Torture poll

[Pure]

clarification

jbj: I believe most people will torture if the information is important enough.//

this is possibly true, and applies to murder as well. but i did not intend a question about human psychology [behavior] under stress.

i intended a question about one's personal policy [one's morality; moral code], one's standards applied to others' actions [one's general moral views] and about public policy [the laws in our society; or the laws one would support as proper]; secondly i intended to look at the basis for any such policies, for one's moral views.

some around this forum talk about 'objective moral principles,' and i was curious about the results of 'objective' or rational analysis for this issue.

===
i think some of the points above about the efficacy of torture are *highly* relevant, since the defenders of torture often describe it as a 'magic bullet' [magic arm twist] applied in a perfectly clear situation where the suspect is *known* to be guilty and well informed, and where the immediate saving of a life is guaranteed to result. as soon as one adds uncertainly to the equation--is it the right person? does he really know?-- then the downside is rather apparent. the wrong person, under torture, will end up telling you anything to save himself and hence wild goose chases result, detracting from more efficacious approaches.

 

[wmrs2]

See, I don't think that is a threadjack.

There are certain lines I feel we must not cross. In my view, these lines are the things that make us able to say that we are human, not animal.

I do not believe in using torture. Period. On moral grounds. The fact that information gained in that manner is generally unreliable is, to me, a kind of natural justice. I would call it evidence that my "moral" stance is valid.

The question I always receive is something along the lines of, "What if torture would save your daughter/son/loved one?"

It would still be wrong. Would I do it? Under those circumstances? I hope I never have to find out. But if I did do it, I would expect my society to hold me responsible for my actions.

I have no belief that I am some kind of superior being. I am susceptible to failure.

But I say it is never justified. Not even to save my life or that of someone I love.

The question I always receive is something along the lines of, "What if torture would save your daughter/son/loved one?"

It would still be wrong. Would I do it? Under those circumstances? I hope I never have to find out. But if I did do it, I would expect my society to hold me responsible for my actions.

How would it change your views on torture if you decided that you were responsible to a higher good or being than that of society? Maybe you are more responsible to the well being of your children than some scum bag of a terrorist? I would torture his ass to save my children and would not think twice about it. Then again, I do not have the idea that I am more responsible to society than I am to God.

To simply say "I do not believe in torture" and based on this, allow innocent people to die, is far more evil than crossing any line of morality based on moral relativity. There is something to be said for being kind to your enemy but being stupid and sacrificing your children is beyond the scope of human reasoning.

 

[wmrs2]

Morality is entirely subjective. We can outlaw acts, and thereby decree their rightness or wrongness, but such laws are still the creation of man.

I don't like the idea of torture, and as has been noted, it does not produce truths -- but convenient lies. Thus, it is just a means to an end. Is that end justified? That depends on what is most valued.

*shrug*

The reason you are 100% wrong is that morality is absolutely not subjective. Morality does not depend on what any one person thinks. If morality was subjective then there would be several billion codes of conduct because there would be a code for each individual in the world. That being the case there would be nothing to hold society together.

The only way you can argue otherwise will require you to change your premise that morality is subjective. That is bull shit.

Think about it, pedophiles use the same logic to justify their abuse of children. Morality should never be the decision of pedophile logic. If it feels good, do it is really extreme bull shit.

 

[wmrs2]

For me, since we are getting into a discussion, torture is wrong both pragmatically, because of circumstances, and because it's immoral on its face.

For here we are, humans together in a smaller and smaller space. Human rights apply to everyone, or else they are instruments of privilege. That's the second case. I would add that there is no godly superbeing who will ultimately redress injustices in an afterlife; therefore we must prevent and correct them here and now, in this life.

Pragmatically, torture and beatings and so on are no enhancement to interrogation, but just the opposite.

A) The art of interrogation has changed dramatically over the last sixty years; we know how to loosen people's tongues without that sort of thing. Modern techniques work much better than Brian Donlevy rubber hose methods in back rooms of police stations. Torture methods screw those modern techniques up.

B) Judicial torture has a centuries-long history. Those people under inquisition so long ago, for instance, were not, in fact, witches, though they said they were. Whatever else they said, according to contemporary witnesses, was ignored anyway. Torture hardens resistance and motivates the witness to deceive and mislead. Torture extracts answers designed to appease, true or not. The information gained in this way is less reliable, not more, despite what the writers of screenplays would have you think. We have contemporary witnesses to all this, even today.

Torture, since it doesn't "work," is only of use as a political tool. The Gestapo, the Stasi, the NKVD, the tonton macoutes, the French in Algeria, and so on were banking on this, imagining that people would dully endure much before embarking on a brief career as an insurgent, if they knew insurgents were routinely tortured to death.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/contradiction.jpg

We Americans don't need a political terror tool. That's the first argument, from pragmatism.

For me, since we are getting into a discussion, torture is wrong both pragmatically, because of circumstances, and because it's immoral on its face.

For here we are, humans together in a smaller and smaller space. Human rights apply to everyone, or else they are instruments of privilege. That's the second case. I would add that there is no godly superbeing who will ultimately redress injustices in an afterlife; therefore we must prevent and correct them here and now, in this life.

Your logic here is pedophile logic and you contradict yourself from the get go. first you say that torture is immoral on its face. You are a moral relativist and are not suppose to believe in self-evident truths; therefore, are you finally conceding that there are universal truths or not?

You say human rights apply to everyone. You then point out that there is no super being that will correct things in an after life. You want to correct things in this life based on what? If what you say is true about morality there are billions of codes of conduct that we should consider before acting on any issue.
See, we are lost without a super being and its not superman either.

 

[wmrs2]

Thank you for the addition, but I'm still having problems with the question. It seems to me that rather than facilitating a discussion on torture, what you're really going to get (and perhaps this is what you're after) is an idea of how many people are moral absolutists--and if they're not, what their relativism focuses on. Which means this isn't about torture at all. It's about moral relativism.

I mean, just to go to your addition here--why should "due process" make being arrested and held against one's will any less "torture"? If the due process happens but the judge is corrupt or the legal defense is bad, if a person is innocent but unable, even through due process, of clearing their name...isn't that torture? If it is, then are we to say that arresting anyone is immoral simply because they might end up in the same situation (unable to prove their innocence)?

Once again, I ask you. Why can't we discuss a specific example? Do you have anything in mind to give us a handle on this topic, and which we can say, "No, that is immoral" rather than trying to find out if it's "ever" immoral to do something so vaguely defined and with so many variables as to make the question meaningless?

A very excellent point.

 

[wmrs2]

I'm saying that if they do torture because the information is important enough, they deceive themselves and have acted against their interests.

I would also add that the use of torture as a political tool doesn't work very well either. The macoutes are gone, the Stasi is gone, the Gestapo is gone, and so on.

If all these evil forces are gone, who in the hell are these people blowing up schools, hospitals department stores, etc.?

 

[wmrs2]

jbj: I believe most people will torture if the information is important enough.//

this is possibly true, and applies to murder as well. but i did not intend a question about human psychology [behavior] under stress.

i intended a question about one's personal policy [one's morality; moral code], one's standards applied to others' actions [one's general moral views] and about public policy [the laws in our society; or the laws one would support as proper]; secondly i intended to look at the basis for any such policies, for one's moral views.

some around this forum talk about 'objective moral principles,' and i was curious about the results of 'objective' or rational analysis for this issue.

===
i think some of the points above about the efficacy of torture are *highly* relevant, since the defenders of torture often describe it as a 'magic bullet' [magic arm twist] applied in a perfectly clear situation where the suspect is *known* to be guilty and well informed, and where the immediate saving of a life is guaranteed to result. as soon as one adds uncertainly to the equation--is it the right person? does he really know?-- then the downside is rather apparent. the wrong person, under torture, will end up telling you anything to save himself and hence wild goose chases result, detracting from more efficacious approaches.

Could you name some of these more efficacious approaches? The terrorist tried to blow up the World Trade Center previously. We tried the efficacious approaches. Then came 9/11.

 

[shereads]

deleted.

That was too easy, and way too much fun.

[/threadjack]

Back to the topic:

Will most people torture given sufficient incentive?

Well, duh. The Milgram Experiments demonstrated that the average person doesn't need an incentive to torture; just a victim, instructions, and anonymity.

It's wrong not because people are unwilling to do it, but because it has been proven ineffective except as a tool of terror. Terror is wrong, ergo torture is wrong.

 

[shereads]

A Consequentialist Argument against Torture Interrogation of Terrorists

Jean Maria Arrigo, Ph.D.

Joint Services Conference on Professional Ethics
January 30-31, 2003, Springfield, Virginia

Abstract

Much support for torture interrogation of terrorists has emerged in the public forum, largely based on the “ticking bomb” scenario. I draw from the historical record, criminology, organizational theory, social psychology, and interviews with military professionals to envisage an official program of torture interrogation. The quintessential element of program design is a sound causal model relating input to output. I explore three, increasingly realistic models of how torture interrogation leads to truth: the animal instinct model, the cognitive failure model, and the data processing model. These models expose the rational, mid-level social processes that lead from an official program of torture interrogation to breakdowns in key institutions—health care, biomedical research, police, judiciary, military, and government. Stated most starkly, the damaging social consequences of a program of torture interrogation evolve from institutional dynamics that are independent of the original moral rationale. {my boldface - sr}

<snip>

Causal Models of How Torture Leads to Truth

1. Animal Instinct Model

In order to escape pain or death, the subject complies with the demands of the torturer. The model fails when (a) physiological damage impairs ability to convey the truth and (b) torturers cannot control subjects’ interpretation of pain.
2. Cognitive Failure Model

The physiological and psycho-logical stress of torture renders the subject mentally incompetent to muster deception or to maintain his own interpretations of pain. The model fails due to (a) time delays and (b) torturers’ inability to distinguish truth from deceit or delirium.

3. Data Processing Model

Torture provokes ordinary subjects to yield data (both true and false) on an opportunistic basis, for comprehensive analysis across subjects. The model fails when (a) analysts are overwhelmed by data and (b) torture motivates many new terrorists.

4. Rogue Models

Torture is emotionally, culturally, or historically inseparable from other methods, or it is one tactic among many in a hit-or-miss approach. The model fails when (a) biases and ulterior motives of torturers invalidate results or (b) torture tactics empower competing political or criminal entities.

for full article go to http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/jscope/arrigo03.htm

 

[Huckleman2000]

appearing to be "tough" on terror.

So, it was still largely a propaganda exercise.

 

[cantdog]

Your logic here is pedophile logic and you contradict yourself from the get go. first you say that torture is immoral on its face. You are a moral relativist and are not suppose to believe in self-evident truths; therefore, are you finally conceding that there are universal truths or not?

You say human rights apply to everyone. You then point out that there is no super being that will correct things in an after life. You want to correct things in this life based on what? If what you say is true about morality there are billions of codes of conduct that we should consider before acting on any issue.
See, we are lost without a super being and its not superman either.

Where is it written that I am a moral relativist? Amicus used to say it of me, but in Stella's lovely phrase, if there are more than two crayons, amicus can't pick a color.

I do say, routinely, that life is complex, human minds are complex, and almost nothing is clear-cut in consequence. Moral action lies in equilibrium, in balance. It is a rare luxury indeed to have a clear moral choice with no cavil or qualm.

I am not lost, though; far from it. I am undeluded, for one thing. What superbeing? Does he hand you roadmaps?

 

[cantdog]

The question I always receive is something along the lines of, "What if torture would save your daughter/son/loved one?"


How would it change your views on torture if you decided that you were responsible to a higher good or being than that of society? Maybe you are more responsible to the well being of your children than some scum bag of a terrorist? I would torture his ass to save my children and would not think twice about it. Then again, I do not have the idea that I am more responsible to society than I am to God.

To simply say "I do not believe in torture" and based on this, allow innocent people to die, is far more evil than crossing any line of morality based on moral relativity. There is something to be said for being kind to your enemy but being stupid and sacrificing your children is beyond the scope of human reasoning.

The facts are, torture saves no one. You cannot prevent innocent people from dying by setting out to use a tool which produces, by its nature, unreliable information.

Thus the choice you put is a false one. There can be no circumstance in which sane interrogation techniques will not produce a reliable answer faster than torturing would have. If you torture in a circumstance like that, you have thrown away those lives.

 

[cantdog]

If all these evil forces are gone, who in the hell are these people blowing up schools, hospitals department stores, etc.?

What do you mean by 'evil?' All those people, even the macoutes, were acting for good reasons, as they saw the world. If you employ a morality which admits of enemies, than you will do evil to those enemies. But every morality which includes the construct 'enemy' considers despoiling enemies to be moral.

I, too, once considered that I had enemies. I nurtured a better-dead list and I maintained grudges. One's moral ideas change radically as one matures. People blowing schools and churches up are most likely not doing it for the reason: I shall now do evil things. On the contrary, they have sound moral reasons for their actions, within their own set of ideas, and within their moral limits.

My country blows schools and churches and hospitals up. I am helping, this moment, with my taxes, to support the apparatus which has this as its purpose. I watched Shock and Awe take place. Wholesale destruction was visited on enemy population centers. That's what military forces are good at. If you want people killed and shit destroyed, bring on an army. And yet, armies are not sent forth to do these things out of any impulse to evil, but for sound moral purposes.

My own morality has matured, and I no longer have enemies. I see these actions as unspeakably evil. In this, my morality is also sound, at the level I am now at.

 

[cantdog]

The reason you are 100% wrong is that morality is absolutely not subjective. Morality does not depend on what any one person thinks. If morality was subjective then there would be several billion codes of conduct because there would be a code for each individual in the world. That being the case there would be nothing to hold society together.

The only way you can argue otherwise will require you to change your premise that morality is subjective. That is bull shit.

Think about it, pedophiles use the same logic to justify their abuse of children. Morality should never be the decision of pedophile logic. If it feels good, do it is really extreme bull shit.

What you describe, several hundred million moralities, is precisely the case. A child is a total egoist. His moral decisions will be quite different from Gandhi's and quite different from Pastor Hagee's or the Phelps family's at Westboro Baptist. Each of these people will act morally, by their lights, if they can. But they will still act differently.

How held together do you imagine societies are? Can you honestly look about you and see unity of purpose across an entire society as big as this one? If so, you really are deluded.

 

[sr71plt]

Where is it written that I am a moral relativist? Amicus used to say it of me

And chances are good that it's still Amicus saying it of you.

 

[cantdog]

Well, pilot, thankful I am not to know whether or not that's true. I ignore amicus, for the excellent reason that he has nothing to say. Plus, what he does say, he doesn't even actually mean. He speaks solely to punch buttons. He is a troll's troll. To reply to amicus is not to engage a mind in debate, but merely to take the bait which he has trolled through the water. Me? I don't bite. I recommend the same to anyone.

 

[sr71plt]

Well, pilot, thankful I am not to know whether or not that's true. I ignore amicus.

Ah, but you very dramatically put me on ignore too--and yet you responded to one of my posts. So, there you are (wherever that is).

 

[Pure]

Data showing ineffectivness of torture: the alternative methods

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2302-2005Jan11.html

The Torture Myth

By Anne Applebaum
Wednesday, January 12, 2005; Page A21


..."realists," whether liberal or conservative, have a tendency to accept, all too eagerly, fictitious accounts of effective torture carried out by someone else.


By contrast, it is easy to find experienced U.S. officers who argue precisely the opposite. Meet, for example, retired Air Force Col. John Rothrock, who, as a young captain, headed a combat interrogation team in Vietnam. More than once he was faced with a ticking time-bomb scenario: a captured Vietcong guerrilla who knew of plans to kill Americans. What was done in such cases was "not nice," he says. "But we did not physically abuse them." Rothrock used psychology, the shock of capture and of the unexpected. Once, he let a prisoner see a wounded comrade die. Yet -- as he remembers saying to the "desperate and honorable officers" who wanted him to move faster -- "if I take a Bunsen burner to the guy's genitals, he's going to tell you just about anything," which would be pointless. Rothrock, who is no squishy liberal, says that he doesn't know "any professional intelligence officers of my generation who would think this is a good idea."

Or listen to Army Col. Stuart Herrington, a military intelligence specialist who conducted interrogations in Vietnam, Panama and Iraq during Desert Storm, and who was sent by the Pentagon in 2003 -- long before Abu Ghraib -- to assess interrogations in Iraq. Aside from its immorality and its illegality, says Herrington, torture is simply "not a good way to get information." In his experience, nine out of 10 people can be persuaded to talk with no "stress methods" at all, let alone cruel and unusual ones. Asked whether that would be true of religiously motivated fanatics, he says that the "batting average" might be lower: "perhaps six out of ten." And if you beat up the remaining four? "They'll just tell you anything to get you to stop."

=======
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?topic_id=1416&fuseaction=topics.item&news_id=510315

"The Foundation of Interrogation" Is Rapport, Not Torture

Matthew Alexander discusses how relationship-building techniques helped the U.S. bring down Al Qaeda head Abu Zusab al Zarqawi

February 25, 2009

In February 2006, the Al Qaeda attack on the al-Askari shrine, with its famous Golden Dome in Samarra, north of Baghdad, pushed Iraq toward an open civil war between the Shia and Sunni sectarian communities. Abu Zusab al Zarqawi, the head of Al Qaeda in Iraq, became the U.S. military’s top immediate target, eclipsing Osama bin Laden. But the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” what Matthew Alexander, former Air Force interrogator, calls “force on force” techniques yielded nothing. In the wake of those failures, Alexander was deployed to Iraq as part of a handpicked team of interrogators, who employed non-coercive interrogation techniques and eventually broke the case.

In the event, part of International Security Studies’ ongoing Terrorism and Homeland Security Forum, Alexander stated emphatically that torture is both immoral and ineffective. Using “rapport-building” techniques, the success rate of getting people to cooperate rose from 20 percent to 70 to 80 percent.

“Relationship-building is the foundation of interrogation,” he said, a tenet reflected in his book, How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq.
The interrogator must understand the suspect’s motivations, and then incorporate that understanding into the design of an effective counter-strategy. Often “the strongest motives in life are intangible,” he observed. Even when the U.S. interrogator spoke Arabic, native Iraqi interpreters were essential as “a cultural encyclopedia” to help the Americans fully understand the local context of suspects’ answers.

No Sunni Iraqis Alexander met truly believed in Al Qaeda’s ideology. Some Al Qaeda in Iraq members were just criminals, running kidnapping rings for Zarqawi. The Sunni-Al Qaeda alliance was “a marriage of convenience” that General David Petraeus was able to successfully sever by co-opting the Sunnis, however tentatively, back into the political process.

Through a series of arrests and successful interrogations, employing rapport-building techniques rather than coercion, Alexander and his team were able to obtain the intelligence that led to the successful airstrike on Zarqawi’s safehouse in June 2006.

Alexander welcomed President Obama’s executive orders banning torture and establishing a Special Interagency Task Force on Detainee Disposition. Alexander rejected the assertion of former Bush administration officials that the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” on top Al Qaeda suspects had been necessary to avert terrorist attacks: There is “no scientific data that torture works faster and is more effective. Experience points to the exact opposite.” Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, Alexander stated, became recruiting tools for Al Qaeda that directly led to the loss of U.S. lives in Iraq.

 

[cantdog]

Precisely, pure. And if someone else has already manhandled your subject, you have to expend time undoing that damage before you can proceed.

Cop shows on the television will show you some of the techniques they use now, but of course they will also show you huffy and offended cops abusing people. But really, they teach some really clever and useful ways, nowadays, to go about getting witnesses to give out with the details.

 

[wmrs2]

The facts are, torture saves no one. You cannot prevent innocent people from dying by setting out to use a tool which produces, by its nature, unreliable information.

Thus the choice you put is a false one. There can be no circumstance in which sane interrogation techniques will not produce a reliable answer faster than torturing would have. If you torture in a circumstance like that, you have thrown away those lives.

It is only speculation that torture saves no one. The information is not unreliable at all times. You forget about Dirty Harry. The assumption is the person being tortured is a bad person and his life being thrown away is no lose at all.

As a general rule, torture should not be an every day thing but it should not be ruled out. Sometimes it is the moral thing to do.

 

[ishtat]

A poll on this subject, to my mind trivialises the issue. It enables the decision to be pigeonholed and the necessity of the individual confronting the moral dilemma is therby avoided. In any event a poll which provides 10 options with an average result of less than 2 per option is saying what?

Impressive's short comment is right; moral issues like this are subjective, difficult, indeed very difficult but ultimately they are subjective, dependant on circumstances. Many find it very difficult to face up to that reality but ultimately she is right.

 

[wmrs2]

The facts are, torture saves no one. You cannot prevent innocent people from dying by setting out to use a tool which produces, by its nature, unreliable information.

Thus the choice you put is a false one. There can be no circumstance in which sane interrogation techniques will not produce a reliable answer faster than torturing would have. If you torture in a circumstance like that, you have thrown away those lives.

What you describe, several hundred million moralities, is precisely the case. A child is a total egoist. His moral decisions will be quite different from Gandhi's and quite different from Pastor Hagee's or the Phelps family's at Westboro Baptist. Each of these people will act morally, by their lights, if they can. But they will still act differently.

How held together do you imagine societies are? Can you honestly look about you and see unity of purpose across an entire society as big as this one? If so, you really are deluded.

If you define morality as a process of maturation, I understand your point. Your premise for morality is changing and with the changing in morality with each country and each person in each country, there is no hope of moral unity in the world.

The only chance the world has of being unified and human rights being a universally accepted thing, is that all people will accept the same standard of morality. Without a unified premise there will always be confusion.

I am not an authority on Gandhi but what I know about him, it does not seem that he would approve of the ethics of your country that says it in certain situations is a moral to kill innocent school children. What many members on this forum do not recognizance is that the morality based on changing values is the cause or allowance of such beliefs (killing children) to exist. These exist because no matter how vial the act, the person committing the act can justify his actions. I have coined this type of logic as pedophilia logic. Pedophilias use this same logic to justify their behavior. I don't mean that people all who think this way abuse children, but I do want to call attention to the fact that it is the same logic. It is the same logic moral relativist use.

 

[wmrs2]

And chances are good that it's still Amicus saying it of you.

If this thread gets into a shit slinging contest, note that you opened the door to the outhouse right here.

 

[slyc_willie]

If this thread gets into a shit slinging contest, note that you opened the door to the outhouse right here.

And look who was sitting inside . . . .

 

[wmrs2]

Well, pilot, thankful I am not to know whether or not that's true. I ignore amicus, for the excellent reason that he has nothing to say. Plus, what he does say, he doesn't even actually mean. He speaks solely to punch buttons. He is a troll's troll. To reply to amicus is not to engage a mind in debate, but merely to take the bait which he has trolled through the water. Me? I don't bite. I recommend the same to anyone.

Cantdog, I am not amicus although we hold many of the same views. Amicus is an atheist. I am not. This sr71plt is a complete sophist and has no moral convictions at all. He attempt to play you against amicus and make you his friend. He tries to say that I am amicus to discredit my discussion with you. However, if you address me with respect, although we disagree, I will return that respect.

Here is what sr71plt says that you put him on ignore just like you did amicus. The fact is that sr71plt promised to put me on ignore but never has. He doesn't do well in debating people like you or me who really understand what we believe. He lacks character and that can not be gained by debate.

He told the fans on another thread that he had complained to the administrator of the forum about me and that the administrator had given me a slap on the wrist. He either flat out lied or the administrator of the forum just did not want to bother with sr71plt. He is greater in his own eyes than anybody elses eyes. Watch out for him, he is a secret agent for RABD, just like Pure the OP here.