An interesting, related post:

http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2002/02/fog0000000350.shtml

Ace,

Thanks so much for remembering which article that was. I couldn't, and google didn't help.

You're right to frame the question properly. Saying it doesn't work is a cop-out from a difficult debate.

I think torture ought to be strictly illegal. The moral cost is too high, and I feel threatened by giving that kind of power to the state. I realize that the cost of not using torture is high, too, but we're the kind of nation that takes the moral high ground even when it's far more difficult.

There are extreme corner cases, of course. In those cases, going to jail for a crime will be worth it to the responsible authorities. Yes, it's asking a lot. No, it's not fair. But, you know, freedom isn't free and all that. It's also not fair to ask a young man to go get shot in Iraq, but that's part of fighting terrorism.

As far as I'm concerned: no to torture.

From rearranging additions the sum does not change.
Physical or psychological, still is the torture and still is the abuse, despite how vastly purpose it can serve.

Peter, no offense, and I think I know what you're saying, but is you babelfish broken?

On the level of personal morality you are right. From a societal standpoint you are being ridiculous. Of course a State may torture, and a State is not a moral being. And the main argument here in the USA is whether torture works.

Answer: Yep.

Give me 10 minutes to work on anyone that claims torture doesn't work with my needle-nose pliers and benz-o-matic torch and I have them admitting that torture not only works, it works so well that in the future they won't need to be tortured to admit that it does.

Third Verse Same as the First:

Anyone who has almost drowned (as I have) knows that when you are suffocating there's not much you wouldn't do to stop it. If our interrogator had more time, he could've tried the shampoo method of shoving Mohammed's head into a dirty toilet and holding it there to let him decide how much shit and urine he is willing to inhale for Allah.

Anyone who has almost drowned (as I have) knows that when you are suffocating there's not much you wouldn't do to stop it.

Well, let’s torture them because they torture us. Let’s be on the same level as they are, right? Is graphics in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq does here credit? http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=2444

Can torture works? Yes and no.
No. Spirit.
It is difficult to fight an ideology and applying torture isn’t the way to solve a problem. People, fanatically believing in their ideas can endure torture and leave this world with the faith, dying as a brave soldier defending their principles.

Yes. Flesh. People are humans and they can endure the torture to the point and than brake.

Point. The soldier is the human and has to be treated as a human. Good intelligence is the answer to all.

Sure it works, but it still isn't right. However, killing is much less barbaric. These people do not deserve to be tortured. They deserve to be killed.

1. 3,000 years of using one form of torture or another is good evidence it works.

2. The other side does not follow the Geneva Conventions or the Convention on Torture. From Al Qaeda to Sunni insurgents in Iraq, it treats all soldiers caught to summary execution wiyhout trial, sometimes in agonizing barbaric fashion - sawing the neck of a captive with a kitchen knife for a minute or so until the spinal cord is severed and the screams are shut off. It treats most civilians caught the same way. And we are supposed to buy the argument that sleep deprevation, solitary, and agressive interrogation makes us "morally equivalent"?? Please..

3. Is forceful interrogation - not extreme physical torture - worse than napalming a Vietnamese village or the firebombings of WWII where we burned 10's of thousands of citizens alive in city after city??? We firebombed to win. Sticking a terrorist's head in a toilet is pretty mild stuff compared to that.

4. "Torture" of the enemy worries the anti-Americans running and financing the ACLU so much that they have all but discontinued their war on the Christian religion and traditional American culture to put more resources into safeguarding the rights and liberties of terrorists. Like the Patriot Act, the true horror to those NYC lawyers is that vigorous interrogation works.

5. For Peter and SJKevin - I think you may be confronted with an event - given the liberals have forced US military lawyers and Fed Courts to now gun for any jailer or interrogator that does more than give a radical Muslim terrorist 3 sqaure meals, comfy quarters, and Geneva Protection. An event of a preventable attack causing mass casualties...And, it may serve America more to let a terrorist attack go forward than hang the interrogators for preventing hundreds of deaths. Many "no torture ever!" proponents say, well, it's likely that our defenders are so dedicated to defending us that they would have to torture to save us - but then we have to destroy such people's careers and lock them up in jail for for torture...to set an example and communicate torture is never acceptable from our high moral vista.

What if - we get a tip that a man named Mustafa X was heard saying "the bombs are ready to go". We get a warrant and find that he has remnant materials from the assembly of six large C-4 nail bombs. We ask him where the bombs are, who is going to make the cell phone calls to set them off. He just says, Allah will kill you all, and asks for a ACLU lawyer.

Now, this is where the anti-torturers count on some super patriot cop or FBI agent stepping forward and accepting the destruction of his family, career, and a 20-25 year jail sentence to force Mustafa X to say where the 6 bombs are. Or who has the cell phone numbers....

What if none of them are willing to wreck their lives? Just go, "fuck it", ensure their personal friends & family are safe, and wait. Let's say the nailbombs go off in a nightclub, an elementary school cafeteria at lunchtime, a Britanny Spears concert 60 miles away, 2 shopping malls, and a State motor vehicle license issuing center at peak times. After the bombs go off, in a video mysteriously leaked by Mustafa's American captors, he gleefully rattles off the exact locations and times of the bombs...wants to know how many infidels were dispatched....and says he worried the info was going to be forced out of him, but Allah answered his prayers and he was left with a lawyer and just took the 5th.

Not one of those law enforcement officers will go to jail, and you can't even censure them for letting the bombs go off because they followed the letter of the law the anti-torturers demanded. If 700-1700 people die in the bombings, I imagine there will be enough public rage - even a few prominent liberals, ACLU members, or activist judges beaten or killed in the process of mob revenge - that the anti-torture folks lose power.

And possibly instead of cops being set up to take the fall as their patriotic duty, we find several prominent
politicians and anti-torture activists publically accused, even arraigned ,on charges of giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

Well, perhaps it's time to re-examine an idea Alan Dershowitz had: Torture warrents. If we agree torture works and is needed (I do) then let's have our elected leaders actually lead. Let the President propose, and let Congress pass, a bill that allows military and/or FBI agents to go to a judge and say: "We have Abdul Achmed and we think he knows where the dirty bombs are" Let a judge issue a warrent, and then break out the Rack and Iron Maiden and get to work.

If we need to torture terrorists, fine. If not, then let's have written agreements that we are not going to, and we accept that as a result of this we may suffer mass casulties from terrorism.

Once and for all, we as a country should decide. No more winks and nods, no more letting low level peons do the dirty work and then get sent to jail for it. I personally have no problems with doing whatever needs to be done to stop terrorists - if they don't want to be tortured all they have to do is stop being terrorists.

There is, IMHO, no reason, practical or legal, why we should not torture terrorists. The 8th amendment does not apply outside of US territory, and terrorists have no rights under international law. As for moral equivalency, give me a break. We are talking about terrorists. NOTHING we do to them will bring us down to their level.

This is an odd moral dilemma, and one cannot apply traditional moral calculus with such issues as war.

Kant's kingdom of means would say never allow torture.

But guys, this is war. How can one say torture ought to be illegal? That's so Clintonesque it almost seems quaint. He was real skilled in the art of saying things like this, while still holding firm to a core stance that he took on a particular issue.

This reminds me of two anecdotes:

1) Washington, during the debate on the Constitution, answering one of the men that posited that our standing army should never exceed 5,000 men, countered with something along the lines of "That'd be fine. But only if we can get a guarantee from our enemies that they'll agree to the same cap on the size of their army." Forgive me if I'm misquoting or twisting the story, but I believe that this is documented, and can be found in the debate on the Constitution.

2) FDR was asked at a cocktail party about the 8 or so German spies that had entered the US (one group in Jacksonville, FL, the other in Maryland). The media at the time was reporting on the incident, and people were quite aware of the group's failed attempt. Well, FDR replied, "They've just been executed, actually during this party," then went on sipping his cocktail. If memory serves me, the whole ordeal was played out in less than a few months, from their capture to their execution.

If it's illegal to torture anyone caught on the battlefield, who might have important information that could save lives, then send them to a country where certain techniques that might work in drawing out this information are permissible.

It's fine to discuss where the line is drawn, but to say no torture ever is really simplistic. There are gradations of torture, as there are of most anything, such as when is an embryo a human life?

No slippery slope arguments will do here. First you have to define what torture is, then you must define what is acceptable and legal, then you carry it out.

That's the point of the Gonzalez memos. Define what you can or cannot do, but don't close the door on any of your arrows available in your quiver.

The root question here is: Why did the President not ask Congress to declare war? If he had done so, he'd have far wider latitude with war powers than without. The answer is simple. Without declaring war, but being in a state of war nonetheless, the Executive can use a whole array of tools at his disposal.

Some terrorists get sent to Gitmo, others are held in military prisons, and still others are fought in the courts on an individual basis. This gives Bush the ultimate flexibility to fight this strange new type of warfare. That's why we have these quirks like with the dirty bomb guy on the one hand, and the folks at Gitmo. Different circumstances call for different tactics.

But FDR still got to order the execution of those German terrorists, without so much as a whine from the media.

Bush is operating under a different time and with a different enemy. We have 21st century information technology spreading news and propaganda around the world, 24 hours a day, and we are fighting an enemy unlike those of the past.

I say torture them on a case-by-case basis. Draw the line of demarcation, and don't cross it, but anything short of that is open for discussion and implementation.

As a footnote, ever consider why the guy who injects the poison into the criminal when carrying out the death penalty sterilizes the guy's skin before injection? (I know, it's an old question). It seems strange, but these people take their jobs very seriously, and if the rules call for a cleaned patch of skin, then a clean patch of skin it shall be.

Well, let’s torture them because they torture us. Let’s be on the same level as they are, right? Is graphics in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq does here credit? http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=2444

Nobody wants to torture them because they torture ours (unless they're sadists). The point of coercion is information, not revenge. And coercion works. It works very well.

Point. The soldier is the human and has to be treated as a human. Good intelligence is the answer to all.

As to "intelligence being the answer", you finally get one right. But you don't get any intelligence by playing nice with fanatics.

Besides, everybody's missing the major point here: The most important weapon in an interrogator's arsenal isn't the actual acts of torture. It's the prisoner's belief that you might use it, that there's no limit to what you might do to get him to talk.

By publicly stating that we won't even go as far as to put panties on the head of prisoners, we've made sure that our interrogators won't ever again get a truly useful piece of information, because our enemy now knows that even if we threaten, we won't ever actually DO anything.

Thanks to a bunch of clueless "Holier than Thou" civilians enjoying the protection gained, in part, by nasty deeds that they'd rather pretend never happen, we've made sure that we'll have another 9/11 or worse.

Most Esteemed Emperor Misha the First:

I couldn't agree more. I suppose in my post I was getting at the issue from the fringes, as well as trying to take a stab at why the administration has taken so many different tactics with different cases. I think the administration has quietly allowed much torture to happen on the battlefield, torture that you or I will never know of. And I believe it's been happening from the beginning. But I don't think it's been our guys doing the bulk of the real torture.

Two points:

1) On the battlefield, once the most vile bastards are captured, I believe that there is a very real threat of violence happening on the ground, before the SOB gets put into any prison. In other words, some terrorist is caught before a bomb goes off, he's snagged, and the grunts on the ground do their stuff. They've got fully loaded weapons, high-tech gear, and probably look pretty damn menacing. That's the first place where I think the threat of violence is happening, and no one knows about it because it happens before the guy caught gets sent to a prison.

2) I also believe that up to this point, many suspects of very vile nature have already been shipped off to countries where they do a lot more extreme stuff than our guys do. Look at the story in today's paper on the transfer of prisoners from Gitmo to Yemen and Saudi Arabia and our new allies in the land of Karzai. Furthermore, in Iraq in particular, now that we are doing joint operations with these guys, who's to say that the Iraqi National Guard and police aren't taking the suspects and doing the questioning? I bet that's happening now too.

So, these two things keep our threat and possible use of torture in tact, but allow us to say that the prisoners in the American-run prisons aren't being tortured. That may be a true statement. What the US Military is not saying is that there will be no torture of suspected terrorists snagged on the battlefield (or in the streets). They just get handed over to allies that will do the torturing. Plus, I still think our soldiers are doing quite a bit of threatening use of violence before the bad guys are carted off to official prison.

I humble myself before your widom, most merciful Emporer.

It should be use where necessary, but never to such a degree that anyone becomes comfortable with it.

Especially the insane terrorist. When they become comfortable with the torture applied, then I completely agree that that degree of comfort is unnaccepatble. At that point, the degree of torture needs to be amplified exponentially.

Citizens of this country should never become numb to torture techniques that aren't effective and terrorists are comfortable with the amount of torture applied. The citizenry should stand up and say, "We will not tolerate these current torture procedures that have proven to be ineffictive. We demand that you increase the amount of torture."

Only an enlightened citizenry can keep the pressure up. And a cooperative media reporting on the lack of effective torture should provide Americans with this valuable information.

Where's the media when we really need them?

If a tortured prisoner has any useful knowledge, he'll tell his captors anything they want to hear. Unfortunately, even if a tortured prisoner doesn't have any useful knowledge, he'll still tell his captors anything they want to hear.

The Lodger:

Your post could also apply to bad behavior in a marriage. Spouses confronting their partners about suspected bad behavior.

But when you've got the goods on someone, and you've got the will to show them that you know that they have information and you will use force of some kind to get that information, the canary might start singing.

I don't agree with your blanket generalization, though it does have truth in it. Just not the kind that applies to specific cases where suspect A knows something about event B, and won't talk unless he's threatened.

In that particular case, he just might talk.

Ledger -

You think like a civilian applying full civil rights to a terrorist. 1st, that a constitutional guarantee to the right to silence exists - and 2nd, that any forcing of an unlawful combatant to speak will only produce lies.

In civilian investigations, though, the right to the 5th is taken away by immunity, and the perp is obligated to talk, with repercussons - harsh ones - for lying. Also, it used to be (before the ACLU stopped it) common practice for cops to do stress interrogations and triangulate suspects against one another.

You see, you can lie, but not lie consistently, and if others are in the same conspiracy and separated at arrest - there is no way for several suspects to weave the same lies - only tell a common tale of the truth.

Terror suspects have the same motive to lie if they have nubile American females peeling grapes for them, if they have an interrogator that wants to be their friend, or offers of a million to betray comrades, or just had 3 minutes of their face in a toilet dining on crap.

But lies are more valuable than silence.

Lies can be checked, cross-compared with other terroris in custody, and experienced interrogators know from body language and othe cues when a person is lying - at least part of the time.

Silence gives you nothing to work with.

You assume it is so easy to "turn" a committed Jihadi. Think what that entails with some sect of Americans you might be familiar with.....a fanatic fundamentalist Christian bombing abortion clinics with a ticking bomb..To "turn him" in a friendly manner, you have to convince him that his killing is wrong, but he thinks he is stopping murder, and has 8-10 years of intense religious programming and total belief in the literal word of the Bible. You think you will "turn him" to reveal others in his plot with pretty women flirting, offers of money, "being his friend"???? You only have limited time, and it is doubtful you can convince him his religious beliefs are wrong in hours or days......he thinks killing abortionists is stopping murder, and he is convinced he is in a righteous cause. Torture might work in the hours or days before the next bomb goes off - but unlikely anything else will.

But as we know, the abortion bomber has rights. By 9-0, the Supreme Court says that unlawful combatants - foreign spies and saboteurs - don't. Though the ACLU and the Left are desperately trying to move society and judges to positions that the SCOTUS was superceeded by Ruth Bader Ginsburg's preferred "international law and collective consciousness" a view shared by the cosmopolitan Breyer, and which the 2 of them have convinced O'Connor and Kennedy of, to various degrees.

Here's how it goes Ledger - We have a choice of silence or lies from a hard-core terrorist trained to resist interrogations. Lies are better. If inducements don't produce talk, punishment will. If you know the terorist is lying, inducements don't correct the lying, punishment might. When that happens, the perp will start talking mostly the truth.

The worst Al Qaeda terrorists required harsh methods to get them to start telling the truth - certainly deviations from the 3 squares and cigarettes on demand treatment that put America into "evil torturer" status. Things like sleep depravation,- days without sleep, disorientating stress from noises, slapping around, bright lights, threatening to throw their families from safety and comfort on the mercy of aa 3rd world nation. That was done with Khalid Sheihk Mohammed. He was silent at first, then forced to talk by harsh methods was analyzed for what he said being lies or not-(comparing what he said from what we knew from other suspects, from high tech intel gathering). When we found him lying, he was punished for those lies coming out of his mouth, and would be punished for any other lies we hadn't found out yet were lies. All the while weakening his will and body by stress techniques - and keeping our word by punishments like dunking his head in water (Oh, the torture!!!) or forcing him to stand for long periods. At some point, the 9/11 mastermind quit lying and then began naming suspects, their locations, other plots underway. Which were checked for veracity by ensuring the fellow Jihadis were linked to him, the plots were real.....or dear Khaled would have been punished for more lies he was caught in.

But the ACLU, the Left, and Justices like Ginsburg are still very strong and able to thwart many efforts to interrogate the enemy. It's been 3 1/2 years since American civilians have been attacked in their Homeland and already civil libertarians are saying things are safe enough to do away with the Patriot Act, end Gitmo Detentions, and provide a NYC ACLU lawyer for any caught terrorist. IMO, more dead Americans are the only thing that will stop their efforts to sabotage America's national security needs.

I still think the marriage analogy works quite well. Suppose your spouse is regularly cheating on you, abusing drugs or something even worse.

You hire a PI to gather evidence, and the PI is able to cobble together some tangible information, but nothing bullet-proof. Your spouse does not know that you have this partial evidence, but does suspect that you may be onto him or her. Addicts, abusers and people that are having affairs are always in lie-your-ass-off mode just in case they are confronted.

How do you proceed to entrap your spouse to come clean? Well, the best strategy (or at least a good one) is to catch them when they are vulnerable and comfortable, such as on a Saturday watching the football game and everything is pleasant. You confront this person when they aren't actively prepared (mentally) to offer up their lie, and hit them with an out-of-left-field question. The first thing they do (if they are good liers) is go into lie-mode. But even the best will have a short, unstable period where they have to get to that state of mind.

Sort of like catching fish. You chum the waters, bait your hook, and then start reeling them in; the fighting fish will put up a good struggle, may break the line, but if you're careful, and your timing is good, you'll catch him. Entrapment. Not even Bill Clinton could lie that good. Given the right set of circumstances, anyone will spill the beans when confronted in the right moment. Once they are cornered, and their little hard disk spins searching for a good lie, and they can't find one, they're toast.

The angry spouse might have divorce papers ready; that's the nuclear option. Pretty powerful to get the addict to turn his or her life around, especially when children are involved, or their livelihood.

But the spouse must be willing to USE this option or threat of divorce. You can't just say it, you have to be willing to follow through to the bitter end. The light of truth, once shined on the sneak, consistently shined, intensified and unrelenting, just might work. But one using this light must be willing to suffer the consequences of using the threat and possibly following through with it.

Now in marriage in this scenario, the end-game is to keep the marriage together (or it may be to maximize your child support payments and custody arrangements), but with a terrorist or criminal, the end-game is similar: confession. Confession or imparting truth that will save lives or thwart a threat.

The spouse may be trying to get the partner to come clean to protect his or her children, or to maximze his or her chances of turning the spouse's life around and saving the marriage. But short of the threat, a lier will slither out of the best set trap. I think this compares quite well.

Perhaps I'm wrong. But ultimately, everyday life is very similar to the threats we face as a nation. It's just that the threats to the nation from the enemy we face affects us all, and not just one's family.

I say that Police trainer in that high school class could be the perfect questioner of the terrorist. He's got precise timing, is a master of words and nuance. And his humor factor is sky-high.

Sign that SOB up with the CIA.

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