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The CIA report threatens our legitimacy as a world power. no it does not...almost everyone in the world understand that under certain conditions, torture to ge
by connie_lingus 12y ago
The CIA report threatens our legitimacy as a world power.
no it does not...almost everyone in the world understand that under certain conditions, torture to get potentially life-saving information is just the way of things.
let me put it this way...if your immediate family was going to be blown up in two hours, wouldn't you say go ahead and torture that guy who you KNOW has information on how to diffuse the bomb?
- xtrumanx 12y agoI'm not sure I would. It's scary me that you're sure that you would.
- connie_lingus 12y agoyou would allow your parents and children to be blown up rather than make a horrid criminal be very uncomfortable for a few minutes???? and i'm the nutty one?
- ObviousScience 12y agoExcept a) that torture in the report didn't last for a few minutes and b) that it's less effective than other methods and more likely to obtain false information. So if I only had a couple hours and actually wanted to save my family, I'd probably try to do something that would actually make a difference.
- rblatz 12y agoThe world doesn't work like the television show 24.
- connie_lingus 12y agoi don't watch tv so i don't know what you are talking about.
- jobposter1234 12y agohey! everybody! over here! this guy doesn't watch tv! huzzah, we must use him as a sining beacon of leatherbound mahagony book-readership!
- DonHopkins 12y agoThat's funny, because you sound exactly like somebody who watches Fox News religiously. So if it wasn't TV, please explain to us where you ever got the idea that there was a "ticking time bomb" scenario, and how that justified the CIA's torture and war crimes that you're trying to justify by unwittingly parroting the exact same lies that Fox News is broadcasting?
- droidist2 12y agoI've never watched a minute of 24 but I know what you're talking about.
- nemo 12y agoWould you allow your parents or children to be misidentified and wrongly tortured out of the false view that torture is the most effective interrogation/investigation approach? Note also that the CIA had to really claim some kind of permanent unknown ticking time bomb of unknown nature, but after they used that justification, held a suspect they ignored for 40 days before torturing them. A false sense of urgency at an unknown threat is not a rational justification for torture (I'd argue that if we were rational we'd never justify it), but once you permit torture, it opens the door to all kinds of terrible, immoral, and ineffective tactics.
- superfx 12y agoThe most damning aspect of the CIA report is that none of what you're claiming was true. There was no ticking time bomb scenario, and there was no critical information extracted. In fact, the information the CIA did obtain from prisoners was later shown to be false.
- wmeredith 12y agoYour premise is pure fantasy. There was never a ticking time bomb scenario. And torque is NOT an effective means of extracting information. Everyone from Napoleon to Hitler to our own Military generals have aid as much. Here's a good article on the subject: http://www.theguardian.com/science/the-lay-scientist/2010/nov/04/2 http://www.theguardian.com/science/the-lay-scientist/2010/no...
- connie_lingus 12y agoi'm sorry, but this simply flies in face of logic. it is absolutely morally wrong, but it certainly can be effective and has been used throughout history. usually, things that don't work don't last anywhere near that long. there are all sorts of reasons to oppose it, which of course I do, but saying it cannot be effective just isn't one of them.
- skj 12y ago"Logic" is not what you're using here. People thought the earth was flat for, well, a long time. Things that are false can last quite a while.
- aninhumer 12y ago>Things that are false can last quite a while. Like the idea that people thought the world was flat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_Flat_Earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_Flat_Earth
- Sumaso 12y agoWhat?!?! When John McCain was tortured and was asked to give up the names of his squad mates, he gave the names of the front line of the green bay packers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_life_and_military_career_of_John_McCain#Arrival http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_life_and_military_career_... Clearly torture is an effective way of getting useless information, you have no way to tell if the info is correct or not, and the prisoner has no incentive to give you the correct information. People who were cooperating were still tortured, for no apparent reason! (See the section on Rectal Feeding And Hydration:) http://www.businessinsider.com/the-senate-is-about-to-release-the-cia-torture-report-2014-12 http://www.businessinsider.com/the-senate-is-about-to-releas... So no, its just people being messed up. There is no logic. There is no reason.
- srj 12y agoMany were tortured for years. That fact alone argues against the existence of a ticking time bomb scenario. Dozens of others were held for no reason at all, later released as having been found innocent. If the US did torture someone in a scenario where the public was in imminent danger they would likely be exonerated in (at least) the court of public opinion. That's not what happened here, though.
- aeze 12y agoYour example is invalid but even so - no I wouldn't, and that's the point.
- rbobby 12y agoYou have 30 minutes. Do you torture the guy you KNOW has had years of high level torture resistance training or do you give in and save your FAMILY? See... bullshit hypotheticals can prove the opposite point too.
- jplahn 12y agoYou're missing the entire problem with this premise. Somebody torturing a man that has his family held hostage is entirely different than state sponsored torture. I think that should be obvious. People understand the fact that on the battlefield, sometimes torture happens, even when it shouldn't. When a soldier tortures somebody they just captured to keep their fellow soldiers alive, we don't agree with it, but there's a different mentality surrounding it. When the government TELLS that soldier to torture somebody, then it's a different matter entirely. This same idea is at work with your example above.
- jplahn 12y agoYou're missing the entire problem with this premise. Somebody torturing a man that has his family held hostage is entirely different than state sponsored torture. I think that should be obvious. People understand the fact that on the battlefield, sometimes torture happens, even when it shouldn't. When a soldier tortures somebody they just captured to keep their fellow soldiers alive, we don't agree with it, but there's a different mentality surrounding it. When the government TELLS that soldier to torture somebody, then it's a different matter entirely. This same idea is at work with your example above.
- 5yzygy 12y agoI believe torture is abhorrent. Effectiveness aside, how would one morally distinguish himself from the bomber in this imaginary scenario? Or is it because one person has done something terrible, a moral golden ticket is created that allows a person to do anything, including terrible things like anal rape and simulated drowning, in order to /maybe/ stop that first terrible act? Is there a torturer inside every human heart just waiting for an excuse to be let out? The philosophical ethical project isn't about what we can get away with but instead against what kind of standard do we want to hold ourselves. If we allow ourselves torture as an acceptable mode of conduct, what is off limits?
- dang 12y agoPlease avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- DanBC 12y agoMost people in Gitmo were not captured by US forces on the battlefield (only 5% were captured by American forces) - the rest were captured by Afghan forces and handed over in return for money. The intelligence that you get from someone being tortured is worthless - people say whatever you want to hear in oder to make the torture stop. There is never a situation where there's some ticking bomb. Finally, torture is prohibited under a wide number of international treaties. Even the US uses phrases like "Enhanced Interogation Techniques" because they accept that torture is wrong.
- DonHopkins 12y agoYou certainly have already lost the argument when you have to make that kind of a ridiculous emotional implausible supposition, trying to whip everyone up into a patriotic frenzy, in your sociopathic attempt to justify torture. There was NO ticking time bomb. And even if there was, torture STILL would not work, for all the same reasons, and it would just waste precious time. You've just demonstrated that you're not thinking rationally, and that you're just reacting to and parroting emotional pro-torture propaganda. That doesn't win your argument, it just shows what kind of a person you truly are: a war crime apologist, who panders to people's worst fears and emotions, to support ineffective torture, as a means to your actual ends: revenge.