If Torture Works, That Makes It Okay? What A Morally Bankrupt Argument.
The Washington Post does the most insidious form of "journalism" today: they do an "on the other hand" story about torture. "Some say" it's wrong, but "others say" it works, so the implied conclusion is, how can it be wrong?
And therein lies the problem. Why does it matter? After eight years or so of deceptive leadership and an inbred corporate media corps eager to lend its imprimatur, we have gotten to the point where we're actually arguing that torture is okay if it works.
Life is full of challenges and dilemmas, but morally aware people don't take to the low road when they have to deal with them. For instance, I'm worried about paying for my COBRA coverage. If I could rob a bank and get away with it, would that be okay? Of course not.
And can I point out again that the most useful intelligence we got from detainees was because their interrogators were kind to them?
These scenes provide previously unpublicized details about the transformation of the man known to U.S. officials as KSM from an avowed and truculent enemy of the United States into what the CIA called its "preeminent source" on al-Qaeda. This reversal occurred after Mohammed was subjected to simulated drowning and prolonged sleep deprivation, among other harsh interrogation techniques.
"KSM, an accomplished resistor, provided only a few intelligence reports prior to the use of the waterboard, and analysis of that information revealed that much of it was outdated, inaccurate or incomplete," according to newly unclassified portions of a 2004 report by the CIA's then-inspector general released Monday by the Justice Department.
The debate over the effectiveness of subjecting detainees to psychological and physical pressure is in some ways irresolvable, because it is impossible to know whether less coercive methods would have achieved the same result. But for defenders of waterboarding, the evidence is clear: Mohammed cooperated, and to an extraordinary extent, only when his spirit was broken in the month after his capture March 1, 2003, as the inspector general's report and other documents released this week indicate.
Over a few weeks, he was subjected to an escalating series of coercive methods, culminating in 7 1/2 days of sleep deprivation, while diapered and shackled, and 183 instances of waterboarding. After the month-long torment, he was never waterboarded again.
"What do you think changed KSM's mind?" one former senior intelligence official said this week after being asked about the effect of waterboarding. "Of course it began with that."
Mohammed, in statements to the International Committee of the Red Cross, said some of the information he provided was untrue.
"During the harshest period of my interrogation I gave a lot of false information in order to satisfy what I believed the interrogators wished to hear in order to make the ill-treatment stop. I later told interrogators that their methods were stupid and counterproductive. I'm sure that the false information I was forced to invent in order to make the ill-treatment stop wasted a lot of their time," he said.
Critics say waterboarding and other harsh methods are unacceptable regardless of their results, and those with detailed knowledge of the CIA's program say the existing assessments offer no scientific basis to draw conclusions about effectiveness.
"Democratic societies don't use torture under any circumstances. It is illegal and immoral," said Tom Parker, policy director for counterterrorism and human rights at Amnesty International. "This is a fool's argument in any event. There is no way to prove or disprove the counterfactual."
MSNBC website mirrored the article.
Can you imagine that?
God, there goes the fucking liberal media again, always in the tank for liberals and promoting the progressive scourge on this country.
So, you're here why, exactly?
You sure you didn't take a wrong turn near Albuquerque there, Sparky?
There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby. - Tom Waits
Good job cutting Bob Baer off at the end Tweety. It was apparent that your simple-minded hypotheticals were getting you nowhere, and the guy was slapping you down on every point.
If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're gonna get selfish, ignorant leaders.
George Carlin
i don't believe "torture" was to get information. "Torture" was used as a strategy to give meaning to the
occupations/capitalistic imperialism. the right and the cia/blackwater used "torture" as propaganda to further aggitate al queda/taliban/Iran. in my opinion this gave more rationale to continue the war(s) and their respected strategies. saddam h. got off the u.s. petro dollar and the BUSH admin. didn't like it. there
was/is a lot of money to be made in these occupations from military industrial complex to oil imperialism. "Torture" was used to continue the u.s. public support of a war that getting questioned.
it was wrong and the BUSH administration prepared before initiating the torture strategy for the legal fight that would occur when revealed. my understanding the torture performed is much worse than we know.
Now we're getting somewhere.
A former award-winning journalist and lifelong class warrior, keeping a jaundiced eye on the Washington elite.
I think you hit the mark.
The U.S. has to make up its mind. Is it a couquering and killing power, or a moral country? You can't be both, no matter how effective the propaganda is.
So killing millions of Jews and other minorities reduced their populations in Europe as intended so according to Republicans that made it OK....very sick logic.
If you look at every past dictatorship or opressive regime they all used that very same excuse, "torture works" as a means to continue its use against some perceived enemy. The results, when torture was used by those regimes and for the very same reasons more than likely ended up the same way as they do now. With those results in mind, the collection of intelligence to prevent some perceived attack by a stated enemy couldn't be the intended goal of torture in my opinion. Its real use, is to keep the citizenry in fear through its presumed use. Kim Jong Il does this to great effect.
an evil and corrupt argument, that places your own fighting men and women at risk
at the end of ww2, the germans ran to surrender to the americans...because they knew that the russians would torture them
but if they think that americans torture...an enemy will fight to the death...and the americans will have no moral standing when it comes to our own being captured
cheney is now running around the country saying that he is proud that the cia tortured
he is challenging the obama admin to arrest and jail his traitorous ass
he should be picked up on monday...tried on tuesday...hung on wednesday...then hung upside down in the villiage square so we the people can beat his lifeless bloated corpse with sticks
How can we satiate that deep seated hatred of little brown sand people if we can't torture them?Where would be the fist clenching boner inducing pleasure in that?
"To me, truth is not some vague, foggy notion. Truth is real. And,
at the same time, unreal. Fiction and fact and everything in between,
plus some things I can't remember, all rolled into one big "thing."
This is truth, to me. "
-Jack Handy
Glenn Greenwald wrote a great article called "Thomas Paine v. the Right's Torture Defenders"
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/0...
Excerpts:
"In his 1795 essay, which he entitled Dissertations on First Principles of Government, Thomas Paine wrote this as his last paragraph:
An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
Can that be any clearer? Of course, Paine also wrote in Common Sense that "so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America the law is king" and "in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other." And in his Dissertations, he also wrote:
The executive is not invested with the power of deliberating whether it shall act or not; it has no discretionary authority in the case; for it can act no other thing than what the laws decree, and it is obliged to act conformably thereto. . . .
For anyone who believes in the basic principles of the founding, the fact that these acts of torture are illegal -- felonies -- ought to end the discussion about whether they were justified."
up. "...the fact that these acts of torture are illegal--felonies-- ought to end the discussion about whether they were justified." It should say, "does end the discussion..." Bush and Company chose to violate the law. They are criminals, and should be prosecuted. If the BHO administration does not have the balls, I mean desire to do this, then send them overseas, like we did and apparently still do to those we don't want to deal with "directly."
"The Mouse That Roared" today. There's a scene where an American General and some NYPD officers are taken prisoner by the Grand Duchy of Fenwick and are led into the country's Museum of Torture (which is just a museum, nothing more), wherein the General starts going on about the Geneva Convention, and how you can't torture people etc, and I though...my how times have changed. Although, this would still be the song these chickenhawks would sing if they ever were really in the hands of a hostile enemy.
I often think of how quickly people like Limbaugh would cave under torture.He'd hand over his entire family in the first 10 seconds.
Meanwhile Hannity still hasn't taken Olbermann up on subjecting himself to water boarding.Gee,there's a big fat surprise.
"To me, truth is not some vague, foggy notion. Truth is real. And,
at the same time, unreal. Fiction and fact and everything in between,
plus some things I can't remember, all rolled into one big "thing."
This is truth, to me. "
-Jack Handy
"Is torture ever justified?"
Jeebus H!!!
Is raping children ever justified?
Is genocide ever justified?
Is burning people alive ever justified?
What EXACTLY is the act so repugnant that even right-whiners would draw the line?
I'm not claiming to be a strategic genius but wouldn't it be logical to assume that if an "enemy combatant" for lack of a better term, were captured that everything he/she knew about an organization's operations would be changed immediately? Every person even remotely associated with that person would be reassigned, attack plans would be altered, etc. No matter how you slice it, the use of torture, really is of little use.
...that being a hit man is wrong. But I'm making a very nice living at it, so it works for me! Therefore you can't criticize.
http://www.jafafahots.com
Torture is wrong. We have always held that torture is wrong. We have prosecuted others for torturing because it is wrong. It is a moral issue that the United States was founded on. George Washington issued orders not to harm prisoners during the Revolutionary war although he could have tortured Hessians and British to help himself if he wanted to or thought it would help. It was never a question to him. Never mistreat a prisoner and if you did you payed a high price. Even during the harsh winters when his men were without shoes and food he never mistreated a prisoner. There also were no Cheney like jokers to tell others trying to win the revolution that Washington was not keeping the new country safe because he, Washington, was not torturing and mistreating prisoners. Even though the British were burning people out of their houses and starving and mistreating the Revolutionaries.
a combatant would probably never know what the planners have in mind for future attacks.
it's foolish to get tricked into an argument as to whether or not torture "works." I don't for a minute believe that it does, but that's irrelevant.
As an adolescent in the '60s, with family ancestors who were of German descent, I could not fathom how civilized people could have behaved the way the historians said the Germans had behaved in the '40s. I thought, "They are uncivilized. Surely this is distorted and things couldn't have been this way. Isn't this a case of the winners writing the history books?"
Suddenly, in this new century, it becomes apparent to me how the Nazis did it. The brainwashing through mass media outlets like Faux, the rewriting of history, the willful ignorance of the people, the callousness towards those who have been branded the "enemy," and the fear engendered by corrupt politicians has created the most ugly and
evil atmosphere I could have ever imagined. I am ashamed for America. I was an American Studies major as an undergraduate, and believed in the idealism of my nation. How discouraging to look at what we have become. The nation verges on the most contemptible behavior imaginable, excusing torture; imprisoning without trial; invading the privacy of citizens; permitting gross, venal lies of politicians to go unchallenged; allowing war profiteering to go unchallenged. Shame on America!
Candideinnc
It's not we as a nation I don't believe. It is they who have done it to us.
WE elected THEM.
WE sit idly by while THEY violate every principle this country was founded on.
When THEY clearly have committed crimes, or at the very least should be investigated for doing so, WE do nothing...
When THEY spend all the money WE give THEM (much of which is wasted or unaccounted for) WE give them more... WE actually let THEM borrow against OUR future.
Sadly, WE even agree with the principle of "if the ends justify the means"... not on torture, but WE do theft and others.
As long as YOU ALL continue to blame ONLY THEM, or one of the subsets of THEM (Republicans/Democrats), YOU ALL will continue to be victims of YOUR own stupidity.
Couple of questions:
Was that 183 waterboardings or 183 waterboarding sessions?
How could a doctor stand by while a human being was being waterboarded? "OK, he's still alive. You can waterboard him again."
Maybe they're doing it inquisition style. Their own rules said the prisoner could only face the Question (torture) once. So the inquisitors would "suspend" treatment and resume it numerous times, sometimes for years. Suspension is an odd term to use since they did tend to favor the Strappado.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSe38dzJYkY
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
I don't know why everyone is so upset about Cheney. Barack Obama is wanting Death Panels. The facts are quite obvious.
But you're an idiot.
1) The bills are coming out of Congressional Committees and not the white house
2) They included covering, as a benefit, end of life couseling WITH YOUR PHYSICIAN
3) Because of stupid conclusions like yours and mega stupid Palin, Grassley, and now even McCain, that BENEFIT has been shamefully removed from the bills.
Quit watching Faux News. It's making you dumb as a dining room table.
Think we'd be torturing fair skinned European christians?
I don't think so....
No, we are torturing dark skinned Muslims, a group of people that right wing Republicans Christ cultists concider to be subhuman...
After all, the Muslims do not worship Jesus as their god, so to the Christian right, the Muslims are heathens..
If torture was really accepotable, then why aren't American police officers allowed to torture suspects?
If the US tortures captured Iraqis or Afgans, how do you think US POWs will be treated ? They'll be tortured! It's called payback.
Why do Republicans always downplay the fact that if we use torture, it invites the enemy to torture our guys?
This is a classic case of liberals and progressives falling for what I've come to call "the truth trap."
It goes like this: conservatives and Republicans know that it doesn't matter if torture actually worked or not. What matters is making that the argument.
Since torture doesn't work, they know that their opponents will fall into the trap of arguing the facts. Once we're arguing the facts as to whether torture works or doesn't work, we've lost the argument.
Because it does not matter if it worked. The law itself says "you can't argue that it worked as a defense."
Once we engage on the basis that it DIDN'T work, well, even if we prove our point, the other side will be able to come back with "well, it MIGHT have worked in this one case...or that one case...or that one case."
And every case we try to bat down just makes the argument that much less interesting and pushes the "but you committed a crime against humanity, a war crime" conclusion further and further to the horizon.
Don't engage with this. It doesn't matter if torture worked.
It doesn't matter. So what if it did? It's specifically against the law. That's it.
Nuking all of North Korea or Iran would take care of them as a problem. Would that make it right?
The Bill of Rights only matters when it requires us to tolerate different positions. When it is difficult. If tortured work that would be an argument that even in the face of that, American's don't do what is expedient. They do what is right. That's what will make us a great nation. That's what will make us worthy of the respect of the world.
Our Declaration of Independence says "All men are created equal." I don't think there's any debate on what the meaning of "All" is.
When we torture we become the equivalent of those we call evil. The "shining city on the hill" could not have torture going on in its basements (no Reagan fan, but the juxtaposition makes a good point).
I sure wish Americans who call themselves "Christians" would act like Christ instead of the medieval Catholic Church. Consider how the right vilified Ted Kennedy because he was a skirt chaser and boozer. Yet, when it came to things that mattered to Christ, Kennedy was spot on. He worked tirelessly for the least among us. When dealing with adultery Christ said "he who is without sin cast the first stone." In other words, mind your own business. Or "get the beam of of your own eye before getting the mote out of another's." But when it came to helping the poor he said "those that feed the poor do this also to me.
Those that clothe the naked, do this also for me." I think he would have said in our time, "those that provide healthcare to the economically disadvantaged do this also for me."
I like Christ. It's most of these faux Christians that sicken me. And now they revert back to medieval "christian" practices and justify them in the name of what they say is a Christian nation. The hypocrisy and ignorance of their own Christ's teachings is mind numbing.
One of the very reasons I abandoned Christianity. If there are some Christians claiming to be doing the work of Christ, yet are so morally bankrupt, no scratch that, morally in debt, then how much of what I know about the faith is bull shit?
Someone call Jessie Ventura on this guy.
So by Neocon logic it must be OK too. These morally bankrupt and depraved traitors should be exported to Somalia.
"We will find fulfillment not in the goods that we have, but in the good we can do for each other."
Robert F. Kennedy
I can see it now..."New this fall on FOX is the must anticipated reality game show - Wheel of Torture!
He talks about it like brainwashing actually works. WTF?
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