Plus if you have operative that you need to get information from quick,you offer them immunity or clemency.
Otherwise why not torture every single person arrested for drugs? Cops get information by offering clemency. The other thing about bargaining with a clemency deal is that a terrorist would give up a lot of good intel, or they get nothing.
Torture advocates say "Would you kill one person to save a thousand?" but I would say "Would you kill a thousand to get one (suspected) bad guy?" Obviously we don't do that - we don't flatten a couple city blocks to get one guy.
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60% of US Teens Believe Torture Is OK
Re: 60% of US Teens Believe Torture Is OK
by PrestonSturges » Fri 06 May 2011, 14:09:09
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Re: 60% of US Teens Believe Torture Is OK
by Pops » Fri 06 May 2011, 14:25:45
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PrestonSturges', 'T')orture advocates say "Would you kill one person to save a thousand?"
I think advocates of torture believe they know who is guilty, usually because the person in question is different from them - that't the self-righteous part - so if the torture victim dies isn't it a just "Preemptive Execution"? And so what if it is, it could never happen to someone like them or their kids or neighbors.
The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities.
-- Abraham Lincoln, Fragment on Government (July 1, 1854)
-- Abraham Lincoln, Fragment on Government (July 1, 1854)
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Re: 60% of US Teens Believe Torture Is OK
by Pretorian » Fri 06 May 2011, 14:57:31
well, would you kill a 1000 to save someone you really care about?
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Re: 60% of US Teens Believe Torture Is OK
by PrestonSturges » Fri 06 May 2011, 15:11:50
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pretorian', 'w')ell, would you kill a 1000 to save someone you really care about?
If we want to stick to the "ticking time bomb you must decide now" scenario, there's always a huge degree of uncertainty. So it's more realistic to say "Would you kill 1000 people, which might or might not save someone you love, someone who might or might not even be in danger, based on a rumor?"
Now were talking about a real scenario, because to my knowledge the ticking timebomb scenario has never actually occured, but cops offer clemency to catch drugs in transit every day.
However, let's turn that question around one more time and consider would who answer the question "Would you kill 1000 people, which might or might not save someone you love, someone who might or might not even be in danger, based on a rumor?" with an enthusiastic "Oh Hell yes!"
This represents at a minimum 10% of the population (in civilized areas) that are more than happy to systematically massacre women, children, and their grandparents with their bare hands if necessary. Give them a rumor (call it "actionable intelligence"), an SS uniform, and they are ready for the slaughter.
Ideally the rumor should not make any sense, it should be patently absurd propaganda so that they march off to slaughter they know they are all on the same team. You know like Hitler/Glenn Beck's story about the international conspiracy of liberals and jews to slaughter the white people.
I would suggest that this 10% is in large part the people who are big advocates of torture, and that for them torture is weak substitute for what they really want.
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Re: 60% of US Teens Believe Torture Is OK
by Pops » Fri 06 May 2011, 15:56:23
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pretorian', 'w')ell, would you kill a 1000 to save someone you really care about?
I would act in defense of myself or my family.
The scenario however is a simplistic false dilemma.
But you do prove my point perfectly by assuming you would know which thousand people to kill. No surprise there, that's the self-righteous part, "kill em all and let God sort em out".
But that self-righteousness makes you blind to the other point: the powerful can have exactly the same view. Once a freedom is gone for one, that freedom is gone for everyone.
So let me ask you,
How many freedoms will you give up to save yourself?
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The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities.
-- Abraham Lincoln, Fragment on Government (July 1, 1854)
-- Abraham Lincoln, Fragment on Government (July 1, 1854)
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Re: 60% of US Teens Believe Torture Is OK
by Fishman » Fri 06 May 2011, 16:01:40
Nad, again, you must never have picked up a history book. We nuked two cities. Because it was war. Terrible but true.
Now the interesting part of this study, despite years of the liberal media pounding Bush for the waterboarding and enhanced interrogation, 60 % of the teens agree with Bush. They have been hit with everything the libs can throw at them, even Jon Stewart. They saw the tv on 9/11. That doesn't bode well for the left. And as financial times get leaner with post peak oil, liberalism will wither on the vine.
Now the interesting part of this study, despite years of the liberal media pounding Bush for the waterboarding and enhanced interrogation, 60 % of the teens agree with Bush. They have been hit with everything the libs can throw at them, even Jon Stewart. They saw the tv on 9/11. That doesn't bode well for the left. And as financial times get leaner with post peak oil, liberalism will wither on the vine.
Obama, the FUBAR presidency gets scraped off the boot
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Re: 60% of US Teens Believe Torture Is OK
by Sixstrings » Fri 06 May 2011, 16:04:38
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DomusAlbion', 'W')ater boarding never killed anyone, terrorist plots do kill people.
Psychological torture is acceptable given the fact that we are in a war.
Psychological torture is acceptable given the fact that we are in a war.
Waterboarding has been considered torture for centuries, apparently it's excruciating physical pain, and can damage the lungs and brain along with psychological damage:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]Waterboarding is a form of torture in which water is poured over the face of an immobilized captive, causing the individual to experience the sensation of drowning.
Waterboarding can cause extreme pain, dry drowning, damage to lungs, brain damage from oxygen deprivation, other physical injuries including broken bones due to struggling against restraints, lasting psychological damage and, if uninterrupted, death.[4] Adverse physical consequences can manifest themselves months after the event, while psychological effects can last for years.
Waterboarding in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge regime. Painting by former prison inmate Vann Nath at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterboarding#Historical_uses
The United States Constitution specifically forbids torture:
"Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." From what I've read about waterboarding, and even seen on TV news with stupid reporters trying it out (to their regret), I'd say that waterboarding counts as "cruel" and certainly "unusual."
Historical incidents of waterboarding:
Spanish Inquisition
United States (19th & early 20th Cent.): New York's Sing Sing prison, Alabama and Mississippi prisons
Spanish-American War, United States used waterboarding on Filipinos:
President Theodore Roosevelt privately rationalized the instances of "mild torture, the water cure" but publicly called for efforts to "prevent the occurrence of all such acts in the future." In that effort, he ordered the court-martial of General Jacob H. Smith on the island of Samar, "where some of the worst abuses had occurred." When the court-martial found only that he had acted with excessive zeal, Roosevelt disregarded the verdict and had the General dismissed from the Army.
"Third Degree" police interrogations, 1930s United States
World War II, used by Japanese Imperials and the Gestapo
Algerian War, used by the French
Chile, used by the dictator Pinochet
Khmer Rouge
Northern Ireland, used by the British Army
I don't know Domus, maybe we ought to just stay away from anything associated with Pinochet, the Gestapo, and the Spanish Inquisition. And as Americans do we really want to be doing things that are straight out of a genocide museum:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/WaterboardWithCanKhmerRouge.jpg/300px-WaterboardWithCanKhmerRouge.jpg[/img]
Waterboard on display at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum: prisoners' feet were shackled to the bar on the right, wrists restrained by shackles on the left.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterboarding#Historical_uses
Last edited by Sixstrings on Fri 06 May 2011, 16:19:16, edited 8 times in total.
Thank you.
