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Interesting implication from the title of the article: that it would be 'right' to waterboard some other men. Who are they, and what justifies their torture? An

by spangry 11y ago

Interesting implication from the title of the article: that it would be 'right' to waterboard some other men. Who are they, and what justifies their torture? And before someone says it, I don't think "gathering intelligence" is a sufficiently moral or practical justification. People being tortured don't tell you valuable information; they tell you whatever they think will make the torture stop. The CIA is a sickening and surprisingly amateurish organisation. Their actions over the past decades have ruined the United States' international moral authority. It's laughable whenever some US politician goes on TV and proclaims that America is some magical paragon of liberal democratic virtue. It's a sick joke.

an_ko 11y ago
I think the word “wrong” in the title was meant to be understood in the sense of “pressed the wrong button”—undelining technical rather than moral incompetence from the CIA. Torturing someone already strongly implies the latter.
jccc 11y ago
To be fair: "And even if it had been true, what the CIA did to Abu Zubaydah—with the knowledge and approval of the highest government officials—is a prime example of the kind of still-unpunished crimes that officials like Dick Cheney, George Bush, and Donald Rumsfeld committed in the so-called Global War on Terror." ... from very near the beginning of the article.
- gshulegaard 11y ago
  Although, to be fair I can't read the article because of its abhorrent pop up...which redirects me when I try to close it.
ikeboy 11y ago
>Who are they, and what justifies their torture? >People being tortured don't tell you valuable information; they tell you whatever they think will make the torture stop. You're already asserting your position, and disguising it as a question. Virtually everyone seriously condoning torture believe it is effective. If they were to believe it wasn't effective, they wouldn't order it to be done. You may think it's not effective, but that should be argued on its own merit. You're assuming the conclusion, then pretending that everyone else does and are therefore unjustified.
- zyxley 11y ago
  > You may think it's not effective Torture factually isn't effective. https://www.cgu.edu/pdffiles/sbos/costanzo_effects_of_interrogation.pdf https://www.cgu.edu/pdffiles/sbos/costanzo_effects_of_interr...
  - blowski 11y ago
    In a "24" like scenario, if you knew that torturing 100 people, all of whom you believe to be terrorists, was 50% likely to yield useful information would you do it? For me personally, the effectiveness of torture is irrelevant. Maybe it is for you as well, I don't know from your comment. It's something we should not do, full stop.
    - zyxley 11y ago
      I believe torture is morally wrong, but it's easier to point out the practicalities of coercive interrogation (even of a nontorturous kind) producing useless bullshit most of the time. Also, your hypothetical is absurdly biased in favor of torture, given that any real information retrieved would be a needle in the haystack of the aforementioned useless bullshit.
      - blowski 11y ago
        The problem with debating it on a practical level is that it sounds like you're haggling over what kind of ends are required to justify the means. Even if it were 100% effective - every person tortured did exactly what the torturer wanted - it would still be unjustifiable because it is so morally repugnant.
        zyxley 11y ago
        Part of my point is that there will literally never be an end that justifies the means with torture, because torture factually does not and will never return any kind of reliable information. Trying to stress the point with weird hypotheticals just emphasizes that the weird hypotheticals don't reflect the facts of what results torture gives.
hartpuff 11y ago
> The CIA is a sickening and surprisingly amateurish organisation. Their actions over the past decades have ruined the United States' international moral authority. I'm not even sure that's true. I think the perception of the CIA (perhaps due to generally positive portrayals of it on TV and in movies) is completely different to, say, the perception people have of the Stasi or KGB. And yet did those organizations, which people rightly consider to be bad, actually do anything worse than the CIA has been doing in the last 70 years?
- Cthulhu_ 11y ago
  Behold, the effects of propaganda. I'd really like to see some solid research in how much the CIA or US government funds TV shows and movies to portray those organizations as the good guys, or whether it's more due to patriotism or whatever it is that makes a movie-maker portray organizations like that as good or bad.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
    Hah, good luck with that. One of the reasons the CIA is so effective is that it essentially self-funds the activities it doesn't want the public prying into. The agency makes its own investments and uses the profits as needed. We usually think of this as a drugs-for-arms Iran-Contra-type of affair, but for most spy agencies, real estate is the way to go: it's easy to obfuscate ownership, the value tends to hold or rise, and nobody's gonna steal your condominium when you're not looking. Sarasota FL has an interestingly high concentration of expensive property and people with clandestine connections. (It also has one of the highest rates of climate change denial, a thought for another time) "He works in real estate" is a common implication. So to answer your question, how much propaganda does the CIA fund: You will never, ever know.
- ikeboy 11y ago
  >And yet did those organizations, which people rightly consider to be bad, actually do anything worse than the CIA has been doing in the last 70 years? The average American is not personally affected by anything the CIA does. Can the same be said about the KGB?
kstenerud 11y ago
You can read any implication you want into 11 words of text. "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." - Cardinal Richelieu
cm2012 11y ago
I am against torture. However, it behooves us to be honest to avoid counter arguments. There is a time when torture clearly does work - when you have a way to quickly verify information. I.E. if there is a safe in the room, or a phone number you can call, or something like that. However, most of the time torture is not used for that purpose.
- x5n1 11y ago
  What's the difference between a drone strike or a beheading of innocents? What's the difference between Assad torturing non-Syrians or Americans doing the same thing at black ops sites? Out of all the justifications for acting brutally or inhumanely according to the ethical standard American rhetoricians, most of the justifications that sort of give a passing nod to all the State sponsored brutality are rooted not in any real plots that have happened, but in fictional ones that could happen.
- spangry 11y ago
  I agree. This is the one situation I can think of where torture would probably be an effective means of obtaining the information you want. And I also agree it's important to make this distinction, and for people to define what they mean by 'verify'. In my mind, the information is verified if the safe unlocks, the bomb is defused etc. The danger, I think, is when people consider 'verified' to include 'corroborating information obtained through torture'. This tends to lead you to false conclusions (e.g. half the women in your village are witches, as they all implicated each other when they were tortured).
Paradigma11 11y ago
So you ask them 30 questions 10 of which you know the correct answers. Also if you have several prisoners you can compare answers. This should give you a good idea about the validity of the answers. Just waterboarding till you get a story you like is obviously bullshit but this also does not tell you much about the potential efficacy of torture.
- masswerk 11y ago
  > "(...)" This should give you a good idea about the validity of the answers." And this is exactly, how we learned about the witches and why we had to burn them.
towlejunior 11y ago
The CIA may be sickening, but at least they don't intentionally misinterpret headlines in order to segway into grandstanding.

by spangry 11y ago

an_ko 11y ago

I think the word “wrong” in the title was meant to be understood in the sense of “pressed the wrong button”—undelining technical rather than moral incompetence from the CIA. Torturing someone already strongly implies the latter.

jccc 11y ago

To be fair: "And even if it had been true, what the CIA did to Abu Zubaydah—with the knowledge and approval of the highest government officials—is a prime example of the kind of still-unpunished crimes that officials like Dick Cheney, George Bush, and Donald Rumsfeld committed in the so-called Global War on Terror." ... from very near the beginning of the article.

gshulegaard 11y ago
Although, to be fair I can't read the article because of its abhorrent pop up...which redirects me when I try to close it.

ikeboy 11y ago

>Who are they, and what justifies their torture? >People being tortured don't tell you valuable information; they tell you whatever they think will make the torture stop. You're already asserting your position, and disguising it as a question. Virtually everyone seriously condoning torture believe it is effective. If they were to believe it wasn't effective, they wouldn't order it to be done. You may think it's not effective, but that should be argued on its own merit. You're assuming the conclusion, then pretending that everyone else does and are therefore unjustified.

zyxley 11y ago
> You may think it's not effective Torture factually isn't effective. https://www.cgu.edu/pdffiles/sbos/costanzo_effects_of_interrogation.pdf https://www.cgu.edu/pdffiles/sbos/costanzo_effects_of_interr...
- blowski 11y ago
  In a "24" like scenario, if you knew that torturing 100 people, all of whom you believe to be terrorists, was 50% likely to yield useful information would you do it? For me personally, the effectiveness of torture is irrelevant. Maybe it is for you as well, I don't know from your comment. It's something we should not do, full stop.
  - zyxley 11y ago
    I believe torture is morally wrong, but it's easier to point out the practicalities of coercive interrogation (even of a nontorturous kind) producing useless bullshit most of the time. Also, your hypothetical is absurdly biased in favor of torture, given that any real information retrieved would be a needle in the haystack of the aforementioned useless bullshit.
    - blowski 11y ago
      The problem with debating it on a practical level is that it sounds like you're haggling over what kind of ends are required to justify the means. Even if it were 100% effective - every person tortured did exactly what the torturer wanted - it would still be unjustifiable because it is so morally repugnant.
      - zyxley 11y ago
        Part of my point is that there will literally never be an end that justifies the means with torture, because torture factually does not and will never return any kind of reliable information. Trying to stress the point with weird hypotheticals just emphasizes that the weird hypotheticals don't reflect the facts of what results torture gives.

hartpuff 11y ago

> The CIA is a sickening and surprisingly amateurish organisation. Their actions over the past decades have ruined the United States' international moral authority. I'm not even sure that's true. I think the perception of the CIA (perhaps due to generally positive portrayals of it on TV and in movies) is completely different to, say, the perception people have of the Stasi or KGB. And yet did those organizations, which people rightly consider to be bad, actually do anything worse than the CIA has been doing in the last 70 years?

Cthulhu_ 11y ago
Behold, the effects of propaganda. I'd really like to see some solid research in how much the CIA or US government funds TV shows and movies to portray those organizations as the good guys, or whether it's more due to patriotism or whatever it is that makes a movie-maker portray organizations like that as good or bad.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
  Hah, good luck with that. One of the reasons the CIA is so effective is that it essentially self-funds the activities it doesn't want the public prying into. The agency makes its own investments and uses the profits as needed. We usually think of this as a drugs-for-arms Iran-Contra-type of affair, but for most spy agencies, real estate is the way to go: it's easy to obfuscate ownership, the value tends to hold or rise, and nobody's gonna steal your condominium when you're not looking. Sarasota FL has an interestingly high concentration of expensive property and people with clandestine connections. (It also has one of the highest rates of climate change denial, a thought for another time) "He works in real estate" is a common implication. So to answer your question, how much propaganda does the CIA fund: You will never, ever know.
ikeboy 11y ago
>And yet did those organizations, which people rightly consider to be bad, actually do anything worse than the CIA has been doing in the last 70 years? The average American is not personally affected by anything the CIA does. Can the same be said about the KGB?

kstenerud 11y ago

You can read any implication you want into 11 words of text. "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." - Cardinal Richelieu

cm2012 11y ago

I am against torture. However, it behooves us to be honest to avoid counter arguments. There is a time when torture clearly does work - when you have a way to quickly verify information. I.E. if there is a safe in the room, or a phone number you can call, or something like that. However, most of the time torture is not used for that purpose.

x5n1 11y ago
What's the difference between a drone strike or a beheading of innocents? What's the difference between Assad torturing non-Syrians or Americans doing the same thing at black ops sites? Out of all the justifications for acting brutally or inhumanely according to the ethical standard American rhetoricians, most of the justifications that sort of give a passing nod to all the State sponsored brutality are rooted not in any real plots that have happened, but in fictional ones that could happen.
spangry 11y ago
I agree. This is the one situation I can think of where torture would probably be an effective means of obtaining the information you want. And I also agree it's important to make this distinction, and for people to define what they mean by 'verify'. In my mind, the information is verified if the safe unlocks, the bomb is defused etc. The danger, I think, is when people consider 'verified' to include 'corroborating information obtained through torture'. This tends to lead you to false conclusions (e.g. half the women in your village are witches, as they all implicated each other when they were tortured).

Paradigma11 11y ago

So you ask them 30 questions 10 of which you know the correct answers. Also if you have several prisoners you can compare answers. This should give you a good idea about the validity of the answers. Just waterboarding till you get a story you like is obviously bullshit but this also does not tell you much about the potential efficacy of torture.

masswerk 11y ago
> "(...)" This should give you a good idea about the validity of the answers." And this is exactly, how we learned about the witches and why we had to burn them.

towlejunior 11y ago

The CIA may be sickening, but at least they don't intentionally misinterpret headlines in order to segway into grandstanding.