Torture

Richard Wagner

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    • Seen May 24, 2009
    So thanks to the Senate Armed Service's committee report we now officially know that the "enhanced interrogation" techniques used at Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, and Iraq, were authorized due to specific orders that Condoleeza Rice and Dick Cheney gave to the Pentagon lawyers to draw up the memos to authorize the torture. That means that what you saw at Abu Grahib wasn't the result of a few low-ranking bad eggs in the military (by the way, over 100 detainees died in US custody in Iraq and Afghanistan due to the "enhanced interrogation").

    One question people might wonder about is where they got all these crazy techniques. The Joint Personnel Recovery Agency trains people in the US military to resist torture that they might get from someone else. They use an old document that the communists in North Korea, Vietnam, etc. that tells you how to elicit false confessions, and counter-train against those techniques.

    So the Bush Pentagon thought, if they use it to train our military, that must mean that it's not that bad. When they asked the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency if they could use those techniques on our own detainees, they were answered with a resounding "No", and warned, not only that it was torture by any sane interpretation of the word, but that the information obtained through such methods would be unreliable. This makes since, since, as the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency said, the subject may provide many answers, or any answer, in order to get the pain to stop. Army Psychologists told personnel at Guantanamo Bay that the methods were inherently dangerous and that students were often injured, despite that it was in very very controlled settings for very limited periods of time. According to them, the risk of injury or death on real detainees would be increased exponentially.

    Anyway, the Bush pentagon just ignored them and took the Chinese torture pamphlet. Condoleeza Rice and Dick Cheney forced lawyers to write opinions saying using those methods would be okay, but let me just say here that lawyers should not be blamed at all. A lawyer will write anything that you tell him or her to, provided that they are being paid.

    One right-wing answer to all this is that the methods in the pamphlet aren't really torture. This seems like a weak argument, since a) It's always been thought of as torture, with the exception of the US doing it in the context of the war on terror, and b) the US executed several Japanese soldiers for water-boarding our soldiers.

    A second, equally weak argument is, "Well, it might be torture, but oh boy is it effective!" Well, the fact is no one has presented any evidence that has ever worked, unless you count the elusive "secret memos" that Dick Cheney has been piping about lately. However, the FBI director Robert Meuller (reluctantly) said that we did not get any information from the enhanced techniques that wound up preventing attacks.

    What do you think? Is torture okay? Should those who authorized it be prosecuted? Was the intent behind the interrogation tactics used to get good information or bad information?
     
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    If they weren't guilty in the first place, they wouldn't be somewhere where they'd be tortured (I'm assuming you're talking about Gitmo and such, because.. tl;dr.)
     
    ^ obvious troll is obvious

    Anyway, yes, I am very against toture as a method of interrogation. Plus, I don't see why the people who authorised should escape prosecution. Surely, its a form of conspiracy or something similar?
     
    Torture is great. The more the better. It gets the job done right in an interrogation.
     
    Yes and no. I don't believe in torturing people for fake confessions; that's unnecessary pain and dishonest. I don't believe in torturing detainees when an interrogation would go fine. I do believe that if you know someone has information about something that needs to be found out as soon as possible, be it a terrorist attack or finding out someone crooked is working in a place to do with a country's safety. It depends on how much time is at stake and how much intel has been received. How much is known about the person getting tortured. How much isn't. Whether there's a valid reason to torture him or if it's just guesswork.

    List is endless.
     
    Rekhyt said:
    Yes and no. I don't believe in torturing people for fake confessions; that's unnecessary pain and dishonest. I don't believe in torturing detainees when an interrogation would go fine. I do believe that if you know someone has information about something that needs to be found out as soon as possible, be it a terrorist attack or finding out someone crooked is working in a place to do with a country's safety. It depends on how much time is at stake and how much intel has been received. How much is known about the person getting tortured. How much isn't. Whether there's a valid reason to torture him or if it's just guesswork.

    List is endless.
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    ^ This pretty much. Torture is inherently wrong on a moral level, but we'd be lying to ourselves if we said that torture has never been an affective interrogation method in critical situations in the past. It should never be done almost all cases, but if there are innocent lives at stake, and you know that a person has information, you can bet I'd want them to be doing everything possible to get it out of him/her.

    It's for that reason that I disagree with those who say that torture is wrong on every level. It's morally wrong on most every level, but putting the well-being of one person over the lives of many is also morally wrong. So yeah, you could say I'm against torture, unless it's the most extreme of cases.
     
    Torture is a good way of interrogation. What would the U.S., England, etc. be without using torture? Torture is morally wrong, like Aurafire said, but it gets the the job done quickly and efficently than just regular psychological talking would.
     
    It should never be done almost all cases,
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    What? Anyway, it should never be done. Period.

    -[JD]- said:
    Torture is a good way of interrogation. What would the U.S., England, etc. be without using torture? Torture is morally wrong, like Aurafire said, but it gets the the job done quickly and efficently than just regular psychological talking would.
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    It is not a good way of interrogation, just as raping someone is not a good way to procreate.

    You disgust me.
     
    Careful With That Axe said:
    What? Anyway, it should never be done. Period.



    It is not a good way of interrogation, just as raping someone is not a good way to procreate.

    You disgust me.
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    Because I feel like doing this:

    Jack Bauer tortured someone because he knew there was a nuclear bomb in his city. The man he was torturing was confirmed to have links with the people who made the bomb, and he helped them get the bomb into the country. He saved tens of thousands of lives when he tortured the man as he got the results he was looking for. Are you going to convict Jack Bauer? Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer?
     
    Rekhyt - Great point. Allow me to elaborate.

    The problem dealing over the morality of torture boils down to this - is it worth it? Sometimes, talking with someone won't get the answer you need, and when it is regarding the well being of millions of people (for example, if one was tortured to give out information on a nuclear weapon of sorts), then I say hell, it's worth it. Why? Because that's one life compared to millions. (by the way, a nuclear bomb, especially a Hydrogen bomb paired with a Uranium bomb, would do much more damage than that. It would kill millions, and the fallout would kill thousands more, and possibly ruin the lives of over a billion people with the effects of the radiation)

    However, just for punishment? No, it's too much on both a economical and moral standpoint. Besides, if you're trying to purge someone from the world, you'll want to do it quickly, like with lethal injection, because there's a chance that they'll escape the torture. Torture is also lengthy and expensive. So no, I don't agree with torture, unless it were over something truely a threat to a large sector of a population.
     
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    If any of you who are saying that torture is sometimes a good way to get answers despite its questionable moral status, you'll find that the vast majority of the time, it elicits inaccurate, unreliable responses that are just being used to appease the torturer to get them to stop the pain. This fact is recognized by the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency.

    I've mentioned nothing about the morality of torture, only that it is hopelessly ineffective as far as gathering intelligence goes.

    I'd be interested if those of you who are saying torture can lead to truthful answers as opposed to false confessions to cite some examples. One interesting case is what we did with the Nazis we captured during WWII - they were taken to Alabama, given a state dinner, we played ping pong with them, etc. -- and they essentially gave the US all the information it needed.

    -[JD]- said:
    Torture is a good way of interrogation. What would the U.S., England, etc. be without using torture? Torture is morally wrong, like Aurafire said, but it gets the the job done quickly and efficently than just regular psychological talking would.
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    Well, the US might be in a place where there is not anti-American sentiment boiling up at an exponential rate in several regions of the world, as well as not having the "evidence" of a link between Al-Qaeda and Iraq to "justify" the Iraq War. Many government officials say we are less secure thanks to a) torture and b) military involvement in the Middle East.

    Aurafire said:
    we'd be lying to ourselves if we said that torture has never been an affective interrogation method in critical situations in the past.
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    Well, overall, you'd be lying to yourself if you believed it was an effective interrogation methods, when it comes to honest answers.
     
    Richard Wagner said:
    Well, overall, you'd be lying to yourself if you believed it was an effective interrogation methods, when it comes to honest answers.
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    Ugh, always taking my words out of context.

    It's only effective in specific and incredibly serious situations. I did not say that it should be the preferred form of interrogation for any country/military or what have you. You said it yourself. "you'll find that the vast majority of the time, it elicits inaccurate, unreliable responses that are just being used to appease the torturer to get them to stop the pain." I agree whole-heartedly.
     
    Are you going to convict Jack Bauer? Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer?
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    I can't. They should.

    Please don't base your argument from a television series. This is not a joke.

    If the ends justify the means, you can go salute Adolf Hitler, Porfirio Diaz, Castro... maybe have tea at Stalin's house.
     
    Oh, tea at Stalin's? That sound just wonderfu -- *sent to Siberian wasteland*

    Then again, it's another topic that's hard to draw the line. I think it's only a good last resort, and when I say last resort, I mean you've flipped through the book of 10,001 ways of getting information from people.

    And the above is correct. Basing an opinion on a television show is rather ridiculous, no?
     
    There's always other ways to get information out of someone. It doesn't always go for toturing, mentally or physical, as a first choice. At the very least, torturing should be used as a last resort, if not a choice or option at all.

    I would like to continue, but everyone else already said everything. >.>'
     
    no creature in this world has the right to be violent towards another creature.
    this is including animals!!!

    so, this means no.
     
    As long as there is another way of getting the info available, I think torture is a completely punishable crime. In a nutshell.
     
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