Proof that torture doesn't work

[SineSwiper]

"I thought you would torture me, and when you didn't, I decided that everything I was told about Americans was wrong. That's why I decided to cooperate."

[Flip]

Eh, i'm pretty sure if i came over there and gave you a purple nurple until you deleted this post it would be gone relatively quick.

[Zeus]

Eh, i'm pretty sure if i came over there and gave you a purple nurple until you deleted this post it would be gone relatively quick.

We'd have to ask Seraph about that one :-)

[Julius Seeker]

That's not proof that torture doesn't work, that's proof that some people don't need to be tortured to talk.

Flip could ask you for various passwords to the site, but I don't think you'd give them. If I start cutting off your fingers with wire cutters, joint by joint. I am sure you'll eventually give Flip the passwords he asks for.

[Shellie]

Eh, i'm pretty sure if i came over there and gave you a purple nurple until you deleted this post it would be gone relatively quick.

We'd have to ask Seraph about that one :-)

[Flip]

I t was a good read, though. In a quick two page article he makes a strong case for other methods of interrogation, id be interested to read his book now.

The ones involved in Abu Gharaharahib were punished, but the lesson seems to be (since actions like what took place there are still going on, according to the author) to not get caught, which is sad.

[Kupek]

If I start cutting off your fingers with wire cutters, joint by joint. I am sure you'll eventually give Flip the passwords he asks for.

Yes, he would. Even if he didn't know any passwords. People will eventually say something, but it's not reliable.

[Julius Seeker]

If I start cutting off your fingers with wire cutters, joint by joint. I am sure you'll eventually give Flip the passwords he asks for.

Yes, he would. Even if he didn't know any passwords. People will eventually say something, but it's not reliable.

Well, that all depends. Would Flip torture Sine for passwords that he knows he might not have? There are, of course, passwords that Flip would know Sine does have; which he could torture him for.

Poor Sine =P

[SineSwiper]

If I start cutting off your fingers with wire cutters, joint by joint. I am sure you'll eventually give Flip the passwords he asks for.

Yes, he would. Even if he didn't know any passwords. People will eventually say something, but it's not reliable.

Well, that all depends. Would Flip torture Sine for passwords that he knows he might not have? There are, of course, passwords that Flip would know Sine does have; which he could torture him for.

Poor Sine =P

Or, if I cared enough about the passwords, I would give you bogus passwords.

You don't seem to understand. There are a few things that go against us using torture:

1. These guys are willing to blow themselves up for their holy war. Somebody who's not afraid to die is going to be harder to torture for information.
2. The US, while skipping the fine line that defines torture, would never resort to the full array of torture techniques. When you go to a point that is clearly way beyond that line, the term "war crimes" comes up, and that's REALLY bad!
3. Like we've being pointing out, torture usually results in bad information, not accurate information. People will say anything to get out of their situation.
4. Torture promotes bad faith in the war we are fighting, and directly kills soldiers:

   I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me -- unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans

In fact, the US's fair treatment of German POWs in Iowa both gave us a lot of important information, and created dissent among Germans that the evil enemy they were fighting wasn't who they really thought it was. There were cases of Germans revealing information over a pint of beer as friendly conversation.

The chances of POWs developing a sort of Stockholm Syndrome are much higher when they can easily relate to their captors. When torture is involved, the prisoner devolves into a sub-human class and further separates the differences between the prisoner and the captor.

[Julius Seeker]

Or, if I cared enough about the passwords, I would give you bogus passwords.

Which would lead to more torturing until the correct ones are given. It wouldn't take long to research whether the information you have given is accurate or not.

[Tessian]

Is torture the best method in every situations? No. "You'll catch more bees with honey than with vinegar". And the scenarios you give are good examples of that, but don't try to feed me a pile of shit about how torture doesn't work. It only gives bad information when you're trying to beat out information someone doesn't have. If I have the password you want it won't take too long before I give it to you to make you stop, and giving you the WRONG password will just have it continue again, probably much worse. Only when I don't HAVE the information you're looking for do you get bad information. So it's more a lesson to make sure you're torturing the right person, not that torturing is bad.

Abu Graibh was a terrible blight on the whole mission down there, but that wasn't torture in order to gain information-- that was torture just for the sake of torturing, or for revenge, or cause you're a sick fuck. Also I don't think Guantanimo is the hell hole everyone thinks it is, at least not in recent history.

Like I said, torture is far from the only answer, but don't also sit there trying to tell me it's never the answer.

[SineSwiper]

And the scenarios you give are good examples of that, but don't try to feed me a pile of shit about how torture doesn't work. It only gives bad information when you're trying to beat out information someone doesn't have. If I have the password you want it won't take too long before I give it to you to make you stop, and giving you the WRONG password will just have it continue again, probably much worse. So it's more a lesson to make sure you're torturing the right person, not that torturing is bad.

Did you not read the bullet points I made? These people are committed to their goals, and willing to die for them. They will keep giving wrong information until they are beaten to death, which is something we aren't going to do, anyway. Fortunately, we aren't at the dictator level of torture, but that also means it's really ineffective, going at it halfway.

Also, the most important point of all, which I guess I didn't shout loud enough:

TORTURE
KILLS
SOLDIERS!

Also I don't think Guantanimo is the hell hole everyone thinks it is, at least not in recent history.

The problem with GB is that it's not on US soil. Why the fuck would we build a POW camp in the country we have trade embargoes against and hate so much? Oh yeah, it's because we can throw anybody we want in there and not try them in court. There are several cases out there of people who probably aren't actual terrorists, but are in Gitmo, anyway. How do we know they aren't terrorists? We don't, but we don't know if anybody in there IS a terrorist either, because they haven't been in front of a military court.

[Kupek]

The assumption that you know a suspect has the information you want is a big one. Big enough, I think, that any technique that relies on it is not worthwhile.

Sine, everyone has a breaking point, even fanatics. The problem, as I stated above, is that you don't have the means to separate "I broke and will tell you what I know" from "I broke and will tell you what I think you want to hear so that you stop."

Even non-torture interrogation techniques have this problem if done long enough. If I interrogated any of you for several weeks, non-stop, depriving you of sleep and only providing enough food and water for bare sustenance, I could get you to confess to the Kennedy assassination. And I would, too, because there's only so much a human can take. If you think you're special, read this: Pessed by Police, Even Innocent Confess in Japan.

[Zeus]

TORTURE
KILLS
SOLDIERS!

So do unnecessary bombings....and they take civilians with them

[Julius Seeker]

Torture is probably the least likely method of receiving incorrect information on a subject from someone who has the correct information. If the person didn't have the information, then it is just tough luck. As in any interrogation process, research and knowledge of the interrogator will confirm whether the information is bad information or not. It's not going to be like a Hollywood action movie where they just take the word of the one being tortured, that would be foolish with any interrogation method.

[Kupek]

Knowing that someone knows something is not trivial. Even when information is given willingly, without coercion, determining its validity is difficult. Read See No Evil.

[Tessian]

Did you not read the bullet points I made? These people are committed to their goals, and willing to die for them. They will keep giving wrong information until they are beaten to death, which is something we aren't going to do, anyway.

Your point there is actually incorrect. Not everyone affiliated with terrorist groups are willing to throw away their lives, but those that are you're NOT going to get a chance to interrogate. You think they'd be taken alive? Fuck no; they would much rather become a martyr for their cause then be captured by infidels who will taint them and destroy their chances of getting those virgins.

Your correlation that torture kills soldiers is also horribly stretched, because you're then making the claim that if no torture was used then soldiers wouldn't be killed or there wouldn't be as many terrorists and that's a load of shit. Was torture in Abu Graibh and Guantanimo deplorable? Of course they were, but for a second think that if those events hadn't happened that they wouldn't have just found another reason to hate us enough to attack too. Make enough excuses for why they fight us being our fault and you start sounding like the guy who blames the girl for being raped cause she was asking for it.

To the rest-- you all watch way too much TV. If you think everyone who carries a gun has been trained to resist torture techniques like McGyver you're sorely mistaken. And as Kupek said, if you're going to attack the validity of information given the same exact rules apply when it was given willingly so that's not something you can hold against coercion.

[Kupek]

Your correlation that torture kills soldiers is also horribly stretched, because you're then making the claim that if no torture was used then soldiers wouldn't be killed or there wouldn't be as many terrorists and that's a load of shit.

That's a straight-up logical fallacy: denying the antecedent. Sine is saying "If P, then Q" where P is torture and Q is American soldiers dying. You're equating this with "If not P, then not Q" which is not an equivalent logical statement.

And as Kupek said, if you're going to attack the validity of information given the same exact rules apply when it was given willingly so that's not something you can hold against coercion.

It most certainly is, because of the concept of "confidence." If you know a method is likely to give false positives, then you will have less confidence in it than a method which is less likely to produce false positives. This increased confidence, however, does not mean you get to avoid doing the work of further testing for false positives.

[Tessian]

Your correlation that torture kills soldiers is also horribly stretched, because you're then making the claim that if no torture was used then soldiers wouldn't be killed or there wouldn't be as many terrorists and that's a load of shit.

That's a straight-up logical fallacy: denying the antecedent. Sine is saying "If P, then Q" where P is torture and Q is American soldiers dying. You're equating this with "If not P, then not Q" which is not an equivalent logical statement.

Uhm no I'm not... I specifically said "If not P, then Q". Even if we never tortured, soldiers would still die and at the same rate. My argument was that you can't blame the death of soldiers on the use of torture because another justification would have taken its place.

[Kupek]

You're claiming Q is independent of P. Sine is claiming If P then Q. You disagree with his claim, except your support for that claim is that "If P then Q" is equivalent to "If not P then not Q" which is false.

[Tessian]

You're claiming Q is independent of P. Sine is claiming If P then Q. You disagree with his claim, except your support for that claim is that "If P then Q" is equivalent to "If not P then not Q" which is false.

Is that not what Sine is claiming? That if we hadn't been caught torturing in Abu Grahb that soldiers wouldn't have died (or at least not nearly as many)? He's asserting that is the reason that so many foreigners have jumped into Iraq to help fight against the US and therefore resulted in more soldier deaths, and since he's using that as the basis for why torture doesn't work is that not then implying that if torture wasn't used (many) soldiers wouldn't have died?

[Andrew, Killer Bee]

There's a good interview with the dude that wrote the Australian Defence Force's interrogation manual <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/rn/counterpoint/s ... m">here</a>. Aside from its moral repugnance, it just doesn't work.

It doesn't work because while it may provide you with timely information, there's no guarantee the information will be accurate. We knew this in the early 17th century and there's really nothing that's changed in the interim, and that's why all the people calling for the return of torture tend to be lawyers and they tend to be academic lawyers and you don't find one professional interrogator anywhere in the world, basically, who's in favour of the return of torture.

[SineSwiper]

Is that not what Sine is claiming? That if we hadn't been caught torturing in Abu Grahb that soldiers wouldn't have died (or at least not nearly as many)? He's asserting that is the reason that so many foreigners have jumped into Iraq to help fight against the US and therefore resulted in more soldier deaths, and since he's using that as the basis for why torture doesn't work is that not then implying that if torture wasn't used (many) soldiers wouldn't have died?

If P, then Q > R, where R = Q - P. Anyway, enough math comparisons. I cited better evidence than yours (which is absolutely nothing), so I challenge your claim with a burden of proof. If I am wrong, then present evidence to justify it.

Also, I said that the harden guys would be more like to give up false information, not that they wouldn't break. We can try to confirm intelligence, but as we know from past history, sometimes long-term actions are started based on false information. Confirmation isn't always possible, or the information is confirmed to be false too late into the actions.

Was torture in Abu Graibh and Guantanimo deplorable? Of course they were, but for a second think that if those events hadn't happened that they wouldn't have just found another reason to hate us enough to attack too. Make enough excuses for why they fight us being our fault and you start sounding like the guy who blames the girl for being raped cause she was asking for it.

See, you're doing what the supporters of torture are doing: bringing our enemy down to a sub-human class. The kind of people who are going to join the cause of terrorism are typically brainwashed, yes, but some are more confident in their reasoning than others. If we behave more like the enemy they want us to hate, their confidence that they are doing the right thing is bolstered. Promoting torture gives them a weapon in recruiting people to their cause:

1: "Did you hear about the atrocities that America was committing in Abu Ghraib? Torturing POWs?"
2: "Yeah, I thought the US was trying to help us get rid of Saddam, but they are no better than the dictator they were getting rid of!"
1: "Of course they are. I've always hated America and their hypocrisies. Hey, I've got some friends of mine who think the same way..."

Sure, some people might have another reason to fight against us, but the more deplorable the reason, the more people that are angered by it. What if Hitler wasn't going after Jews? (Yes, I'm self-Godwining the thread, but there's no way around it.) What if he was merely a man who came into power to take over some countries? People would have thought him to be like the last (forgettable) guy who started WWI. You don't remember either, do you?

But, Hitler did commit those atrocities. He did order the gassing of the Jews. He did create the Holocaust. His name is remembered by everyone. His crimes against humanity are taught in schools everywhere. He is remembered as the ultimate embodiment of fear and hate. His legacy is up there with the likes of Pol Pot and Genghis Khan, and even more so and more negative than those.

Why? Because of what he did to the Jews. A war is just a war, but to have a war with such a twisted purpose defies humanity. Humanity is the reason why we have the Geneva Convention, which outlaws torture. Break those rules, and you take away humanity, and the perception that both you and your enemy are really human. If the enemy believes that you are no longer human, they will be more willing to join a cause to destroy you.

Please remember that we aren't fighting the hordes of Mordor here. These are real people with real causes, and the sooner we understand that, the easier this battle becomes.

[Julius Seeker]

You don't remember either, do you?

I thought everyone remembered Kaiser Wilhelm...