More Evidence That Torture Doesn't WorkFollow

A more comprehensive review of the journal article has been picked up by the AP and is now circulating in major newspapers.

I will admit I did not read this entire thread. The subject line was enough for me. However, I am curious. Is anyone here actually aruging for and advocating the use of torture as an interrogation technique that the United States of America can and should use?

If so, I'd really like this answered, because it was an excellent question that was ignored:



Question edited for my own curiosity.

Edited, Sep 22nd 2009 2:22pm by Belkira

It's difficult to say. Torture is illegal in the United States. The U.S.A. has never condoned torture, and it has never performed torture. This is, at least, the official and legal position of the country. Depending on how nice you want to be to the government, one of two things is actually happening: if you want to be nice, then you can say that the interrogation techniques and such up for discussion aren't really considered torture; if you want to be not so nice, then you just realize that the government pays lip service to the convention against torture, but doesn't really give a sh*t.

Let's be nice, just because it's nice. In that case, people who want to waterboard suspects (among other such things publicized, like sleep deprivation) aren't really torturing someone, because the technique doesn't meet the criteria for being considered torture. If I recall correctly, the exact criteria are "purposefully" causing "severe pain, physical or mental" to some dude. You can then try to weasel out of some action being torture in two ways: the first denies that the pain is severe, and the second denies that the pain is purposeful.

Arguments used in the past to deny severe pain generally focus on the verification of lasting or permanent damage. Because waterboarding doesn't leave any marks really, it's easy for people to say that it does not cause severe pan; it's over in 30 seconds or so, and causes no medical harm that can't be cured in a day. What of the mental harm you ask? That's not easily verified, and it's kind of easy to ignore besides. In any case, the other dodge is to deny purpose, or "specific intent" iirc the wording. In this regard, you can argue that any action which has an end other than the suffering of the victim is not torture, because the consequences are forseen but not intended. In this way, as long as you basically have even the vague notion of defending national security as your end, then any action (waterboarding or more) was defensible as an unintentional, but necessary and foreseeable, act.

Basically, what I mean with that long rumination, is that your question is a bit loaded given all of the semantic epicycles that go on about this. I mean, it's not a bad question, and varus might be straightforward enough to answer "yes," but it's not the sanitized or official position of anyone, and it's due mainly to all of that semantic sh*t that people can get away with it.

***

I appologize is this post sounds haughty or patronizing. I don't mean it to, but it just seemed to form that way.

Edited, Sep 22nd 2009 6:08pm by Pensive

That's not called "being nice", that's called "lying".



And that's called "honesty". Our governments condone torture. Maybe not on a huge scale, maybe not all the time, but they sometimes do. It's slightly naive to think otherwise.

I believe a period following the end quote is the proper way.

That's no reason not to present both. Justice compels the best possible and nicest and most idealistic defense available, as much as it compels the most suspicious and more practical and most jaded attack available.

Incorrect. The question mark serves as the end punctuation, whether or not you're asking the question yourself.

Al Gore also loves censorship, but he seemed to be able to find time enough for that.

FTFY.

Oh, I get it, you advocate the use of any method that someone somewhere may arbitrarily decide isn't called "torture".

It's all semantics and word-games to you.

No, his intellect is just too great to be bothered with such mundane concepts as the obvious difference between torture and interrogation, so he decides that it all just falls under the prettier term because its sooooo nebulous.

No. I'm not advocating anything at all. I'm saying that we should assess the question at hand without putting additional labels which serve no purpose other than to create the kind of simplistic and point-missing arguments you are now engaging in.


I could just as easily state that you oppose the use of any method that someone somewhere arbitrarily decided *is* called "torture".


The larger point is that the study in question did not make any sort of moral judgment. It was about whether specific types of techniques were effective (high stress, with the example being waterboarding). Waterboarding is waterboarding. Whether we call it "torture" or "interrogation" is irrelevant to whether or not it works.


I find it strange that so many people want to defend an argument based on effectiveness by falling back to an argument about morals. If the actual claim is that waterboarding isn't effective, then why not argue the point on that basis? Yet, what seems to be happening is that anyone who questions the veracity of the conclusions of this study is attacked, not based on the study itself and its conclusions, but on a moral angle.

Kinda implies a weak position when you do that...

Edited, Sep 23rd 2009 8:19pm by gbaji