More Evidence That Torture Doesn't WorkFollow

Well, its nice to know where certain amongst you stand. Barkingturtle had made his opinion on the matter quite clear a while back, but the rest of you, I hadn't realized you felt that way. Good to know.

Stateing that you think someone should be fired is not a way to win friends and influence people, and is rather more than some relitivly harmless name calling. Espeically given the present unsettled situation. Besides, he started it.

My statement to you RedPhoenixxx was more in relation to the fact that I wasn't calling you names, there was no real reason for you to do so. obviously you took it differently. Alright, whatever, you do what you gotta do.

Admins on this site have always interacted with posters to a degree, especially in Asylum. If you do not like that, find another board. I am not going anywhere, and quite frankly, I was here first.

No. Actually, I don't. Because we're not arguing equivalent positions. I am saying that neither he nor I have the direct experience to judge whether or not the specific techniques being used at Gitmo should be considered "torture" and disallowed.

The difference is that I'm willing to accept that those who do have said experience might just know what they're talking about. The UN Commission on Torture specifically has not categorized waterboarding as torture, despite dozens of opportunities to do so. Our own opinions on the issue, expressed in this very thread, indicate that waterboarding is not viewed to be nearly as harsh as techniques which are defined by the UN as torture.

If you want to say "waterboarding is wrong because most people think it is", that's perfectly valid. But instead you say: "Waterboarding is torture. Torture is wrong. Therefore waterboarding is wrong". Which kinda makes the matching of the label to the action important...




You could also try actually applying the same criteria to all sides of an issue, including your own. As a general rule of thumb, the guy arguing for change of status-quo should have a stronger burden of proof applied to his argument than the guy arguing for keeping said status. It's questionable for one to place them in some kind of equivalence in the first place, but you've gone a step further and reversed them entirely.



Trust me. The only thing embarrassing is watching you so consistently get things backwards. It's comical really...

Edited, Sep 28th 2009 6:39pm by gbaji

Really? Cause I thought it might have something to do with additional protections we grant to people in the US when they are involved in a criminal case. Funny how you even mentioned the whole "out of the country" bit, but failed to make the connection.

See there is this whole big huge range of things which our legal system does not allow police to do in a police investigation which are also outside the range of things that are torture.

Let me draw you a picture:

 
                   |                                   | 
Stuff legal to     |  Stuff illegal to                 | 
do in a police     |  do in a police                   |   torture 
investigation      |  investigation                    | 
                   |                                   | 

Are you arguing that not letting someone have a lawyer present is torture as well? How about requiring them to testify when they are the defendant? Or use evidence collected without a warrant? Are all of those things "torture"? There's a flaw or two there, don't you think?

And the selective standards just keep on rolling...

Do we require this of legislators or judges with regard to other aspects of the law? Yes or no?


Like it or not, that is the international body we've all agreed by treaty to abide to when it comes to issues of torture and inhumane treatment. We do silly things like have processes for determining our laws, and writing them down ahead of time precisely so that we're not just making emotional "mob rule" decisions as we go along. It's a sign of civilization that we do these things and abide by them.


If you want to argue that the very process is wrong, then you need to argue that in all cases, not just one.

I guess I'll have to throw away those "ABORT KAOLIAN" posters I was working on, then. I'm not sure what to do with the voodoo doll. How do you disarm these things? Maybe you have to literally remove the doll's arm. That'd be an amusing pune or play on words.

Hmm, here I was talking about waterboarding... So, what does waterboarding have to do with all the nonsense you posted?

Not allowed to do stuff? By your own logic:
Is waterboarding specifically prohibited by law in our country? Does it say waterboarding SPECIFICALLY? cite please

I did answer your question, I'm sorry you didn't understand how. Think about it a bit more.

However, I think I'm going to start keeping a list of posts and questions you truly don't respond to at all, and every time you try to throw out this "BUT YOU DIDN'T ANSWER MY QUESTION" bullsh*t, I'll post the entire thing.

We'll start with a citation that people in the medical field will move internationally out of their home country in order to make more money.



You absolutely did not say "international" at all in what I replied to. But ok.



I took the liberty to look up the UN Commission on Torture, considering how insistent you are. Strangely enough, no such thing has ever existed.

Are you talking about the Committee against Torture? Because they don't do anything regarding labeling individual process as torture or not.

P.S. - Don't tell me I know what committee/commision you're talking about, because I have no clue with you. I could start throwing guesses out but you'll just latch on to whichever one most helps you make your point rather than the one you have in mind.



Looking like it, actually.



Well, while we're making commissions up, I'm just going to state that they did! Just now. 10:37 EST on 9-28-2009. Fancy that!



Just because it needs to be said one more time: You're actually talking about something that never was. Carry on though.



Boy, you're sure obsessed with being right.

So, gbaji, do you feel waterboarding is torture? Or are you completely unable to have an opinion here because "THE LAW SAYS SO!"

I'm sure you answered that elsewhere, but it's probably surrounded by a song and dance about how it doesn't matter what you think, so reply again for me. Thanks!

Edited, Sep 28th 2009 11:55pm by CBD

Gbaji couldn't think his way out of a bear trap.

Huh? "Status quo" and "general consensus" are two completely different things.


I'm talking about how we determine what is legal and what isn't. I'm talking about how we define things within the context of the law. The "status quo" is the legal systems we have in place to do those things. And yes. The status quo should always trump a proposed change unless those proposing the change can show convincingly that the new way of doing things is "better".

That's an automatic burden of proof differential. I don't have to prove that using scientific method is the best way to advance technologically. It's assumed because that's how we've advanced so far and it's worked. If you want to argue that we should be generating new advances by reading the entrails of chickens, then you need to convince a whole bunch of people that your method is "better" than what we're using now.


The current method for determining if the treatment of a prisoner violates international treaty is to look at the UN convention on torture and inhumane treatment. That convention calls for a body of UN representatives to meet, address specific cases brought before them, and make determinations as to whether those cases violate the convention itself. When I say that waterboarding is not torture according to international "law", I say this because that commission has met on many occasions to discuss specific cases of the use of waterboarding and has not yet once determined that waterboarding violated UN convention on torture.


Do you agree that any action not illegal is by definition "legal"? Ergo, waterboarding is legal according to the UN. You're free to disagree with that, but you're not disagreeing with me, but with the UN. It just seems like some of you want to make up rules as you go along based on what you think they should be. You want to insist that waterboarding really is in violation of the UN convention in question, despite the body specifically tasked with determining this saying it isn't.


So yeah. I hold you to a higher burden of proof. Just insisting that it is so is not sufficient.




You say it does. Others say it doesn't. That's purely subjective, isn't it? Gee... If only we had some method to decide which interpretation to use? Oh wait! We do...



That's not logic though. You're just shifting the definition down another layer. Instead of just arbitrarily deciding that waterboarding is torture, you're arbitrarily deciding what "severe pain and suffering" is. In both cases, we have set up a group of people to make that determination. While you're free to disagree, your opinion simply does not have the same weight.



Funny how often a guy who insists that his positions are all based on logic and reason has to resort to name calling...


I didn't make the rules of the world up myself Pensive. However, I accept that there was some process and involved in getting them to the point they are now, and that there are additional processes involved in changing them. I respect that, and respect those who came before me and perhaps had very good reasons for doing things the way they did. I also understand (because I'm a bit smarter and more worldly than a 6 year old), that quite often the realities of the world don't allow us to please everyone all the time. I understand that when we look at the rules that govern the world around us and we don't understand them, it's usually because we're missing something, and that something is usually pretty darn important.




I was not equating our respective life experiences, and I'm not sure where you got that idea. Are you saying that he hasn't lived his life in a society in which he expects certain protections? There's a difference between expecting them but not getting them and actually living in a society in which there is no expectation of them at all. I suspect you are confusing those two. Badly.


The point I was getting at, which perhaps I did not express well, is that we use a process to decide what the rules are. We decide what our soldiers fighting in a war can and cannot do. We decide what interrogators in different situations can and cannot do. We decide what police officers can and cannot do. And quite often the range of what they "can do" exceeds that which most of us would be willing to do ourselves. However, the boundaries of the law were arrived at, not by arbitrary fiat, but over time based on what worked best.

I was responding to his statement that he has neither been waterboarded or been in a war. Regardless of what list of bad things may have happened to him along the way in his life, the conditions in which he existed have been defined by those rules and limits. And those conditions would almost certainly have been worse if there did not exist soldiers willing to do things most people are not, and police willing to do things most are not, and laws which may in some cases seem to restrictive and in others too lenient, but collectively were designed and/or evolved to create and protect the society.


Yes. It does not always work. And it's certainly not perfect. There are always exceptions, but overall the processes themselves tend to work out. To chuck them because of one case or another would overwhelmingly be counterproductive, but what I keep seeing is people insisting that we should. And yeah, my assumption is going to be that it hasn't dawned on most of those people just how much protection they do receive as a result of the processes out there in the world. No matter how bad you think things are, it really can get worse...

I sympathise.

Stop playing to stereotypes, gbaji. It's really quite tiresome.

Kind of slow, aren't you?

I was describing facts, states of affairs, reality and such, you see.

Now, according to everything I've written, why would you think that those states of affairs would have anything to do with our reasons for codifying ethics?



Not once in the history of the world, well okay, maybe when I was like 16, but there is nothing about my beliefs which are nihilistic or reductionist or any such thing.

The goal of clarifying and determining from where the processes of ethics and legal proceedings come, and recognizing that they can't come from facts about the world, but rather come from subject-subject relationships doesn't destroy the origin or legitimacy of those ethics and laws. What it does do is change our relationship to them, and our relative power over them. When you fool yourself into believing that what you should do comes from what you are and the things around you, nothing but stagnation can occur.

Unfortunately, concepts like "realism" and "pragmitism" get appropriated and restructured by milk-livered people who want nothing more than to be as irresponsible and non-commital about their own ethical obligations as possible.

I can't believe you're willing to engage in these rambling, pointless, sparring matches with gbaji but you refuse to have an intellectually arousing discussion about the nature of altruism with me.



Sadly, I think gbaji's knowledge of torture methods is a bit rusty.

Edited, Sep 29th 2009 4:10am by Kavekk