Perhaps as a devil's advocate, could you defend an argument for torture?

[kentuck]

Personally, I cannot imagine how someone, anyone, with a heart could ever defend the practice of torture.

It seems to me to be inhuman. Inhumane is only another word for "not human".

How could you defend torture and still be able to live with your conscience? Unless, of course, you had no conscience.

Please explain to me where I am wrong on this? Was it legitimate because we were fighting terrorists that attacked us on 9/11?

I am totally confused by that argument.

[Maedhros]

1. The going rationalization is this:

The needs of the many {terrified white Americans} outweigh the needs of the few {foreign brown "terrorists"}.

Coldly logical, at first glance. Those of an authoritarian, privileged mindset and sub-standard critical thinking skills are inclined to believe it at face value.

[elias49]

9. I think you have that Trek paraphrase on its head...

I think it should be 'The needs (desires) of the few (1%) outweigh the needs of the many (brown people everywhere).

[Maedhros]

33. In Wrath of Khan, when Spock offered Kirk command of the Enterprise,

he stated the phrase as I wrote it:

Spock: If I may be so bold, it was a mistake for you to accept promotion. Commanding a starship is your first, best destiny; anything else is a waste of material.

Kirk: I would not presume to debate you.

Spock: That is wise. Were I to invoke logic, however, logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

Kirk: Or the one.

Spock: You are my superior officer. You are also my friend. I have been and always shall be yours.

However in Star Trek III - The Search for Spock, Kirk and Spock have the following exchange after meeting on Vulcan, in which Kirk inverts the logic:

Captain Spock: My father says that you have been my friend. You came back for me.

Kirk: You would have done the same for me.

Captain Spock: Why would you do this?

Kirk: Because the needs of the one... outweigh the needs of the many.

Captain Spock: [begins to remember] I have been and ever shall be your friend.

Kirk: Yes. Yes, Spock.

Captain Spock: The ship... out of danger?

Kirk: You saved the ship. You saved us all. Don't you remember?

Captain Spock: Jim... your name is Jim.

Kirk: Yes.

[HereSince1628]

31. The fear of the many, needs to target at least a few.

And the many would greatly prefer that they outnumber those they target.

[99th_Monkey]

2. I think torture totally "works"

but not the way the CIA says it does, because most every qualified knowledgable
person who's seen the whole report is saying that nothing useful was produced
by means of torture. Even in the cases where CIA claims it DID work, they had
ALREADY gotten the useful info using no torture, but then tortured
then anyway, just "for good measure".

When I say torture "works" what I mean is that it's by far the most effective way to
keep producing NEW TERRORISTS for our endless ME wars to come in perpetuity,
as family and friends of 'terrorists' we kill will vow to get revenge on the USA.

[sabrina 1]

18. And that may have been the objective. They need WARS and to get support

for them they NEED ENEMIES.

[Maedhros]

34. Torture works for getting the subject to tell you what you want to hear. [n/t]

[99th_Monkey]

39. So, it's a two-fur

[Rex]

3. I can't but I see a lot of people bending over backwards trying.

It is unreliable and actually promotes the subject to lie just to make it stop. What happens if you torture someone that doesn't know anything? HOW MANY innocent people have we tortured?

This country is very sick when half the population thinks torture is okay...because they saw Jack do it on 24.

[Cleita]

4. It's the dogma of "the ends justifies the means" cult.

It's like a religion. When you accept that logic, then many abuses can be rationalized like torture, capital punishment, institutionalized racism, misogyny and other social ills. It's how we can be unconcerned about those less fortunate like the homeless and working poor. It's why a human being can believe that a person who can't afford health care should die and why those companies like health insurance can deny care because it cuts into their profit.

[kentuck]

8. Well said, Cleita.

[JaneyVee]

5. Just call yourself "prolife".

[treestar]

6. To save their immortal soul

Which the medieval religionist did - before they die, they must admit the true faith!

It is for their own good!

Frustrated revenge on people who need information from someone who won't give it. And they believe they are saving Americans from having to jump out of windows of skyscrapers. Keeping that in mind, it's possible to justify. Some of these people may have had to work hard to keep those images in their minds. I'm not really defending it but explaining how they might have thought themselves justified.

People would have defended torturing Nazis on similar grounds. But that doesn't make it effective.

[Bluenorthwest]

11. You should consider reading up on the US methods of interrogation of Nazi prisoners before you speak

Torture was not defended, it was rejected as being what the Nazis do and as utterly ineffective when we had many, many very effective techniques to employ that were not cruel or inhuman.
So you say 'would have' but the facts say otherwise. The fact is the US executed Nazis and Japanese for using the waterboard. We executed them. Think about what that means, executing people for things you turn around and do yourself is a very special sort of evil. Yeah, evil.

[treestar]

44. Really?

We were such angels then? In the late 1940s? Name a case, rather than the vague "read up on." You don't back up that fact. And many of the people who prosecuted Nazi torturers, being it was back then, would not have stood up for gay rights, so I don't see how you would defend them.

[Rex]

16. Well how nice to know you are not really defending torture.

[treestar]

43. Do you always see the worst in everything?

And avoid any issues in order to jump on the chance to judge people? Of course I am not defending it. How jerky of you to imply I was.

It's dishonest debate. Well actually it is not debate. Just name calling and other illogical fallacies.

[sabrina 1]

19. I doubt that there was ever any 'protect America' motive at all. Torture is

big business. Remember when we first found out about it, CACI, a Private Contractor, was deeply involved in the torture program. People have developed amnesia to a great extent as to what went on.

We OUTSOURCED torture, it was a side business of the profitable wars. Remember the Boeing 'Ghost Planes' eg? I remember reading a leaked document way back about a board meeting where they were discussing the price of providing those Ghost Planes.

It is pure evil. There were many US Soldiers who could not do it, some 'committed suicide' we were told.

But the profiteers, just look at how they 'collected' those who were going to be tortured in Guantanamo? And yes, people WERE tortured there and we never got to see the thousands of videos they had, so far.

The BOUGHT them in Afghanistan. Old people, children!

There is no decent human being on the face of the earth who would torture another human being. None.

Torturers are simply evil and a threat to societies everywhere.

They did either for money, Private Contractors like Caci, or because they are cruel, extremely disturbed individuals.

[Downwinder]

7. Only if I hated you and wanted to destroy your beliefs and ideals.

Bin Laden wins.

[Vox Moi]

10. Because I can and I want to.

I know that people under torture will say anything to make me stop and that's what I like about it.
Prisoners piss me off, what with their helplessness and cowering and it makes me just want to hurt them even more.
Very few people get paid to do what I do and it makes me feel special: like a doctor or something.
My boss tells me that what I'm doing is difficult but necessary, that's it is all for the greater good but I don't think on those things too much when I'm working. I don't even give much thought to the people I'm tormenting. I try to concentrate on what I'm doing and do the best, professional job I can.

If other people are jealous of my career I should advise them that torturers don't have a lot of job security. For some reason I don't understand, the governments who hire me don't seem to last very long.

[kentuck]

14. Do you have any friends in prison?

Or are they in the hierarchy of the Church?

[Vox Moi]

26. Well, before I became an independent contractor for the CIA

I worked for a drug cartel.
In fact, that's where I met my CIA contacts.
I figure I'll see if I can get work in the Religious sector now that the US doesn't torture folks anymore, mainly for the benefits and job security.
No religion ever went out of business because they were torturing people. In fact, it's a wonderful recruitment strategy for believers to torture apostates, for believers to be tortured by pagans and heathens and even for believers to torture themselves. Even God uses torture as an incentive.
It's a good career move and if I do go to hell, I'll be the most qualified soul down there.

[kentuck]

38. From what I have read...

the CIA was looking for people with your kind of experience?

[Motown_Johnny]

12. Sure...

but only as a devil's advocate...


Due to my overwhelming incompetence, not only did 9/11 happen but also, I have no hope of protecting this country from another 9/11. Therefore I must appear to be doing everything I can in order to prevent another attack. This includes things like invading most any country that comes to mind as well as shoving feeding tubes up the backside of people who just might know something that could maybe make it look like I am doing something right.


Signed, every member of the G.W. Bush administration.

[msanthrope]

13. No. nt

[Rex]

21. So you didn't say anything when I said more or less the exact same thing in this thread.

Manny just special then?

[Aerows]

17. No, I can't

and "rectally feeding" people is pretty much the cut off point where I state "NO, this is evil."

[The2ndWheel]

20. It's a science experiment

[kentuck]

22. Is that in any way similar to what the Nazis did?

And in what way??

[The2ndWheel]

32. I guess the scale would be the biggest difference

Other than that, it could be somewhat similar. Information is valuable.

Of course it took an outside force or two to bring the Nazis down, and a few of those Nazis to some sort of justice. Then those same outside forces brought some Nazis scientists into their various folds. Again, information is valuable.

The question is can the government that set up, built, and maintains the current international order, with the largest military in the world, do whatever it wants to do? It has so far. Who is going to do anything to the US government for bombing other countries? Who is going to do anything to the US government for torturing people? What government has clean hands? What moral standard to they stand on? Who is going to economically sanction the US government?

There doesn't seem to be a right and wrong. It's what you can get away with. Might makes right, it always has. That much more so in international politics. Who or what has ever stopped the CIA from doing as it pleases?

[calimary]

23. I can't get around the whole idea of

"Why do they hate us?" Do we really have to ask that anymore? Isn't it clear as to why?

I've been aghast watching some of the apologia - splitting hairs about how this or that is okay as long as... Or - well if they did this but not that... Or - well, under certain circumstances if...

Shit! Seems like an absolute to me. What about Torture-is-a-Crime do they not understand? Where is the "wiggle room" - where we can make an exception or two? I am aghast. As far as I can see, there is NO wiggle room or weasel-wording or fine print or wink-and-a-nod or any such thing.

Not if you don't fancy being a rogue nation. CERTAINLY not if you claim yours is a "Christian" nation.
Not if you profess to be a nation of laws.
Not if you view yourself and your fellow citizens as "the good guys."

It's simply not an option. No rationales, no justifications of any sort. No excuses or "well just this one time" or "because 9/11" or ANY such vindictive sadistic subhuman hair-splitting.

Is it who we are, or isn't it, America?

To me, it's just so far off the table that it isn't even near the restaurant.

PERIOD.

[kentuck]

25. Amen.

It's difficult to understand.

[calimary]

40. It is spectacularly nauseating to hear the hair-splitting conversation out there ON the air.

On the air!!! They're actually kicking this monstrous idea around as though it were something realistically feasible. How we're debating whether water boarding really really is torture? Or that there is actually such a thing as "rectal infusions" - barbaric and hideous and not just inhumane but SUB-human. The "it did, TOO, work" protestations. And the what-ifs. What if this happens or that is threatened and X number of American lives... or whatever the equilibrium-cancelling event was. It reminds me of that "just a little bit pregnant" thing. Is it okay to torture just a little bit? When couldja do it? When is it okay? WTF do you mean, "when is it okay"??????? What the Freakin' HELL????? Criminy - we're actually chatting about this around the microphones on TV. It is SICKENING!

It makes one question that statement the President is trying to reinforce "that's not who we are." Ideally, yes. True - assuming it's the America we grew up believing in, some of us even growing up with reagan's rhapsodies about the "shining city on a hill" ringing in our ears. The America that was described in the song "America the Beautiful" and all those other nice things. Details like these really call that into question, particularly when there are so many loud voices out there relentlessly trying to spin and excuse the horror and disgust away with rationales. Notice many of them have never served, never faced combat. Never faced the risk of being captured by the enemy, mistreated, and outright tortured. I piss and moan about John McCain, but he has tremendous credibility here, and since he actually WAS there, literally had skin in the game, I take his take on this issue MOST seriously. And he says it's bad and that we shouldn't do it and it doesnt work and he certainly oughta know. None of these other pantiwaists has even the remotest idea about that part of the Dark Side. They probably think they do because they watched "24" a lot.

Former CIA Officer Glenn Carle on "All In" just now was talking about the euphemisms, like Extreme Interrogation Techniques - or the shorter more innocuous-sounding nickname "EITs", used to refer to torture - because nobody wanted to use the word "torture" since that isn't who we are... That isn't who we are??? Seriously? Can we get a second opinion on that?

MAN, I gotta tellya - I'm 61 and I have NEVER seen our country sink to these depths. Never imagined it could. Certainly a lot of that time was spent by me in a semi-comatose state, not really paying attention to things some of these fiends were perpetrating on the American public. In the name of whatever, National Security or God or Religion or the Constitution or "Our Way Of Life" or "The Sanctity Of Marriage" or "Our Freedoms" or the almighty sacrosanct and untouchable Free Market. Sometimes I feel like I know way too much now. It can be rather discouraging, gotta say.

Chris Hayes just posed the rhetorical question - will we ever do this again, and posited that John Brennan just left the door open? The answer, unfortunately, is - Probably.

[hifiguy]

24. Only if the torture in question

was the impalement of DicKKK Cheney.

[Scootaloo]

27. What did the Inquisition use torture for?

To coerce people into saying what the inquisitors wanted them to say. That is, in fact, all that torture is good for - terrorizing people into giving you what you want to hear. i imagine with enough broken limbs and rectal "feedings," a 19 year old from Anbar will confess to killing Lincoln, if that's what you're trying to get out of him.

so what do you so, once you have what you want to hear? well ,you use that to justify your policies - including torture.

Essentially, torture's only use is to supply propaganda.

[mikehiggins]

28. no

we executed Japanese generals because of this stuff. It is illegal everywhere on the planet. The people who did it should be rounded up and delivered to the Hague.

Bush and Cheney should be jailed and the "psychiatrists" who aided them for money should be stripped of their credentials, and jailed as well.

The list goes on and on.

And Morning Joe still hasn't shown up to be waterboarded.

[on point]

29. The torture was not for info, but to intimidate and scare people - that is also the classic use

Purely sadistic authoritarian criminal behavior

[Xithras]

30. One of the things that I learned in my college debate courses...

...was that a person can assemble an argument to support any position, if they are really motivated to do so.

[spanone]

35. no. we're either a moral nation or not.

[MisterP]

36. Bigeard, Aussaressess, and Trinquier say it DOES work--but it's never used for intel

short- or long-term, but to terrorize the population, to make sure nobody talks to one another, to dismantle resistance

and long-term it fails because it just brutalizes the opposition, makes them tough, less idealistic and more goal-oriented, adaptable, underground, etc.

so all the "ticking time bomb" scenarios aren't just less implausible than Nessie (people have been chased by each-uisges), the whole scenario is fabricated: even asking that question is implicitly pro-torture, since it assumes torture can be used to save people rather than as a weapon of unconventional warfare--that it's something people do in the heat of the moment, or in traumatized panic to save someone like in an action movie

[haele]

37. Nope,Torture is all about the punishment. It was never about interrogation.

Throughout history, it was never about finding out anything that the torturer/interrogator didn't already know. It was more effective as a method of mass intimidation of certain groups and classes of people, imposing control by the threat of a terrible death or crippled life over those who the torturer's patrons already classified as enemies.

Haele

[Aerows]

41. No, and anyone

that attempts to justify NOT PROSECUTING people for torture needs to search themselves as to why they believe it is excusable.

Because it isn't. Period. President Obama failed to prosecute torturers.

Ugly accusation? Yep. True accusation? Yep.

He is as guilty as the torturers for failure to pursue prosecution of torturers - because he condoned it. It's a harsh thing to say, but some harsh things took place when he took the helm and did nothing about it. It makes him complicit, and I would say the same if Jesus was President.

Some of you pretend you don't know why people have lost faith in President Obama and politicians in general. This is Exhibit A.

[Derek V]

42. Unless it was a guy who'd kidnapped my daughter,

no. 100% uh-uh.