More Evidence That Torture Doesn't WorkFollow

By "someone of importance" I suppose I was talking about people with actual power, but more broadly, I mean anyone with the gumption to understand that saying "torture is awesome" is ideological suicide in the same way as would be advocating beating up five year olds and making them build your house.




Because that's not the claim. It's a claim. It's one claim of many.

gbaji, when we start talking about waterboarding's effectiveness, it's because the moral argument is already done. The only reason to talk about its effectiveness at all is if you were trying to somehow redeem the technique for the inevitable harm that it causes. Prison is effective for its purpose and ostensibly redeems the harm it causes.

Now, sometimes, and to some people, the harm it causes can't be redeemed anyway. With torture, ***** it: nothing's going to redeem the use of "torture." The reason we talk about effectiveness is a secondary argument to convince people who are otherwise on the fence about the issue, who think that the practice has been redeemed. It's an argument to convince people who have already failed to be convinced by (more deontological) moral ones.

I'm sure he doesn't, but then that's the unfortunate image the US military, and wider, project. It's OK if we do it, but we'll crush anyone who tries to do it to us.

Every country tortures when **** hits the fan. Whether they do it directly, or use proxies, or use techniques which are on the borderline of torture, we all do it. France tortured during the Algeria war, the UK had agents present during the torturing of AQ suspects in certain countries, there are tons of accusations of torture by US agents at Bagram, we've all heard of rendition flights... It might not official policy, the President might operate on a "don't ask" policy, but it's naive to think that "we don't do torture".

I'm not saying it's right, or that we should do it, or that it works, obviously. But it does happen, and every country does it in certain circumstances.

Silly Squatch, that's WMD, not torture.

People always lump waterboarding in with torture, but the very fact that anyone ever has volunteered to try it out on tv to see how bad it is means that it really isn't. Any proceedure a sane, normally adjusted individual would submit to willingly is not torture by definition.

Regarding torture in the abstract, and speaking as someone with a degree in security and intel, it isn't reliable. You have to assume that the people you would be interrogating are the hardened "worst of the worst" individuals. religious martyrs, fanatics, democrats, etc. You know the type... But anyways, that gives them a very strong core of belief to cling to. Their ego is tied to their resistance persona, and in their mind, THEY, not you, are the good guy, so right is on their side. If you don't damage that psyche enough, they will never crack. if you damage it, or the subject too much, they slip past the point where they might be rational enough to try and negotiate, and into the area where they start to welcome death as a release. If they do start to talk, about half the time you'll get some decent information with the bad. But the problem being that the time you took to torture the individual ahs almost certanly made anything they know out of date.

You also can't torture someone and keep the moral high ground in your own worldview. cracks start forming in the system, and if you really are the good guy, you can't take it as far as your subject would endure anyways.

A far more effective approach would probably be to messely kill the **** out of one of a group of insurgents in front of the others, and then seperate them and try to get them to talk. That or round up their families and try the same thing. If you do that though, you now have become worse than what you are fighting, and they win anyways.

It's far better to get your own deep cover assets in place and work through reliable intel. We used to have such an intel network untill William Clinton decided to scrap the whole ******* thing as a cost cutting measure. Stupid *******.

Oh well, now obama wants to scrap the rest of our nukes. Funny how quick the rest of the security council agreed that would be a great idea eh?

Not exactly.



Is it?

People labouring under the misapprehension that it's less horrible than it is. I haven't seem any of them say it's not torture after undergoing it, even though to do so would cost them nothing.

Also, that's not the definition of torture under international law. I don't think it's anyone's definition of torture, for reasons that should be exceedingly obvious.

The chances of the US giving up all their nukes in our lifetime is as close to zero as is statistically possible.

Giving people a very agressive bath isn't torture. It's OCD hygene. It might have worked if they weren't expecting it, but now the terrorists are all going to be like "oh goodie, now maybe these horrible fleas will drown and leave my scalp in peace, and all i have to do is make up **** about where osama is and they will leave me alone! wheee!"

and yeah, getting rid of the nuclear stockpile is a ******* stupid idea. Do you really want China or Russia to be the ones with the most toys? Like us or hate us, the US is more likely to look ot for european interests than either of them would be. But you go right on ahead and think thats a good idea if you like.

Vestigial. Self. Loathing.

Really, I don't care about "most" toys. Figure out what "enough" toys is. I'm sure you're more equipped to answer something like that than me, but it's a bit hard for me to believe that we're barely teetering on the threshold of no longer being able to assure mutual destruction.

The US will never, ever, unilaterally give up its nukes. Ever.

The only way it would give up its nukes would be if the rest of the world did it too, but even that will never, ever happen. Ever.

Also, both the UK and France have nukes. Which they won't give up unilaterally either.

The only thing Obama is trying to do is reduce the stockpile of nuclear weapons worldwide. But even the prospect of Russia, China and the US reducing their stockpiles significantly is extremely remote. On the list of "threats
to the US", Obama's nuclear stockpile reduction plan is about as high as "Invasion of giant bluefin tuna with freaking lazers on their heads".

Exactly.

According to the UN, it's not torture if you just do it for shits and giggles.