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> What is different about the 9/11 attacks that legitimizes the use of torture, when you would not support it against soldiers or other criminals? They had dem

> What is different about the 9/11 attacks that legitimizes the use of torture, when you would not support it against soldiers or other criminals? They had demonstrated the practice of mass killings of innocent civilians and expressed the desire to continue to do so. > If you would endorse torture to prevent another 9/11, why wouldn't you also endorse torture to prevent, say, another Hiroshima? Well, setting aside the moral equivalency of 9/11 to Hiroshima, I suppose if there was reason to believe there was a nuclear threat and there was access to someone for whom it was legitimately believed could provide details which would prevent it, employing torture would be morally and ethically justified.

jaimebuelta 12y ago
Let me refresh one of the key point of the report (sorry about the caps) TORTURE IS NOT EFFECTIVE This is hardly news, it has been known for a long time. CIA knew it before 9/11
- tosser-001 12y ago
  Again, that to me is the crux also. If it is not effective than there is no justification. If it is, which the CIA claims it was, then I have no ethical problem with it in this limited situation
  - mikeash 12y ago
    The CIA is completely biased here. They have every reason to claim that torture is effective purely to defend their past actions. Their stated opinion on it means absolutely nothing, in that you'd expect them to say exactly that either way.
mikeash 12y ago
Mass killings of innocent civilians are commonly carried out by "soldiers of a legitimate state." OK, so nuclear attacks by soldiers justify it. How about conventional strategic bombing? Invasions? Exactly where and why do you draw the line, if you're not drawing it where you previously said?
- tosser-001 12y ago
  I'll admit, you've got me. I don't know where I would draw the line, but in the case of Qeada/ISIS, they are well across my personal fuzzy gray line.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    I think you'd better sit down and think about it a bit more before publicly advocating for torturing prisoners, then.
dragonwriter 12y ago
> They had demonstrated the practice of mass killings of innocent civilians and expressed the desire to continue to do so. That hardly makes them unique, or even different than previous enemies the US has faced, and dealt with detainees from, and studied the effects of interrogation, and concluded that torture is ineffective. And, as the Senate report notes, every single one of the CIA claims that this torture was effective misrepresented the facts, either of whether information gained through torture had not independently been gained through other means, or whether the information gained was gained through the torture at all (often claiming information gained from a detainee before "enhanced interrogation techniques" were used was gained through those techniques, which is only plausible if the techniques are so effective that they send shockwaves back in time), or by simply misrepresenting the existence of threats that were supposedly disrupted when no real threat existed.

jaimebuelta 12y ago

Let me refresh one of the key point of the report (sorry about the caps) TORTURE IS NOT EFFECTIVE This is hardly news, it has been known for a long time. CIA knew it before 9/11

tosser-001 12y ago
Again, that to me is the crux also. If it is not effective than there is no justification. If it is, which the CIA claims it was, then I have no ethical problem with it in this limited situation
- mikeash 12y ago
  The CIA is completely biased here. They have every reason to claim that torture is effective purely to defend their past actions. Their stated opinion on it means absolutely nothing, in that you'd expect them to say exactly that either way.

mikeash 12y ago

Mass killings of innocent civilians are commonly carried out by "soldiers of a legitimate state." OK, so nuclear attacks by soldiers justify it. How about conventional strategic bombing? Invasions? Exactly where and why do you draw the line, if you're not drawing it where you previously said?

tosser-001 12y ago
I'll admit, you've got me. I don't know where I would draw the line, but in the case of Qeada/ISIS, they are well across my personal fuzzy gray line.
- mikeash 12y ago
  I think you'd better sit down and think about it a bit more before publicly advocating for torturing prisoners, then.

dragonwriter 12y ago

> They had demonstrated the practice of mass killings of innocent civilians and expressed the desire to continue to do so. That hardly makes them unique, or even different than previous enemies the US has faced, and dealt with detainees from, and studied the effects of interrogation, and concluded that torture is ineffective. And, as the Senate report notes, every single one of the CIA claims that this torture was effective misrepresented the facts, either of whether information gained through torture had not independently been gained through other means, or whether the information gained was gained through the torture at all (often claiming information gained from a detainee before "enhanced interrogation techniques" were used was gained through those techniques, which is only plausible if the techniques are so effective that they send shockwaves back in time), or by simply misrepresenting the existence of threats that were supposedly disrupted when no real threat existed.