I thought this was interesting. Figured I'd toss it up here for review/discussion because we've had the "tastes great/less filling" back and forth on this topic previously.

Recently a radio host decided to get waterboarded to prove that it wasn't torture. He apparently lasted about 6 seconds after macho claims he'd last much longer because it "wasn't that bad".

http://www.inquisitr.com/24491/conserva ... s-torture/

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I was wondering when someone would mention this.

Now if we could only get Hannity on the board, or that blond chick from the View. Shit, I'd shell out some cash for pay per view to see her strapped down.

Hannity said he would do it, and Olberman or whatever the fuck his name is promised to donate a lot of money per second he could last it.

Of course it's easy to SAY shit...

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Yeah, I've been waiting for Hannity to man up to that, but somehow I don't think that will be anytime soon.

Frankly I've been thinking about it for some time. I suppose this is less about whether waterboarding is torture than it is about torture in general. I yawn in disgust of thoughtlessness whenever I see someone like Joxur blather about "I like the question: Should America be torturing people, for any reason, ever?" and "Eliminate our practice of torture" and "This was pretty close to torture and the eroding of our civil liberties on my list."

The "known bomb with prisoner that you absolutely know has information with many lives at stake" is a very convincing argument for me. It may be rare that we actually have that kind of intel, and only in very rare circumstances might we actually use such methods... but in all seriousness, I don't know if I would be able to live with the blood of tens, hundreds, or thousands of lives on my hands if I had decided that on "principle" I would not torture. Just thinking about people and the importance of each of those lives really gets to me. At some point, it sort of defeats the "principle" of it.. for me anyway.

Now granted there's a good deal of chance also that if other people found out that such a great nation was participating in torture, that *also* could lead to many lives being lost(through some series of events, such as terrorist recruitment levels rising and so forth and their being more capable of pulling off attacks). But that's more or less a question of keeping such things secret. Would not ruling out the possibility of torture, similar to what the Bush and Obama administrations are doing, cost lives? Quite possibly... I don't think to the degree of everyone seeing videos and such of us torturing on a regular basis would, but there's certainly that possibility.

But even with that said, that's more of an unknown cost and reliant on the fact that other people would not understand or appreciate the delicate moral situation on our end(or on the end of anyone else that would withhold information so that many people could die). They may or may not. What we do know in that situation is that a person has the information(again, would need a lot of intel to confirm that the person has it for sure) and that people will die if you don't torture them(and have exhausted any and all methods).

That's a toughie. It's certainly not something I would rule out. People complained back when President Bush would not rule out using nukes on Iran(or at least wouldn't make a clearcut statement to that effect). Some of his word choices may have been poor, and it's a pretty tough question to answer unless you're content with being dishonest. Heck, maybe dishonesty is the best course of action here given the political turbulence that can result. But you can't take options like that off the table, and it lacks foresight to suggest it - especially without consideration of the myriad of situations that may or may not take place.

Regarding whether it works or not, I think it should be obvious that in certain situations it most certainly can be effective. Fast cross-checking without quagmiring yourself and psychologically understanding when someone is simply blathering are two things that can go a decent way towards making it a potentially useful tool.

Richard Cohen wrote an interesting piece on it... and while he is decidedly against torture in general, he also is willing to admit that it could work sometimes and that abolishing it is pointless. Frankly this point of view was a little more refreshing, because the argument of "it never works they'll just say anything the WHOLE time!" always seemed inherently weak to me.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 02692.html

I'm ok with this being a convincing argument to you because I cannot think of a situation where this would ever happen. It's impossible to be absolutely sure that someone has the information you are looking for, unless you heard that person being told that information. And if you heard that person being told that information.... well then you don't need to torture.

I am perfectly willing to draw the line at torture. I'm not interested in being a part of a society willing to torture.

Then you're just not thinking of enough scenarios. Impossible is a rather bold statement.

One would be that you obtained through some sort of intel bits and pieces of information about what the person knew - but in an extreme scenario, you obtained enough to know that he knows something. For example, you caught a transmission of a conversation between the person and his boss and it cuts off after several minutes right before a location a mentioned such as: "The bomb will be placed in...".

You would not have the information necessary in this case, but you're almost certain the person has at least some kind of location information. If you can corroborate it with other intel, it may be an applicable situation.

Another would be that you see the person talking about the bomb, making the bomb, carrying the bomb around. You actually obtain footage of the person doing all this and you're certain it's a bomb from looking at the materials. Traces on the scene where the footage was taken reveal bomb-making materials as well.

Again, in this situation you know the person would have at least some information as to where the bomb went. Assuming the camera cannot follow that person everywhere, you have no idea where it went, but the person in question certainly does.

The point here is that just because it is a rare scenario doesn't make it impossible. Maybe you tell the public what they want to hear, I don't know... but I don't think it's something that should be unilaterally ruled out.

Torture /= interrogation. The "ticking bomb" scenario conflates the two in a Jack Baueresque way.

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Hope is the new black.

Problem being that interrogation doesn't always work. It's more a question of: "Well, what else can we do here?". It may not be surefire, but I think there's enough evidence that it can work some of the time to give it a try under extreme conditions such as those I mentioned. Even if it were a 10/100 chance, which I doubt it'd be, that's something.

"Intelligence" produced by torture is unreliable.

Even if you've got a 10% chance that what the dude is telling you is right and a 90% chance its wrong, you *know* that the odds that it is wrong are 90%. So in this hypothetical 'ticking bomb' scenario, how much of your intel resources do you divert towards verifying information that you know is 90% likely to be wrong?

Setting aside all of the moral and ethical quandaries, from the perspective of deploying your intelligence resources effectively and efficiently, it doesn't make sense.

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Hope is the new black.

- George Washington, charge to the Northern Expeditionary Force, Sept. 14, 1775

Torture whoever you want, in your new country. Just don't do it here.

10 percent seems extreme to me, but we can leave it at that for the sake of argument. How much in terms of resources is diverted? Well, depends on how many people you'd need to set up the waterboarding session(or whichever means). From what I've seen it looks like around 3-4 people to operate it safely. Throw in an experienced interrogator who can read the obvious signs of bullshit into the mix. So, maybe 5 people(3-4 people would otherwise might not have anything in particular to do with actual intel reporting anyway...) as a diversion of resources, and a VERY limited amount of time considering how fast people crack under waterboarding.

You have very limited options under those scenarios as well. Assume that the interrogator is primarily used for interrogation purposes anyway, under which case he wouldn't be nearly as useful out looking for the bomb on the field. So basically - no idea where the bomb is. You have 10 percent chance, versus near-0 chance - assuming we have a worst-case scenario here with no leads whatsoever. I may be bad intel, but that's all you have, and with the resources to quickly ascertain the data and proper interrogation it shouldn't be too difficult to confirm whether or not he's bullshitting.

Even so, I'm still having trouble buying the the oft-touted idea that torture doesn't work. How many people here can say that from first-hand experience, out of curiousity? If anything, we've seen some historical evidence that torture can work. A number of soldiers from the U.S. military admit to giving up information to the Vietnamese in their torture camps. Moussaui underwent waterboarding and revealed a number of details that we wouldn't have otherwise known(and later confirmed a few of them I believe).

At the point where a person starts babbling anything, it stands to reason that because it is a psychologically motivated response it should be also be identifiable when a person enters that state. Whether it be brainwave patterns, or more obvious body language that indicates such. It's not random.

Wow.

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Hope is the new black.

Intelligence produced by hard interrogation is actually quite reliable. If it weren't, what is the point? Meanness?

The argument is really over whether the tactics are morally acceptable.

Yes, apparently it's thoughtless to stick to your ideals regardless of who is in power. Good game, Venen

I am inclined to believe the argument that in the ticking time bomb scenario there are faster and more reliable forms of interrogation than torture. How often and over what period of time was required before Moussaui gave up information through water boarding? Sleep deprivation would take at least days.

I'm not convinced torture induced intelligence is reliable. It's pretty clear there are those who are convinced. I'm not entirely certain that reliable intelligence is what motivates people to endorse torture.

I do love how the new catchphrase for torture is "had interrogation." I noticed this on the radio the other week and I had to laugh. Changing the name doesn't change what it is.

And from what I've read on the issue, people who are tortured will often confess to what you want to hear. Might you get accurate information? Perhaps. But dude might also confess to killing his own mother while she's two feet away from him, just so you'll stop.

I bet Tarot has a lot more facts and figures about it, though. :p

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I can tell you that it rarely is. Eventually? Possibly. But NOTHING that will give you the results you need in time to resolve a "ticking bomb" scenario. This comment is NOT speculation. Take it for whatever you think it's worth.

For you, Venen? The world is a dangerous place at time. Get over it, and enjoy your life. Torture is not worth the price paid - it is NEVER worth it.

This argument is really bizarre in my mind. Even if torture can be proven to work, there should be other things stopping you.

When your neighborhood bully is tormenting you, murder works at making it stop, but is correctly frowned upon. An extreme example, but it should illustrate my point.

There are OTHER ways. The question is, do we take the quick and (in my opinion) wrong approach, or do we fund and staff the correct one?

We're better than this. Or at least, we should be. In my opinion.

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Never fear, looks like we're back to outsourcing our torture to 3rd world countries.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/world ... wanted=all

So glad you all voted for hope and change. Again I ask, where is Karthun and his theories on soft power?

I might ask my spouse to post on this thread, he actually does interrogations. Clearly the ones he does are no 'ticking time bomb'. And they're done with ...unbelievable rights...to the accused.

-They can choose to stop it at any time.
-They can choose to have an attorney present, at any time.
-They have the right to not speak.

And of course, they can't physically touch them. Oh they can move them around, they can touch their arm, or their hand...they just can't aggressively touch them.

I know people at a lot of agencies, and you'd think I'd be immune to it, but when I see them, even my spouse, go into what is called "work mode"...it can be really scary. Our neighbor rotated into sex crimes and was talking to me about interviewing a pedophile (I've mentioned this story before). He's a really nice guy, one of those guys you totally want at your party because he'll liven it up. And one of those people that others will say, 'Wow, he's a REALLY nice guy'. I've even seen him 'work'...such as when a car crashed on our block and he and my husband went out to respond to it and they were both questioning the guy as officers, lol.

Anyway, he described how even with these scum (pedophiles) how he could converse with them, and say things that are hard to say like 'Oh yeah, you know we're both men and of course they come on to you [refering to the man's 9 year old niece], then after like 2 minutes of acting nice, sympathic, kind...someone you'd WANT to be your best friend...he got cold and scary, and I KNOW THIS GUY...AND I had done nothing wrong, and in the instant he did that...I wanted to pee very badly.

It scares me more when I see my spouse do it, and he tries very hard not to do it around people he knows, and he'll apologize. I'm trying hard to describe it, because if you haven't seen this stuff...it's really hard to believe.

Just imagine someone you think is really nice, that you'd trust, that you'd want to be your friend...that connection being created REALLY quickly. Someone with a good sense of humor and something that's an unbelievable relief given that when you're being questioned it's a high stress situation. And once you're lulled in, that person in a flash becoming so scary, you will do anything to appease them.

That's just one technique.

Another is 'here's the way out'. I just call it that I dunno what they call it if they have a name for it. But basically most people being questioned are afraid on some level. Even if they seem arrogant, etc. they're scared (or will be made to fear). So they're shown a way out. You did X. You know you did X. We know you did X. That's a given. Let's move past that. We don't wanna hear about X, because we ALL know.

But...X carries this punishment. You're fucking fucked. It's not just prison, people are going to think badly of you. Your family will think bad things. Your church will think bad things. All the fears people have of losing love and reputation, and status.

If you did X because of REASON Y...then that changes things! It's not nearly that bad. Hell, anyone can understand that, and ...people need to understand.

Here's the real point. They DO need the guy to say he did X. WHY HE DID X isn't important to the police. It makes no difference, that's for a court to decide. They just need him to admit to X. But by pretending the goal is really to find out WHY, and that the WHY makes a difference...and offering them a WHY that mitigates it...they'll get the information they need.

It's also important to note one very very important thing. Our police and various agents of the alphabet soup agencies have very strict guidelines they have to maintain. And in today's society with recorded interviews and videotape...they're making sure to do so. (And these tools benefit the officers because it can show exactly what was said, and protects them). And even with these 'soft' methods, where no one is beaten, where the person being questioned has the right to STOP questioning, where the person being questioned has the right to not speak, to demand an attorney, blah blah blah...

1 in 4 people who have been PROVEN innocent (by Project Innocence)...PROVEN mind you with scientific evidence...gave false confessions.

25%.

It's a *stunning* number. That's how effective these methods can be, that an innocent person will SAY they did it, just to appease the interrogator in some fashion.

And it's not just that innocent person that suffers, though that's pretty awful. The criminal who committed the crime is getting away with it, and may harm more people. It's extremely damaging to society.

So with what can only be termed highly ethical interrogation methods since no one is harmed and the prisoner has SO many rights...false confessions are proven to be a huge problem.

How much worse if you torture?

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Just going to pipe in with the "knowing they have the information you need."

What happens when you're wrong?

yep, that was my original point. You can't know. You can't know with 100% assurance that someone has that "omg vital" piece of information. There's no way to know, unless you heard it told to them, in which case you have no need to torture.

In other news, Tarot, that was an excellent post.

This


combined with this:

Powell aide: Cheney first approved torture to tie Iraq, al Qaeda
http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/05/14/ ... -al-qaeda/

should give anyone who supports torture pause.

People should be in jail.

Of course there's a chance you grab the wrong guy, or someone not involved, and put them through it. Or you get a guy who was just tricked into driving a load of goods across the border that turned out to be a car bomb. That's why I find the tactics morally reprehensible.

Using them on someone who plotted the 9/11 attacks I can see. Not so much on a guy who was arrested in a firefight and probably knows less than scouts have already discovered.

But, just out of curiosity, taking false confessions out of the equation what is the accuracy of the information provided by those guilty of a crime?

The point is to feel like we're doing something. We aren't big fans of feeling helpless... especially when we have a terrorist in a secret prison who might know something. Let's psuedo-drown him and get some leads!!

My fundamental question is this - for all the poking and prying and black helicopter jazz the Bush administration undertook - what has been the results. I guess that's where I'm a little dumbfounded. In 6 years, we have seen virtually no results, so I'm not sure what we're getting for all our efforts.

As a boss once said to me, "it's OK to fail, but make sure you're nice when you fail because everyone loves sticking it to an asshole."

And it was alluded to, but I will also chime in with:

People have seen too many episodes of 24.

Haven't you heard Cheney all over the media recently? Obviously it worked because there hasn't been another 9/11. I loved how he twisted the fact that there hasn't been an attack into "we stopped all attacks since 9/11 by using these techniques". What anyone with an ear actually heard him say was: "We have no idea if there were/are other attempts being planned or not, but since nothing happened, we're going to use it to justify our abysmal policies."

/eyeroll

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You can never know with certainty if someone has information unless you saw them acquire it. You can know that someone had a hand in planning other attacks and was still active in the organization they planned previous attacks with when you captured them. What do you suppose the chances of are that the guy who planned 9/11 had a hand in planning other attacks? The problem with the 90%/10% nonsense is that they are counting all of the detainees not just the valuable ones.

Which is why you limit it to those you have actionable intelligence on, such as actually witnessing them gathering information or witnessing them with said material.



Possibly better rather than worse. As Bearne implied himself, interrogation and torture are two separate things entirely. There's certainly plenty of pressure under the supervision of a very good interrogator, however, I think even under the most masterfully crafted interrogation procedure you would find there's less pressure on the person as opposed to waterboarding. Why I'm saying this is that I think people reach a peak where they feel they have no option but to give in a much different way when they are tortured as opposed to when they are interrogated well. And even under the best interrogation, people may still feel like they have an option. Maybe not to the degree where they can simply keep silent or say nothing but gibberish, but they definitely feel more leeway.

I also wouldn't hesitate to chalk up at least some of those failings on poor interrogation technique.



If you take those ideals at face value without ever questioning them or even bothering to rationalize them? Absolutely.



You're missing one critical component here in what I'm saying: There are no other options in said dilemma. Everything else had been tried. The best interrogators had already been on the scene. There are no leads. There's 15 minutes left until 10,000 people die.

The neighborhood bully is a poor analogy because it's a tolerable circumstance, at least in the interim. The question is whether we do what it takes for the better outcome in an extreme case, not in minor cases where the alternatives are within an acceptable range. People will most likely not die because a bully decided to be mean to someone for a while(usually anyway, there are a few examples of this in school shootings, but it is far from the norm and it is not extremely easy to identify exactly when it's going to happen and under which circumstances). At the very least there isn't a severe limitation in the methods that can be employed as there is with the ticking bomb.

Ok, venen...even though everyone here knows that scenario is not realistic at all, except for you...I'm going to humor you.

We know they are going to set off a bomb. 10,000 people are going to die and we only have 15 minutes....

You seem to be ignoring the fact that the bomb going off is the DESIRED outcome for these people. And that dying a martyr is "the goal". Seriously. The guy who knows where that bomb is? You could probably flay him alive and he'd still not tell you.

All you win in this scenario by resorting to torture is giving them the satisfaction of knowing they not only get to smile at you 15 minutes from now when everyone is dead, but that they made you sacrifice your moral superiority and they successfully drug you down into the mud with them along the way. They not only killed everyone they wanted to kill, but they killed the much harder target..."America".... along with it...at least for you.

Good game, sir. You gave them what they wanted.

I'm actually honestly surprised that you of all people are taking this stance.

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You also seem to be ignoring the fact that if we have the person responsible for planning the attack in custody, it means one of two things. 1) the bomb has already gone off or 2) we know enough to not be in the "24" scenario.

Otherwise, you are just randomly going through a jail and torturing people to make yourself feel better about when the bomb goes off. If they've gotten you to THAT scenario, where you don't even know if you have the right guy and the bomb goes off in 15 minutes? You have no hope of stopping it.

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The desired outcome for Moussaui was to not give any information about Al Qaeda and he still continues to hate America regardless. Why would he give the info he gave? The desired outcome for American troops in Vietnam being tortured was to only give up their name and rank, but they gave more.

History has shown that at least SOME good info is given by people who are tortured. As Sarissa said, if torture wasn't an applicable procedure that hadn't shown at least *some* merit to being useful, why would people do it? Sure, as Orme said, there are some things that are done just to "feel good" or enact revenge or whatever, but why for *centuries* was it specifically used as an information gathering tool? It wasn't later simply dismissed out of hand when people decided it was only good for revenge, and thereby from that point forward only used for revenge purposes. They would have continued doing it even if it wasn't good for information, but people still used it for information gathering purposes.



I disagree with the first two-point assertion here. With one possible exception to number 2 - maybe we SHOULD be able to do better if this situation happens to arise, but it would be hindsight once we get to that point. Our making one unforgivable mistake shouldn't mean we should make another unforgivable mistake.

In general though I'm not convinced that we *should* necessarily have enough intel all of the time to predict everything. Just because a security camera caught the guy with a bomb, or someone was able to record a conversation in which we can establish pretty convincing knowledge that the person knows something doesn't automatically indicate that we can be everywhere at once (and also without becoming Big Brother).

Anyway, 15 minutes is an arbitrary number with regard to the point here. Make it 3 hours or even longer.

It's not a viewpoint I take lightly, though I don't expect to win too many popularity contests with it. I can honestly say I'm not trolling or playing devil's advocate here, I think it's a very rare exception to a general stance against torture - but an exception that nonetheless means we should not rule it out completely.

One thing I will admit is that I think Obama's record on this has led me to re-examine it a bit more. Obama probably stepped into the White House pretty gung-ho about changing a lot of things, but upon listening to his advisors realized some hard truths about the world. Outsiders are all aghast, but they have the luxury of not confronting it in the same way.

No torture. Period. End of story. All scenarios involve one thing, 'would YOU do it under X, Y and Z'...and that's retarded because it wouldn't be up to people in that situation. A kid is missing and this guy knows for sure where they are? Sure, let's get the blowtorch. Which is why they're not going to have ME question them. And frankly the consequences would keep most people honest...unless you're the kid's mother or some other relative, then you might not care. At that point I know *I* wouldn't. Which again is why I wouldn't be in that position.

If we say it's okay to do it SOMETIMES...then it gets pretty fucking hard not to justify it all the time.

My spouse had a case involving a dead child. The parent was so fucking batshit over this (and that's the only reason I didn't take his balls) he asked for a meeting with my spouse on the case at a specific address. It was the cemetery and then he marched my spouse up to the kid's grave and THERE gave the information. He justified this bullshit with wanting the investigator to be 'personally involved' so he could get justice for his kid. But...seriously you shouldn't want that, you should want someone objective. And no one needs to be put through an emotional wringer like that, which is why *I* was pissed. It's only because I TRULY understand how insane a parent who's lost a kid is that I let it go. Because the case was already upsetting, and my spouse was crying that night over this shit.

So here's my point, as bad as THAT was for that parent. As bad as it is for any parent who's lost a child to want to manipulate things for justice or closure...explain to them why torture can't be used to find out where their child's BODY is.

Why not? Isn't the agony that family has to go through as important as the other reasons to torture?

What about a woman who was raped? You catch one suspect but 4 or 5 people did the attack. Isn't it worth HER peace of mind to KNOW who the others are? And isn't it worth it to society to get them? Why not use torture there?

I'm sorry, but any bullshit of ...NEVER...weeeeeelll except maaaaybe here...will always be a slippery slope.

And if you want to look at reliability, look to the Nazis. There are many people who held out against the most horrific of torture. There's plenty who didn't too. And there's plenty that had nothing to give up...but were tortured anyway.

Can you find even one historical example where torture was really fantastically beneficial in the type of absurd scenario you're proposing? Can you find even one historical example where torture was held up as a shining example, instead of as an example of horror? And I don't mean to the people at the time. I'm sure lots of people loved seeing pogroms against Jews, and many townspeople joined in torturing and murdering them...but outside of that sphere of barbarism, you won't find us today saying, 'Hey wasn't this wonderful?'.

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You can't really disagree with it.

We "know" a bomb is going to go off in Cityville. We "know" someone is responsible for it.

The pre-emptive one: If we know "who", then we most likely know "why". And probably pretty quickly "how". If you were able to answer even 1 of these things about a bomb plot for Cityville, you would very quickly get the rest. All of these things are connected. If you aren't able to answer any of them, well....you don't just find yourself in the situation of accidentally apprehending the mastermind of a plot to kill 10,000 people, mid-plot. And so if you don't know the who, the how, or the why that led that person to sitting there while you are strapping on your torturer's hood, you are just torturing a random person to make yourself feel better about the fact that you know 10k people are dead.

The after the fact one: If the plotters were wise, the only time we know of their plan (like 9/11) is after it has happened. Then we piece together all of the data we have until we have come to the solution.

But by all means, I'm curious to know what you disagree with and how you come to the scenario with a person enough in the know to be worth torturing to save the day and can tell you where the bomb is, and yet you do not know the "how" or the "why" or even why that person came to be sitting in front of you.

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Because people like to hurt their enemies. And they like to be able to justify it to themselves.

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The slippery slope only exists if you allow it to. Both of those cases are horrific, but a life ending is permanent. It depends on how much value you place on living, certainly, but that is precisely where I would draw the line. How many lives? THAT is more of a tough call, though to be consistent I would say 1 life is too many to lose.

Anyway, I don't have an example of where history wrote that it ended in nothing but happiness. Rarely does that even happen with or without torture. But more importantly is the historian in question would be slammed into the wall for not being politically correct. How many actually decide to take that stand? Not too many, I'd wager. The two examples I did give, however, of information simply being garnered are decent enough examples of it happening(though not with any "HEY THAT WAS GREAT" endings). Though of course just because it hasn't been done in a controlled test lab doesn't mean it's not possible.

Which makes me wonder how reliable research to the contrary of torture being viable is if we haven't actually tested real subjects with real information to be gleaned. That would be... unethical?



I was pretty specific with what I disagreed with there: "We know enough to not be in the '24' scenario". You're making a bold assertion that just because you know one thing about a plot, you should know everything. That seems a little ridiculous on the face of it. Even anecdotal examples suggest otherwise. The one I gave in particular.

I'll elaborate even further on the example: You hear chatter reports that loosely give information about a bomb threat in Manhattan. You've wired a building in another country where the terrorist is from and you overhear bits and pieces of the conversation, and have identified at least one suspect who has that information that's missing in crosstalk and problems with the audio. A few days later a security camera picks up the same suspect building a bomb, and carrying it around.

1) You know the person has something to do with it and you have actionable intelligence.
2) You DO NOT know where it's being planted.

That's where the disagreement comes in. There's no way you know under this circumstance. You might be able to argue that you OUGHT to know, but you simply don't here. The audio messed up in the wired room. You are unable to locate the people that left the building in the other country. The suspect that was caught is not talking.

Take the example and make it as extreme as you want to make it, but it's still a possibility. If you had suggested pre-9/11 that a few terrorists would board planes with minimal weaponry and crash them into the World Trade Center and actually bring the towers down, you would've been laughed out of the room. The idea of not ruling something out is to leave room for those rare - but still very serious - situations that may or may not present themselves.

No. Because if they wired him to hear that conversation, they are also following him. If not prior to the phone call, certainly after. So when they see him carrying the bomb around a few days later, he's stopped.

Again...once you know one of those things for sure, the other pieces fall together very quickly.

I still don't see anything resembling a valid argument for how you get to having a "who" to torture (that can actually save the day) without knowing the rest, thus making the torture moot (for anyone that was considering it to begin with).

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People make mistakes, trails can be lost. They could see him on a security camera videotape say... an hour(or even less to tighten the search radius) before he plants the bomb. That gives them a certain search radius, they find him after he has planted it and the bomb can only be within that radius. They STILL have no clue where he planted it. Just because some store owner spotted the guy and called in with the security footage doesn't mean the store owner decided to pop out of his store and track the guy down himself. If they lost his trail before then, there's a good chance they don't know without additional info.

Even barring obvious human mistake, assume they wire a building with innumerable different access points(on a large block full of large buildings in a highly populated city; underground access even) and the people in question have elaborate disguising mechanisms when they actually leave, and assuming the CIA or whoever doesn't want to give themselves completely away(or doesn't have the manpower in that specific area) by having access points checked at every time - it may not always be possible. Even something as simple as blending into a crowd could fudge things up.

People make mistakes the other way around too-- security camera videotapes can be switched on accident-- conversations can be misunderstood, etc. etc.

You can keep making hypotheticals all day, making the possibility of feeling justified by doing torture more and more remote, and we can keep making hypotheticals that make it impossible to be sure.

And that's the point-- it's impossible to be sure.

Venen, if you wonder why I flame you for being pointlessly obtuse, go back and read the ridiculous posts you've made trying to advocate a position. You have not described reality here, you've described a plot device from a movie.

And that works the other way around - the more remote hypotheticals you use against my hypotheticals the more my point is made, which is that we cannot know for sure if such a situation will or won't happen.

And about the mistakes - again, this assumes we have intelligence that can actually be relied upon. 100 percent proof is incredibly hard to come by of course, but this scenario assumes that or the absolute next best thing - which doesn't include room for much error. Audio must be clear, video recording must indicate that it was recorded at the right time and facial recognition must be spot on. I'm saying EVERY avenue of information and cross-checking must be reliable and actionable intelligence. Call that a fantasy situation, but I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility.

And since you are apparently conceding that there is no way to know for sure if someone has the information in question, I believe then that we should not torture someone since we have no way of knowing if they know the information in question.

Or, I'll concede that if EVERYTHING you said happens just the way you said it-- some guy somehow gets caught within 15 minutes of a bomb going off, and we don't know where it is because somehow we lost him while he was planting the bomb but somehow found him right after he planted it, and somehow we didn't hear where he hid the bomb during previous eavesdropping because somehow the wire we tapped malfunctioned right when he said so, then you can torture him.

Of course, I figure you only have maybe 1 minute to torture him, since it will take most of the 15 minutes to go find the bomb and disarm it before it goes off. Go get him, Jack Bauer!

You are being ridiculous, sir. Again I say it--- there is no such thing as 100% proof that someone has the information in question. We should not torture.

You know, to be honest, I'm a bit surprised at the side Venen has taken here. Hippy guy who thinks everyone should walk to work (despite the fact that many people, in many towns, don't have feasible public transportation or are not within biking/walking distance, but I digress...), guy who seems to take a liberal stance on just about everything, is saying torture should be permissible.

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Negative, I said 100 percent proof is incredibly hard to come by. It's included in the "rarity" portion of what I'm saying. I am by no means saying it's impossible to get. I also think you can get incredibly close, especially with loads of corroborating evidence, which may also be justification enough for it.

You act as if it'd be a miracle to somehow lose him and then catch him after you see the videotape. Why would that really be outside the realm of reason? Certainly we can agree that once a team obtains a lead, and they vigorously pursue it, they have a better chance of tracking the guy down.

It's not simply "it requires X and Y and Z to happen all in that order" - it's any combination of the above happening, and then some. Like I said, there are infinite possibilities here. As for the 15 minutes, again quite arbitrary and unrelated, but it served the Jack Bauer line well I suppose =p

100% proof is impossible to come by. I'll stand by that until you give us a hypothetical that demonstrates that it is not.

With that, I'm done, until you come up with something new. I've said it three times, and you have yet to show otherwise.

It probably has something to do with the fact that he's a trolling tool and always has been? Do you remember this guy in EQ? It's been so long it's easy to forget but yeah heh, not much has changed there.

Fribur keeps saying it, and I have to agree, there literally isn't "100% proof" it does not exist. For every scenario you can suggest, one can suggest counters. DNA? Planted. Tapes? CGI, out of context, etc. You may argue that those possibilities are highly unlikely to the point of absurdity...BUT THEY ARE POSSIBLE.

Which is why there is no such thing as 100% proof positive.

Additionally Rugen has made far more cogent arguments about if you have THAT, you're a dunce if you don't have the rest.

But I'll answer the even more absurd, 10k in Cityville are gonna die!!!111 argument. No. We do not torture. There is no guarantee that the information will be achieved in that fashion, there is no guarantee that the unsub has the information; we do not torture.

And if your little scenario were to happen today? We do not torture.

Tim McVeigh gets caught after leaving the truck and we don't know where the fuck it is? He can't be tortured. Period.

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Which is why I stopped when I did. Anyone who holds up the Viet Kong as their prime example of "torture works" is either trolling, stupid, or amoral. There's no fixing any of those.

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Hope is the new black.

Amen.

I suppose I was more getting at it in the practical sense - for all intents and purposes. But you are correct about this part, and it would be inconsistent of me to say there is 100 percent proof especially in the scientific sense(especially since I've argued it in other religion-related threads =)).

Nevertheless, I maintain you can get all but indisputably close to it. For everything you listed, there's also a counter-counter. Planted DNA? Eyewitness, human error(fingerprints for example), eavesdropping or cameras that picked it up somehow. CGI tapes or out of context tapes? Video analysis has become a pretty intricate field and has proven its worth in this department, out of context might not even be admissable as the evidence I'm speaking of(but you could certainly identify certain things that are pretty hard to take out of context in a video).

If I had all the evidence in the world that pointed to one thing I still could not maintain that it's proven, but I certainly would be justified in taking action on it.

And that's really the crux of the issue, for me at least. If we follow this train of logic, we should never do anything that might harm or inconvenience another human being because we MIGHT be in error. Certainly we can all agree torture is a horrific act out of the many things we can think of that would harm another person. So at what point is it acceptable to say that we shouldn't do something because there might be error? At one point I would have agreed torture is a great place to draw the line. But we're talking about what is actionable or not, and in terms of that I have maintained through most of the thread that while maybe not necessarily proof, piles of evidence is enough to take action. And after having thought about it, that negligible percentage of potential for being wrong in the face of so much hypothetical evidence is far too small to ignore the value of 10,000 lives.

I think the point about it being clumsy that we have piled on so much evidence but have somehow missed the location of the bomb is somewhat beside the point here. The question is not whether that *should* happen, but whether that *could* happen. Humans are not infallible.

Venen, just admit that you don't give a damn for the rule of law and are willing to torture another human being to meet your goals. Stop trying to justify it to us, and to yourself.

If torture worked, why is Bin Laden still loose?

Well, certainly I've indicated my callous disregard for the law when it comes to jaywalking to save the baby in the street. I won't dispute that.

As for justifying it for myself, I did that some time ago. If there's anything in my posts indicating that *I'm* not convinced, I'd certainly like to see it(or where you think you're seeing it).

So far though I haven't seen much that convinces me to the contrary of the larger paragraph within my last post. It was a tough point for me to originally swallow, but even tougher to find an answer that goes against that logic =)

Careful Venen. Such 'logic' would dictate that no one search for the missing child in the mountains...because the risk of injury/death to the searchers and the cost of the search isn't worth the life of that individual. Or that no one dive into that icy water to save a child, because the risk of rescue is too high, and more lives might be lost.

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The sad/pathetic thing is that if you search the boards for "torture" in the keywords and Venen as the username, there are a half dozen posts from Venen taking the exact opposite stance he is taking now.

What changed, Venen?

Certainly if 10 rescuers died for the sake of one child we would be at a net loss - however, the greater good in those situations is the fact that those people have the freedom of choice to rescue the child. It's hard to condemn them for using that freedom of choice to commit to a noble and selfless act, regardless of the net loss. That net loss is chosen by them, and no one else *for* them(I suppose you could argue that employed rescuers are told by their bosses to go out and finish the job, but they are still able to refuse.. and I wouldn't be at all surprised if most human beings would want to save the child). In the case of torturing the terrorist for the bomb's whereabouts to save 10k lives, the net loss is chosen by the terrorist with no thought given to those lives. Those people aren't dying because of some risk they decided to take, but because of that terrorist scumbag.



I've said several times here that I was against it before, that's nothing new. What changed is that I took some time to think about it and changed my mind. The arguments of "it might not work all the time" and especially "we can't know for sure so we can't do anything" seemed inherently flawed to me.

So, is it safe to infer that you admit you were wrong before, and that you now support Bush and Cheney's detention and torture policies of the past half decade?

How does that make you feel, after devoting so much time hating on Bush/Cheney?

Absolutely safe to admit that I was wrong, yes. I wish it were the first time! =)

It doesn't make me feel all that different, frankly, since I both disagreed and agreed with a number of of their policies. Mostly disagreed, of course. One issue in particular that I feel differently on doesn't change all that much, even if it was a rather important one.

Never hated though, simply strongly disagreed. Frustrating at times that they didn't see their own failing to be sure, but hate is a strong word. As I indicated in the other thread, I actually think Bush is/was a likeable person.