When is Torture Morally Acceptable?

[mopaul]

when national security is at stake of course!

[Walt Starr]

1. Never

Torture harms national security far more than it can help it under any cicrumstances anybody would care to ennumerate.

[abluelady]

2. I Know You're Kidding

Torture is never acceptable.

[bleedingheart]

5. you are absolutely correct but the Bush Admin has a huge

disconnect on this issue...the life they lead in the Republican Vacuum has convinced them that they can torture people without having any fallout....same idiots that thought we would be showered with floral wreaths as our soldiers marched through Baghdad.

[abluelady]

23. Maybe Torture Rather Than Impeachment?

Should we give Mr. Bush a taste of his own medicine? What could we do to truly torture that man--mentally, not physically? Should we have cases of beer delivered to the white house every day, perhaps?

[bleedingheart]

3. when people who authorize torture are willing to accept the risk for

themselves and their citizens.

So when we think it is okay to torture folks to get information...we should remember that it is a two way street.

[mopaul]

4. when the suspect is a muslim

when it's a g.i. getting tortured, that's a bad thing.

[bleedingheart]

6. I hate the idea of torture and would never condone it.

however you would think that common sense would tell people that using torture just escalates violence...it never really works. It steels the enemy against you and it creates more enemies.

[Deep13]

7. ditto on "never"

[baldguy]

8. When your morality is for sale.

Enough CASH makes anything acceptable.

[dutchdemocrat]

9. Of course....

And it's only left wing groups that make the 'threat to national security' list...

A recent internal Homeland Security document lists the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front with a few Islamic groups that could potentially support al-Qaida as domestic terror threats.

SNIP

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=686175

[WinkyDink]

10. Well, I can think of one instance:

When it's Bush, Cheney, Rove, Libby, and Rumsfeld on the receiving end.

Why, yes, I AM a vindictive bee-yotch; why do you ask?

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

11. NEVER! eom

[sepia_steel]

12. Never. nt

[mopaul]

13. when you CAN'T prosecute those who ordered it...n/t

[kansasblue]

14. the military says...

that info received through torture is nearly worthless.

Plus, the same rules that protect people falsely accused in all advanced countries are needed for these suspects. Some people feel its ok to torture a 'terrorist', but what guarantee do you have that the person you are torturing is really a terrorist? So many arrests are made on very weak info. Now imagine this, an innocent man/women is now held. Tortured, again and again because they aren't 'giving up their info'. They could be completely innocent. What concern do you have the would allow you to torture an innocent man.

[Daphne08]

15. NEVER!

It's a proven fact it doesn't work, but of course the Freep and NeoCon crowd won't believe that.

[sinkingfeeling]

16. Never...even if there is a bomb that will kill millions and the person

you have in custody knows how to stop it.

[jokerman93]

27. that would make

That would make a great idea for a tv show...

[Coexist]

17. Why, that sounds like a joke!

Oh never mind, wrong country.

[mondo joe]

18. If it could be shown to be effective there might even be a case to be made

that it could be morally used in the interest of national security.

But of course it's not.

[Touchdown]

19. When your leather is fresh, boots are polished, dungeon clean.

...and your Daddy is mad at you for not shining his boots with your tongue, and you need a spanking.:evilgrin:

[headin_south]

20. Torture...

is never morally acceptable but sometimes it's necessary.

as for it being effective? depends on who's using it and why. if i want to scare the hell out of someone or a group of people, torture them to death in a particularly gruesome fashion. like sun tzu said, "kill one, terrorize a thousand". name me one secret police organization that hasn't been effective gathering information through torture...the gestapo, kempe tai, kgb, duxieme bureau, cia, saddam's mukhabarat, mossad? their bosses may have failed them, but they never failed providing intel and repression.

for intel, it has to be used as a tool not an end in and of itself. think about it...if i ask you if x is a terrorist, at some point during the torture you will probably say "yes" just to stop the pain, whether x is a terrorist or not.

what if i ask you to tell me who the terrorists are? after awhile you give me the name of z along with addresses, connections, etc. i now have a suspect. i go to someone else and ask them the same thing. under torture, without my suggesting a name, they give me the same info. i now have two independent sources giving me info that z is a terrorist. that's effective.

but i've said too much...:D

[Cults4Bush]

25. Uh actually every study Ive ever read (and I've studied those studies)

would seem to indicate the opposite.

Take for example this line of your post "as for it being effective? depends on who's using it and why." The exact opposite is what holds water it does not so much depend on who is using it and why. It has much more to do with who is recieving it and how.

Every single effective use of torture comes from reeeling in low level criminal types and thugs. Its application to even shortly trained extremists is almost never ever useful except in fulfilling the expectations of the detainee. That lame faux terror alert in NYC a bit ago?? Most likely from info gotten under duress.

The intelligence orgs that you mentioned have all used torture on criminals with no training who may have had connections to a security threat, if they got lucky enough to capture the security threat they did not use torture as a means to extract intell. They used one or a combination of ideological betrayal, blackmail, pay off, or familial threats. This has been SOP in most intell gathering orgs since WW2.

Take a look at Victor Suvorovs' books on the GRU (the most notoriously wet working agency ever), he explains quite succinctly why the methodology you described doesn't work with flipping an enemy.

Also when you are dealing with extremists who are fully expecting to be tortured some of them are actually able to take a measure of comfort in the pain, martyrdom is not just the act of death it is the pain suffered before hand. Some believe that the greater the suffering the greater the reward upon completion of their martyrdom.

The truth is that it is almost never necessary except in movies and fascist fantasies.

I actually truly can't say anymore than this, but nearly all publicly available (i.e. not classified or need to know) information on intelligence gathering agencies contradicts your every assertion.

[janx]

30. Yes, you have. n/t

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

32. Pretty effective in the WAR ON ISLAM ALL PROGRESSIVES SHOULD SUPPORT huh?

We have memories, you know.

Pineapple, man. Pineapple.

[spanone]

21. Never. As Jimmy Carter says, people will say anything when tortured

so the information attained is NO GOOD. Of Course.

[jobycom]

22. Never acceptable. You can argue that in individual cases it's necessary

For instance, if someone you know for certain knows of an imminent, specific plot to kill people, then torturing that person to get the information out of them might be defensible. Even in that extreme, and very rare, situation, the people who make the decision and carry out the torture should be tried before some type of court, to see if it was justifiable, and the benefit of doubt should be against them.

I wouldn't say it was morally acceptable, even in that case, but there are times when no choice is morally acceptable. Like killing is self-defense.

But the way we are using it, as a fishing expedition to learn what someone might now, or worse, to create a climate of fear as a deterent, is wrong on every level, and not reliable, anyway.

Torture can be reliable if you need one bit of information--say the time and place of an attack that you know of from reliable means. A person being tortured will tell you something. It might be the truth, it might be a lie just to make you stop. For instance, you know from other methods that there is a bomb in New York set to go off in one day, and you know several people involved, and you have one in custody, torturing that person to find the location and time of the bomb could work. What we do, though, is torture someone who, because he has to say something, makes up a plot. Then he adds some names to that plot. Then we arrest the names he has given us and toture them to learn more about the plot. Only after torturing a dozen people do we realize that the information was wrong to begin with.

Keep in mind, I'm not saying it should EVER be legal, or ever be policy. The people doing it should believe that they will be fired and imprisoned for doing it. It should only happen when you know for sure that the immediate alternative is the deaths of other people, and there should be no other method of coercion left unexhausted. And even then it is not morally acceptable, it is just the less evil of your alternatives.

[The Stranger]

24. acceptable when you are torrturing Brown people or Muslim people,

and for any combination of the two, torture is virtually required.

No matter how many lies they disseminate, these are the rules they practice.

[freestyle]

26. Never, and it doesn't work.

Torture is reprehensible and ineffective. The torturers forfeit their morality, and the person being tortured will lie, die, or both. There is absolutely no incentive to tell the truth to people who are in the process of demonstrating their capacity for evil.

[newyawker99]

28. It is NEVER acceptable. n/t

[maximovich]

29. When You Vote Republican..

morality is malleable

[readmoreoften]

31. when it's consensual. n/t

[Cults4Bush]

33. LOL... true.

Didnd't figure a post on this thread would make me :spray: my coffee.