrorists getting rough treatment because they have similar names to actual terrorist, or because somebody made a profit selling bad intel to the US?
Presumably the Geneva Convention omitting “non-state actors” would mean that if we found a group like the Lord’s Resistance Army, a “non-state-actor” terrorist group with child soldiers, it would be perfectly legal for us to rape, kill and eat those children. Thumbs up, everyone?
For those to whom the Geneva Conventions do not apply, civilian criminal law still applies. Someone not in the uniform of an organized military group who shoots or bombs people can be arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced according to normal legal procedures.
@mythago
As I said, the Geneva convention does have a newer section elevating the status of uniformed, regional rebel organizations to being similar to a national military. The USA never ratified that section anyways.
Either way, the Geneva convention still protects soldiers of non-signatory states, so I see no ethical reason for them not to apply it to non-state groups.
The ethical considerations of whether or not to apply the protections given in the Geneva Conventions to persons of a particular classification when those persons either are not described therein at all or are described as members of a different classification is a very valid question to consider both from a hypothetical viewpoint and from the viewpoint of those people in the military and the Administration who actually have to make a decision on the matter regarding real people.
But the Geneva Conventions themselves are a legal document, a treaty. What I believe I have seen in the MSM is an accusation that the Administration has not treated people according to the Geneva Conventions when in fact what has actually happened is that certain people have not been treated as what the GC describe as “prisoners of war”. But in reality, according to the GC they were not prisoners of war but were illegal combatants, and were in fact dealt with as the GC permit illegal combatants to be treated.
Now, I say “I believe” because I haven’t engaged in a conversation with someone knowledgeable on the GCs. I was hoping that ginmar would give me a hand with that, but ….
Again; whether or not that’s advisable or ethical is a very valid question, and I would tend to agree that you should treat people as best you can for the reasons given above. But I have never seen in the MSM a statement that the Geneva Conventions permits different people to be treated in different ways; without pointing that out and making a statement about what means is in the best case very sloppy reporting and in the worst case deliberately misleading. My guess is that reporters and editors started writing about the Geneva Conventions without ever having actually read them, or at least the parts where they deal with this kind of thing.
RonF,
If you are interested in this, you could google “geneva convention status determinations”
and then you could go and read this summary paper.
Everyone is covered by the Geneva Conventions.
From the Red Cross’s authoritative commentary on the Geneva Conventions:
If you are a captured civilian who has committed acts of violence, then you may be prosecuted for them. Civilian’s may be interrogated, but they can’t be tortured. No one can be tortured. If you are captured in wartime, you must be treated as a POW until a determination has been made by a proper status tribunal, and the characteristics of a status tribunal are laid out in the Geneva Conventions. The US did not initially use status tribunals, but rather used fiat to declare that everyone captured in the war in Afghanistan were illegal combatants, and the status determination we have done since then were not made by legitimate status tribunals. POWs must be tried for crimes (for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes unrelated to the conflict, basically, anything we would try our own troops for) in the same courts as the soldiers of the capturing forces and
On the question of torture:
Legally, the ticking time bomb is a settled matter. If you torture someone, no matter what the circumstances are, you are a criminal.
So, media coverage that says that the US has failed to meet its Geneva Conventions obligations with regards to the treatment of captured combatants is correct, and media coverage that says that torture of prisoners is a war crime is correct.
O.K. So then there is actually a classification called “unlawful combatant”, but in order to classify someone as such they have to get a status trial. Once someone is found to be an unlawful combatant they can be convicted of crimes and punished accordingly, which I imagine can include the death penalty. But it’s a violation of the Conventions for someone to be adjudged an unlawful combatant and to be punished as such without a trial, and in any case torture is not allowed. Fair enough, then, and thank you for your answer.
Hang on. You keep going on about how it’s such a great demoralizing tool–are you advocating it because it’s effective terrorism? Oh, the irony.
I’m not sure if this is just bad phrasing, or if you really did want to include Joe Tomato Farmer, but I’m someone who doesn’t wear a uniform or participate in combat as part of my country’s military. Because I don’t participate in combat at all.
Which is fitting, from what we know of all the “terrorists” we’ve captured and tortured so far, isn’t it? Almost as good a loophole as “I’m against torture, but I’ll let the president define it”.
There was actually a pretty long back-and-forth on just that topic on the Straight Dope thread. The guy who did it said that it was so purely instinctual, just blind animal panic (paraphrase–“if it were on a scale of one to ten, this was a ten thousand” and “I’d’ve done anything, sold my children, to get it to stop”), that higher-level thinking didn’t even come into it at all.
Afterward, yes, probably the level of control someone has over what’s going on would be a very large factor psychologically, but during and in the immediate aftermath, it’s simply your lungs screaming at you “I’M DROWNING!!!!!” As I understand it.
If it’s “not being tortured”, then presumably we would be perfectly happy if our own soldiers were subjected to it. It’s not torture, right?
I read the Straight Dope post and want to know what we, as American citizens can do to stop this. And how troubling is it that of all the presidential candidates questioned on the matter, only McCain comes out staunchly against it?
It’s been reported more than once that American soldiers are indeed subjected to it in training. See for instance the New Yorker’s piece on it from this past august. [http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/08/13/070813fa_fact_mayer?printable=true]
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Maybe there are more important issues, I don’t know.And I don’t know how to quote properly.
You as american citizens, I think, should make a big scandal about the law being so obviously broken – torture is illegal , but is commited .Is the law broken because a lot of citizens want it to be broken, or because a few CIA agents think that nothing can happen to them.I don’t know, you figure it out.
Okay, so how do you “make a scandal”? Petitions, letterwriting campaigns? I’ve never done this before… And StefanU, you’re always allowed to quote the old-fashioned way… the mysteries of the block quote elude me as well. I think I did it right a grand total of once, and boy, did I feel accomplished. *shakes head in self-pity*
Robert @ 72:
Okay. Let’s move those goalposts and see how it adds up. I have a new hypothetical for you.
Let’s say you identify yourself as a righteous freedom fighter rising up against a superior power who you are convinced is oppressing your people and way of life, is murderous and corrupt, and cannot be trusted to be as powerful as it is.
Let’s say you already know you’re outnumbered and outgunned on pretty much every battlefield there is, and your small organization has resorted to extreme tactics because it is so vitally important that your more powerful, allegedly tyrannical enemy be defeated. You know your only real advantage is dedication, your own moral superiority, and hopefully God on your side because your enemy, as immoral as you believe them to be, must fall. You’re fighting them because you’ve been convinced that they are abusers of power, maybe even monsters, who will destroy everything you care for if you don’t defeat them, no matter the odds. You’re fighting them at least partially on the grounds that you already believe they’ve been responsible for murder and destruction visited upon your world.
Now let’s say you are given concrete proof that your enemy is indeed committing atrocities, do indeed behave, in your view, like soulless tyrants willing to break any rules they’ve agreed to, for the purposes of attempting to crush and humiliate your movement. They’re willing to do terrible things to people they don’t even know for sure are guilty of anything, knowing full well that it won’t get them much useful information–after all, you’ve tortured people yourself, and it didn’t do you much in that department. Maybe you even know a guy–even a guy who did something!–who got sodomized, beaten, waterboarded, had dogs set on him. Who had his dignity and personhood stripped away, maybe even was tortured to death. Maybe you’ve seen pictures.
Tell me that this is the part where you quit. Where you say, well, shucks, the people I already believed to be monstrous, unprincipled tyrants are being monstrous, unprincipled tyrants–and bragging about it, trying to scare me. I knew they already vastly outnumbered us and had more resources and weapons than us on an exponential level, but it looks like some of us might actually get hurt, in this situation where we’re already risking our lives. Golly, those people I thought shouldn’t be trusted to be in power on the world stage are handing me proof–waving proof in my face–that they abuse power. Looks like this fight isn’t worth it after all.
I thought it was worth risking everything to topple these oppressors, but now that I know for sure they might oppress me, I guess not. They really should be trusted to be in charge of my life. I may have thought before that they were going to rape and murder my family–that’s what I was told–but whoops, they raped someone, tortured someone, killed someone–maybe I ought to just back off and quit my righteous cause.
I don’t know about you, but my human reaction to that hypothetical would be “steely resolve” and maybe “stepping up the extreme tactics to stop these atrocities as soon as possible.”
As a tactic of war, waving torture around, even if it stops every single person currently in the fight, will just produce another generation of people who see us as monsters who must be toppled at all costs. It will produce more wars. I don’t see any way it couldn’t. And in the meantime, it disgusts any allies and friends we might have who are worth anything.
So, let’s see, not much good for getting information, and not much good for demoralizing people. Next?