Whether you agree that it is morally acceptable or not, the argument against it that it doesn’t work is and always has been insane. And it now turns out that the CIA lied about its efficacy in getting bin Laden.
[Update a while later]
OK, I misread (or rather, didn’t read) the article, just going by a glance at the headline. Nonetheless, it’s still nuts to think that torture never provides actionable information.
I’m finding this post unreadable. Are you claiming it works or it doesn’t? The article seems to say it didn’t, but you seem to be saying the opposite.
Sorry, you’re right. I just glanced at the hed, and assumed it was the other way around. Nonetheless. it makes no sense that you can never get actionable information from torture.
Well, it would certainly be helpful to have the actual report available, instead of fuzzy leaks. In the meantime, ignore, I think. I’m tired of reacting to data that doesn’t really exist or isn’t really available.
Ya, I am a little skeptical of any “investigation” run by Democrats these days, especially ones where the conclusions are reached before the investigation has begun.
Trying to remove the taint from UBL’s death has been a major effort of the Democrats.
What is “the taint from UBL’s death”?
It’s the piece of flesh between the uh-huh and the you-know-what that they must’ve carved out and kept as a sick trophy.
Spit take! (rimshot!)
The article says that information gained from prisoners came either before or long after torture (waterboarding?) was applied. Then there is this at the end, “Of course, some of us are old enough that we still remember when the US used to be against torture, in part because of all the years of evidence proving that it was useless in actually getting information out of people.”
According to the article, not only did we not get anything useful from torture but that it is literally impossible to do so.
Most critics don’t argue that there’s no conceivable situation in which torture might produce true information. They argue that the information is too unreliable, because the suspect will say anything he thinks the torturer wants to hear.
“They argue that the information is too unreliable, because the suspect will say anything he thinks the torturer wants to hear.”
In relation to questioning prisoners it could also read, “They argue that the information is too unreliable, because the suspect will say anything he thinks the questioner wants to hear.”
Getting bad information from people happens in all circumstances. The intelligence aspect comes into play when trying to tell what is truth and what is bs.
Rand,
If it is “nuts” and “insane” to suggest that “torture doesn’t work” or “torture never provides actionable information” , then it should be easy to provide proof to the contrary. When I google for such proof, I see a hodge-podge of claims and counter-claims. For example, this is a mess:
http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4498/does-torture-work-well-as-an-interrogation-technique
I completely agree with you that the debate should focus on morality and not efficacy. Since the issue is hotly debated and since morality and efficacy are frequently conflated, it would be nice to once and for all prove that it at least works.
No, I am not volunteering to be a test subject.
Maybe we should ask Bill Clinton since he regularly renditioned people to countries to face torture and questioning.
“I completely agree with you that the debate should focus on morality and not efficacy. ”
This is true. The argument can be won, and is easier to win, on moral grounds. Arguing that torture doesn’t work is counterproductive, its effectiveness doesn’t even need to be brought up.
“it would be nice to once and for all prove that it at least works.”
It can’t be morally wrong to inflict on prisoners but then the moral thing to inflict on patients. Although, I do think it is something our servicemen and women should be trained to deal with because non of the countries we fight against have a “no-torture” ethos. If you ever thought that you would tell anyone everything they wanted to know when tortured, then you just proved torture works.
It is terrible that we water boarded 3 people and some of the other tactics used certainly border on torture, I wish we didn’t do it, but lets also look at the context of the much worse treatment people get at the hands of AQ, the Taliban, and other militant Muslims. The people we are fighting against slice off parts of faces, mutilate bodies until death, use developmentally disabled people as bombs, chop off heads and other extremities, kidnap women for sex slaves, use child soldiers, and on and on. That is all stuff they do to other Muslims. We could also talk about the genocide against Christians, Jews, and other minorities.
From this speech by
John McCain, describing how his North Vietnamese torturers eventually broke his ability to refuse to talk.
A lot of prisoners had it worse than I did. I’d been mistreated before, but not as badly as others. I always liked to strut a little after I’d been roughed up to show the other guys I was tough enough to take it. But after I turned down their offer, they worked me over harder than they ever had before. For a long time. And they broke me.
When they brought me back to my cell, I was hurt and ashamed, and I didn’t know how I could face my fellow prisoners. The good man in the cell next door, my friend Bob Craner, saved me. Through taps on a wall he told me I had fought as hard as I could. No man can always stand alone. And then he told me to get back up and fight again for our country and for the men I had the honor to serve with. Because every day they fought for me.
The realization now is that almost everyone will eventually be broken if torture is severe enough and lasts beyond an individual’s ability to endure. From the Code of Conduct (emphasis added)
V
When questioned, should I become a prisoner of war, I am required to give name, rank, service number, and date of birth. I will evade answering further questions to the utmost of my ability. I will make no oral or written statements disloyal to my country and its allies or harmful to their cause.
Notice how it doesn’t say that a POW will never divulge anything, it just says they must evade answering questions to the utmost of his/her ability. That’s a big difference. It wouldn’t be there if torture never worked.
Contrary to Obama’s vapid assertion that Winston Churchill wouldn’t have resorted to torture, the British had a huge program that successfully tortured all kinds of actionable intelligence out of captured Nazis.
George, are you familiar with the story of how, IIRC, captured high ranking German officers in World War II were kept in a mansion in England and treated to the highest level of service as supposedly was appropriate for their high rank (and aristocratic lineage, in many cases). All the while, the mansion was being bugged by German Jewish refugees. When Churchill found out — wait, let me find the quote.
Here it is:
From here: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-20698098
The high-ranking guests chatted away at such events in their native language, unaware that Col Kendrick himself spoke German and that such entertainment was being provided so as to relax them in captivity, making them so unguarded as to spill secrets – which they did.
Mrs Fry also says Winston Churchill was outraged when he learned the generals had been bussed into the lavish Simpson’s-in-the-Strand in central London for lunch. He ordered what he called “the pampering of the generals” to be stopped.
But spoiling the generals and boosting their egos was providing so much useful information that the British intelligence officers decided to carry on, and simply stopped telling Churchill about it.
Nevermind about Obama and Churchill and all that. Check out the link – it really is an amazing story about World War II and an almost hilarious alternative to torture. (It really would be hilarious, except for the life and death aspect.)
That’s an interesting story, but I’m not sure it has much relevance to dealing with Jihadis.
I’m (very sincerely) glad you liked the story.
I don’t see why Americans couldn’t use similar methods with young men picked up off the battlefields in Afghanistan. Obviously some cultural differences would have to be applied, but the basic idea of catching flies with honey instead of vineagar still applies.
Heres’ the mirror image World War II story of the one above: A German who got captured Allied fliers to relax and spill the beans: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/0/19923902
What happened after the war was funny: he settled down in New York and eventually became a consultant to the US Air Force on non-coercive interrogation techniques.
“During the early 1950’s he was feted in newspaper and magazine articles as the “master interrogator”. His former enemies became his friends and wartime POWs welcomed him at their reunions.” Ha!
some cultural differences would have to be applied
That’s the understatement of the year.
Meanwhile, over at the EPA…
There are several arguments against torture . There is the moral argument. Then there is the fact that torture not only produces true positive information but also a lot of false positive information. Unless you have some 2nd way of verifying if the extraneous information you got from via torture is actually true or not the information can actually cause a lot of lost time and resources and hinder a proper investigation.
It used to be that the US got a lot of information by providing incentives for people to defect. That worked reasonably well. Does anyone in their right mind think that tactic stopped becoming viable when the opponents changed? Is corporal punishment the only viable alternative? I doubt it.
This whole deal is a slippery slope. Would you be willing to support the use of police torture or not Rand?
It works, to believe otherwise is idiotic.
The idea of “it doesn’t work” is because a bunch of panty waists believe that we are barbarians who torture without purpose, like the barbarians we are fighting. Like war and killing, the efficacy of such acts is dependent on the purpose, and why no one can hold a candle to JUST our domestic militia/every armed and trained citizen in the country. We have very narrow purposes, and only go wrong when we ignore, or muddy those goals with backstabbing scumbag cowards and politicians.
Does torture work? Whenever someone tells me that the debate is over, it’s a pretty good sign that it’s wishful thinking, and that they’re losing it.
(I confess that the above was snark. My non-snarky question is about torture’s opportunity cost: does torturing someone interfere with a more effective way of obtaining information?)
After all, when we ask whether a tax-funded program “works”, we don’t just wonder whether it can possibly be achieve its stated goals. We worry about efficiency, reliability, opportunity cost, and so on. Same with rockets: a rocket that occasionally produces the desired level of thrust without blowing up might be said to work, but it also might be said to not work!
That question implies that torture is the info-gaining method of first resort.
Or, at least, not the last resort.
What is amazing is that -after all the bloated opinions expressed- no one ever bothered to define “torture.” That’s the biggest issue I have with the linked article.
Are we talking bamboo splinters under the fingernails, or cold cells with the lights always on? Sleep deprivation, or hanging someone by their arms until their shoulders dislocate?
That’s not to mention the hoary old chestnut “Is water-boarding torture?”
The article keeps using that word, but I don’t think that word means what they think it means. Until a sane definition of torture is developed, we’re all pretty much spouting literally nonsense at each other.
One of the problems is that progs have diluted the term, in the same way they’ve diluted the terms atrocity, genocide, and rape, among others. In the same way an idiot college sophomore can now cry “rape”after she passes out after a drunken hook-up, a captive can now cry “torture” after being slapped around or getting a black eye. Didn’t a few soldiers get in trouble in exactly that way?