Study of the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program released

[Mage246]

Not many people know this, but Kobie was one of the people who personally signed that convention.

 

[Kobrag]

So my post was poorly phrased.

 

[kurczak]

Yes it is...
As torture for the last hundred years, at least, has been declared ineffective as an interrogation method. :/
The only reason to declare as an interrogation method is to justify the inflictior's insanity*.
And it's just ****ing despicable, amoral, dastardly, atrocious etc.
I am surprised at your support in a major breach of international agreements.
Seriously, you are repulsive.

*Definition in this case being the act of repeating something that has been proven time and time again to be false in it's effectiveness.

I think you're maybe letting yourself get carried away by the emotional load of the word. It is used to describe what happened in Abu Ghraib, which if it ever was interrogation quickly degenerated into "entertainment" for the staff. It is also used to describe painful ways to execute someone. Those are all despicable, amoral, dastardly and atrocious things indeed. But it is also used to describe interrogation methods. A very large spectrum of methods. You seem to automatically jump to some mental image where CIA agents are taking a dump on people while waterboarding, vivisecting and raping them at the same time. But maybe that's just me reading into your, uhm, let's call them passionate words.

The claim that torture doesn't work gets thrown around a lot these days. As if it was some super common knowledge like apples fall down from apple trees, torture doesn't work, duh. I'm wondering where are all these hosts of experts on torture that have suddenly emerged in the past few days get this common knowledge? Torture has been indeed banned for quite some time, so everybody who has done in the meanwhile (and let's not be naive about this, every relevant intelligence service has done it) are not exactly prone to bragging about it on top of what I have already mentioned - intelligence services are not prone to bragging about any aspects of their activity, even if legal and even if successful, especially when we are talking about essentially live operations in an ongoing conflict, so "I haven't read about any successful cases in Guardian ergo there aren't any" doesn't really count. And once again, I'm talking about torture used to get leads that can be verified or falsified, not torture to get confessions.

International treaties. Well if I wanted to be cynical about it, I could suggest that norms that aren't and cannot be enforced aren't really law, but let's gloss over that. So if you take this article at face value and assume it is true, do you blame SIS, Churchill, the Allies or whoever would you hold responsible, for doing it?

 

[Sir Saladin]

So you think a person needs to study torture for many years and become an official expert in the field of torture before he can know for certain that torture is useless and not something a government should be sanctioning.

 

[Mage246]

Replace torture with climate change.

 

[Das Longbowman]

Might as well submit some Listverse here. Pardon me, folks.
10 Thing You Should Know About The CIA's Torture Program

 

[Jhessail]

The claim that torture doesn't work gets thrown around a lot these days. As if it was some super common knowledge like apples fall down from apple trees, torture doesn't work, duh. I'm wondering where are all these hosts of experts on torture that have suddenly emerged in the past few days get this common knowledge?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/13/AR2007121301303.html

1 Torture worked for the Gestapo.

Actually, no. Even Hitler's notorious secret police got most of their information from public tips, informers and interagency cooperation.

2 Everyone talks sooner or later under torture.

Truth is, it's surprisingly hard to get anything under torture, true or false.

3 People will say anything under torture.

In fact, the problem of torture does not stem from the prisoner who has information; it stems from the prisoner who doesn't.

4 Most people can tell when someone is lying under torture.

Not so -- and we know quite a bit about this.

5 You can train people to resist torture.

Simply put, nothing predicts the outcome of one's resistance to pain better than one's own personality. Against some personalities, nothing works; against others, practically anything does.

It's worth it to read the full article.

http://www.fas.org/irp/dni/educing.pdf

Educing Information: Interrogation: Science and Art—Foundations for the Future, Intelligence Science Board.

The multiple essays pretty well sum up  that there is no evidence that it actually works in the manner we wish.

Is that enough? I understand that the lure of torture is powerful - just inflict some pain and get answers, it's the silver bullet that solves a thorny problem. But it doesn't work and usually is counter-productive. There is no justifying it outside of the ticking nuke thought experiment.

 

[Bromden]

[...]intelligence services are not prone to bragging about any aspects of their activity, even if legal and even if successful, especially when we are talking about essentially live operations in an ongoing conflict, so "I haven't read about any successful cases in Guardian ergo there aren't any" doesn't really count.

The War on Terrortm is fueled with public opinion as much as it is fueled by oil and poppy. If anything big against the US had been thwarted by anyone (be it the CIA, the National Guard or John McClane), it would have been smeared into our faces in a very flaunty and arrogant way. I think that ticking nuke scenario everyone picks here up as example is pretty much non-existent, hence it's an awful way to justify anything topic related.

 

[Vermillion_Hawk]

Note "ongoing". The reasons for the war don't change the fact that flaunting your intelligence operatives' work in any way is just drawing undue amounts of attention to them, no matter if they remain anonymous. The only person stupid enough to reveal such things was **** Cheney and even then it was ostensibly for revenge and not for flaunting anything.

 

[rebelknight]

Has anyone forgot about this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra

 

[Swadius 2.0]

Note "ongoing". The reasons for the war don't change the fact that flaunting your intelligence operatives' work in any way is just drawing undue amounts of attention to them, no matter if they remain anonymous. The only person stupid enough to reveal such things was **** Cheney and even then it was ostensibly for revenge and not for flaunting anything.

It's a wonder how Bush survived his two terms.

 

[kurczak]

the links

Ok cool, thanks. I will get to them eventually. I'm not necessarily saying that torture does (always) work (great). I don't know, luckily for me I have never been in a position where I would have to make the decision or even seriously look into it. But I don't think it's a good idea to completely dismiss it because it doesn't feel warm and fuzzy on the inside which it seems to me is what about everybody is doing these days.

 

[Jhessail]

No doubt the moral superiority thing comes into play heavily in a topic like this - just see Kobrag - but at least torture has been studied to some extent and has been found lacking.

Weapons of mass destruction are generally abhorred as well and they at least work when properly utilized.

 

[Sir Saladin]

I don't feel all warm and fuzzy about everything I think should not be outlawed.

I think I see how this works now. If I say torture shouldn't be done whether it works or not the people who have somehow been convinced that it is useful and neccessary will accuse me of opposing it merely on moral grounds or because I'm squeemish so if I want to continue fruitlessly arguing anyway I can point out the fact that it doesn't even work and then the retort will be "yes it does, yes it does, sometimes" and you just can't argue with that.

My moral opposition is not a religiously fanatical kind of morality that doesn't allow me to think things through but the true believers will believe what they want to believe and reality be damned.

 

[kurczak]

No. I mean some people might spin it this way, but that's not what I'm trying to say.

From my vaguely utilitarian perspective, effectiveness of torture is a key component in assessment of its morality, not something that stands against each other and you have to pick one.

Equally as importantly, during my career with the law enforcement, I have become quite familiar with situations where you under time pressure and more is lost by indecision than by a wrong indecision, sometimes even the whole case might be lost and you have to act based on incomplete information. And sometimes you have to "violate" someone's rights in those situation - detention, putting a bug on someone or going through his stuff without his knowing are not as intense violations as torture, but they are violations nonetheless and can mess up your career and/or family life significantly. The best part always was when after the deal was done, some moron who now had the complete information came and felt perfectly comfortable criticizing my decisions. They were usually equally divided between the "let's hold hands and sing songs about human rights" crowd and the "why didn't you do something?!?" crowd. I have accordingly developed somewhat of a distaste for both the approaches. I think, and I'm starting to feel like a one string banjo saying it, so I should probably take a hint and quit it, that a lot of those indignant folks not only not understand what's it like to make that kind of decisions, they don't even have the complete information now.

 

[Jhessail]

Welcome to the human race!

The amount of amateur military historians who feel justified going on rants about this general and that commander not doing X and doing Y is staggering. When I point out that they had incomplete or wrong information and were working under stress and time limits, they often keep insisting. Another oh-so-popular trend seems to be the character assassination of formerly admired generals, as it's apparently the "cool" thing to stupidly hate on someone that's popular.

But with torture, to return to your good point, carries with it the problem that it can actually waste your time by sending you on wild goose chases.