[connie_lingus]

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?

[dang]

Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[wmeredith]

Your 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/no...

[maroonblazer]

>And torque is NOT an effective means of extracting information.

Then how do you explain this case in Germany where simply threatening torture resulted in the perpetrator divulging the location of his victim: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/10/world/kidnapping-has-germa...

[aaronbrethorst]

The key distinction is that in this case it was a matter of

    simply threatening torture

Torture would not have produced more useful results, and may have actually produced less useful results. Threatening it, on the other hand, seems to have worked.

The issue with the CIA torture scandal is that you have a bunch of guys who may or may not know anything. These guys are interrogated, and, probably, disclose everything they know. Then, the higher ups at the CIA, acting on the authority of Cheney[1] and Bush[2] required that the guys being held—who may or may not know anything more or at all—be tortured to extract more information.

At this point, the guys being held who may or may not know anything are going to start telling their 'enhanced' interrogators anything they can in order to stop what's happening to them. It doesn't matter if it's real or fake.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/sep/09/dick-cheney-def... (and it's important to note that the Senate report on this subject revealed that torture had nothing to do with the discovery of bin Laden's location.)

[2] http://www.businessinsider.com/afp-bush-knew-about-cia-tortu...

[maroonblazer]

Maybe, but consider: instead of someone like the person in the article, the perpetrator is a member of a radical fundamentalist organization who believes that death is better than life and is not so put off by the prospect of some discomfort, at least in theory. It's conceivable that once theory is put into practice he might rethink his position.

[aaronbrethorst]

That's completely, verifiably wrong.

    The Senate report has a revealing passage saying that
    the statement of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed ("KSM")
    "during his first day in CIA custody included an
    accurate description of a Pakistani/British operative,
    which was dismissed as having been provided during the
    initial 'throwaway stage' of information collection
    when the CIA believed detainees provided false or
    worthless information". KSM was later water-boarded
    (simulated drowning) 183 times, leading him to make
    frequent confessions that later turned out to be false.
    Another section of the report says that "KSM fabrications
    led the CIA to capture and detain suspected terrorists
    who were later found to be innocent".

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/torture-it-didnt...

[hellgas00]

This is the case where there is without a doubt a definitive 'ticking time bomb'. Torture is usually used to illicit confessions, and in the case of the CIA they used it as a method to garner further information without knowing if the subject had more information to give. Say the guy in the article was just a suspect and didn't actually know where the person was, is it prudent to torture him because he might know something?

[maroonblazer]

Right, I wasn't arguing that torture was necessarily called for in situations where we don't know if someone has the desired information. I was more making the point that the idea that "torture never works" isn't borne out by the facts.

One could imagine a situation where, like this one, we DO know the person has the information. Add to that the 'ticking time-bomb' context and it's difficult to argue against torture.

Just to be clear, I think torture is horrendous and should be outlawed. But to say it should never be used is to fail to grapple more broadly with the complexities of collateral damage.

[hellgas00]

I see what you are saying, but I would have to guess that it's so very rare that the authorities know for sure that a suspect has information to give, that it is almost irrelevant to debate the scenario.

Not to mention, the use of the ticking-time bomb scenarios were used to justify use of torture by the CIA. Which entity determines if a suspect has usable information, to stave off 'improper' use of torture? If you can't trust the CIA to make a definitive call in that regards, why even consider torture as an option in any form?

[sitkack]

Turn it up to 11 and see if any more "information" comes out. Sounds legit.

[lotsofmangos]

They happened to have the perpetrator there, if they had caught the wrong guy and threatened torture, they could well have got a confession and a load of false information. Also, there are plenty of situations where you have the right guy and they still feed you bullshit, like in the example of John McCain.

The thing isn't that threatening torture occasionally works, it is that it generates false information just as readily. It is extremely unreliable and in the process it also turns you into something despicable. Nietzsche had it right when he said: Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

[cloakandswagger]

I don't think you deserve to be downvoted for providing a concrete, real world example that supports your argument.

[uxp]

But his concrete argument (while being factually correct) is irrelevant. No one was tortured, but was threatened with torture

In the case of Abu Zubaydah, in his first 2 months of capture he provided more information than at any other time. The "enhanced" torture techniques didn't start until about his 3rd month of detention.

In both cases, the threat of torture, among other future conditions that don't fall under the "enhanced" umbrella (simple solitary confinement, life in prison, unable to see family, etc) were enough to extract valuable information. Subjecting them to humiliating and physically brutal conditions did nothing. tl;dr: threatening torture can motivate people to divulge information, but performing it does nothing further.

[cloakandswagger]

Threats mean nothing if there is no possibility that they'll be followed up on. As unfortunate and dark as it is, we have to be willing to torture for the threat to be effective.

[connie_lingus]

i'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.

[Sumaso]

What?!?!

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_...

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-releas...

So no, its just people being messed up. There is no logic. There is no reason.

[webXL]

There is only one justification, and it does happen to be the ticking time bomb scenario, only when you've exhausted all other (effective) investigation methods. But that's so rare that if it ever did happen in human history, the bomb would have probably detonated anyway. So it's practically useless and counterproductive.

The bottom line is if you have to resort to torture, too many systems have failed, and you have to seriously question the values you're trying to preserve.

[tzs]

> 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

(In the following, I'm trying to just discuss the technical aspects of this. When I ask if or suggest that something would be effective, it is not meant to imply that if torture can be made effective then it is OK to do it. The ineffectiveness of torture as currently practiced is just one argument against torture, and so if it can be made effective that still leaves the other anti-torture arguments intact).

Wouldn't this largely depend on what type of information you are trying to get and how much you already know? If you already have information that I know that you are not supposed to know, and I don't know you already have it, you can ask about that while interrogating me in addition to asking about whatever it is you are really trying to get. That should give you some feedback on whether or not I'm giving correct info.

Wouldn't it also depend on how many other people you are interrogating over the same subjects? If you are questioning me and several other people about a particular thing, and I make up something on the fly to get you to stop torturing me, my made up story might not be the same as the made up stories of other people, whereas the stories of the people who tell the truth will agree. Of course, we could all have been trained to expect to be interrogated over this, and all have consistent prepared lies to give. Your counter to that would be to try to capture and interrogate lower level people or people who were less directly involved so that they are less likely to have prepared stories to give.

I can believe that torture as currently practiced is almost always ineffective, but I suspect that this may be due to them relying on psychologists to figure out how to do it rather than bringing in engineers, scientists, and mathematicians and treating it as some kind of noisy and unreliable channel problem.

[skj]

"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]

>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

[srj]

Many 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.

[superfx]

The 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.

[xtrumanx]

I'm not sure I would. It's scary me that you're sure that you would.

[DonHopkins]

You 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.

[DanBC]

Most 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.

[aeze]

Your example is invalid but even so - no I wouldn't, and that's the point.

[5yzygy]

I 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?

[jplahn]

You'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.

[rbobby]

You 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.