The topic of waterboarding is not a hot one right now, but it is a great example of today’s rampant emotionalism. Who is not harassed by human rights activists at least once a week?
My Facebook feed just happened to spit out a joke about waterboarding today and I got curious. There’s no shortage of fat slobs and so-called experts who attest that waterboarding is torture inhuman beyond imagination. Yet despite the pseudo-intellectual debate, waterboarding is not black magic. You need a can of water, a cloth, and you need to lie down. What the hell keeps me from trying this?
The experiment
People sometimes say that you need to experience something to be able to talk about it. I don’t agree, not generally. But it does, on an emotional level, make you more convincing.
Unlike this guy, I didn’t prepare a great set up. I laid down on a flat floor, put a shirt over my head, and spilled water over it. Now you may say that it is not representative and I need an inclined platform. You would be right, but it is irrelevant to my point.
Yes, it’s nasty. Having been close to death one or two times in my life, I have a sense for the kind of panic that grips you and it is indeed similar. I managed to breathe in some watery air through the wet cloth while I wasn’t pouring further water on it, but during the pouring, the discomfort was unmanageable for me.
I didn’t go as far, nor am I as trained, as the guy in the linked article, but I can easily imagine how—if you took it to the edge—you would make statements such as:
“I have never been more panicked in my whole life. Once your lungs are empty and collapsed and they start to draw fluid it is simply all over. You know you are dead and it’s too late. Involuntary and total panic.
[…]
If I had the choice of being waterboarded by a third party or having my fingers smashed one at a time by a sledgehammer, I’d take the fingers, no question.
[…]
It’s horrible, terrible, inhuman torture. I can hardly imagine worse. I’d prefer permanent damage and disability to experiencing it again. I’d give up anything, say anything, do anything.
[…]
It’s torture. No question. Terrible terrible torture. To experience it and understand it and then do it to another human being is to leave the realm of sanity and humanity forever. No question in my mind.”
About emotionalism
The author clearly struggles to express the intensity of his emotion. No wonder—immoderate formulations are so overused in this sensitive world that words lose their meaning. When will the first person scream rape for a glance at a woman’s butt?
I think the emotion is a natural reaction. Life has shaped the biological body in order to sustain itself. Obviously, this means that the fear of death must be an absolute. At a certain point, the programming takes over and this loss of control may be impossible to reconcile with the belief in an untouchable soul.
In daily life, we overuse strong words to the point that they can’t represent really extreme experiences anymore, leading us to believe that these don’t exist. We feel offended by sexual proposals and work ourselves up over tweets. These kind of things become the limits of what we deem humane.
Yet nature doesn’t know limits. Inhumane, to us, becomes everything that simply can’t be, must not be. But that’s wishful thinking.
White lies about white torture
Yes, of course it is torture. How the hell do we think it works? The point is not whether it is torture. It is.
If it wasn’t too horrible to accept and live with, how would torture be supposed to work? That is the whole point.
Most people actually seem to think that the kind of interrogation imposed upon potential enemies of our civilizations should be humane. If the pain and devastation of a person being tortured was acceptable, well, the victim of such treatment would be able to resist it and defy the point of breaking that person.
Considering the intensity of the experience and the widespread delusion of the categorical imperative, it is not surprising that you often hear the statement “If you had experienced it, you would think otherwise.”
Of course you don’t want to be tortured. You don’t need an expert to tell you that. But despite Kant, doing unto others is not the same as having something done to you. It’s part of growing up to learn to distinguish between yourself and others. Between your group and other groups.
So do the words of somebody who was in great distress carry great meaning?
No, they don’t. No matter how intense one’s emotions, emotions don’t become wisdom. A young man will find it intolerable to be left by a girl—a seasoned player will laugh about it.
White-collared sheep have never experienced anything close to certainty of death. They live in a world that seems to run by itself and have daydreams about utopia. They want the state to tell them bullshit about white torture and the state does so.
Not because the state really believes that, but because white-collared sheep could never be expected to have the strength of character to do a terrible thing.
The important question
The question is not whether it is torture. The question is whether it leads to usable results, and whether these results justify the methods used. And the answer can not automatically be no.
Atrocity is not an argument. Strong nations have always gone through war, which is atrocious. To become and stay strong means to fight. And to fight does not mean to respect limits, to be careful. It means to break limits. The notion of humane warfare is laughable and not more than a public relations gag of a government.
Torture is horrible. And that’s because life is meant to be precious. It’s an absolute in our brains to fear death. Yet, in a time where one is taught to empathize with practically everybody—because everybody is equal—it is more critical than ever to distinguish between your will to live and the will to live of others. There was once a word that described this concept: Enemy.
I leave it open for debate whether torture leads to any results and whether it should be used.
Read More: Give Her Tingles, Not Torture: Erica’s Story
Is waterboarding torture?
No.
Torture doesn’t work.
Use the FBI method, go RICO on terrorists and do as the FBI did to the Mafia in the 70s and 80s: gain the trust of the little fish, make deals with them to get to the big fish. That’s what works.
who knows, maybe we have some americans down there who sacrificed their foreskin for their country.
No reason to light some goatherders nuts up like a Christmas tree. He’s just going to tell you what you want to hear to stop the torture. A few days of sleep deprivation with a pro and I would confess my own mother planned and executed 9/11
Man, I get so tired of the whole crap about ‘he only tells you what you want to hear’.
The first step in interrogation is to ask a few questions to which you know the answers. If he lies, you convince him that the only way to stop hurting is to tell the truth. You occasionally sprinkle in more questions while interrogating, in order to leaven the session and attempt to catch him in more lies.
Only an idiot or a completely ignorant interrogator fails to take human nature into the equation.
But you don’t interrogate to discover facts or evidence, you interrogate someone to get to them confess.
In what universe? Interrogation for confession is useless. Interrogation is used to learn, and confirm, facts… confession demands that you lead the ‘client’ and every interrogator worth his salt knows that leading a client is poor interrogation.
ou don’t haul rand people on off the street and press them in a formal police style interrogation just because you can. The supposition is that the one you are interrogating is guilty, ie knows something of value. Any detective will tell you this. You’ve done it through your entire rebuttal, supposed guilty on the part of the target, only questioning lies vs truth, never asking if the target actually knows anything in the first place. This is exactly what I am telling you is the problem with torture: you’ve assumed guilt, a guy who doesn’t know anything is going to tell you what you want just to get you to stop. The entire history of torture has been the extraction of confession, not facts.
Ascertaining guilt is a completely different subject, and frankly is completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
Only an idiot tries to ascertain guilt with torture, and it’s not what I was talking about at all.
BTW, next time you want to debate something, try debating the subject at hand, which is whether or not torture is useful. Throwing situations up where it is clearly NOT useful is like saying a motorcycle is useless because it’s not good for improving your jump shot or preparing lasagna.
Islamic terrorists aren’t motivated by the same things.
The FBI has a better track record than the CIA
doesn’t invalidate what guest said. Terrorists are not motivated by greed. RICO tactics only works on individuals motivated by selfishness.
I’ll take proven investigative methods any day of the week. The gist of my point stands: you deal the guys low on the totem pole to get the guys at the top. It’s works, the FBI does it today, and has more successful building a rapport with their targets than torturing them.
You mean like the twin towers guys? Oh yeah, a marvel of success.
No it’s just aggressive pulminary humidification therapy.
Who cares they are just sand people.
Luke and Obi-Wan might care.
do you think luke’s parents were waterboarded before burned?
The 70s Lucas would’ve probably allowed that, the millennial version of him was too into making movies for kids.
says who.
Oh shit!
Mesa likea thisa.
Yes, it’s torture. But if it works, use it. If it doesn’t work, use something that does.
Agreed!
damn right.
The problem with agreeing to let the state use weapons of torture on those we dislike, is that there is no controlling who the state dislikes, despite all claims to the contrary.
“No, they don’t. No matter how intense one’s emotions, emotions don’t become wisdom.”
Great line!
the general population is delusional to think that our enemies–those being tortured–deserve “humane” treatment and due process. What the general population does not realize is that our enemies DO NOT play by the same rules. Aggressive methods (that work) must be employed in order to save lives and eventually defeat the enemy. To do/think otherwise would be at our own peril.
our news won’t even show what the other side does, fearing to trigger somebody’s sensitivities. but reality looks like this: burning corpses hanging from bridges and kids playing with them. heads cut off while the community cheerleads.
we really need to invent a more bloodthirsty god to counter theirs.
Well guess what, because I don’t lock n load and get on a plane and travel thousands of miles away and start bombing strangers weddings and kidnapping their fathers in the middle of the night and raping them up the ass and sicking dogs on them, I’m not really at risk of anything they might do in reprisal, and don’t consider them to be on the “other side” of anything. They are just guys over there, trying to live their life day to day. Before America stirred the shit, there wasn’t all this Spring Uprising stuff and Iraq didn’t have a civil war and shit was fairly peaceful, by ME standards.
But yeah if you think we wouldn’t have corpses burning from bridges if someone tried to invade the USA you are being naive.
i guess that depends on how much patriotism you subscribe to. pure individualism makes a big group weak against smaller united groups that invade it.
i don’t understand. can you rephrase that?
The “harsh reality” that the media is not showing of corpses being burned in the ME may be gruesome, but it is totally predictable and foreseeable. America invades sovereign nation, installs new dictator. People there dislike this and kill the invaders, often using guerilla warfare.
That is precisely what would happen if America itself were invaded (that is what DID happen when America fought its revolutionary war, using guerilla insurgency tactics of its own).
When speaking of moral rights and wrongs, once must always reverse the roles and consider if the shoe was on the other foot, would you still feel the same way? If not then one is not thinking in terms of morality, but merely blind patriotism and jingoism.
you should try expressing yourself more clearly. what feet are we talking about? i assume you mean the perspective of the other person.
as i wrote in the article, i do not subscribe to kant’s categorical imperative. would i want to go to prison if i were a child rapist? no. so should i not put child rapists in prisons?
A mentally ill person or a criminal will of course never want to face repurcussions. But consider the view from two vantage points. Consider not only the victim but also how the opposite side will feel–How one would feel if one’s family member were a child rapist. Typically, a severe punishment is accepted and desired (ie the Unabomber was caught because his own brother wanted him to face justice for his crimes). Most members of society realize there are rules and laws which are set up for the advantage of all.
In this case, one must consider in an invasion of a sovereign nation, how would the invading nation respond if it were the target of invasion itself. What if the cause were something as simple as “the nation possesses a powerful weapon capable of ‘mass destruction’”. If that is the only criteria, than all of the world’s superpowers today are legitimate targets for invasion; clearly that is not a tenant they accept. And were any one of these nations invaded, the invaders would be repelled by any means, including guerilla warfare. To be shocked that when America invades sovereign nations, and its troops are attacked with guerilla tactics is naïve.
Of course the goals in the US’s intervention were pointless and have only accomplished making the area a more unstable and dangerous area. Goal: replace Saddam Hussein with a new popularly elected leader. Result: The populace elects religious extremist and violence ensues. Even if and when the US succeeds at its goals it results in horrendous failure.
Incidentally, this is precisely why torture, even if it WERE proved to “work” is wrong. Even if you succeed, you have failed in a larger way and caused greater harm to your society and rule of law . Hence many say that obl won the war on terror, because he succeeded in getting America to take precisely the actions he predicted we would, and in the meanwhile shredding our Constitution, and therefore defeating ourselves in the long run, as our government and society devolve into a police state and violent military industrial corporate triumvirate run by the “elected” head of two powerful families.
Torture was abolished in most civil societies centuries ago. Resurrecting this old argument that was settled in medieval times shows the direction in which our society has headed intellectually and philosophically recently, and it will not surprise me when torture is openly accepted in the west, especially America, again. Summary executions of people who run from the law are accelerating, and the number of laws increasing. 4th amendment protections are almost nonexistent to where there is no privacy. Soon the remaining restrictions on “cruel and unusual punishment” along with the last remaining shreds of the other bill of rights will be dropped because it “works” from the state’s point of view (ie increases prosecution of the citizenry).
“Hence many say that obl won the war on terror, because he succeeded in getting America to take precisely the actions he predicted we would, and in the meanwhile shredding our Constitution, and therefore defeating ourselves in the long run, as our government and society devolve into a police state and violent military industrial corporate triumvirate run by the “elected” head of two powerful families.”
That is so true, i live in Australia so looking at america from an outside perspective they have been defeated by this war on terror and if anything has become a bigger terrorist nation than ME country. What i mean by that is due to 3000 plus people dying in 911 tens of thousands of innocent people have been killed due to american retaliation america has what is called acceptable civilian collateral damage when they bomb a suspected enemy target how is the life of any innocent civilian dragged into a war they didn’t start or want deemed acceptable? America has pretty much written the book on modern day terrorism and if you believe the 911 conspiracy where the american government was behind the whole thing then that would truly make america the embodiment of terrorism.
Exactly.
For further reading on the topic of the effectiveness of torture, I would recommend the highest-rated question (or rather, the corresponding answers) on the Skeptics Stack Exchange, entitled, “Does torture work well as an interrogation technique?” Unfortunately, I cannot link it directly as this comment would apparently be marked as spam.
interesting addition indeed. i would have guessed that it works from time to time. this answer seems also plausible to me:
it would be interesting to conduct studies on how torture affects the morale inside the own troops. islamists are not shy to hack off our heads, either, and it’s a great festivity for them.
Cool,I think im gonna try this.
if you want to go farther than me, i suggest an inclined platform. i wasn’t aware of the fact that this is intended to keep the water out of your lungs. otherwise, you are indeed drowning yourself – i’d be disappointed if you were not here to report on your try.
Barbarians torture.
Everyone is a barbarian to someone. Barbarian.
I didn’t think I could get way with two words. Let me add more: Every American military man or intelligence agent who has tortured someone in the last 14 years grew up in a culture that declared torture to be barbaric, which is why articles like this have to be written to convince us that, no, contrary to what you were taught and believe, torture is fine.
it’s hard to tell whether you are being sarcastic. what exactly is your opinion?
I am serious. I am against torture. Our society before 2001 was against torture.
http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/The-torturer-s-dilemma-the-math-on-fire-with-fire-2507085.php
WAR CRIMES!! Send Bush, Cheney and their pals to the Hague.
And O.
There’s no such thing as ‘war crimes’. Us military men have never fallen for that ruse.
Damned straight. The Barbarians always win in the long run.
Yeah, my main problem with it isn’t feelz for terrorists, more that it doesn’t work. Also, innocent people have been tortured, too. I guess it’s unavoidable, still kinda’ sucks though.
The most effective way at getting intel is fucking with the prisoner’s mind, controlling him psychologically. The truth doesn’t always sound like the truth, and interrogators sometimes miss it.
If somebody is being tortured, they’ll say whatever they think will make it stop(i.e. something that sounds important, exciting and believable to the interrogator) rather than the bland truth.
Hey look, Tom’s writing articles now!
i’ve been writing all along – they just weren’t published.
must say i like the editorial changes from rok – like the picture under “the experiment”.
The thing with torture for information is it can’t logically work.
First of all you need to know you have the right person because if not you are torturing the wrong person and the information will be wrong and a waste of time no matter whatever they say.
Second if you know then you have done investigation on the case and would already know. If you need more information torturing may not give the right information you will need to check it anyway.
Third you will need someone a type of person who can do the torture since most people do not enjoy hurting someone. So you are paying these types of people who enjoy causing pain to others, then what does this person do when the job is no longer there?
If your not torturing for information then you are torturing for enjoyment (like what happen in the USSR) or to force someone to change i.e medieval type ‘Say you follow jesus and we will stop this pain’.
The title is a bit stupid since it is asking if water boarding is torture and then later in the article saying it said it is and then why it is right. History said otherwise on society that goes into torturing (there is a reason why people call it medieval), it ends up then up being ok to do other things (especially to enemies of the state or religion) that were forbid for such as killing someone for their ideas, taking their stuff, killing their children etc.
i chose the title with a tad of sarcasm, because for me, that question is indeed irrelevant. i did not say it is right, either.
people do have a tribe mentality. i am not much of a globalist, so i’d say yeah, you have to differentiate between friends and foes when it comes to determining the way you treat them.
Well I agree with you on in your own life treating friends and foes differently. My problem is three fold.
One unlike Jailing a person (which can be bad like prison rape), if evidence comes out that the wrong person for the crime well with jail time is taken, with torture time is wasted, and now they have mental and psychical scares, also turning them likely into future foes.
Two as I said above the type of person who can actually do the torture is not a type of person you want to paid. You would be increasing their addiction and then if minds change later against it well now what does this person do with no skills for a market place (other then made be torture porn).
Three you are giving more power for people in the state. Not only to increase projects such as torture but also to choose friend and foes.
Of course torture is wrong, and we hung the Japanese for waterboarding and other war crimes just one generation ago, which should end the discussion.
But for the sake of intellectual exercise, let’s go further: You get to the heart of the matter here: Even if torture *did* work (which would still not make it morally right) it does not work because the above steps you mentioned. The waterboarding of Afghan goat herders in Cuba who knew nothing about Bin Laden or anyone else only resulted in turning plain ordinary farmers into scarred human beings, and patriotic Americans into Nazi terrorists.
Right off the bat, the vast majority of the time you will not have the right person, and will be asking them questions they have no clue about. I just watched the film Unbroken, and the Japs interrogated and tortured the protagonist for questions he could plausibly have known (how many troops are in Hawaii) but didn’t. In the case of our CIA, they were asking far more detailed questions from people who had no clue what the hell they were talking about. If you torture 10 people and one of them knows the “truth”, you have at least 9 wrong answers (and possibly 10) that you have to sift through, which only wastes your time and defeats the purpose of the interrogation in the first place.
Of course almost all military leaders agree not only is torture wrong and evil but it simply does not work. There is no discussion here. Why don’t you go write an article about how the earth is only 6,000 years old next?
I’ve simulated water boarding on myself, and you’re right, its ghastly. I didn’t set up an apparatus, I just clapped a wet washcloth on my face in the shower and stood under the stream, bit the effect was the same.
I read somewhere that Daniel Washington really underwent water boarding for Safe House.
interesting. you surely mean denzel washington.
curious how a piece of cloth can have such an effect, isn’t it.
btw, you made the same mistake i did. we didn’t protect ourselves from really getting water into our lungs by keeping our lungs physically above the water level. next time.
Sorry, I thought I typed Denzel Washington, but auto correct changed it. Good point, I must be more careful next time I feel like asphyxiating myself.
why waterboarding is an essential interrogation technique
CIA interrogator “who’s funding you?”
terrorist “you are, everyone knows that”
CIA interrogator ‘wrong answer’
Ha ha……
Ok, that was funny.
and there lies problem number 1 (pretty funny, though).
Torture leads to an answer but it’s not the “right answer”. The Soviet Union used this technique, often, to get confessions out of neighbors (or suspects) to imprison certain people. It’s not whether the answer was true or factual…it was the “right answer” that they wanted to hear.
The problem comes when the people (of the U.S.) start to find this treatment acceptable. Yes, it’s fine to use on those “terrorists” – over there……but what about when your own government is trying to label you (a U.S. citizen) a terrorist? Are you still fine with torture at that point?
And…how often has your own government lied to you?
One country’s “terrorist” is another country’s “patriot”.
couldn’t agree more. What is presented as a means of discovering the truth easily becomes a disciplinary measure of control
Interrogation has been used for hundred for 1000s of years by different governments on enemies during wartime. Using it as a measure of control though has more to do with how corrupt a government is to its own citizens.
But things can change quickly. Even if most governments today exercise their functions with relative restraint what would it take for some ’emergency situation’ to arise which would justify the removal of such restraint. Additionally the phenomenon of home grown jihadis serves to blur the distinction between the domestic citizen and the enemy at the gate so to speak.
Too reductionist. Waterboarding isn’t an isolated event it’s used within the context of other interrogation techniques. e.g sleep deprivation, food withdrawal etc. These things might lead to greater psychological hard than physical harm. Waterboarding is effective because the person who is experiencing the sensation of drowning must rely on others for “psychological survival” in exchange for information. The information that is given is being cross examined against other people who give up information. Lies are soon discovered and when stories do not corroborate. Gathering the information relies on a complex web of informers. However there needs to be measures to ensure it’s used asa last resort. Which includes executive orders. Trials to that determine whether that person is a terrorist or enemy combatant.
my point was to query whether the point was always to “discover” the truth. I’m not saying there can’t be situations where the technique might prove efficacious and even save lives (i.e. where’s the bomb going to go off ?) . I just think that people who generate lies for a living aren’t always the best people to uncover the truth, and putting instruments of torture in their hands is a bad idea
We hanged people for this shit. If I had my druthers, I’d hang ever single coward who is pro-torture. Cowards torture, that’s why we hanged the Japs that did it to our soldiers. The collective pants pissing cowardice that thinks this is just peachy also gave us the single largest piece of Big Brother in American history: the so-called “Patriot Act”.
Do me a favor and go move to a nice commie dictatorship, or even the territory of ISIS / ISIL / whatever those barbaric cowards want to call themselves, if you’re pro-torture. Go piss your pants over there because I’d rather die on my feet than live on my knees in fear. Anyone willing to toss principle into the dustbin isn’t a patriot, they’re afraid.
Agreed. Indeed. It is a disgusting and cowardly practice regardless of the reasons for which it is used.
I can come up with a million reasons for which torture would not only be justified, but morally mandated.
Right. Waterboard a guy for information or let thousands die from a nuke/dirty bomb?? What is the moral justification to let thousands die but not waterboard a terrorist? Alan Dershowitz has supported limited torture in extreme cases. He ( Dershowitz ) has recommended in life and death situations you can use torture but first you must get legal approval from a judge i.e. a torture warrant. Sounds insane but in these days of WMD, suitcase nukes, dirty bombs these extreme scenarios could happen.
Your premise is flawed. Torture works because it’s repeated over a prolonged period of time with no hope of cessation. Everybody breaks… Eventually. In the ticking timebomb scenario, the captive knows there’s a finite end. He just has to last until x time. Torture under these circumstances doesn’t work.
Guess it was too hard to type just one of them, eh?
I was searching for a new sword. Cannot spend all my time arguing.
You assume the elite responsible for the torture give a damn about saving lives. That is a very dangerous assumption.
If anything, they would let an attack happen only to be able to increase their tyranny and control.
Remember the events surrounding the beginning of the previous decade? I’ll give you a hint: take a look at PNAC (People for New American Century), who they are, and what they were planning/writing about in the 90s. I doubt they were just fortune telling.
i do not quite follow you. why do you consider torture cowardly? to be a coward is to give in to fear. how does that translate?
if you accused torturers of cruelty, that would be more fitting, but cowardice? doesn’t seem congruent to me.
He didn’t explain it right, but it is true. Cowards use torture because they are afraid that if they stick to their publicly proclaimed ideals (“innocent until proven guilty, due process, etc.”) some people may die before we find the culprits. So they try a shortcut. They are so afraid that they are willing to give up their principles to try to save their skin, reputation, and lives. So torturers are cowards.
Ask most Americans today the following question: “What is more important, that we protect people’s lives or that we protect their freedom?” and most Americans would answer “Lives!” Yet if you had asked that question of the founding fathers, they would have had a different answer. And they put their lives on the line to prove it.
What if those are not your ideals?
Then you may not be a coward. But in the western world, every single country says that those ARE their ideas. Yet the US, UK and others also have not just allowed rogue torture, but systematic, institutionalized torture, and tried to rationalize it away.
My ideals are more closely aligned with those of Singapore, where torture IS completely legal, and yet strictly defined and adhered to… Ironically, their ‘torture’ tends to be far less arduous than our ‘behind closed doors’ torture.
Then again, I think that prison, and destroying a man’s ability to work forever, getting raped continuously for years, building up a dam of resentment and hatred for years, and finally turning loose a newly-minted violent criminal made from what used to be a non-violent offender, is a far less humane and far more vicious torture than simply belting a man up, giving him ten lashes, and letting him learn from the pain of experience. WE were literally evolved to learn by pain, and it’s one of the best teachers in existence… it’s utterly ludicrous to avoid using the most effective tool evolution ever created in favor of permanently fucking up a man’s brain by caging him.
Then you belong in a dictatorship to keep you safe from making those kind of choices. I think North Korea would fit with your ideals. Freedom isn’t important to you anyway, right?
Let’s not confuse corporal punishment with torture. I am all in favor of corporal punishment–lashes for thieves and petty criminals, heck, I’m even ok with some of the Saudi stuff if it’s a repeated offense–steal 3 times and take off a hand, or at least a finger.
But to equate any of this with torture is to completely misunderstand the subject at hand. These are totally different concepts. Torture is not a law enforcement tool. Torture is a sadism.
Freedom isn’t important to most people. At least, considering how quickly they give it away.
Agree. People will say lives until they find themselves under the rule of the new USSR. Lives weren’t that great under those conditions (just ask any of them from the former block states). Bread lines were one of the many great pleasures of those “lives”.
People are dumb. They’ll hand over their freedom (at first) until they find out it’s too late. Lives are great…but what about a life in Siberia? It sucked and many died.
Innocent until proven guilty and due process are not publicly proclaimed ideal, they are Constitutional rights for American citizens. Non-citizen terrorist do not receive those rights.
Emotional arguments don’t have to make sense.
People of courage stand on principle. We, and make no mistake we were a driving force behind it, declared torture: unethical, immoral, inhumane, and of little to no value. In the grand scheme of things this is an abstract you may not understand.
People who fear change as the winds shift against them. A little too much pressure, and they buckle doing things they swore they never would. You can also see this in the so-called “Patriot Act” which both parties (save one holdout, a Democrat, who stood up and said it was a horrific monster, one of the few times I was proud he was my senator, his replacement is a coward, the other D was did not vote, coward or not present) overwhelmingly voted into being.
The recent, and make no mistake it has been recent, Republican grandstanding about that bill has been because the wind shifted and a D is president. The irony is that the Democratic Party supports it more now than they did in the past because a D is president. This is yet another example of the winds blowing.
If you do not understand this, you don’t understand the pants wetting fear most people live in today. The people who torture exhibit this same fear or they would have the moral fortitude to say “No” to an illegal order. Anyone that thinks it is right to torture exhibits the same childish fear: it is better to be morally bankrupt, cowardly, and live in fear than it is to be strong, courageous, and take a chance that you might die.
Freedom costs mate. Every ounce of pain, drop of courage, and pint of blood, payable in advance.
i don’t understand everything you write, but i agree that this is a bad way to live:
i probably don’t share your set of morals. which value do you hold that prohibits to torture other people and what is the reason behind it?
Cowards always lack conviction. Cowards change as the wind blows, like wheat waving in a breeze. In the end, all wheat meets the scythe.
The ultimate decision that we do not torture is moral. The practical reason we don’t torture is because it’s useless. The only thing a person being tortured has to do is hold out just long enough to make the information they know useless. More often than not, it is a surprisingly short time for that happen.
Take Osama bin Laden. If we had captured him, how long until the network adapted? Likely days, on the outside.
Take a ticking time bomb (nuke, dirty bomb) scenario. Call it a standard compartmentalized operation. You capture guy A. You take weeks, if not months, to break him. By that time what he knows about the op has expired. Worse, he’s told you a bunch useless half (at best) truths to throw you off while being a good little soldier. Stuff that may even inform the next in line he’s been compromised.
You think you stopped that ticking time bomb? Call it a last “fuck you” from the guy you’re torturing after the bomb goes off.
15 seconds. and believe me, some seconds can seem like eternity.
Good luck with that. Your statement flies in the face of experience from torturers for over 100 years. The hilarity is that people who support torture ignore history in an effort to justify the method.
Take a step back, go read about torture from more than those pussies at the CIA who were trying to justify their bullshit program.
what source do you propose?
Well, the guys that were in WWII are mostly dead, plus they’d be on the hook if they aren’t. Best starting point is Vietnamese (VC) interrogators. They used a combination of homegrown and Russian techniques. Next would be POW’s from the same war. Since the VC won, other than a little PR, they don’t have much to hide. The “Hanoi Hilton” is a great starting point.
Korean War is tougher, as the Chinese and DPRK didn’t want to admit to torture as much, but you can find survivor articles.
“Locally” you can look at SERE training. Even those guys will tell you the goal isn’t to never break, it’s to take long enough to make the intelligence gained useless.
That I have to point you at these sources is a sad demonstration of how well the whitewash campaign went under Gonzalez, Bush, Cheney, et al. You honestly believe torture yields actionable intelligence in a short time frame. Heck, even the Kaiser’s troops knew better.
i do not know if it does. that’s why i proposed a discussion.
thanks for the sources.
Joe before Bush & Cheney created the debacle in Iraq with their wrong war by invading the wrong nation. Iraq and the middle East was much safer and stable. Iraq didnt have any terrorist or ISIS and Saddam had it all under his control.
Make no mistake: Saddam was a monster. However he was, in colloquial terms, “the devil you know.” He was also predictable, and anyone who thinks he was in bed with Al-Qaeda is an idiot. Saddam killed more extremists than we did before we went into Afghanistan. Heck, I’d wager he killed more than any other leader in the world. He was a military dictator, not an Islamist. He gave token money to Hezbollah (et al.) solely to keep being called a good Muslim. Really he just used the whole situation to his advantage to further the persecution (Iraq lost the Iran / Iraq war with both the U.S. And U.S.S.R. helping him, that’s quite a talent for losing) complex and he hated the Israelis for bombing his weapon facilities. Two birds with one stone.
My big problem is that we didn’t finish Afghanistan. The Bush administration didn’t want to commit the boots to either campaign. I went through both with a friend, and if you’re going to invade a country you need boots: lots and lots of boots. You need to establish compete (nearly) control so you can establish a daily “routine” for people where they feel “safe” to start building. You need to be able to respond swiftly and overwhelmingly.
This costs a LOT of money and lives, but most importantly: time.
We can’t even successfully govern America, so be careful what you wish for, with the US creating new governments overseas. The US invasion is what created / spawned ISIS (whether it was an invention of the CIA or merely the result of the US invasion in the ME doesn’t really matter–the US caused ISIS either way). By pushing for more invasion and more control, if history is any guide, we would end up with something even worse than ISIS, and likely something that actually WAS a true threat to the US, which is ironic, since that was the lie that got us into war in the first place.
I’m not suggesting it myself. Nation building, as they like to call it, is fraught with perils. The only reason I supported Afghanistan was to seize a criminal. Once you commit to a course of action like that, you’re on the hook like we were after WWII. I did not support Iraq, but then again I knew better than to believe the bullshit that was being pandered to ignorant dumbfucks. Saddam in bed with Al-Qaeda? When pigs fly, Muslims start eating pork on the Haaj, and Israel stops building new settlements. Saddam has weapons of mass destruction, possibly capable of targeting America? Ok, that’s a larf. The man can’t even get missiles to fly straight. We, and the Israelis, had spanked every facility he had since DS1. (Before that too, actually.) Other Arabs hated this fucker, and weren’t exactly rushing to help his arrogant ass. He wanted to be seen as the next Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb, which didn’t exactly endear him to either the Saud family or the Ayatollah. The Turks hated him for Kurdish problem. The Syrians (Assad) weren’t going to crown him supreme leader of anything, even a dung pile. I think the Kuwaiti opinion could be summed up as: “We would sooner be buddies with the Israelis and kill you than say you are the next great leader asshole.”
You are also correct, we generally rush in too fast without thinking. We generate a LOT of animosity by meddling. We paint a giant target on our backs, and the worst part of it is that we don’t generally accomplish shit.
So true with the last statement there. I view bombing other countries and meddling in their affairs as cowardly and offensive, but at least when other great empires did it, they actually accomplished something. The USA has LITERALLY NOTHING to show for spending a trillion dollars in Iraq. The British, Roman, Russian, Japanese, French, Portuguese, German, Ottoman, and Spanish Empires, just to name a few, actually accomplished things when they meddled outside their borders. They set up colonies that were around for decades, they invested in infrastructure that created new trade, they extracted foreign goods and resources, which, ok maybe that’s theft, but at least there was a PURPOSE at the end of the day for the invasion. And in most cases, while the current generation suffered, there were (except in the case of Africa) lasting benefits in the colonized society for decades to come (infrastructure, bureaucracy, religion, institutions, etc).
The USA would be better off if it just took a trillion dollar bills and just lit them on fire–then there would be no turmoil and civil war in Iraq, no ISIS, no tens of thousands of maimed US veterans who will be unable to work and in pain the rest of their lives, forced to become wards of the state and permanent patients of the VA. It’s really quite sick.
While I’m against most social spending, the ironic thing is at least if we blew a trillion on housing for Americans, or health care, or food stamps, at the end of the day we’d still be a trillion dollars poorer, but at LEAST we’d have a bunch of new homes, a more healthy population, and people wouldn’t be hungry. But people view that as socialism, but don’t care when we blow the same amount of money on military adventurism to “keep us safe” which of course does the opposite.
Define “finish”.
Well, some of those cowards were enlisted by the CIA and the FBI after the war:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/06/AR2006060601555.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._intelligence_involvement_with_German_and_Japanese_war_criminals_after_World_War_II
Torture is inhumane and turns the torturer into as great a monster as the prisoner may be. If you don’t buy that, consider this: do you really trust the current USG with that kind of power? If it were you, wouldn’t you say anything if only to make the pain stop for a while?
of course i would. but if i knew the truth, i might just as well spit it out among all the lies i invent to save my skin. who knows. someone linked an article that contains a download of a 500-page cia report – might want to look into that.
You trust the CIA to be honest and upfront with you?
Wow………..
now what happened to giving someone the benefit of the doubt?
Please tell me you’re being facetious @michaelmobius1:disqus
You mean we shouldn’t trust the CIA? Pretty sure all those wars they start all round the world is to keep us safe and sound
Yes lets invaded Germany and Italy since they do have WMD and will attack the USA at any minute. Lets NUKe them same way Bush did with Iraq while leaving over 200,000 innocent Iraqi babies, women and men. War Crimes anybody?
And if you were to spit out the truth, whats to stop the interrogator from killing you and if they didn’t kill you, your allies were kill you when you are jailed?
nothing.
WAY too much telemundo for you my friend.
Radio personality Mancow underwent waterboarding
god, that guy is annoying and loud. but basically his reaction is what you would expect from all i gather: repeating over and over the sentiment how horrible it was. it is. so what. it kinda doesn’t matter whether the person undergoing it is famous – it always feels the same kind of damn shitty.
Yeah and with every incident of torture we give our enemies more reasons to fight us, our people more reason to hate us, and our allies more reasons to leave us.
someone linked an article suggesting that torture works well as intimidation method. i don’t believe that ISIS will stop their mission if we stop torture – sounds a bit naive to me.
Of course they won’t but look at the Second World War. Hitler believed that The Blitz would destroy the morale of the British people and it only served to strengthen it.
thanks for the reference, i’ll keep it in mind during my history studies.
That’s quite a backwards and convoluted rationale for not doing something that is immoral in the first place.
Giving you the benefit of the doubt that “ISIS” is something you should be worried about, whether or not an immoral and wrong action will affect them is irrelevant.
since we unlikely adhere to the same set of values, our definitions of morality probably do not align.
Coming up with a universal morality is indeed a difficult proposition; humanity has only arrived at one through centuries of civilization until a consensus developed that is the best framework we have today for basic human rules of behavior.
However, the rationale that a bad action should continue because if it is stopped, our enemy won’t give up (“we should torture because ISIS won’t give up if we stop torturing”) is quite insane. Why not just nuke anyone we disagree with? They’re not going to change their minds if we refrain from nuking?
that’s indeed a good question. i believe that nuking would simply not be in any way accepted by the public and would likely lead to serious economical repercussions or even a real nuclear war.
Torture is not always effective. Sometimes it just gets your subject telling you what he thinks you want to hear. But in some situations, like when Allen West was seeking intelligence on an ambush planned by the enemy, it works and it works brilliantly.
>>
“West said he also threatened to kill Hamoody. Military prosecutors say West followed up on that threat by taking the suspect outside, put him on the ground near a weapons clearing barrel and fired his 9 mm pistol into the barrel.
Apparently not knowing where West’s gun was aimed, Hamoody cracked and gave information about the planned ambush on West’s convoy, thwarting the attack.”
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/12/12/sprj.nirq.west.ruling/
that’s a surprisingly objective article, coming from cnn.
West is black. That may have contributed to CNN’s commitment to objectivity. He also went on to become a Florida congressman.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_West_%28politician%29
black = objective? i don’t follow.
The MSM treats West with more objectivity because he is black and they fear the accusation of racism, a weapon wielded exceptionally well by Obama. And, as I pointed out, West went on to become a Congressman and a favourite amongst many Republicans as a Presidential candidate. Not that I think West would play the race card, on the contrary, West would have made a far better first black President than Obama. He would make a great President period.
my mistake, i wasn’t reading your comments thoroughly. makes sense.
Not when you consider how strongly some people are pushing to allow torture to be used on noncompliant men.
who is? what noncompliant men in particular?
for example.. harsher and harsher penalties for ‘deadbeat’ fathers, tax ‘offenders’, and ‘rapists’. (air quotes implied).
http://www.debate.org/opinions/should-rapists-receive-harsher-punishments
https://www.change.org/p/harsher-penalties-on-rapists-and-child-molestors
http://jacksonville.com/interact/blog/mj/2009-01-24/harsher_punishments_the_antidote_for_the_delinquent_child_support_paymen
Torture is ripping flesh out of bodies.
We are a group of people who have not witnessed war on our lands in centuries. We are not qualified to discuss the morality of torture, including myself.
If our lands were occupied by invaders as was Russia and we had lived through those times, this discussion would be entirely different.
Torture has been reclassified as the application of pain to achieve a result. As such, I see no problem with it.
Yes, it’s strange how words are distanced from their meaning. Police routinely use electrical pain devices and attack dogs trained to bite genitals, but it’s a non-issue since it’s done to get “compliance” from citizens rather than information from foreigners
I like it when police make prisoners fight each other for sport.
I believe it was Mancow Muller who waterboarded himself to prove or disprove its effectiveness. He lay with head on the low end of the incline and had someone slowly pour a stream of water into his nostrils from the spout of a gardening plant waterer. Everyone should learn what it’s like so if they are ever besieged for example or if their posterity is threatened and they have to actually DO IT on someone else to say get info or work their way up the food chain, then they would have a handle on how not to over do it. If you’ve experienced it a little for yourself then you’d fear it a little more OR you’d learn to remain calm and save your breath gulps while manufacturing bullshit to throw the interrogator his bone. Trained yogi’s can hold their breath for a very looong time, so appearantly some are going to be more sensitive to waterboarding than others.
MY OWN MOTHER used hot pepper of all things in my mouth when I was young. Every time I used potty language like ‘doo doo’ ‘crap’ ‘shit’ my mom would hold me down and douse my mouth with tabasco. I would then go into a stream of obscenities. AND GUESS WHAT? Now I love hot pepper. I dump the shit on damn near every food I eat now except for my corn flakes in the morning. People wonder how I can eat my food so hot in restaurants. Actually cayenne is good for you. It’s like a roto rooter treatment for your circulatory system AND you projectile shit out intestinal build up regularly. I’ll SWEAR by it. But the point is that some people consider hot pepper as torture. I’ve been with girls that scream in agony when I slip them a hot mouthful. I’m used to it so I can’t help but laugh. IT’S TORTURE FOR THEM BUT NOT FOR ME. Lolol. Cayenne really is like a drug. It’s awesome if you can get several ounces down. Your head throbs and you feel it as it goes through your entire body. It adds a warm buzz to anyone’s normal cocktail. It’s better for coming alive than a big coffee in the morning. You just have to get past the hot taste to get enough of it down. I thank my mom for that.
oh no, that was a pleasure scream. gotta love to take things out of context, but i have an inkling that you chose this phrasing purposefully.
eating hot things is one thing, drinking or eating foul things is another. i juice red beets, spinach, carrots and celery. it’s damn disgusting without any sugar, but it does wake you up and actually stop you from feeling hungry – because you feel like you have to puke if you eat anything. remotely like the effect sapo frog poison has and even more remotely resembling the foulness of ayahuasca – god, that’s nasty. i really gotta say that one of my biggest weaknesses is feeling nauseous. pain is fine to even high degrees compared to nausea, which makes me want to die.
i believe that holding your breath doesn’t work because the stuff gets down your nostrils anyway, slowly filling up the cavities. the linked article on a forum describes it quite well. once the water reaches a certain level in your throat, your body involuntarily jerks itself out of willpower – certainty of death. but i’ll let you prove me otherwise.
Garlic also causes reflex regurgitation. Try to wash a spoon of powdered garlic down with warm water. It comes back up automatically. Mixed with food like beans, large amounts of both garlic and cayenne will go down and stay down and gives both an energetic and full feeling.
Garlic contains ancillin, a powerful anti biotic like substance which never seems to wear out or lose its potency. Garlic in the blood is sensed by insects as well. If on the ‘lamb’ or hunkering down surviving in the woods, have a good stock of garlic and insects will rarely bite. Ticks and mosquitos don’t like the taste of blood tainted with garlic. They can sense the garlic in your blood and won’t bite.
that’s interesting. gotta try it.
Garlic and Wasabi
The fact that bloodsuckers avoid garlicy blood is the reason it has become part of the vampire lore.
Garlic, like wasabi, kills a lot of the bioorganisms that tend to cling to raw meat and fish. It won’t stop a deep rooted microorganism, like trichinosis, but eating raw chicken, fish, and poultry that has been soaked in garlic water or had garlic juice drizzled over it is pretty close to safe.
as far as hiding goes, the stench of garlic is bloody likely to get you caught.
If garlic odor is a concern, odor free garlic tabs do the same but cost a little more than the raw stuff or powder. Chase it with pro biotic and it’s as good as a Slick50 teflon engine treatment.
I was just pointing out that that is one of the reasons why shashima doesn’t tend to make people sick (wasabi kills most of the bacteria) and that Garlic makes a damned fine method of ‘cooking’ a raw fish.
Family dinner with Garlic is never a problem, since the girls will smell exactly like you do.
actually, Capsicum(sp?) is a poison. That’s the reason that peppers possess it, as a defense against animals eating the fruits. That’s why animals avoid it for the most part.
of course, scavengers like humans, rats, and pigs have a very tolerant digestive system… we have to. But it’s still not ‘good’ for you.
SJWs say waterboarding terrorists is torture, but gender re-assignment surgery on an 8 year old child who isn’t able to understand is acceptable.
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-authority
FOAD! The problem IS one thing: GOVERNMENT.
WTF? Are we really posting articles defending torture?
There’s a lot of good stuff on ROK, these kinds of articles undermine all that. Please stop it.
Boo fucking Hoo. grow up. covering your eyes and plugging your ears and humming doesn’t make a problem go away.
People like you who defend torture are the problem and I’d to go to war with you and your kind long before I’d sign up to fight in any fake foreign CIA BS.
Ahh, ideological differences. You would lose a war.
There are many different ways to torture people. Use your imagination; it’s endless… Waterboarding just happens to be one of them but there are much more… I think the one that strikes your five basic senses are the most effective form. Then there are mind torture methods too. Wow human ideas can really get dark and macabre.
i read somewhere that most of the torture instruments seen in museums aren’t real or have never been used. maybe the human mind is not as dark at all. the other explanation obviously is: why have so much variation when a single method is easily enough?
Because fear of pain is a thousand times more efficient a motivator than directly-applied pain.
And the rennaissance had it’s lying liberals just as much as the modern day. They would invent these things and then point to them As ‘proof’ that rome was evil, or that the crusades were monstrous, or whatever damned evidence they wanted.
I don’t have a source handy but I remember some democrats complaining about other interrogation techniques. One of them was that the interrogators made the prisoners stand up for six hours straight. Standing up for a very long time is uncomfortable, but my parents operate a business that involves them regularly standing up for 12 hours per day.
Another technique was waking prisoners up so that they would always be sleep deprived. This is also torture.
One thing that we have to remember is that these are not citizens or legal residents, they are enemy combatants so the constitutional protections do not apply. How can you provide a fair trial to an irregular captured on a battle field in Afghanistan? Who are you going to call as witnesses? Do they have Miranda rights?
My guess is that if the interrogators feed the enemy combatants 3 square meals a day, let them get 8 hours of sleep per night, and ask them questions very gently while they sit in the comfy chair, they will get few answers.
I am not comfortable with torture either, but as Tom points out, war is not humane.
The Israeli Supreme Court has a very well written opinion on the question for those who are interested.
They are enemy combatants so the constitutional protections do not apply
Excuse me? Outside of Bush’s hack weasel of a lawyer Alberto Gonzales no one can believe this with a straight face.
The bill of rights are not “special halos of protection” bestowed to every Murican boy and girl as soon as they pop out of the womb. No, they are restrictions placed ON THE GOVERNMENT itself. In other words, I don’t have a “right” to free speech. The government is prevented from stifling my speech. I don’t have a “right” to privacy. The government is (well, was) prevented from seizing the assets of innocent people. The Constitution and Bill of Rights is nothing more than a list of restrictions of things the government does NOT have the power to do. It has nothing to do with what plot of soil one was born on.
Consider the following:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
That’s the first amendment. It doesn’t grant anyone any rights or special goodies. It is nothing more than an order that CONGRESS cannot make certain laws. This is an EXTREMELY important distinction.
I share your concern about limitations upon the federal government (which seems completely without limit at this point), but with regard to enemy combatants: “an enemy combatant who without uniform comes secretly through the lines for the purpose of waging war by destruction of life or property, are familiar examples of belligerents who are generally deemed not to be entitled to the status of prisoners of war, but to be offenders against the law of war subject to trial and punishment by military tribunals.” Ex parte Quirin.
That doesn’t mean I support Bush’s policy on Guantanamo or his admin’s policy with regard to torture, only that an enemy combatant is not entitled to exactly the same process that citizen or legal resident.
I’m not sure when that definition was created, but there is a big difference between the partisans which existed for example in WW2 (typically these were anti-German partisans incidentally, in Poland and western Soviet territories, civilians who operated in small groups living in the woods sabotaging German operations) and what the Bush administration labeled enemy combatants–people who clearly didn’t meet the definition of “secretly waging war” above.
When ISIS takes over territory, they are doing so overtly, under their own flag, and under their own leadership, and they do not meet the definition above. Of course, most people in the west today think that means one identifies with or supports the cause of ISIS. I’m glad you are intelligent enough to see the distinction.
Ironically, the reason for such a distinction is not to ensure that invading armies face no resistance–no it is actually to help protect the civilian population. By outlawing civilian rebellions, the idea is that there will be fewer reprisals of innocent civilian murders.
I am pretty sure that Ex parte Quirin is still good law. Of course it is up to the courts to decide whether the enemy combatants of Afghanistan met the criteria that would put them under that decision.
ISIS may be, as you mention, a different case because they have territory and identify as a state. My guess, and it is only a guess, is that the US would still consider them as falling under the enemy combatant designation of Ex parte Quirin because the US does not recognize ISIS as a state.
I think this whole area needs to be revisited. The US has never dealt with this kind of threat before, so the law that is in place probably needs to be adjusted.
I’m not necessarily strongly opinionated one way or the other on this, but I do see a lot of comments to the effect that “torture doesn’t work because the victim will just say whatever is necessary to make it stop.” Frankly, this statement is the perfect example of the kind of mindless talking point that passes for serious discourse these days.
It has already been mentioned that if they’re willing to say “anything” then they’re certainly willing to say the truth. The response is, “yes, but there’s also a lot of garbage to dig through so this wastes time and resources.” OK, but who says you can’t structure it to avoid garbage?
Here’s a scenario: imagine I bring some terrorist fuckhead into a room and waterboard him immediately without even saying a word to him. Let him feel the full terror of it. Put the fear of God into him and then sit him in a chair. Let him calm down for a minute and say, “that was unpleasant, wasn’t it? I’m going to ask you one question. If you don’t give me an answer, it’s happening again. If you give me an answer, you can go back to your cell while I check the information you give me. If your information checks out, you get a nice meal and a good night’s sleep. If I find out you’ve wasted my time, we’re coming back here, and I’m going to waterboard you for a week straight before I ask you another question. Understand?”
How many bullshit responses do you think you’ll get before you’re going to get the truth?
The only real issue I wrestle with on this subject is the idea of the state having this power. Sure, it’s tempting to think it’s great to have some jihadi fuckhead strapped to the table, but what if the feminazis are ever able to have it happen to anyone that ever posted on this site? But I don’t doubt for a second that it’s effective – that’s the reason it has been used by every society throughout human history. And I’ll tell you this, if one of my kids was kidnapped, and I had someone that I thought could give me information to save them, I’d torture the fuck out of them without thinking twice, and I’d sleep like a baby afterward. Being “better than your enemies” is the kind of moralistic nonsense that develops when a society has had it too soft for too long.
i agree. moralizing is a trait of the weak. “i wouldn’t want my enemies to do this to me, so i don’t do it to them.” it paralyzes you while it does nothing to limit the agility of your opponent.
i am guessing that waterboarding would work like a charm for feminists. the effects are apparently very effective in terms of intimidation. is that an argument against allowing it in general? i don’t think it is. only because you wouldn’t like it in a special case doesn’t mean you don’t want it in another. in the end, you don’t object war with the reasoning that war kills people and the state could kill anybody.
the rest of your argument is a fair theory, but you may want to check it against that article on sceptics stackexchange. theories can only be models that have to be confirmed by reality.
Fortunately the people in militaries around the world disagree. Hence the removal of glass shrapnel, persistent cluster bombs, etc… Furthermore we are talking waterboarding, if you look at the shogun era in Japan, they boiled prisoners, tied limbs off and more. Of course there are even more examples of savage acts in history, and universally they are looked as tactics used by the loosing side.
The idea that one guy has the key to unlocking the secret dirty bomb hidden in downtown Paris, but we can only save the world if we rip his fingernails out is a fantasy.
Going back to historical cases, it was used primarily to install fear in the enemy so that they would quit, which has worked zero times.
The people in a “handfull” of militaries disagree, true, but what does that prove? The question is whether torture is effective. The answer depends on how it is used and what you’re trying to accomplish. It’s not something reserved for the losing side. Our military engaged in plenty of “torture” in WWII. We won. Is ISIS losing now? How about the Mexican cartels?
Bush created ISIS. Before his invasion and attack on Iraq Saddam had it all under his control and the middle east was much safer. Now ISIS controls Iraq and other places.
And Saddam used torture, extensively.
By the way, ISIS started in Syria. That was Obama’s adventure, sweetheart.
Saddam knew how to control the desert tribesmen under his rule. He used the only tools that ever work.
Isis is not a military, it’s a affiliation of tribal goups that share a common interpretation of the Koran, backed by Iran as a counterweight to Saudi influence. There use of torture and draconian battlefield tactics is a major source of motivating other governments to get involved, rather than a well spring of success.
They will have their time, but they lack any real vision for governance. I would estimate there life span will be measured in years, before infighting takes over.
Likewise the Mexican drug cartels have been on the receiving end of some significant losses to the federals as soon as they become to aggressive. Most of the major northern players and the more southern zetas have been targeted for just this reason.
The use of unsanctioned torture in the battlefield by solders is one subject, but a planned government use has been banned by all but regional despots and mideast worthless armies.
The fact that the U.S. stooped to that level for a period will not be looked back on as great moment, or even military significant.
ISIS is a creation of the west, a reaction to the invented Al Quaeda which began during the Reagan administration. The invasion by W and the escalated dronings and bombings by Obama accelerated and encouraged the group to grow.
Just to add to your point, the region is a political cesspool. ISIS in one hand grew from the war in iraq, due to sectarian violence whipped up by iran. This got out of control, the Saudis then decided to fund it to screw with Iran. Iran then started funding the yemen rebels to cause Saudi Arabi problems. But they all use the net message of death to the crusaders.
Take away the oil money and watch it all die.
Your view is simplistic. The “Arab Spring” created ISIS / ISIL more than Bush. The simultaneous open conflicts, refugees everywhere, infighting even where government remained. Bush invading Iraq didn’t help, but it’s much more complex than you infer.
Actually you can’t blame Obama for not starting a war. Unless you think nation building is a great idea, or you think Libya went well.
If anything Obama proved you’re damned if you do (Libyan air strikes to support the “spring” and what mess is that now?) and damned if you (we didn’t go support Syrian Rebels against Assad) don’t.
That region is a shithole and we should stop painting a target on our back by getting involved.
Yes, unlike the person above you are correct: the Kingdom funded ISIS / ISIL. The Iranians funded the Ansar Allah, or Houthis in the west.
Yes, he killed them. Torture was used for fear, to make people worry. He also used plenty of (accidental) child informants. Mostly he just flat out murdered people, whole villages. He gassed whole towns, had mass executions, and so on.
He destroyed tribes that opposed him. That’s the only way to deal with ME tribesmen.
I agree with your last point, but at the same time we absolutely can blame Obama for ISIS. He set all the prerequisites, encouraged it, and has allowed it to fester. You may disagree, but ISIS is certainly not Bush’s making, and I’ll give you one guess as to what he would have done to them.
I understand the temptation to draw links between these things, but I think they are overstated. These ISIS guys want similar things to Al Qaeda, but that doesn’t make them any more related than Nidal Hassan is. Every whackjob that does something terrible wants to link to someone for support and justification. It doesn’t mean they’re actually functions of one another.
I agree that there are very few group links. The word “ISIS” is just a new synonym for “enemy of the USA”. There is rarely if any real link to an organized group when someone is called a “member of ISIS”
This was definitely the case with Al Quaeda (the great BBC documentary Power of Nightmares dispels the idea that Bin Laden ever controlled any sort of real group). However, with ISIS, there is at least somewhat of a real organization, at least insofar as groups of guys take up arms together and move against organized armies in a coordinated effort. Funny, because the US invaded because it claimed there was this magical enemy opposing it, and the US has succeeded in little other than creating that enemy where it never existed before.
Beyond that, however, it’s silly to think they have any sort of overarching allegiances or identify with people in other regions. It’s mostly tribal people retaking territory that was taken over by the puppets in the wake of the US invasions.
Which makes it unimportant, pointless in fact, in a ticking time bomb scenario.
One of the most realistic things about torture is that, if you even (and this is questionable in the extreme) get anything true, by the time you figure out what’s true and what’s bullshit: it’s too fucking late.
Take your kid as an example: You get one of the people involved. You spend a day or two torturing the shit out of them (being very generous to you here, even torture takes longer, just ask someone who was held by the VC or even former VC interrogators) to get info. Okay, so their buddy hasn’t checked in for over 24 hours, your kid is dead already. So sorry. Sleep like a baby knowing that you killed your kid for sure. Taken (Liam Neeson) is feelgood, but complete bullshit, but it is a movie.
Oh, and that “moralistic nonsense” is what people who value freedom have. It’s what people who have the courage to stand on principle have. Cowards lack that and their morals flow like wheat in the wind. You know what happens to wheat? Yeah, it gets scythed.
You argue from a false premise. Where have I said that torture is best used in a ticking time bomb scenario. Why is my kid going to be dead within 24 hours instead of say, locked in a basement dungeon one block away being sexually tortured for the next decade ala that sick fuck in Cleveland?
First, again, if someone will “say anything,” then they will certainly say the truth. That it may be hard to discern what the truth is doesn’t counsel against it if we are out of options.
Second, where have we gotten this idea that torture is exclusively used to gain information? That’s absolutely not how it is used exclusively anywhere. And the ticking time bomb scenario has been allowed to dominate the debate as if that’s the only time this comes up.
Third, did the Marines who used their K-bars to pry the gold teeth out of wounded Japs lack values? Did they not value freedom? You paint the world in moral absolutes that don’t exist. I believe that any man, in the right circumstances, would consider torture as an option. If you disagree, it may be because you have never thought about it hard enough, or never been in a very trying situation.
Hand wringing over being better than our enemies is moralistic nonsense. You presume that our enemies always deserve moral treatment, I don’t. That’s not my morals blowing in the wind like wheat, that’s your amorality assigning moral equivalence to evil and concluding that it deserves compassion and sympathy. Fuck that.
I don’t think torture should be the first resort, but I don’t tie one hand behind my balls in a fight. Everything is on the table.
It all depends on circumstances an if torture is going to be used under extreme circumstances. To just say all torture is wrong is having a black an white view of the world an morality. When dealing with inhumane monsters you need to use extreme measures.
Of course waterboarding is torture.
The only reason one could possibly consider it to not be is because it doesn’t leave any scars or lasting wounds, which is true. I still don’t think we should be doing it.
I agree, a whip is much cleaner, scarier, and more effective.
You capture a middle eastern gentleman, who has knowledge of a sub-nuclear weapon in a capital city of a nuclear power, Washington, London, Paris etc.
You have 24 hours to find out where it is before we have a real crusade destroying the world (N.B. its very easy to make a dirty bomb, and the mozzies know if they set one off, Mecca and Medina will have buckets of sunshine poured over them, so they don’t. Obviously, if we retaliate and turn Mecca to glass all those kebab shop and carpet sellers you know will be a bit annoyed).
So, you have a choice, use torture to get the information required, or as torture is anathema to you, let the attack go ahead, killing thousands, followed by the retaliation, followed by a world religious war.
What would you do?
Exactly. See my post above. Better to water board a single guy for information or carpet bomb a city? Waterboarding is nonlethal torture . It is torture but you will live.
Sounds like the plot of that show 24! Do you actually think your “hidden bomb” scenarios really exist?!?
These “terrorists” build or obtain a sub-nuclear weapon in a city of a nuclear power and they put a 24 hour digital clock on it and press start, but nobody know where! The terrorists then take off on their camels while raping and pillaging New York, Munich, Tokyo or whatever city they just intruded. But wait, the rouge Sargent who doesn’t take commands from his General chases a camel jockey down and tackles him off his camel, then wrestles his scimitar from him then proceeds to capture him. They water board this terrorist prisoner and finally 23 hours later he breaks and tells the Sargent where the nuclear bomb is! The Sargent then finds and disarms the bomb by closing his eyes and choosing the black wire to cut. 1 second left on the timer!!!! OMG, Crisis adverted, thanks to water boarding!
Listen to absurd and ludicrous that sounds. C’mon man, we should be more worried about some of the nations that already have nuclear weapons.
Not necessarily the hidden bomb trope, but yes, terrorist attacks have been disrupted due to “timely” intelligence gathering. Though torture isn’t always needed, money seems to be very effective.
forget hidden bomb scenarios. The real scenarios where torture can be effective are numberless. The ticking bomb is just the easiest example for stupid people to grasp.
You capture an Isis terrorist and have information that he is a member of a group guarding a large cache of weapons.
You catch an illegal immigrant that ‘magically’ just showed up in seattle with an AK-47, one of the russian jobs with full auto.
You find chemical coveralls with traces of VX and the DNA of one of the janitors. You have an undercover man with the local cell who has passed the information, you need confirmation on the attack sites.
You guys are really naive if you don’t think the technology exists to “read minds” and enter the memory
right now, a worthless device, can go ANYWHERE, and pick up for free, Am and FM, which are invisible . That’s right.
For free i can download a program that shows a globe and i can find any house in the world, it’s called google earth
What do you think is REALLY possible with hidden technology, and unlimited budget, and the greatest scientists in the world ?
These are very old, old technologies^ and they are free, which shows how far advanced a multibillion billion$ program must be (with a little creative thinking, price-performance analysis, and speculation you can go a long, long way)
there is no purpose of “torture”, not since early 1990’s due to the ability to read the mind from a short distance(distance is unlimited now) your thoughts are just coclear nerve signals which are easily read we comminicate with our inner dialogue in words, Also There are live nano sized cameras in insects all over the world, and can be live satallite vision within an hour ANYWHERE in the world, Nothing is “unseen” no thought is “truly” private
evidence?
Right now they’ll admit a small dna swab can re-create your entire body/face/brain
That means, you’re brain, your psychology, What your attitudes are likely to be, You’re entire blue-print, they run it through AI, than they know how to sucker you, er extort your “kindness” for powah
http://time.com/3890499/hong-kong-littering-campaign/
that is not at all what the article says. you should read more carefully and delve deeper into the matter.
well, either way, use your curiosity/imagination and figure out what may already be possible with known-technologies when used together
Each “new” technology is just a creation based off of the past framework that preceded it, just imagine taking that exponential equation out of the mainstream, and secretly speeding up the process
we’re surrounded by frequencies, it is simply possible to bounce a frequency from the coclear cannal(closest to the brain) (which tenses and changes based on thoughts and moods) and than turn that particular “morse code” into a readable signal
———– – ———– (tension level)
—— —- —– —
If im thinking of a word, it would create “this” much space between the coclear nerve based on activity levels creating a “code” which can be bounced back and read
(but this is old tech)
Bouncing a frequency based on thought-reflexivity within the coclear nerve creates a unique signal, We think in “words” Which create unique signatures which can easily be read, Yes, this is called “mind reading” and it exists.
a study of thought patterns and coclear cannal reflexivity patterns easily proves how mind-reading) But further, entering the memory is a more difficult challenge
Say im talking to you, Well, it means the sound is really happening in your ear externally, but when you talk to yourself, your ear nerves still react as if there were an external sound, and by reading the inner ear action, reading the thoughts are possible.
I could elaborate, but really, fuck it
that presupposes a profound knowledge of known technologies which i admittedly lack. but my basic insight from watching documentaries and reading occasional articles suggests that there is still much work ahead in regard to neuroscience and genetics.
fyi, i was in a blood testing laboratory in munich and asked if they could do a general blood test. they said that there is nothing like a general test. there are just zillions of possible tests, each of which has to be done manually and costs extra. a complete blood analysis with all known components may cost thousands of dollars and take some time. and that’s just rather simple chemistry compared to genetic research, i reckon.
it’s not like you can use dna to reconstruct an organism – rather, you search for patterns between dna and living organisms. if 99% of blue-eyed people share a dozen genes which are only 1% prevalent in everybody else in that combination, that can serve as a prediction.
but you are right, it’s definitely smart to stay sharp. thirty years from now, your ideas might be much closer to reality.
Perhaps in some dystopian and VERY distant future, the whole “mind reading” thing might be remotely possible. But speaking from many years of experience in large scale, enterprise information systems, it is certainly not possible now. No matter what “hidden technology” or limitless budget you suppose they might have. The amount of storage required to even come close to accurately storing just one person’s mind, personality, and so forth is staggering. Not to mention the computational power that would be required to make any significant use of it. Such systems simply don’t exist yet. All they’re doing with this DNA stuff is guessing. Very calculated guessing, I’ll admit. But guessing nonetheless.
meanwhile in the news: . . auto erotic aspxiation deaths rose slightly in the month of April . . and don’t miss MacGyver at 8:00 followed by Gay Watch . .
“The question is not whether it is torture. The question is whether it
leads to usable results, and whether these results justify the methods
used. And the answer can not automatically be no.”
The USA is a signatory to an international treaty banning torture. This makes it *illegal*. Right or wrong, it is first and foremost *illegal*.
PS: the question is not whether my breaking into your house and taking your stuff is theft. The question is whether or not it works for me, and whether that justifies it. And the answer can not automatically be no.
PPS: rather than putting some water on your face, get someone who routinely kills people just like you to strap you in and do it. You’ll find the experience is ever-so-slightly different.
glad you agree.
you may be right in PPS. have you tried it?
People who support torture will inevitably roll out the ticking time bomb scenario. That only exists in Hollywood. It’s a scenario that never happens in real life.
If you are being tortured you will say anything to get it to stop so any information that you may gain is of little to no value.
Also if you think torture is fine and dandy then you should have no issues with our troops being tortured by the enemy if they were to be captured. If we can do it then why can’t they do it? You can’t claim the moral high ground if you participate in the same behaviour.
The other point I raise is one of what I call a ‘trickle down effect’. Once a government endorses torture then that mindset filters down into the next level of authority – the police. Although police themselves will not torture a suspect (evidence obtained by duress is inadmissible in court) you only need to look at how militarised police have become since 9/11 and their eagerness to deploy tactics and weapons once reserved for wartime upon it’s own citizens. Once a government endorses inhuman and brutal behaviour then it’s a natural flow on effect that elements of police will think that brutal behaviour is acceptable.
Now I despise feminists, SJWs and their supporters and generally like ROK but an article on torture has no place on this site.
Again, you are preaching a philosophy that has no basis in reality.
Torture is a highly effective tactic, IF the Interrogator knows how to use it effectively. the old canard about ‘telling you what you want’ is only true if the torturer is a complete idiot. It’s like claiming that guns kill people.
Good points. Also remember that many military members are policemen back home and after they serve a couple of years abroad torturing people, it’s kind of hard to come back and treat a criminal respectfully who you know committed a crime, especially when you may know the guy is guilty, with much more certainty than many of the flimsy cases abroad in the faux War on Terror who you tortured. A tendency develops to use more and more aggressive tactics on suspects domestically, and then when we are all watched we are all suspects, so torture of everyday Americans can become an acceptable thing. Some may laugh but there is historical precedence for this in many well developed civilizations and societies.
“It’s a scenario that never happens in real life.”
Terrorists hijacking planes and flying them into skyscrapers was once a scenario that never happened in real life…until it did happen.
Waterboarding is NON-lethal torture. It sucks but you will live. Some psychologic damage but you will live. The CIA uses it not for a confession but for information. Watch the movie “Dirty War” done some years ago by HBO. Imagine you find the guy with information about a WMD /dirty bomb /nuke. How do you get the information from that person ? Ask nice ? Subway sandwich? You have 2 hours till the bomb detonates? You have the guy with the information. What do you do ? Waterboard the fuck out of them…
A fictional movie isn’t real life. Ticking time bomb scenarios only exist in Hollywood.
Disagree…could happen in these days of WMD…
See the movie. Can’t believe HBO made it. Compelling.
And in Hollywood cops also solve crimes in just 45 minutes. The ticking time bomb scenario is a lazy argument because it is based on fiction.
I’m totally against torture. Why? Because I don’t want to be tortured. Simple. But I’m no bleeding heart. If someone’s a bad egg, get rid of them. i.e. Just kill them quickly.
Yes, I understand why they use torture: to gain information. But, in reality, that’s just bullshit as most people will say anything to avoid pain.
I mean, you can a war many different ways.
#1. Brute force. Run gun, kill, slaughter, no mercy. i.e. Vikings.
#2. Covert operations and spy shit. i.e. James Bond.
#3. Overt operations and spy shit. i.e. KGB.
Expanding on #3, the KGB spent 80% of their allowance on overt operations. This is stuff like promoting feminism. They may not be the ones starting these “movements” but when they see someone heading down a path that would lead to a weakening of social values/morale, they would help fund them. I saw a video of an ex KGB guy talking about it, I believe posted by a commentator on this site.
IMO #1 and #3 are the two best options. One is the quick game, one is the long game. #2 is like a medium sized coke.
Maybe i’m naive or unrealistically compassionate but I’m not in favor of torturing animals. Land whales, hamsters & unwashed pigs. God…God..God has taught me to accept them too.
I don’t like terrorists. I also support other things deemed “torture” such as stress positions and sleep dep. Served in the military and yada yada. You get the drift.
Waterboarding blows ass. I tried it. Let me tell you. I would admit to sucking Mayweather’s cock in a taliban sex orgy while Obama fapped in the corner.
There is a fine line between just causing someone to give up and say what you want to hear vs being so miserable that they break down and tell you the truth. Waterboarding is the former.
That’s only because American Interrogators have lost the skill neccessary to use torture effectively.
Kill yourself
Why?
the thing about having a debate about whether waterboarding is legitimate is that it only works on the presumption that the people who would engage in it are primarily concerned with protecting us. I hope that is the case, but that motivation assuming it is real is clearly in competition with the concern to control us, police us, and establish power over us. At a time when at every level governments are expressing a concern to combat extremism while seeking to broaden definitions of what counts as extremism (guess what anti-feminism counts as extremism at one major convention that happened recently) its only a matter of time before mild-mannered manosphere commentators are lumped together with head-chopping jihadis as a threat to civilization. Some risks are very real, but that should not detract from the fact that this is a society, or rather an international system that manufactures risk in order to control its populations
I guess this is why the MGTOW philosophy is essential–unfortunately too many men are in deep delusion–
this author here is trying to argue on the benefits of torture–i.e. if it works we should use it–how bout we use every nuke we have and destroy our enemies? It worked on Japan, so why not on any other nation the US dislike? North Korea for example?
You can replace torture with any other immoral ideas and if it seemingly works, who cares whether it is wrong or not?
I mean enslaving an entire nation of people and let them do your hard labor would help your economy, right? I mean if they are dying, just toss them to the side. Breed them like animals. Hey it works, right?
The whole asinine idea of torturing, wars, or any other atrocities is disturbing–if everytime a psychopath stands and say “hey we are going to war with such and such nation, because blah blah”–and the men respond on both sides “go fuck yourself, dear leader, if you want to go to war, please feel free to go by your damn fucking self”–this world would be a much better place
However, what we are stuck with are men on both sides just ready to follow a bunch of bloodthirsty maniacs to destroy lives–
If you want to torture, go torture your damn self–if it works on you, then no need to let us know about it–
The problem with ISIL and any other insurgent group is that they don’t function like a traditional enemy. The only way we can deal with these groups is by targeting their finances and containing them. If we withdraw from areas that aren’t strategically viable i.e. oil fields, we can let them live in their ideal 7th century Islamic State without aid, medicine, and food from the outside world. Just look at the events following 9/11. As soon as those planes hit the towers the US and UK had already lost. They show ridiculous army recruitment ads showing a 1.59 million dollar Tomahawk Missile wiping out a Soviet era mortar acting like it’s a win for the good guys. I know I’ve gone completely off topic but torture and conventional warfare are a complete waste of time in the world we live in.
Agree, I would like to see how much intel was actually gathered, gained, and used from torture and how it helped in the fight against terror! We are not fighting an army or an evil dictator. This fight is vs. an ideology. It is a war that can not be won and torture will not help the cause in the end.
During the Bush era civil liberties were eroded and public spending increased by 70% due to the C̶o̶m̶m̶u̶n̶i̶s̶t̶ Republican party. Far worse than Clinton and paved the way for Obama’s wacky policies. It reminds of that Nietzsche quote about fighting monsters and looking into yourself to see that you do not become what you fight. This site used to be more Libertarian, but it seems like it’s gradually being infiltrated by Communists.
Very entertaining.
Is waterboarding torture? James Bradley was the author of The Flag of Our Fathers which was made into an Clint Eastwood movie. He also wrote The Imperial Cruise about VP Howard Taft’s East Asia tour for Teddy Roosevelt. In 1890’s the Americans were nowhere like today’s liberals. They were very white, very religious, and very conservative and looked down any anyone not white Angle-Saxon and Protestant. America was fighting a long and brutal war to pacify the Catholic Philippines who were trying to win their independence from the American imperialists. The American troops practiced water boarding (called “water cure”) to break the will of what they termed “nig—s” who they considered lazy and stupid sub humans who must be christianized. Teddy Roosevelt cannot be labeled weak or yellow and yet the President, VP Taft ( who was also a former governor of the Philippines) and other Washington big dogs actively censored any talks of the water cure. They knew that the Americans would consider the water cure to be torture. Think about that. A very patriotic and religious generation didn’t approved while many so-called “conservatives” and “religious” supported it today. That say a lot about today’s morality.
Until 1899 the Philippines were part of the Spanish Empire. That is why they were catholic, spoke Spanish and all have Spanish names. WHen the USA arrived after the Spanish_North American war Filipinos had enough of been rule by white powers.
Yep, now they want to pretend that they are NOT being ruled by America, while secretly kowtowing and scraping like slaves.
The question you really have to ask yourself is, are you ok with the torture of innocent people? Because, since the purpose is to extract information, sometime you will try to get it from the wrong person, or person with no information.
Water boarding is enhanced interrogation. SJWs are terrorist apologists and have no way stop it from happening. It happens in another country like turkey or egypt with an american cia “advisor” taking notes. The cia is the 4th branch of government that operates outside the constitution, just the way libs like it, so they don’t have to feel guilty about it while benefiting from it.
“Enhanced interrogation” is a weasel word for something that has always been known as torture, and the US military, when it stood for more than just invading third rate nations like Nicaragua and Iraq, always defined it as such.
Language is important. Do not use weasel words. Speak plainly, clearly, and simply. Waterboarding IS torture. End of story. It does not work. Period. IF it worked, it is still torture, and is still wrong, and a war crime.
This whole post was a mishmash of confused philosophy.. as if because one doesn’t like a ‘social justice warrior’ one believes in terrorism? WTF man?
Set their bodies on fire and put them out with an ice pick and broadcast on youtube. Call it what you want, language faggot.
Language Nazi would be more appropriately hyperbolic. A language faggot would want to use words that don’t naturally fit together or make sense, well, like, “enhanced interrogation”
America gov continues to use torture, always has, and always will, but SJWs have demanded the optics be changed so they don’t have to feel guilty about benefiting from it. Yes, the same SJWs who hype feminism, gay marriage, etc. Amnesty international’s letter writing campaign can’t do anything about it, just as impotent as your comments, in a fantasy world of rainbows and unicorns.
Whether SJWs support torture or not has no bearing on my opinion of it, or more importantly whether it is right or wrong. SJWs also believe humans need to breathe oxygen. Should we all stop breathing in an act of protest?
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/genetic
Torture is pointless because an interogee will say anything to make it stop. It also tends to produce answers the intergator wants to hear, rather than the truth. All one has to do is look at the crusades and the Salem witch trials. In our modern world where it is considered extreme, even the threat of torture telegraphs to the interogee that the information they have is very valuable. That gives them an advantage in working out a deal with authorities, should they choose to cooperate.
There are fMRI teqniques in development that would be far more effective at extracting information from someone’s brain. The use of drugs and torture for interrogation is unreliable.
If we allow, encourage, and authorize our government to torture people then we have become worthless. Virtue demands better of us. While I have not been put to the test in that manner I hope that I would pass the test.
We cannot condone torture. If we do we will eventually destroy what is left of our society. If millions of people could be saved by an act of torture then perhaps someone might choose to torture a suspect in the hopes of learning enough to stop the atrocity, in the certain knowledge that they would pay for the crime of torture.
I am reminded of a story about a father who took a pistol into a drug den to save his daughter. He shot the young man dealing the drugs (emptied the magazine into him – good technique and also a sign of extreme emotion) and brought her home. She immediately accused him of murder and he served extensive prison time after a brief trial.
I can admire what he did, and also admire the law for properly punishing him. Perhaps we could deal with the extreme corner cases of torture in this manner.
Otherwise, no we cannot possibly condone it.
This is trite bullshit. The test would be if you were strapped to a board involuntarily and someone else was pouring water over your face at their control, not if you poured some water over your face. Of course you’re going to stop when it gets painful.
Sad to see apologies for state torture here.
I think torture should be reserved for ‘humanitarians’ who fly food and medical supplies in to the victims of a seige, thus prolonging that seige indefinitely.
Humanitarians who aid the enemy in the guise of ‘helping the women and children and other victims in warfare’, not caring that hardship to the women and children of enemy combatants is the least bloody way to get them to stop fighting. Uncaring of the fact that the moment those supplies land in the hands of women and children (if they ever get there) they are instantly ‘appropriated’ by enemy soldiers to support their war efforts.
Humanitarians who fight to impose ‘rules’ on warfare little caring that tying soldier’s hands gets them killed and loses wars.
Every one of those fuckers should be tortured ‘until organ failure’. Not to teach them a lesson, but to teach a lesson to those who we do not catch. Aiding the enemy while being safe behind laws is treachery, and traitors NEED to be punished.
A ROK post endorsing torture as a way to become more masculine? Surely we are scraping the bottom of the barrel. This is sick.
Waterboarding is a joke and is thrown around to take peoples eyes away from real interogation methods. Yes these things work and the argument that they do not is a myth.
The goal is to cause enough pain that the brain can only focus on that area. When asked questions the person is unable to think of a lie because thry are in so much pain. Add in drugs that lower inhibitions you have a open book. Partialy thanks to mk ultra and its drug devopment.
What I find amusing about the people who claim torture is ineffective is that they also tend to be the same people (namely the anti-war left and anti-war libertarians) who claim that Saddam Hussein would have stopped ISIS if he were still in power.
Now how exactly would he have stopped them? What exactly did he do to keep the region stable for so many years???
*cue Jeopardy music*
iraq was stable entity, now it is in chaos
syria was a stable entity, now it is in chaos
libya was a stable entite, now it is chaotic
etc etc
our main enemy is apparently Islamic State (standing in for the worldwide spectre of islamic terrorism), yet in each instance the actions of the western powers have allowed it to rise. Each of those states were bulwarks against the factionalism of ISIS and Jihadi militias, so isn’t it suspicious that we helped destroy them?
This documentary gives some insight. Water-boarding is also discussed:
===============================
We Have Ways of Making You Talk
We Have Ways of Making You TalkFilmed in France, Israel, USA, Algeria, Argentina, Uruguay, South Africa and the UK, this disturbing and candid BBC documentary explores the history of modern interrogation techniques and the rise of modern torture using revealing interviews with state interrogators and state torturers.
The legacy of this history continues to shapes our present, especially in the United States, and some of these techniques have now become routine in the war on terror – be it the use of dogs, water-boarding, or sexual humiliation.
This long, unbroken line of inhuman cruelty connects Nazi Germany to Abu Ghraib, and is an essential issue in today’s political landscape.
Watch the full documentary now (playlist)
Torture is one of the many signs that America is sliding into tyranny. It always starts by using it on the most hated of people until it gains public acceptance (or indifference). Then it spreads to political dissidents. That includes everyone here.
This is part of the agenda the globalist elite have in place. It is a powerful weapon of fear used to control a populace too tempting for them to pass up. The elite have brought the social engineering, wars, and the reduction of freedoms over many years as part of their long-term agenda for control.
In many western nations it’s already a crime to call out their tribal connections of the major political sponsors, the media execs, the feminists and their financial backers, the communists and their financial backers, the central bank execs, big bank execs, etc.
SJWs say terrorists have human rights?
http://www.barenakedislam.com/category/beheadings-graphic
Part of the understanding of the situation is missing from most of the comments. People dismiss torture as useless because of possibly wrong information. This is a silly argument for two reasons; first, all information is verified before being acted upon, and second, effective torture breaks people and they tell all that they know because they are grasping at all straws to make it stop.
The second is that people misunderstand cowardice, principle, and the desire to live. Anyone who says you should die for your principles when there is a way to live without lasting consequence has never been in that situation. Yes, the USA is a principled nation, or is supposed to be, but when it gets down to it, the only real principle is you live, and the other guy, if necessary, dies. If that means hooking up Abdul’s balls to 480 volts to get the info we need, then Abdul loses his balls. People talk about all human life being equal. It’s not. I don’t know how many American lives Abdul’s life is worth, but it is much less than one. This humanistic, one world shit has got to end. If you’re an American, you need to sack up, and put your countrymen first. Why do you care about some muslim arab? He doesn’t care about you. Your supposedly enlightened stance that we are all brothers is dangerous when no one else buys into it except other urban hipster bitches.
TLDR: Torture works, the info gets checked, when the going gets tough, the tough go nuclear, and if you’re concerned about them over us, then you can go be part of them.
Yeah, it gets results. If it’s that horrible people will admit to anything, telling lies, truth, and all kinds of bullshit in order to not suffer like these poor bastards are making them suffer. It sucks for em and gives us a lot of bullshit intelligence.
The only purpose of torture is to extract false confessions for propaganda purposes. Aside for psychopathic sadism I mean. Any person being tortured will confess to sinking the Titanic. I hope someone watrrboards this author’s mom for the crime of bringing him into existence.