Friday, February 27, 2009

For the "torture is never justified" crowd

...the definitive answer about why they are so wrong.

11 Comments:

Blogger Balbulican said...

Well, actually, no. This article provides no "definite answer" at all.

It simply restates the "ticking time bomb" problem, and theorizes that maybe torture might have worked this time, possibly. It fails to address the key problems of torture; that apart from violating most national and international laws and poisoning the legal systems that sanction it, it doesn't work very well, for the reason best summarized by the FBI in commenting Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, who quoted him as saying “They were killing me. I had to tell them something.”

February 28, 2009 10:15 am  
Blogger Louise said...

Close, but no cigar, Balb. The proof is in the pudding. If the information yielded by the torture proves to be correct and, as a result, 100s or perhaps thousands are saved as a result, then it is worth it. You seem to have missed the basic point of the article. No surprise there, of course.

February 28, 2009 10:32 am  
Blogger Balbulican said...

No, I think I got it. As I said, it's just one more restatement of the ticking bomb scenario - the one that Michael Ignatieff once used as a justification for supporting torture. Like Mossad, Ignatieff no longer believes in it because, among other reasons, it doesn't work very well.

I'm afraid setting argument in Mumbai does absolutely nothing to address its very fundamental weakness. Torture subjects will say pretty much anything to make the pain stop. They will cheerfully finger the wrong people (especially when presented with names by their torturers), acknowledge responsibility for crimes they never committed (remember Stalin's show trials?), or manufacture plausible threats, if that's what they need to say.

The signal to noise ratio inherent in that kind of information renders it worse than useless - it can send investigators down all kinds of wrong paths and divert resources that could more profitably be doing valuable research in the crimes under investigation.

February 28, 2009 12:31 pm  
Blogger Louise said...

Oh come on, Balb. Iggy is an opportunist who, now that he's an elected politician, will not say what he would say as an academic for fear of losing votes from liberal lefties. And besides, it's obvious you didn't read the article.

What the article is saying is that if torture reveals details such as critical names, places, times methods and materials that can be used to capture and dismantle a massive terrorist attack such as the one that recently took place in Mumbai, and it turns out that those names, places, times, methods and materials are just who and where and when the creeps said they would be, then torture is justified.

You are saying that saving one sorry ass creep from being hurt is better than saving thousands of innocents who just happen to be in the wrong place and the wrong time. Well, I must say, your position does not surprise me.

Leftards tend to think that the lives and safety the thousands of innocents can be cavalierly disregarded in the name of protecting some of the most incorrigible specimens of humanity that exist, because that would be a violation of some vaulted international law for which that the incorrigible specimen and his ilk has not one iota of respect. That is a debased argument, if there ever was one. But again, no surprise there.

February 28, 2009 12:49 pm  
Blogger Balbulican said...

"Iggy is an opportunist who, now that he's an elected politician, will not say what he would say as an academic for fear of losing votes from liberal lefties."

That doesn't really address the substance of what he said.

"And besides, it's obvious you didn't read the article."

I'm afraid you're mistaken.

"You are saying that saving one sorry ass creep from being hurt is better than saving thousands of innocents who just happen to be in the wrong place and the wrong time."

No, I'm not saying that at all. I have no sympathy for the terrorist captive described in the article.

I AM saying (as Mossad, one of the most effective intelligence agencies on the planet,now says) that the information obtained through torture is inherently unreliable, and, because it can divert investigator attention into seriously wrong channels, it's actually dangerous.

To quote Lieutenant General Harry Soyster, USA (Ret.), Former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency:

"The reality is that use of torture produces inconsistent results that are an unreliable basis for action and policy. The overwhelming consensus of intelligence professionals is that torture produces unreliable information. And the overwhelming consensus of senior military leaders is that resort to torture is dishonorable. Use of such primitive methods actually put our own troops and our nation at risk."

You may find this study interesting: http://www.fas.org/irp/dni/educing.pdf It essentially concludes that information extracted by torture is essentially valueless. Their conclusion isn't based on moral, ethical or legal considerations - simply on the fact that it doesn't work.

February 28, 2009 2:04 pm  
Blogger Louise said...

You did it again, Balb. You skirted around the core argument, that of the possibility of saving thousands of innocent people if the torture provides truthful facts. Not only that but you cavalierly wave that argument aside, as though it doesn't exist. After all, to a leftard, what's a thousand people, huh? Expendible peanuts, compared to the greater issue of the morality of torture, ie, that because it often doesn't work means it should never be done.

This philosophizing while people are being murdered en masse is the most wretched thing about the left's position on this and many other issues and no amount of fancy goosestepping can deflect the debate away from that central fact. If there's a possibility of saving thousands you would throw it away because sometimes it doesn't work. And besides that, you don't know torture if you think that what Mossad and other Western agencies practice is the epitome.

Which people would you be willing to sacrifice, Balb? and for what purpose? I'd take the courage of a Todd Beamer any day over these phony philosphers for whom real people in real danger mean so little.

February 28, 2009 2:56 pm  
Blogger Balbulican said...

Which of the following points do you disagree with? I ask because I'm not quite sure where you're getting stuck here, and I want to point you to exactly the right data to clarify the point.

1) The information elicited through torture is in most cases inaccurate.
2) The pursuit of inaccurate information is a waste of investigative time and resources, especially in a crisis.
3) A large majority of investigators agree that there are several common non-coercive interrogation techniques that elecit more accurate information than torture.

Which of those statements do you feel is incorrect? I'll cheerfully provide whatever data you require to substantiate the point. Much of it is documented in the source I already provided, but I'll dig out the specific quotes and stats for you.

On the issue of Mossad - I don't think you got my point, which is that have stopped torturing because it doesn't work.

February 28, 2009 3:52 pm  
Blogger Louise said...

Bait and switch. Bait and switch. Bait and switch. You know, Balb, this is really a very tired, very old tactic. Why don't you try something new for a change, such as answering the questions that are core to the question about which I have written in the above post. I'm really not interested in these red herrings. I'm more interested on what sort of soul would wave aside the possibility of saving a thousand people just because the odds are really that great. If you aren't interested in dealing with that moral question, there is no point in continuing.

February 28, 2009 4:08 pm  
Blogger Balbulican said...

Heh. Let me try putting it another way for you.

You have a thousand people dying of thirst, and you know that there's water somewhere beneath the surface. You have twenty four hours to find it.

You're offered two approaches. You can look for the water with a dowsing rod, or you can look for the water with a tool that will give you a hydrological analysis of the land.

Most experts agree the dowsing rod doesn't work, and most experts agree that the hydrological analysis provides much better results. Both take roughly the same amount of time.

Now, why is choosing the Dowsing Rod somehow a more "moral" choice? Can you explain why favouring an approach that doesn't work is better than choosing an approach that does?

February 28, 2009 4:46 pm  
Blogger Louise said...

Oh, I see. Now it's "replace it with bullshit analogies" and switch. We've gone from words like "unreliable" and "inconsistent", both of which imply something less than 100% ineffective to equating torture to dowsing, which is a completely silly superstition, while claiming the dowsing might sometimes work??!!

This is too boring Balb. I'm moving on and you should,too. Your arguments are dishonest, at the very least. Go play somewhere else where your spin-doctoring might actually work.

February 28, 2009 5:53 pm  
Blogger Balbulican said...

Yes, it is boring. You're not much for actual debate, are you?

Chat later.

March 01, 2009 5:47 am  

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