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To torture or not to torture? A question that troubles the West
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HamPster PamPster
Member
You know, these threads on torture pop on gaf every once in awhile and while reading them I don't think I ever read an example where it actually worked and saved a life. I mean, if you want to discuss this you'd at least need to prove it has a success rate better than zero and ideally better than "common sense"
kinoki
Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey.
People, on an individual level need to make a difference and act in people's best intrest. Stop taking sides with religion, government or tradition when actual people are being hurt by it. I don't even agree with "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" motto that's used by the pro-torture camp. Sometimes it's better to take that blow just to show that no matter how foul the enemy is you won't sink to their level.
here's the thing with torture.
lets say we detain some dude that has the details about some up coming attack. we dont really torture him and he doesn't tell us anything. then that attack happens and people die. it will only take one sobbing mother who lost he only child to get the media crazy and put her on every newspaper and on every tv in the nation. then all the sudden people are like "we had the guy who could of givin us the info needed to prevent this, why didn't we get that info?" the government is made to look like it failed it's nation all because it chose to not torture due to human rights. PLUS innocent people died.
so there's the best argument for torture.
i'm a pretty progressive liberal. but i dont blind myself with naivety. There's a huge stigma around torture but this nation is safer because of it.
discuss.
lets say we detain some dude that has the details about some up coming attack. we dont really torture him and he doesn't tell us anything. then that attack happens and people die. it will only take one sobbing mother who lost he only child to get the media crazy and put her on every newspaper and on every tv in the nation. then all the sudden people are like "we had the guy who could of givin us the info needed to prevent this, why didn't we get that info?" the government is made to look like it failed it's nation all because it chose to not torture due to human rights. PLUS innocent people died.
so there's the best argument for torture.
i'm a pretty progressive liberal. but i dont blind myself with naivety. There's a huge stigma around torture but this nation is safer because of it.
discuss.
logen9999 said:
How is that a good argument for torture?
Here's another scenario: Terrorists have captured a bunch of school children and have them in an undisclosed location. Their demands are that the US release prisoners who have previously been involved in a terrorist attack that killed hundreds. They also demand the US pull out of Afghanistan. Oh and they demand that George Bush be tried for war crimes. The offer is there. The government can give in, and innocent lives will be saved. You just need to... give in to their demands!
Torture is the same thing. Justifying it is no different from giving in to the demands of terrorists. You will have compromised your own values simply as a reaction to their threats. Torturing a prisoner might not give you any answers, it might give you inaccurate information, it might even give you information which further compromises your operations. That doesn't keep anyone safe, that just makes everyone more paranoid and more desperate. Having to resort to torture is an indication of a failure in the intelligence sector in the first place. Fix the problem, don't make it worse.
MaxSteel said:
But how you can KNOW this? That's the question. It's not a realistic scenario.
TheRagnCajun
Member
duckroll said:
I was just thinking: In theory, torture works. But there doesn't seem to be a good way to make it work in practice.
Air Zombie Meat
Member
BattleMonkey said:
Yeah, because the intelligence community would never knowingly use questionable evidence to support their goals.
Or how about the word 'terrorist' is so vague that it can apply virtually to everyone. What if one political party is in power and decides to call dissidents 'terrorists' and deem them a threat to living, and now have the free power to throw them in jail cells and torture them.
Torture won't seem so acceptable once it is turned back on the population that allowed it, which will almost inevitably happen.
Torture won't seem so acceptable once it is turned back on the population that allowed it, which will almost inevitably happen.
gutter_trash
Banned
torture does not produce correct intel.. it just produces any random rambling
HamPster PamPster
Member
MaxSteel said:
Duckroll, before you answer remember that if you torture the guy the wife won't give up the guy's son in 20 years later right before he goes through with a plot to kill 50,000,000 people (as revenge for his father) because even if her son is evil she still doesn't want to see him tortured
Are you really willing to kill 50,000,000 people in the future by torturing?
Also, killing those 50,000,000 people actually kills someone who just developed a SUPER VIRUS that would have killed 50,000,000,000 20 years after that!
What will you do duckroll???
MaxSteel said:
Well first, I want to know how you're very sure he's going to give up the information, and not just feed you garbage. How can anyone know that? If you know so much about this person that your intel is so SURE that he will give up this information if he is tortured, but that same intel does not give you enough information or leads to go after his accomplices, places he could have worked out of, or other means of extracting intel, then it sounds like you're focusing all your attention on the wrong things.
CharlieDigital
Banned
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1901491,00.html
One of the better mainstream articles I've read on the issue in recent times.
After Waterboarding: How to Make Terrorists Talk?
The most successful interrogation of an Al-Qaeda operative by U.S. officials required no sleep deprivation, no slapping or "walling" and no waterboarding. All it took to soften up Abu Jandal, who had been closer to Osama bin Laden than any other terrorist ever captured, was a handful of sugar-free cookies.
...
Abu Jandal's guards were so intimidated by him, they wore masks to hide their identities and begged visitors not to refer to them by name in his presence. He had no intention of cooperating with the Americans; at their first meetings, he refused even to look at them and ranted about the evils of the West. Far from confirming al-Qaeda's involvement in 9/11, he insisted the attacks had been orchestrated by Israel's Mossad. While Abu Jandal was venting his spleen, Soufan noticed that he didn't touch any of the cookies that had been served with tea: "He was a diabetic and couldn't eat anything with sugar in it." At their next meeting, the Americans brought him some sugar-free cookies, a gesture that took the edge off Abu Jandal's angry demeanor. "We had showed him respect, and we had done this nice thing for him," Soufan recalls. "So he started talking to us instead of giving us lectures."
It took more questioning, and some interrogators' sleight of hand, before the Yemeni gave up a wealth of information about al-Qaeda including the identities of seven of the 9/11 bombers but the cookies were the turning point. "After that, he could no longer think of us as evil Americans," Soufan says. "Now he was thinking of us as human beings."
...
Bush Administration officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, had previously claimed that Abu Zubaydah supplied that information only after he was waterboarded. But Soufan says once the rough treatment began administered by CIA-hired private contractors with no interrogation experience Abu Zubaydah actually stopped cooperating.
...
But professional interrogators say the ticking-time-bomb scenario is no more than a thought experiment; it rarely, if ever, occurs in real life. It's true that U.S. intelligence managed to extract information about some "aspirational" al-Qaeda plots through interrogation of prisoners captured after 9/11. But none of those plots have been revealed at least to the public to have been imminent attacks. And there is still no conclusive proof that any usable intelligence the U.S. did glean through harsh interrogations could not have been extracted using other methods.
In fact, a smart interrogator may be able to turn the ticking-bomb scenario on its head and use a sense of urgency against a captive. During combat raids in Iraq, Maddox grew used to interrogating insurgents on the fly, often at the point of capture. His objective: to quickly extract information on the location of other insurgents hiding out nearby. "I'd say to them, 'As soon as your friends know you've been captured, they'll assume that you're going to give them up, and they'll run for it. So if you want to help yourself, to get a lighter sentence, you've got to tell me everything right now, because in a couple of hours you'll have nothing of value to trade.'"
That trick led to Maddox's finest hour in Iraq. At 6 a.m. on December 13, 2003, the final day of his tour of duty, two hours before his flight out of Baghdad, he began interrogating Mohammed Ibrahim, a midranking Baath Party leader known to be close to Saddam Hussein. More than 40 of Ibrahim's friends and family members associated with the insurgency were already in custody. For an hour and a half, Maddox tried to persuade him that giving up Saddam could lead to the release of his friends and family. Then Maddox played his final card: "I told him he had to talk quickly because Saddam might move," he says. "I also said that once I got on the plane, I would no longer be able to help him. My colleagues would just toss him in prison. Instead of saving 40 of his friends and family, he'd become No. 41." It worked. That evening, Ibrahim's directions led U.S. forces to Saddam's spider hole.
The most successful interrogation of an Al-Qaeda operative by U.S. officials required no sleep deprivation, no slapping or "walling" and no waterboarding. All it took to soften up Abu Jandal, who had been closer to Osama bin Laden than any other terrorist ever captured, was a handful of sugar-free cookies.
...
Abu Jandal's guards were so intimidated by him, they wore masks to hide their identities and begged visitors not to refer to them by name in his presence. He had no intention of cooperating with the Americans; at their first meetings, he refused even to look at them and ranted about the evils of the West. Far from confirming al-Qaeda's involvement in 9/11, he insisted the attacks had been orchestrated by Israel's Mossad. While Abu Jandal was venting his spleen, Soufan noticed that he didn't touch any of the cookies that had been served with tea: "He was a diabetic and couldn't eat anything with sugar in it." At their next meeting, the Americans brought him some sugar-free cookies, a gesture that took the edge off Abu Jandal's angry demeanor. "We had showed him respect, and we had done this nice thing for him," Soufan recalls. "So he started talking to us instead of giving us lectures."
It took more questioning, and some interrogators' sleight of hand, before the Yemeni gave up a wealth of information about al-Qaeda including the identities of seven of the 9/11 bombers but the cookies were the turning point. "After that, he could no longer think of us as evil Americans," Soufan says. "Now he was thinking of us as human beings."
...
Bush Administration officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, had previously claimed that Abu Zubaydah supplied that information only after he was waterboarded. But Soufan says once the rough treatment began administered by CIA-hired private contractors with no interrogation experience Abu Zubaydah actually stopped cooperating.
...
But professional interrogators say the ticking-time-bomb scenario is no more than a thought experiment; it rarely, if ever, occurs in real life. It's true that U.S. intelligence managed to extract information about some "aspirational" al-Qaeda plots through interrogation of prisoners captured after 9/11. But none of those plots have been revealed at least to the public to have been imminent attacks. And there is still no conclusive proof that any usable intelligence the U.S. did glean through harsh interrogations could not have been extracted using other methods.
In fact, a smart interrogator may be able to turn the ticking-bomb scenario on its head and use a sense of urgency against a captive. During combat raids in Iraq, Maddox grew used to interrogating insurgents on the fly, often at the point of capture. His objective: to quickly extract information on the location of other insurgents hiding out nearby. "I'd say to them, 'As soon as your friends know you've been captured, they'll assume that you're going to give them up, and they'll run for it. So if you want to help yourself, to get a lighter sentence, you've got to tell me everything right now, because in a couple of hours you'll have nothing of value to trade.'"
That trick led to Maddox's finest hour in Iraq. At 6 a.m. on December 13, 2003, the final day of his tour of duty, two hours before his flight out of Baghdad, he began interrogating Mohammed Ibrahim, a midranking Baath Party leader known to be close to Saddam Hussein. More than 40 of Ibrahim's friends and family members associated with the insurgency were already in custody. For an hour and a half, Maddox tried to persuade him that giving up Saddam could lead to the release of his friends and family. Then Maddox played his final card: "I told him he had to talk quickly because Saddam might move," he says. "I also said that once I got on the plane, I would no longer be able to help him. My colleagues would just toss him in prison. Instead of saving 40 of his friends and family, he'd become No. 41." It worked. That evening, Ibrahim's directions led U.S. forces to Saddam's spider hole.
One of the better mainstream articles I've read on the issue in recent times.
gutter_trash said:
how can you be so sure?
i'm not talking about mass torture and interrogation of every prisoner you capture.
i'm talking in the field, spur of the moment, make or break situations. you have a man with a bomb strapped to his chest, going to kill a large number of people. you put a gun to his kid's head. it gets him to back down.
that's not random ramblings, that's action. and it worked.
or you need to where a base is. you threaten to chop off a suspects legs. if he gives you the info and it proves to be wrong, you chop his legs off. if he gives it to you and it's right, he stays in one piece.
that would be concrete evidence of torture working. and if these situations happened, i'm sure there are times when it WOULD work.
so then you have to ask, is it worth it?
kobashi100
Banned
Atrus said:
Ed Husain and his group the Quilliam foundation are paid by the UK government. They have no credibility on the muslim streets. They are sell-outs and what brother malcom said "House Niggars"
As for the caliphate in the muslim world, yes I agree with this and the method HT use. Considering the caliphate is an islamic obligation this should not be strange. This was the ruling system of the prophet (saw) and the Companions (ra). I am not saying the caliphate will bring a utopian society although I do believe it will help get rid of the many problems the muslim world faces.
Why is it that when it comes to political views the only system that is acceptable is democracy and secularism? irrespective that muslims have there own values and there own political system.
Non muslims have always lived in the muslim world even under the ruling of a caliphate. There is no problem with this at all.
is the call for caliphate growing in the muslim world? Well many western think tanks already predict that a caliphate will rise by 2020. Groups like HT are banned in the muslim world for a reason. You look at Uzbekistan for example, many predict that the jails hold 10,000+ members of HT.
100,000 muslims attended the Khilafah conference in Jakarta in 2007. At the The International Ulama conference in 2009 There was 6000 ulama from all over the muslim world who all call for the return of the caliphate. It is growing no doubt!
SmokyDave said:
Destruction of the Hindu occupying forces in Kashmir, the Russian occupying forces in Chechnya and the jewish occupying state in palestine. Thats not calling for violence against civilians.
It has never been proven that HT are a violent party although many have tried. Even ex members who do not agree with there method do not call them a violent party.
BattleMonkey
Member
We should be better, and let every other country do it. They will see the light someday.
duckroll said:
dude you argument is horrible. i'm sorry i'm not even going to be polite in saying that.
any information is better then no information. but that's not saying that every terrorist that is tortured will give you bad information. some will give you accurate info that may lead to lives being saved.
you're saying the risk is that we compromise our values. i agree a nation that has values is a righteous nation. but those values cant be naive ones.
would you feel safer with a government that's committed to keeping you safe, or a government that tip-toes around it's perceived values and doesn't do what i needs to do in order to protect it's citizens. truthfully tell em which government you would feel safer with.
CharlieDigital
Banned
logen9999 said:
The problem with this scenario, if we really play this out, is answering the question why a captive, whom you are torturing and whom believes he will never be free again, will give you factually correct information if he believes he can get retribution against his enemies by lying and misleading them with false information. In essence, this individual, upon whom you have inflicted pain through torture and abuse now has an avenue for exacting revenge against his captors: by lying.
As I quoted from the Time article above, interrogation techniques that seem to work center around deception and, perhaps more importantly, switching the context from which the detainee is approached: treat him as a human or a "friend" and not as an enemy.
Yeah, there's always the small print. Peaceful in theory but violent in practice seems to be a bit of a motif.kobashi100 said:
The difference between a democracy and a caliphate is that democracies aren't based on singling people out for differing treatment depending on which sky fairy they believe in. In fact we're trying to move as far away from that kind of thing as possible in the west. There will be no caliphate no matter how many extremists wish for it.
I find this bit very interesting. Islamic counter-terrorist organisations are viewed as 'sellouts' on the muslim streets of the UK are they?Kobashi100 said:
Aaaaah. I get you now
MultiCore
Member
That's an interesting quote.ronito said:
I don't think 'we' know who 'we' really are. There are mixed messages and double standards on almost every subject imaginable. There is little intellectual honesty, and lots of theory and idealism mixed in with practicality.
As other people have said, getting accurate intelligence ahead of time is critical.
Can 'torture' be use to obtain that sort of thing? You bet.
Should it?
I can only answer for myself, but in all honesty, yes, I think that if there is reasonable certainty that an individual is concealing critical information, reasonable force should be considered when/if other methods of interrogation fail.
BattleMonkey
Member
Sir Fragula said:
Well if you can live with that on your conscious, though that is why there is people who would be willing to do what others can't or won't.
logen9999 said:
Then I will not have to be polite in saying that you have been reading and/or watching too much silly spy fiction with over dramatic and glorified ideas of what intelligence and torture is "really" like. A mindset like yours is immature and oversimplifies everything into "OMG DO OR DIE, DO YOU TORTURE OR NOT" when such scenarios are pretty much always contrived and made up simply to argue why torture might be "acceptable" in certain circumstances.
BattleMonkey
Member
duckroll said:
Not so say it isn't, but to say it's a complete fabrication is pretty hard to swallow.
It swings both ways where we get bad scenarios set up to picture torture in a bad light when it's obviously used wrongly. One can toss it back and forth all day.
BattleMonkey said:
I guess I should have said "brought up" instead of "made up", but what I meant is, everything in this thread so far is totally fabricated for the sake of the argument. Basically, the example of "if you don't torture this guy, thousands of innocent people will die" is not a realistic situation and is only brought up to attempt to illustrate why torture is needed.
And no, we don't need to use bad scenarios to put torture in bad light, we're talking about torture here. Is everyone forgetting that we're talking about torturing another person? It is ALWAYS used wrongly. You're not supposed to torture someone. I'm sorry, it's unacceptable to me that torture is ever acceptable as a means of "protecting" other people.
TheRagnCajun
Member
logen9999 said:
You don't seem to grasp the difference between your constructed hypothetical scenarios and what actually happens in the real world.
duckroll said:
i take back my comment about not being polite anymore. it was a silly thing to say. we can have a much better discussion being polite and level headed.
having said that how exactly am i oversimplifying it? you're as guilty of it as i am since you're making an argument against it due to it being against the values of this country.
we can go hardcore and make this really detailed with bullet-points and statistics and everything. it will require a lot of time and commitment but it will be an extremely thorough and detailed discussion. or we can keep it to broad strokes which is what we've both been doing.
i feel like i've made an extremely solid, albeit general argument.
CornBurrito
Member
logen9999 said:
Are you kidding me? Misinformation (the kind of information you generally get from terrorists after a torture session) is far more dangerous than no information.
kobashi100 said:
Interesting...
1. Non-conformists are viewed by the victim to be sell-outs and traitors to the ideology which is deemed to be indisputable.
2. There is a forecasted prediction of 2020 that is seemingly close enough to be witnessed in the victims lifespan but far enough not to delude the sense of a realistic or achievable time table.
3. The victim has a persecution complex.
4. The victim likely also believes in the existence of vast conspiracies that are aligned against his position.
5. The victim also believes that Muslims are one monolithic entity, likely to exaggerate the size of the support.
6. Ideological basis appears to be founded solely in 'belief' and 'faith'. The post lacks any strategic talking point other than personal belief to infer otherwise.
7. Counterpoint to democracy and secularism infers that the victim believes a religious system is superior (possibly by fiat or poor understanding of history). We lack information as to why he believes this is so.
8. The most troubling aspect is the support of militarism and the cognitive dissonance surrounding it. Apparently supporting groups that will destroy occupying forces is not a call for violence against civilians even if those groups themselves intentionally target civilians (Beslan school massacre).
What is your biggest influence when it comes to Islamic knowledge? When did you start universalizing the interests of a few muslims into the interests of all muslims?
TheRagnCajun said:
i mentioned only one hypothetical scenario. how is it different then what "really happens". explain to me what "really happens". if you're a knowledgeable person who is familiar with the details of intelligence gathering and the politics behind it please go nuts and educate me. I'm open minded enough to give you the benefit of the doubt so all you have to do is run with it.
MultiCore
Member
Okay, you just hit a buzz-phrase for me.Kowak said:
There are a lot of restrictions being put in place on anything you can think of, all in the name of "If we can save just 1 person/prevent 1 accident/ect then it was worth it".
As you might imagine, I find this train of logic to be overreaching. I find myself to be fond of my personal freedom, and the suggestion that my activities should be limited, because it would be in my own best interest, causes me great distress. (For instance, who in the heck has the right to tell me that I have to wear a seatbelt? No one, that's who.)
No amount of restrictive policy is going to solve all the world's problems, it is just going to reduce law-abiding citizens to zombies with little real choice.
As it pertains to torture: The odds of someone who has nothing to do with, oh, let's say a bomb threat on a US/UN/(insert favorite country/orginazation here) embassy being detained and interrogated are pretty slim. The key point is, we wouldn't be out to tourture people, we'd be out to save innocent bystanders. I think intent is important in this instance, as, from a morality standpoint, it makes all the difference.
Nobody intends to tourture an innocent person. You can bet your ass they intend to torutre someone who is withholding information that they believe, in good faith, could be used to prevent a large act of terror/violence/kitty killing/ect.
CharlieDigital
Banned
logen9999 said:
I don't feel I'm oversimplifying anything, since my argument has never been "if you torture this one man, all of society will go to hell and we will become terrorists ourselves". But instead I am pointing out that the actual application of your example on reality is not a very realistic or probable one. Your argument is that "some information is better than no information", and what I'm pointing out is that there are tons of ways to get information, and it is not restricted to capturing enemy combatants and torturing them.
In fact, that is one of the least effective ways to get information. Think about it, you're basically capturing someone who doesn't like you in the first place, and wants to see you suffer, and then you are going to beat him up to get him to cooperate with you. Can you see the problem here? There's a reason why torture is frowned upon. It is what thugs and hooligans do. If you owe them money and you're unable to pay, they think beating you to a pulp is going to motivate you to somehow pay them faster. If you know something they want to know, they'll beat you until you tell them. If you don't and you end up dying, well that's not their problem because they're thugs.
On the other hand, national security is something which has government and military backing, it has a budget, and a large number of very highly paid professionals in many different fields who are supposed to be able to secure intel. If it has come to a point where somehow only by torturing people do you get the information you need, then clearly you see the problem with the entire system? The question is not "to torture or not to torture", the question is "why has it come to a point where torture is even required?"
Obsessed said:
completely disagree. the most dangerous thing a terrorist can do in an interrogation session is say nothing.
anything he says can be useful, at least more useful then if he said nothing. even if it's a complete lie meant to confuse us. the CIA is not stupid, they know they will be lied to. it's their job to take anything he says and put it under a microscope and decide if how to act upon it, or to even act at all.
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