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Yes. If CIA would actually worry about the terrorist, then the terrorists still free would be 1. concern. They are really hard to catch, no matter how you try.
by vlehto 11y ago
Yes. If CIA would actually worry about the terrorist, then the terrorists still free would be 1. concern. They are really hard to catch, no matter how you try.
Now if you go torture route, you might get some information that is quickly getting dated. But you also validate the terrorist cause. And terrorists in hostage situations don't want to surrender, because they know they will be tortured.
If you would treat captured terrorists incredibly nicely, that would cause huge moral decay and risk of snitching to the terrorists who are still free. This is in line with Sun Tzu from few thousand years back "always reward a traitor, never trust him". Also U.S. domestic terrorism called "mafia" was best fought with witness protection program.
CIA isn't stupid. They do torture for some reason.
- arca_vorago 11y agoI think you unknowingly answered the real question: what is the purpose of torture? Almost everyone here is assuming it is to extract information and save lives with that information, but I would venture to say that is not nearly as often the case as most would like to think. If we look at the other possible reasons, some things make sense. One thing to keep in mind is that torture is rare. The majority who end up at places like Gitmo don't get tortured (treated badly, yes, but rarely tortured). The real people who get tortured are much more likely to be at a blacksite no one knows about. There is an interesting pattern though, I have noticed, which is the turning of targets into double agents and releasing them back in the wild. Now, another thing to remember is The Company started MKUltra a long time ago. They have surely highly improved the mental breakdown/buildup process since then. If you stop assuming the purpose of torture is to gather information, things will make much more sense. Also, like you said: "you validate the terrorist cause". What a useful side effect for those who seem to be invested in destabilizing certain areas of the world...
- vlehto 11y agoI think that's good speculation. But with bit of Hanlons Razor, that seems bit too good picture of CIA. They are not stupid, but they are still a fallible organization. I think their priorities are: existence of CIA, genuine concern for safety of U.S., geopolitical power of U.S. Maybe they we're really clueless. And decided to waterboard people so they would be "doing something" so they could try to justify existence of CIA. Or maybe they wanted to show to Mossad that they get to do shit too. As an intelligence saber rattling. We really don't know.