Torture revelations

Whereas if your nice and just talk soothingly with them, they'll never tell lies, because that would be wrong.

You're.

ummm because you're being a complete ass like Garamet and Liet often are and ignoring it. You're being small-minded like them and not making the proper connections.

Do you want me to do it for you?

Torture works provided that the people doing it know what they are doing PLUS We have far better methods however of getting information now that we do not need to torture anyone.

Equals: Torture is of low value and is obsolete. It's stupid to do it in the face of newer and better information gathering ideas.

Oh okay. You're right. My bad.

Very good Zombie. That was very insightful. Kudos!

Indeed any method of interrogation that allows the person being questioned to answer will sometimes get an answer that happens to be true. That's not the mark of an interrogation method that's successful. There's simply no evidence that torture is in general, or in any specific situation, more likely than regular old interrogation to get useful intelligence that you can readily confirm to be true, and there's a whole lot of evidence that torture is phenomenally awful at getting a continuous stream of useful intelligence from a high level target.

And even if, for no reason at all, you don't like traditional interrogation methods, how in the world could a person think that torture is better than a steady stream of hookers and blow, or some other lecherous luxury of choice, at getting a target to provide useful information?

Indeed any method of interrogation that allows the person being questioned to answer will sometimes get an answer that happens to be true. That's not the mark of an interrogation method that's successful. There's simply no evidence that torture is in general, or in any specific situation, more likely than regular old interrogation to get useful intelligence that you can readily confirm to be true, and there's a whole lot of evidence that torture is phenomenally awful at getting a continuous stream of useful intelligence from a high level target.

And even if, for no reason at all, you don't like traditional interrogation methods, how in the world could a person think that torture is better than a steady stream of hookers and blow, or some other lecherous luxury of choice, at getting a target to provide useful information?[/quote]

It's effectiveness depends on the situation, but hookers and blow definitely aren't going to work when you've just picked up a hard-core al Qaeda lieutenant who believes in absolute Koranic piety with all his heart. They are convinced they are warriors of God, striking in his name and defending his realm, and if they die in holy battle they go to paradise and get uncountable rewards. You have to break through that, and to get timely information you need to break through it pretty quickly. You might get something useful, you might not, but you're not going to get much of anything if you don't try anything.

With the soft approach, you can find out all kinds of things that they don't care if you know. They can babble for days about things they don't think are particular useful to you, even though we learn a lot from that. The hard part is finding out things they desperately don't want to tell you.

If they'd have tried torture at the Salem Witch trials, maybe they'd have believed some of the defendants.

If the Muslim terrorists wants to die in service to Allah could you threaten to freeze him into suspended animation so he would live forever and NEVER go to Paradise?

Sure, we actually don't know how to do that now but maybe you could rig up some science fictiony looking thing and bluff the guy.

Would that kind of threat be allowable?

The funny thing is that we already know that the CIA and DoD use private contractors, and that a lot of the contractors are former special ops troops who will be well versed in how interrogations work. Therefore it isn't that crazy to assume that a lot of off book interrogations were conducted that will never ever be revealed.

Honestly, I was a bit underwhelmed by the report. I figured they would have record of finger nail pulling and constant beating, not sleep deprivation and small spaces.

Either way, tough situation to deal with. If you know there is an imminent attack, I would agree that any and all means should be used to prevent attack. That is afterall the purpose of enhanced interrogation methods. So, we are only getting one side of the story here. What did all these 'horrific' methods uncover? Did they work? Was the information real? Valuable? How many lives were spared?

Obviously the CIA can't be trusted to tell us that as they will protect their own ass, but I do find it interesting that a peace loving hippie like Obama gets into the Whitehouse and things just continue on as usual. In fact, he gave JSOC and even bigger leash. That shows to me that he saw the info that was being gleamed, and decided it was worth it.

I thought one of the first things Obama did when he took office was to put an end to it.

...I liked Caddyshack II...

Well, no president wants to admit just how roped in he is to the policies of his predecessors.

Look at containment policy in the Cold War. Democrat Truman began it. Republican Eisenhower, Democrat Kennedy, Democrat Johnson, Republican Nixon, Republican Ford, Democrat Carter, Republican Reagan all continued that basic policy.

He put an end to what? JSOC got a lot bigger under Obama. They ran secret prisons that were often criticized.

Sure, lots were shut down AFTER people found out about them, but they left a trail of bodies behind where ever they went and Obama authorized everything. So lets not pretend like he's a saint.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/175/end-the-use-of-torture/
I'm not saying he's a saint, but it is what it is.

And let's not pretend that the argument "We could tell you about it, but that would compromise things." has any truth to it all. If there's a successful military operation, the government, no matter who is sitting in the White House, is going to blab about it to the press.

I wish! It has been 6 years, and we're still debating the merits of it.

Um, no. We were in the throws of the disco era before the US and British governments finally admitted that we'd been breaking Nazi ciphers.

You really believe everything gets told to the press?

LOLOLOLOL

And last I checked Obama has no problem droning people to death.

I'd like to see where the people who get the info for him so he can order those drone strikes got the info in the first place. I bet some in Obama's administration doesn't want anyone to find out.

What goal post did I move?

Sorry, I thought we were talking about torture.

You forget the consensus opinion here at Wordforge.

Blowing people apart with Hellfire missiles is fine.

Pouring water over their face is a terribly immoral act.

Liar.

I thought you'd bowed out of that argument. Blowing people apart who are a threat to the the US is, under certain circumstances, justifiable. Torturing someone who is not a threat is an immoral act.

Because some guy 5,000 miles away sitting in a truck on a dirt road is a threat to the United States.

Be honest.

You cannot truly justify drone attacks overseas or air strikes on threat alone.

He's got a point there. I mean sure if we know that John Dow is about to do something we can shove a drone missile up his ass but a lot of people had missiles shoved up their ass based solely on who they were and not what threat they actually presented at the time.

You, yourself agreed in post 173 that, for instance, a bomb maker or an Al-Quaida leader planning attacks on US targets should be killed. Did you have a change of heart since this moring?

Not true at all. Ever heard of Senator Homer Ferguson? He revealed that the US was breaking codes shortly after WWII ended. His goal was to try and discredit FDR, and the US government admitted that we'd cracked German and Japanese codes long before the disco era. What they didn't admit was how they'd done it. But WWII is pretty unique in warfare, since no nation has engaged in that style of warfare since then.

Of course, cracking codes is not really the same thing as tracking down the leader of a terrorist organization and sending in a SEAL team to paste his ass. Or using drones to take out the number 3 man of a terrorist organization, or any of a number of things that we've done since 9/11.

Hey, their neither American, nor Christian, so who the fuck cares if they get blowed up? Am I right?

Oh I get his bigotry. I just didn't know he was suffering from short term memory loss.