On Waterboarding...

Discussion in 'Politics' started by countezero, Dec 11, 2007.

  1. countezero Registered Senior Member

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    The CIA officer's testimony here is interesting. He's taken a moral position that waterboarding is torture, but he also says it was effective and saved lives. This issue is a lot more complex than it first appears, I think. And I'd be the first to admit I've waffled on it. On the one hand, I don't like torture, don't think it is all that effective. But then you see evidence like this...

    http://www.abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=3978231&page=1
     
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  3. pjdude1219 The biscuit has risen Valued Senior Member

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    so you will admit than when bush said the us does not torture he was lying
     
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  5. draqon Banned Banned

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    CIA officer controlled like puppet by the superiors..."tell em the truth...but make sure its pretty"
     
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  7. countezero Registered Senior Member

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    No, I won't. And here's why. I'm still confused about what is and isn't torture. And I'm not certain the US is torturing these people. It's my understanding they are allowing others to do the "torturing" for them. This is a fine point, I know. But it's important if we're going to call a man a liar. Lying and being intentionally obtuse are two different things.

    It's funny. The people who say things like this tend to be the ones who know the least about the CIA or what it does. I'm not sure this is the case, so far as you are concerned, but it sure sounds like you don't know jack about "The Company."
     
  8. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Drowning someone is torture, no question about it. There is a precedent of US soldiers being prosecuted for it.
     
  9. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    A question comes to mind here. What if they got information about an

    upcoming terrorist attack that saved thousands of peoples lives. Would

    everyone still think that this type of torture was no good and shouldn't be

    used? What if it was either your life they saved or your families?
     
  10. countezero Registered Senior Member

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    Waterboarding does not drown a person. It simulates the sensation of drowining.
     
  11. shichimenshyo Caught in the machine Registered Senior Member

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    By "almost drowning" them.

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  12. Ganymede Valued Senior Member

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    Waterboarding doesn't work. Because Terrorist inside of Terror cells (allegedly) never know what their actual assignment will be until the day it's to be carried out. This is to avoid them being tortured and giving up the entire operation. Israel has been torturing Palestinians for decades, I'm sure it's save lives, but it hasn't solved the problem, it's only exacerabating it.
     
  13. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Nonsense, it's the same as drowning, only you are not permitted to die.
     
  14. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Water torture, as it was commonly called before the euphemisms took over, has always been called torture in the past and when done by others. People who water-tortured prisoners during WWII were hung for the crime, afterwards.

    The CIA is faced with a damage control situation. They have been torturing people, concealing and destroying evidence formally requested by Congress and various courts, and producing "intelligence" in compliance with domestic political needs that can be publically contradicted by simple journalistic investigation. This is not only embarrassing, but legally actionable - and their administrative protection may be about to go away.

    They want some political sway an their side. So they admit what can no longer be plausibly denied - they are torturing people, as a matter of policy - and spin it by claiming that it gave them important information - it was in a good cause, in other words. Events moved them. They are not to blame for making the choice - it was a genuine dilemma.

    The cause of torture is not a good one. Even on a simple info scale, the meagre and unreliable intelligence it produces is far outweighed by the intelligence it destroys and deflects. Once you start torturing, the willing turncoat vanishes, the clever interrogation has been interrupted and blocked, the well-motivated informer stays quiet and out of sight, that most valuable asset of all - the enemy who converts from conviction - becomes almost impossible to find. You have made yourself odious and despised, and your friends have become many fewer and less helpful. You learn nothing but what you beat out of people - and you can't rely on that.

    And you damage your own evaluations. Torture is hard on normal people, people with empathy, people good at asking the right questions, people whose creativity and intelligence multiply the value of hints and bits of info, people good at interrogation. These people will often try, desperately, to believe what they have seen tortured out of victims, to justify what they have just done. And so we have the spectacle of the US government publically crowing over the "intelligence" they have obtained, that includes confessions of plots against buildings that did not exist at the time.

    Because that's what torture is uniquely good for, that nothing else can get you as easily: false confession. If you want false confessions, torture is an excellent means. And we are being governed right now by people who have great use for confessions, with little interest in their validity.
     
  15. superstring01 Moderator

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    I remember an interesting point by Ice in another thread that struck me as logical: leave all forms of torture illegal and SHOULD some rare hollywoodesque scenario occur where there is a "ticking nuclear bomb" somewhere, then simply break the law, save the lives, let it go public and allow the prosecutor and/or grand jury decide if it was truly just cause.

    A good example is: shooting someone with a gun. It's illegal to do it without just cause, but if a hardened criminal is poining a gun at you and you shoot first and plaster his brains on a wall, there isn't a grand jury in the US that will indict you for the actions. In the same sense, if and when there ever is a terrorist in custody who has the key to unlock the "ticking bomb" then in such a scenario the torturer should do what needs be done, but the details of that act should become public knowledge and the court should decide the matter.

    ~String
     
  16. countezero Registered Senior Member

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    Well, if you had bothered to read the link, you would know that it has worked, in that it led to information that disrupted plots.
     
  17. ashura the Old Right Registered Senior Member

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    That sounds like a great idea. The problem is with having an administration that's open enough to let such things like acts of torture be public. Not to mention this current administrations disgusting nitpicking when it comes to what is or isn't torture.
     
  18. Clockwood You Forgot Poland Registered Senior Member

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    Quite frankly, I don't care if someone is subjected to pain or fear. Call it torture or don't. If it gets the job done and protects American lives, I am for it. My only request is that it do no lasting harm. No lifelong disfigurement, no braindamage, no crippling or damage that may cause permanent disability, try not to drive the person to insanity. But, if you stay within those limitations, do as you will.
     
  19. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Or so it is claimed.

    So far, all attempts to make them back that up with evidence have been rejected.

    It might even be true - who knows? We do know that the "intelligence" we have seen from these torture sessions has been a pile of shit, and the various agencies appeared to have wasted a lot of effort on false leads and innocent people implicated by the tortured person - occasionally innocent themselves, apparently.
    I guarantee you that the cadres of professional torturers you will have representing you and your kind will tell you that they are "getting the job done" and "protecting American lives".

    All torture does lasting harm. Water torture does a whole list of lasting harms - from brain damage to permanent psychosis, from broken bones (during the convulsions) to cardiac arrest.

    And that's jsut to the direct victims. The torturers also suffer, and of course the society that establishes an overt, admitted, professional torturing agency as part of its law enforcement apparatus will never be the same.
     
  20. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    One lasting harm is that any evidence gathered by torture cannot be used to prosecute the alleged terrorist.

    How would the Bush administration feel if an American were waterboarded as a suspect in a crime? I guess it's perfectly legal according to Geneva Conventions?
     
  21. countezero Registered Senior Member

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    I go part of the way on this, in that I think if plots have been busted then the CIA can surely point to them and show us. Its reluctance to do has always been puzzling to me. I suppose they don't want to endanger ongoing operations or let the terrorists know what they know, that kind of thing. But surely, one bit of information obtained from such confessions can be laid out for public scrutiny?

    Agreed.

    Some of the stuff released from KSM's torture is ridiculous bullshit, but I don't doubt what this CIA officer claims. I think waterboarding works, to a certain degree. There are too many first-hand accounts out there that speak to this to say otherwise.
     
  22. Clockwood You Forgot Poland Registered Senior Member

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    If he is indeed a terrorist, prosecution will not occur. The man will vanish off the face of the earth to a pit so deep that even god can not find him. You do not risk the freedom of a man known to be an enemy of civilization on the whim of a judge or jury.

    If he is not a terrorist, the concept of prosecution is moot anyway.
    The Bush Administration? Oh, I'm sure they would give all the proper condemnations and so-on and so-forth. They have to. Its politically compulsory and would make great spin on FOX News. But that is about it.
    Torture is any application of any undesireable sensation with the intention of provoking a certain response. Actual pain, deprivation of just about anything, intimidation, even just anxiety about something that might happen. All things in human civilization come down to one of precisely two things: bribery or torture.

    We do this sort of thing to our own troops to make sure they can endure equal treatment should they be captured by one of our nation's enemies. Our own troops.
     
  23. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Thus spake every tyrant that ever walked the earth.
    Why is that? You have a government that you have just allowed to torture non-terrorists, and you are assuming that government won't prosecute them? They have probably confessed, after all.
    The existence of people who believe things like that is one more reason no one should be allowed to torture anyone.
     

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