Torture...Do you approve?

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by blankc, Mar 5, 2003.

?

Do you approve of torture?

  1. Yes

    2 vote(s)
    6.7%
  2. No

    20 vote(s)
    66.7%
  3. Yes, if it meets certain criteria.

    7 vote(s)
    23.3%
  4. Other (explain)

    1 vote(s)
    3.3%
  1. blankc Your superior Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    300
    Well, do you consider it acceptable? You know that the Al Quaeda guy they caught in pakistan is going to have his b*lls fried with electrodes, and his brain turned to swiss cheese with drugs, so that they can try and get info (probably outsourced to Sudan or somewhere so America can dodge the blame). Do you approve this practice? Do you think that certain kinds of torture only are okay, or only on certain people. Is it acceptable if it guarentees to save lives, or even the slightest possibility that it may. Or do you completely oppose it.
     
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  3. Flashpoint Registered Member

    Messages:
    23
    Only in the case that the person being tortured has evidence that will save innocent lives that he wants to take. In that case let him feel pain. Its a crappy thing to have to do to a human being that is very obvious. Unfortunately some of those humans want to kill us. I'm going with the greater good on this one.
     
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  5. Psycho-Cannon Home grown and Psycho Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    744
    I don't agree.
    Under torture he will tell them anything they want to hear to make it stop even if it's not true.
    Not very productive.
     
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  7. Flashpoint Registered Member

    Messages:
    23
    To play the opposite side, why in the heck would you talk without feeling any pain? I know I wouldn't. And yes he may make something up that is a possibility, give him a little more pain.
     
  8. Psycho-Cannon Home grown and Psycho Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    744
    Thats why torture was abolished "legally anyway" in the first place.
    people confessed to crimes the didnt commit, they made up scenarios or events that the authorites then went out and "stopped" even thought it was never going to happed and killed the guy who admitted it anyway, hell entire communities ened up getting round up and tortured and confessing.

    Yes i agree it may well get answered but they have to be considered very carefully because of how they were extracted.
    Plus i jut think its wrong, but hey there using truth drugs anyway right? they will have his grandmothers kniker size by the weeks end anyway.
     
  9. Flashpoint Registered Member

    Messages:
    23
    I do think its a horrible process, and it sucks that its going to be used. I guess I just picture him killing me and I don't feel so bad. Nature is cruel as hell and we reflect our roots sometimes.
     
  10. Asguard Kiss my dark side Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    23,049
    it breaches international law, Australian law, US law, British law and most of the countrys in the world
     
  11. Bridge Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    291
    They won't physically torture him. They have other cleaner methods that work better.
     
  12. Dr Lou Natic Unnecessary Surgeon Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,574
    To be honest I can think of a few people I would honestly have no qualms about torturing, vic hislop the shark murderer/torturer being one that comes to mind another being this really annoying guy who used to spend weeks at my house, damn he was annoying!!!
    But as for this al queda dude? no.
    Torturing to get info doesn't work and seems wrong to me, torturing straight up jerks to death is a different story.
     
  13. sycoindian myxomatosis> Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    690
    ooh yeah? like what??
     
  14. Psycho-Cannon Home grown and Psycho Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    744
    Well i would say like threaten his life and that of his familly but if they do they probably wont be joking so it goes beyond standard psychological torture.
     
  15. CounslerCoffee Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    4,997
    Im not for torture, I dont care what the guys done, its against international law, and its wrong... Just plain wrong. Did yall ever see that movie The Siege with Bruce Willis and Denzel Washington. Well, Denzel has a quote in that movie about torture, let me give it to you:

    "If we torture him, General, we do that, and everything that we have bled and fought and died for is over, and they've won. They've already won."
     
  16. Tyler Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    4,888
    "it breaches international law, Australian law, US law, British law and most of the countrys in the world"

    1) Uh, yeah, cause most of the world really cares about Aussie law?
    2) This is a pointless comment. You're against abortion being legal (except in certain cases...), right Anthony? Well fuck it, why debate on it; it's legal in most countries. You against the death penalty? Fuck it, it's legal in most countries.

    Saying "It's illegal" is not an arguement. It's a pointless statement of fact in a debate about whether or not to change law.

    So, unless you just felt like saying something for the sake of seeing your name in a thread - I fail to see why you posted that.
     
  17. goofyfish Analog By Birth, Digital By Design Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,331
    This is the last sentence in Newsweek's story about the capture of Al Qaeda operative Khalid Shaikh Mohammed near Islamabad last week:
    Snigger, snigger.
    This is from a story in the New York Times:
    Teased?

    What an extraordinary word to use in this context. The passage is awkwardly written but it seems to mean that the interrogators promised to relieve the agony of a wounded prisoner if he answered their questions. The questioners may have supposed that it doesn't count as torture if somebody else caused the pain. By this reasoning Torquemada was innocent of torture because he wasn't the one who tightened the rack. In fact he was willing to loosen it once the victim confessed his heresy.

    In the same issue of the Times is another story about our treatment of prisoners. It is by Carlotta Gall, who has been filing very useful stuff out of Afghanistan. Here are excerpts from her fascinating piece:
    These stories do not prove that we are the Gestapo, or at any rate not yet. In some respects, they show us trying not to be the Gestapo. It was a U.S. army pathologist, after all, who examined Mr. Dilawar's body and ruled his death a homicide. But we are going down a very slippery slope here. No doubt those who wink and giggle at the mistreatment of suspects, like Newsweek, are right to think that torture works.

    Answers can indeed be extracted from a man in agony. Sometimes the information will be false, but sometimes it may be true. Sometimes, although probably less often than we imagine, lives may even be saved. But that is in the short term. In the long term, fighting fire with fire only creates a bigger blaze. Consider the Israelis, who have been fighting fire with fire for decades and have made a brilliant success of it. They have betrayed their own national ideals, coarsened the sensibilities of their young soldiers, weakened their democracy, bred generations of suicide bombers, and made Israel the most terrorized nation on the face of the earth.

    :m: Peace.
     
  18. Malifics Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    37
    toture?

    Aside from the latest Al Queada questions, I would like to take this one step further and question what methods would be acceptable and for what crimes? I would like to step out side of this box a little and think about the many other causes for some form of punishment.

    Child molesters?
    Murderers?
    Junkies?
    Thieves?
    Punks?
    Cheerleaders?


    What method or what crime would have to happen to you personally to engage in feelings of anger and revenge?
    I have to say that persons views vary if they are personally effected/affected by a situation. Are we not driven by our social views and what we as a group in a box feel is acceptable? What ever happened to those who lynched? Did they have cause? Was this legal? Was this religiously driven?

    I am just asking to engage in a little more thought on what would be considered an appropriate offense to give cause for "torture" AND what "said" Torture would consist of?

    Example:

    Child molester-proven guilty
    Method of punishment-Torture
    Torture consists of???? Certain Body parts being removed so non functional?

    I don't know. just thinking of variety of situations we all could fall into............
     
  19. Xev Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    10,943
    It's unnecessary.

    Sleep deprivation, drugs, psychological manipulation.

    Actually much more effective.
     
  20. blankc Your superior Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    300
    Drugs are physical torture imho. They use some pretty harsh stuff that often permanently alters reality for the subject.
     
  21. hypewaders Save Changes Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    12,061
    Hard for me to grapple with this without some finer definition of torture. In the situation we are discussing, intense pain and mutilation are unecessary. Panic and intense fear corrupt thinking and information- adrenaline and the other components naturally coursing through the system distort memory just as much as synthetic drugs. The debriefing game is most efficiently done by learning enough about the subject to choose the best punishment/reward program. Since this individual is reportedly not as devout as someone like UBL, I would venture to guess he will be quite the wheeler-dealer once broken.

    MSM has obviously not been getting much sleep lately, has been under constant psychological strain, and will soon be talking if not already. He is or will soon be getting inducements to pay attention, while multiple threads of accounts are run through over and over (and over & over, that is the "torture") with very subtle and difficult-to detect tweaks which reveal the real information once stripped out analytically. Because the Pakistanis (sympathetically) tipped off the press and thereby al-Qaida, the pace of the debriefing needs not be frantic. All the rabbits are in new holes now.

    The way the Busheviks savor wallowing in cloak-and-dagger BS is unfortunate amatuerism. The administration needs no "undisclosed location" melodrama at this point in order to get what they need from MSM, and the sinister act by Rumsfeld is counterproductive to the "democracy building" PR campign they have been spending so much monetary and credibility capital on. The probable motivation for the Mossad act is deterrence, and impressing a barely-repressed bloodthirsty element of the public- but it is safe to say they are not scaring any motivated terrorists, especially those fanatically living a religious Mission.

    In the wider non-specific ethics of torture, IMO there are dire, fast-unfolding emergency circumstances where time is so critical, and perhas megadeath in the balance, that torture (yes, extreme pain, mutilation, death) could be justified (not as effective, but sometimes speed is more valuable than quality). This is clearly not one of those times.
     
  22. Malifics Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    37
    Torture??


    Bravo! Well Thought.......
     
  23. pumpkinsaren'torange Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,159
    if it's in the best interest(ie. safety) of roughly 7 billion people, than, yeah..i'd say torturing one man on their behalf would be acceptable.
     

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