Offshoot Torture Thread: Your Reasons for Opposition

[aimeeandbeatles]

One of my oppositions is that if you take somebody and torture them, at some point they'll confess to anything (even something they didn't do) just to make it stop. So it's not exactly fair that way.

 

[RedRalph]

One of my oppositions is that if you take somebody and torture them, at some point they'll confess to anything (even something they didn't do) just to make it stop. So it's not exactly fair that way.

I bet no one could torture you til you said you hated Tom Petty

 

[Yeekim]

Interrogation is most likely going to end in effectiveness once torture starts.

Why?

Torture is legally defined as an act of intentionally inflicted severe pain or suffering, whether mental or physical, for obtaining information/confessions/punishment/coersion/discrimination, by the consent of a public offical. That's the offical line drawn because that is what torture is. It doesn't have to drive one permanently crazy, it just needs to be severe mental pain or suffering.

Define "severe".

 

[Bill3000]

Define "severe".

"Severe mental pain or suffering" means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from:

* The intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering
* The administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality
* The threat of imminent death
* The threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality

Near-asphyxiation is "the threat of imminent death"

 

[Yeekim]

"Severe mental pain or suffering" means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from:

* The intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering
* The administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality
* The threat of imminent death
* The threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality

Except #3, all these are circular definitions. And I don't think e.g. waterboarding really qualifies under #3.

 

[RedRalph]

Except #3, all these are circular definitions. And I don't think e.g. waterboarding really qualifies under #3.

So you don't think that, but people who have undergone it know it.

 

[Bill3000]

Except #3, all these are circular definitions. And I don't think e.g. waterboarding really qualifies under #3.

Er, I was defining "severe mental pain". And of course it qualifies under three - you cause the body to experience the symptoms of drowning, and it can lead to asphyxiation if done long enough, i.e. it's a threat of imminent death.

 

[G-Man]

Because it's such an abhorrent and wrong action that if one had to justify it with some sort of twisted utilitarian logic one would need absolute certainty that it would save lives. Otherwise it would likely cost more than it would gain due to all the other inherent problems I have already said time and time again.

Besides, you will never have any chance of knowing a numerical probability that torturing someone will save lives. There is no realistic possibility that an Israeli interrogator will know that there is a 1 in 2 chance that torturing a detainee will save a life. That is impossible to know. It's a silly distinction that is designed to trap people into these useless hypothetical arguments that have no basis in reality. These kind of hypothetical arguments are not in any way shape or form useful in developing any kind of real-world legal framework so I see no point in continuing with them.

I was wary of giving some sort of moral absolute statement for this exact reason. As I said previously, such statements are useless.




OK again, the moral and practical side are, for me, related. Let's just get over this point because I disagree with how you're trying to form a moral foundation not based in reality.

I have already told you why torture is ineffective 3 times. 1) There is no guarantee--none whatsoever--that you will get useful information. The only motivation to tell the truth is to escape another round of torture. By that time it may either be too late or, theoretically, the detainee could continue to feed you BS forever while you continually follow false leads. 2) In a "war on terrorism," terrorists use knowledge of torture to recruit new terrorists. Case and point: the recording released yesterday by the American Al-Qaeda leader in Yemen summoning all American Muslims to wage jihad due to all the bad things we have done to Muslims, yada yada yada. These guys love torture and Gitmo. They eat it up. It's very useful to them in fomenting Muslim resentment and hatred of America. 3) Finally, what people seem to continually forget is by adopting torture out of fear of more terrorism, the terrorists have succeeded. They have terrorized us into adopting violent, inhumane, and offensive practices more befitting them than us.

Those few instances where we do get actionable intelligence out of torturing someone are not worth the risks or the erosion of our core values that lend us more legitimacy over the terrorists. We are different from them. We are civilized and we follow laws that are meant to uphold a fair and just society. We need to keep it that way otherwise we lose.

Humanity has devised a fully functional police and domestic investigatory system in the United States and elsewhere. Torture is not used in this system and yet we manage to find highly sophisticated and dangerous criminals all the time. We even *gasp* read these people Miranda rights!

All the things you say here are true not just in regard to torture, but to the other forms of violence countries use. Just a few days ago I was in a very interesting discussion about the different forms of punishments. As you probably know, one of the elements judges take into account is protecting society from the criminal. So how is that judge any different from the interrogator you describe? There's no way he can be sure exactly how dangerous this criminal is, and in many cases it's not much more than an educated guess. Yet this estimate allows the judge to send this person to prison for very long times (months, years, sometimes even decades).
In a situation even more similar to the one we're talking about - armies kills enemy soldiers and terrorists and it isn't considered immoral or illegal. But, if we'll compare it with the three points you've raised - there's no guarentee that killing any specific terrorist really prevents him from commiting an attack (in most cases they're killed in battle and aren't even identified untill after they're dead). Terrorists often use these killings as a method to recruit others. And I think that when we look at the action itself, killing someone is much more against our values than, say, punching him.

So yes, torture in itself is immoral. But so is taking someone's freedom for years and certainly so is killing someone, and yet we do these things in order to protect our citizens and nearly always without knowing exactly what effect if any they'll have. So why is it that killing someone is allowed but torture isn't?

 

[I'm Cleo!]

Aha. So torture is "very effective" to get people to confess things they haven't done, but completely useless to get them confess things they actually have done?

Not so fast, Yeekim. You asked why the KGB and other secret police used to torture people. The answer is, "to get them to say what they want them to say."

And regarding the legal definition of torture, it's designed to be vague because it's meant to operate in a legal system. Legal definitions contain words like "profoundly" because they will be filled in on a case by case basis. What's more, the definition for "torture" is written this way for another reason: if you listed specific things that were "Torture," then torturers would just figure out something slightly different and do that. Instead the definition focuses on the victim's experience.

Cleo

 

[illram]

So yes, torture in itself is immoral.

Thank you.

But so is taking someone's freedom for years

Not necessarily.

and certainly so is killing someone,

Not necessarily.

and yet we do these things in order to protect our citizens and nearly always without knowing exactly what effect if any they'll have.

Usually we know that throwing someone in jail will at the very least prevent that person from committing a crime outside of the jailhouse walls while incarcerated. This is a 99.9999% certainty. Killing an enemy soldier carries a 100% certainty that the soldier will not later kill you. None of these are analogous and in certain circumstances are "moral" so I disagree that doing these things in any way justifies torture.

Again, you're way way over simplifying things. You're trying to draw analogies to very different things in an attempt to say "well we do this, so we can do that." This and that are very, very different.

 

[Cutlass]

Why?

Why would anyone cooperate with interrogation if you are just going to torture them anyways?

 

[Glassfan]

The lack of utility argument stems from the fact that you'll get confessions out of completely innocent people because a tortured person will admit to anything to get the torturer to stop. The confessions you elicit from all the innocent people make it useless.

A professional torturer will know his topic and know very soon if the subject has valuable knowledge. Of course, if the purpose of the torture is other than information gathering (i.e., intimidation, punishment), than it doesn't really matter what the subject says.

 

[yellow_peril]

Not so fast, Yeekim. You asked why the KGB and other secret police used to torture people. The answer is, "to get them to say what they want them to say."

And regarding the legal definition of torture, it's designed to be vague because it's meant to operate in a legal system. Legal definitions contain words like "profoundly" because they will be filled in on a case by case basis. What's more, the definition for "torture" is written this way for another reason: if you listed specific things that were "Torture," then torturers would just figure out something slightly different and do that. Instead the definition focuses on the victim's experience.

Cleo

While I agree that torture is a barbaric and inhumane method, I can certainly think of ways to extract information from a suspect in such a way that they wouldn't be able to lie about their information.

Ex: Let's say the government catches a known terrorist suspect on American grounds and is able to deduce from intelligence that there are several other cell operatives. They torture him till he reveals their names.

If he lies, he'll be tortured more rigorously til he gives the correct information, so of course he'll be more inclined to give up his compadres.

 

[Camikaze]

While I agree that torture is a barbaric and inhumane method, I can certainly think of ways to extract information from a suspect in such a way that they wouldn't be able to lie about their information.

Ex: Let's say the government catches a known terrorist suspect on American grounds and is able to deduce from intelligence that there are several other cell operatives. They torture him till he reveals their names.

If he lies, he'll be tortured more rigorously til he gives the correct information, so of course he'll be more inclined to give up his compadres.

And you know he is lying how exactly?

 

[G-Man]

Thank you.

Not necessarily.

Not necessarily.

You'd have to explain that. What makes the right to, say, health or being free of pain (which torture deprives of), different from the right to life or the right to freedom?

Usually we know that throwing someone in jail will at the very least prevent that person from committing a crime outside of the jailhouse walls while incarcerated. This is a 99.9999% certainty. Killing an enemy soldier carries a 100% certainty that the soldier will not later kill you. None of these are analogous and in certain circumstances are "moral" so I disagree that doing these things in any way justifies torture.

Again, you're way way over simplifying things. You're trying to draw analogies to very different things in an attempt to say "well we do this, so we can do that." This and that are very, very different.

You're looking at things from the wrong perspective - what we're interested in is preventing crimes which would happen without the means we take. We can take an innocent person and throw him in jail or kill him, and he won't commit any crime, but chances are he wouldn't have done so anyway.
So the question that should be asked is - by what precentage do these means prevent crimes that would otherwise happen? And as I said, in most cases we really don't know.

 

[illram]

You'd have to explain that. What makes the right to, say, health or being free of pain (which torture deprives of), different from the right to life or the right to freedom?

You go to jail after a trial.

You're looking at things from the wrong perspective - what we're interested in is preventing crimes which would happen without the means we take. We can take an innocent person and throw him in jail or kill him, and he won't commit any crime, but chances are he wouldn't have done so anyway.

Why are we interested in that? You're still trying to compare two different things with two different purposes. Jail punishes, deters, and rehabilitates. Torture is an attempt to get information.

So the question that should be asked is - by what precentage do these means prevent crimes that would otherwise happen? And as I said, in most cases we really don't know.

No that is not the question that should be asked. Why is this relevant?

We've already come to an agreement that torture is immoral. You haven't really argued that it doesn't work or that it is an effective tool in the war on terror. That being the case I'm not sure what we're trying to discuss here at this point.

 

[illram]

Ex: Let's say the government catches a known terrorist suspect on American grounds and is able to deduce from intelligence that there are several other cell operatives. They torture him till he reveals their names.

If he lies, he'll be tortured more rigorously til he gives the correct information, so of course he'll be more inclined to give up his compadres.

How will we know the people he rats out aren't also lying? Better torture them too...

 

[ParkCungHee]

Seeing Quacker's torture thread, I thought I'd make one of my own that asks the question: what's your reason for opposing it? What I'm getting at by asking this is whether it's a question of whether you are more opposed to it for moral reasons or for practical reasons.

While I oppose it on practical purposes as well, because I have never been given a bit of evidence to indicate that torture is of any use whatsoever, I oppose it on an unrelated moral level as well.
All men are created in the image of God, and are subjects of his eternal love. To torture a human being is to take one of God's creations, which he loves dearly, and try to harm, destroy and pervert it in the most obscene methods imaginable. It is one of the most horrific sins human beings are capable of.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

And you know he is lying how exactly?

Lost equipment and sometimes lost troops in failed operations based on wrong intel. Lost standing among the local populace. Not that high of a price, actually. Completely and morally justifiable.

 

[G-Man]

You go to jail after a trial.

The law is supposed to be the result of moral decisions, not the other way around.

Why are we interested in that? You're still trying to compare two different things with two different purposes. Jail punishes, deters, and rehabilitates. Torture is an attempt to get information.

No that is not the question that should be asked. Why is this relevant?

We've already come to an agreement that torture is immoral. You haven't really argued that it doesn't work or that it is an effective tool in the war on terror. That being the case I'm not sure what we're trying to discuss here at this point.

The situations are the same because they both involve a similar moral equation - On the one hand, the safety of the country's civilians, and on the other - depriving individuals of certain rights. The idea is to balance the two sides, so that the public will stay safe while the criminal isn't deprived of too many rights. You agree that in this equation it's possible to deprive the criminal off of his freedom, and even of his life, but not of his right not to be harmed. Why is it?