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if we could have prevented 9/11 by torturing a few bad guys, would that have been wrong?

torturing innocent people is wrong, and awful, just like giving innocent people the death penalty is wrong and awful.  are we against the death penalty now?

but torturing cowardly jihadis who hide among civilians, and intentionally kill civilians, and seek nothing less than the destruction of our society by any means necessary - is that so wrong?  people who gladly give up their own lives just to blow up some iraqi voters, or police recruits, or crash one of our civilian airplanes?

we should use any means necessary to defeat, gather intel from, and otherwise disincent these animals from their bloody goals, and if an [i]effective way[/i] of doing that is against this or that international convention...

well who ever said these cretins ought to be protected, and at what cost in military and innocent lives?

how many american soldiers' lives are you willing to trade for your anti torture absolutism?

torturing terrorists is a PR problem, nothing more.

wc

There are two issues at hand:

1). Are we handing off people to be tortured?

and

2). Are we handing off innocent people to be tortured?

Not whether we 'should'; whether we are.  It is growing increasingly obvious that we are at least engaged in 1). - and, given the nature of governments, that 2). is going on as well.

If you wish to make it legal for us to engage in either 1). or 2)., then you have to go out and lobby for our laws to be changed and the relevant treaties repudiated - I hope that you will at the same time take my enthusiastic suggestion to likewise go to Hell - but for the rest of us this is an abominable loophole that must be plugged.

I am notoriously skeptical of conspiracy theories, particularly ones involving the current administration - but extraordinary rendition is a different story.  It's precisely the sort of bureaucratic incremential fu*kup that can slip in without warning... and given that the American people have given us in the GOP the power to bind and loose, it is in the end our responsibility to put a stop to it.  Whether or not the practice is functionally useful.

And that's all I have to say about that.

I'm calling moby.

If Krempasky calls it, I will follow.  I donated $5 to Redstate to discourage trollism. Give a $1 or $2 each time a troll tries to divert our attention and help Redstate grow while discouraging disruptive posters.

As my understanding goes, yes we are doing #1 and have been for a long time.  If we are doing #2 I'm sure it is unintentional and regrettable.

If you wish to care about international law, and have the geneva convention apply to unlawful combatants (which it doesnt), and maybe you wish to have Germany arrest Rumsfeld for war crimes while you're at it, then you have to go out and lobby the US government to hand its sovereignty over to the UN.  I'm sure there are tons of liberal globalists who will be glad to help you.

And if you are absolutely against torture in all cicrumstances, even if it is deemed useful  (btw, why else do you figure we would be doing it?  duh) then you should readily admit:

1.  the if we could have prevented 9/11 by torturing mousawi, we should not have done so
   
2.  that if a terror group planted a nuke in NYC and we captured one of them, we shouldnt torture them to tell us where it is and instead take the million or so casualties and destruction of the city.

If you will agree to #1 and #2, then I will respectfully encourage you to go to hell, or at least sit on the sidelines and be quiet, since people like you are going to get us all killed.

wc

Since it's probably my money anyway. ;) Enjoying its new home, I can see.

are you saying i am a troll?????

are my positions so far off base?   what???  

Pretty much.

... on the New Yorker piece here.

This is the kind of avoidance of the law and ridiculous semantics that we decried when employed by the Clinton adminstration.  It has gotten no more attractive just because Bush has decided to continue the program.

Who in the GOP or on the right denounced it when Clinton was President?  And are any examples offered anything but misguided Norquist-inspired pandering to Muslim American voters?

It is becoming completely obvious that some of the people being tortured are innocent.

This in itself is not an argument against a thing, however.  Many people in jail are completely innocent as well, yet we don't advocate dismantling our system of justice.  Instead, we refine it so as to minimize the incidents of that injustice.  Pace Maher Arar, Katherine's claim to fame, the injustice done there was not in what happened per se, but in that it was unjustified.

There isn't any information we are getting that could possibly justify the torture of innocent people.

How do you know?

Torture is ineffective.  Torture isn't ineffective at getting information per se. It is ineffective at geting useful information.

Again, how do you know?

That is because the victim either snaps completely, or starts trying to mold his story to fit what the torturer wants to hear.

Do you know that this is universally true?  Or is it just a feature of torture applied poorly?

There is evidence that we have relied on information obtained through torture, only to find that it was very wrong.

There is evidence that we have relied on information obtained through SIGINT, HUMINT and ELINT, only to find that it was very wrong.  You get the picture.

Torture also opens us up to the legitmate criticism that we are acting out the very barbarism that we want to fight.

Only if you confuse means with ends.  One might as well argue that our use of mechanized formations in the Second World War made us as bad as the Wehrmacht.

Therefore extraordinary rendition is a moral sinkhole, which is being employed on people we are not sure are guilty, and which doesn't even get good information.

You have a long, long way to go to back up the latter assertion, there.

This practice is foolish in the proverbial sense of the word--it perverts our moral core....

Well, no.  If the Trail of Tears and slavery and the Tuskeegee experiments and area bombing and abandoning Indochina did not destroy America, I'm pretty sure extraordinary rendition won't either.

well, if you dont want any disagreement, have it your way.  i'll gladly go elsewhere if my ideas are seen as trollish.

i think if you look though, you could find many people in the republican party who agree with me.

wc

the term:  "Torture", and its euphemisim employed here:  "Extraordinary rendetion".

If you are able to propose definitions, will you then be able to convince at least 10 people of your definitions' universal applicability? Validity?

Will you include physical torture?  Mental torture?  Emotional torture? Will they all be similarly weighted in a 'Moral/Legal/Ethical Costs of Torture Matrix'?

Why?

What about pharmaceutical 'inducements'?  Are they considered 'torture'?

Should they?

Why?

If 'they' torture our guys - and we later return the favor - are ours acts of torture?  Retribution? Punishment?  Deterrence? Operational Necessity?

What?

Are they the same? Similar? Different?

Are there Moral Equivalencies to Torture?  What are they?  By whose decree?

Is it REALLY torture if (as noted elsewhere in this string) it fails to produce the desired result?

How much of the definition of 'Torture' is subjective?  What about the application of torture techniques?  When do they actually become torturous, rather then simply discomfitures or inconveniences?

Can a masochistic enemy REALLY be tortured?

The point is torture (regardless of type or method) is a mechanism employed to extract either critical information or desired conduct not likely to be volunteered by the subject.

Techniques are loaded with negative values:  Ethical.  Moral.  Legal, etc..  Americans are given to believe that torture, per. se. is intrinscally BAD.

But, is it?

I am of the opinion that the negative values applied to torture are relative to whose interests are involved;  and inversly proportionate to the proximity of one's family members to the terrorists knife/bullet/bomb/rape room.

But.  That's just my opinion.

"Do you know that this is universally true?  Or is it just a feature of torture applied poorly?"

Doesn't really matter because we give up control of the process by turning people over to other governments.  

"There is evidence that we have relied on information obtained through SIGINT, HUMINT and ELINT, only to find that it was very wrong.  You get the picture."

Sure, and they weren't obtained by torturing people.  Unless you want to argue that torturing people is generally equivalent to wiretapping, it seems rather obvious that the quality of the information had better be damn good if you think you are going to justify it.  

"Only if you confuse means with ends.  One might as well argue that our use of mechanized formations in the Second World War made us as bad as the Wehrmacht."

Uh, no.  This isn't even as good a dodge as the one I just responded to.  Plucking out someone's fingernails isn't comparable to using a mechanized formation.  I'm not even sure the basis of the analogy--it is like saying that we breathe and they breathe.  It would be like saying kidnapping innocent people and chopping off their heads for scare value isn't a barbaric tactic--and perhaps is one we should use.  

"This in itself is not an argument against a thing, however.  Many people in jail are completely innocent as well, yet we don't advocate dismantling our system of justice.  Instead, we refine it so as to minimize the incidents of that injustice.  Pace Maher Arar, Katherine's claim to fame, the injustice done there was not in what happened per se, but in that it was unjustified."

This is the worst of all.  We abdicate our appeal to a 'system of justice' when we turn people over to the systems of places like Egypt.  We know for a fact that their systems are not fair.  We know for a fact that they don't follow rules.  We know for a fact that their claim of guilt can't be weighed as equivalent to a finding of guilt in our system.  

If you want to advocate a system of legalized torture, we can argue about it.  It won't be pretty and I'm not going to go for it.  If we want to draw lines about what is and is not permissible interrogation technique, I'm all for that.  I'm not an Amnesty International member who is going to whine if we keep some awake for two days in a row or if we turn up the temperature to 110 degrees.  But we aren't talking about any of that.  We are talking about handing people over to regimes which we know will beat them to a bloody plup.  The Arar case is instructive.  If an innocent man can be sent off for torture AT THE START of Bush's reimplementation of the practice--at a time when you would expect people to be the very most careful, and with such little evidence, it IS happening and we are not being careful about who it applies to.  The practice is too tempting and too out-of-sight-out-of-mind to be controlled properly.  We give up too much control of the situation when we throw someone to the tender mercies of Arab secret police.  

I'm not going to endorse torture; but if we are going to argue against its use in all circumstances, we should at least trouble ourselves to construct logical and cogent arguments for the position.

Anyway, judicial ukases notwithstanding, given that neither the protocols of the Geneva Convention nor the protections of the criminal justice system rightly apply to unlawful combatants and terrorists, this is a discussion that we need to pursue, free from hyperbole, histrionics, fanaticism, wild-eyed utopianism and the like.

Someone here at RS has a magnificent tagline which I will adapt: Greater shame hath no man than that he will lay down the lives of others to preserve his ability to consider himself morally superior.  

Citizens and aliens should not be treated the same way by the law.  

Citizens should be the soveriegns of the country.  To allow their own servants to lay hands upon them, to force from them their private thoughts or convictions is wrong.  The republic is based on their public actions and statements.

Soldiers and civilians of states at war are protected by treaty to ensure that US soldiers are likewise protected.

Terrorists, pirates, illegal combatants do not treat US soldiers with treaty rights, nor should they be expected to do so.  (Punished for not doing so, sure, but not expected.)  

The US should not torture anyone who is a citizen of the US or who is protected by treaty.  The rest of the world should be treated as needed by the interests of the US.  If torture is not effective, then it shouldn't be used on anyone, but there can be no honest examination of such a position given the inflamatory rhetoric of the (anti-)Democrats and the isolation wing of the GOP.

IS it 'extrodinary rendition' to return a subject to his home country?  I had thought (without having much real education) rendition referred to transferring control of a prisoner to a third country solely for interrogation, and not for returning him home for domestic criminal matters.

Isn't there a major difference between bloodletting and beheading? between acts against the better interest of prisoner that will heal and those that will not?  

What information did Berg have that could have best been obtained by cutting off his head?  It seems that there is a clear difference in motive.

Actually, extraordinary rendition is a Clintonesque end run around American law.  It is probably legal as a technicality...which is why I am urging Republicans to close the loophole.  

Sending people by plane to another country to be tortured pretty much excludes the ticking bomb scenario doesn't it?

"Terrorists, pirates, illegal combatants do not treat US soldiers with treaty rights, nor should they be expected to do so.  (Punished for not doing so, sure, but not expected.)"

And innocent people who get tortured.  What do you say about them?  We get around the problem in the mainstream justice system by having huge procedural safeguards.  At the end we say that we did our very best to sort the guilty from the innocent, and every now and then we fail.  That isn't what is happening here.  That some of the first people to have been sent to torture under these procedures are almost certainly innocent strongly suggests that the process is nothing like the justice system in sorting the innocent from the guilty.  

actually, in the ticking bomb case, i would advocate that we use whatever means necessary right here in America, doing it ourselves.

would you disagree?

if torture was the only way to stop the nuke, would you let the nuke go off?

wc

Do you agree that when you can send someone across the world to be tortured you can't hide behind the ticking bomb defense?  

no one wants innocents to be tortured.  just like no one wants innocent people to be killed or maimed in war, but they always are.  how many millions of innocents died in wwii?  it was horrible, but inevitable.

and im not even saying that torturing innocents is inevitable (as some others are) but i think we may be in a fight for our life here - we definitely will be if suitcase nukes ever get into the wild.

a fight for our life.

i will agree to that in general*, now will you agree that torture is ok to stop the ticking bomb?

wc

* although sometimes its not really across the world and needn't take very long, but the problem you point out is one of timing and i'll accept that

It depends on what you mean by 'ok'.  I think the ticking bomb scenario is incredibly unlikely.  I don't think it is the type of scenario we ought to structure the law around.  If I were a juror on a prosecution for torture with a legitmate ticking bomb scenario I would not vote to convict.  However if it were a real ticking bomb scenario and the accused tortured the wrong person, I would still convict.  So even the ticking bomb scenario doesn't go very far for me.  

I'm not happy with your justification structure.  We may someday be in a much worse fight than now.  But we are using torture now.  Why?  

Instead, we refine it so as to minimize the incidents of that injustice.

The problem with that is that the systems that have been put into place in the past to minimize the incidents of the injustice, when it comes to torture, have rapidly been perverted.  Consider the genesis of the use of torture by the French in Algeria.

Also consider that very few governments are willing to torture transparently.  Do you really trust the government to only use its power to torture wisely, when there is no oversight?

Again, how do you know? [that torture is ineffective at getting useful information]

It's pretty well accepted among the Army's professional interrogators.  Google for "Terry Karney" and "torture", for example.  But turn that one around: do you have any evidence that it's effective at getting useful information?  How do you guard against the likelihood that people who are being tortured will tell their interrogators anything to get them to stop?  Are there any example of torture not applied poorly?

Here's what the President said on the topic of torture on June 26, 2003.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/06/20030626-3.html

Either we have policies and actions that are consistent with his words, or we don't.  If the NY'er story, and Holsclaw's post, are correct, we don't.

If we don't, then the President's words are empty.  Lovely, inspiring, and absolutely, hypocritically empty.

I'm somewhat reluctant to post about this because my thoughts on the matter are well known, and are in variance with the consensus here.  I've been around this topic with you all, and I doubt any minds have been changed.

What I will say is that we want to have it both ways, and we can't.  We want to be the good guys, the moral leaders of the world, and we also want to torture people if we think it will be useful to us.  We can't have both.  We have to pick.  If we decide that torture is something we can live with, as far as I can tell we have changed as a nation, and I'm damned sorry to see it.  

My old man spent 4 years in the Navy during WWII.    He lost his brother, my uncle, in Germany.  My father passed away, oddly enough, in September '01, and I'm glad he didn't live to see the day that this conversation was even on the table.  This stuff would have made him puke.

I think, frankly, that you all should be ashamed to stand up for this crap.  Sorry if that offends anyone.  It's amazing to me that the question is even, in any way, open for discussion.

This is my last post on this topic, it's too damned depressing to me to even discuss it anymore.

Cheers -

Doesn't really matter because we give up control of the process....

Oh, but it does.  If you argue that all instances of A produce Y, and that the production of Y ipso facto invalidates the utility of A, and that further the lack of A's utility is an argument employed against the existence of A, then yeah, your premise deserves examination.  As it is, you're merely pointing to a possible (even probable) process flaw in extraordinary rendition -- not an argument against torture per se.  So I say again: do you know that torture universally produces bad information?  And what of your other claims on torture's efficacy?

Sure, and they weren't obtained by torturing people.

You miss the point.  If you're going to argue that torture is uniquely unreliable versus other methods in the intel toolkit, you're going to need some evidence.

I'm not even sure the basis of the analogy--it is like saying that we breathe and they breathe.

Well, you're getting it fine, then.

It would be like saying kidnapping innocent people and chopping off their heads for scare value isn't a barbaric tactic--and perhaps is one we should use.

But what's the end achieved, here?  You're missing the ultimate point of the analogy, which is that a focus on process devoid of context is going to skew your conclusions.  Ultimately, your line of argument denies a moral difference between a CIA operative torturing a jihadi suspect for information on terror cells, and a jihadi torturing a captive contractor for an internet snuff flick.  Problem is, there is a difference, and most reasonable people understand it on some level: it lies in the ends each seeks to achieve.

We abdicate our appeal to a 'system of justice' when we turn people over to the systems of places like Egypt.

In that case, as I already wrote, "we refine [the practice] so as to minimize the incidents of that injustice."  These are process arguments, not moral ones.

If an innocent man can be sent off for torture AT THE START of Bush's reimplementation of the practice--at a time when you would expect people to be the very most careful....

In all honesty, the beginning is when I'd expect the most screwups to occur.

The practice is too tempting and too out-of-sight-out-of-mind to be controlled properly.

It may be so.  Certainly there is evidence we can supervise it vastly better in many cases.  However, at this point you are arguing against merely this one particular implementation of the practice rather than torture or extraordinary rendition as concepts.

You miss the point.  If you're going to argue that torture is uniquely unreliable versus other methods in the intel toolkit, you're going to need some evidence.

Nope, I don't think so.  I argue that torture is almost never defensible.  Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps in the most crazy of situations.  If you want to routinely use it I think it is morally your place to show that it is better than other method in terms of getting useful and reliable information.  I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt on all sorts of intel techniques.  You don't get the benefit of the doubt on torture.  You especially don't get the benefit of the doubt on torture when it appears that the administration can't take normal steps to sort people like Arar from actual terrorists.  

You're missing the ultimate point of the analogy, which is that a focus on process devoid of context is going to skew your conclusions.

I'm not focusing devoid of context.  I'm focusing in the context of a war against terrorist entities which includes a very difficult problem of sorting people who are terrorists from those who are not.  The terrorists don't wear uniforms.  It isn't easy to be sure you are torturing the right person.  Hell, a huge percentage of the time, we seem to be picking people purely on name similarity.  That damn well isn't good enough for me.  This is not the ticking bomb scenario.  What context are you talking about?

In that case, as I already wrote, "we refine [the practice] so as to minimize the incidents of that injustice."  These are process arguments, not moral ones.

A legitimate process argument would involve legalizing torture in specific instances and conducting them here.  The whole point of shipping the accused off to other countries is that following our process won't let us torture them.  The whole point of extraordinary rendition is to avoid the proper process.  The whole point is to avoid the safeguards.  Once we send someone off to Egypt--the whole point is that our process is not in control.  

In all honesty, the beginning is when I'd expect the most screwups to occur.

I don't.  Maybe I'm too honest, but if I were going to push the edge of the law and send someone off to be tortured, I'd make damn sure it was the right person before I did so.  Far more so the first time--when I was still feeling guilty about it--than the 50th time when it has become routine.  

Certainly there is evidence we can supervise it vastly better in many cases.  However, at this point you are arguing against merely this one particular implementation of the practice rather than torture or extraordinary rendition as concepts.

See above on why the process argument fails.  

ok, good now we are getting somewhere.

so you'd put the onus on the torturer - they get the wrong guy, they go down.  an interesting concept which i might actually agree with.

now, if they got the right guy and stopped the nuke, we agree they did the right thing.

next question is, where is the cutoff in severity of consequences where you would vote to convict even if they got the right guy?

if they were about to blow up a marine convoy?

a jetliner?

a single US soldier?

a single innocent civilian?

-wc

Innocent until proven guilty in court is a right that should belong to citizens, not aliens captured by the military abroad.

If they belong to the country where the operations are taking place then they could be presumed civilians, but if they are subjects of a third country the burden of proof should be on them to prove that they are not illegal combatants. Even if they are innocent they should still be returned to their homelands.  

I don't think we are talking about the rendition of Iraqis to Uzbekistan, are we?  Transportation to a third country is not a good thing.

Sure, it would be better if Egypt were a democracy, but as long as the Egyptians are going to be torturing their own people, why shouldn't we have access to the product?

None of those you listed--I'm closest on the Marine convoy.  

ok, I totally respect that.

to me, terrorists are fair game, especially if it means the life of even a single american soldier or civilian.  the trick, of course, is knowing that you have a terrorist and not an innocent.  

im not sure how to solve that part.

what if it was a family member?

even for a single soldier - could you really justify to yourself after the fact that this poor guy got beheaded because you didnt want to sick the dogs on one of the perps?

that would haunt me, I think

wc

Sebastian and Moe Lane make the points I would have; I'll add only the following:

a.  Torture has a well-established dictionary definition which, in lieu of the sudden appearance of an international law expert, we should assume applies to this discussion.  Torture is the "[i]nfliction of severe physical pain as a means of punishment or coercion."  Note that mental anguish is not included.  We are also not talking about banning interrogation, misdirection, or persuasion.  It may be stupid or immoral to commit certain acts that are less-than-torture -- or not -- but that's not the issue at the moment.

Incidentally, see how far from ordinary dictionary definitions Yoo, Bybee, and Gonzales strayed in the so-called "torture memorandum."

b.  We are not talking about the ticking time bomb situation.  We are talking about laying down rules for CIA operatives, GIs and our government to follow generally.  Trust that, in an exceptional situation, an exception to any rule we create will exist.  

c.  It seems utterly and completely backward to place the burden on those who oppose torture to establish that torture lacks utility or is unlikely to deliver useful information.  Mind you, abundant evidence of both exists.  But the burden is not on we who oppose torture to show that the last two hundred-plus years of history, the treaties our government has chosen to be bound by, and its very laws are legitimate.  Nor, as a matter of logic, do we require proof of a negative.  The burden is on those who would seek to change all that -- the burden is on those who seek to legalize torture to show that it's worthwhile.

We may someday be in a much worse fight than now.

We were in fights much more desperate than this one.  See, World War II.  See, the Cold War.  See, the Civil War.  And, yet, we did not stoop so low as many propose that we do here.

(Does that mean no one was tortured?  Of course not.  But it was not legitimized, as folks are seeking here.)

 I am "against" torture -- but of the physical, not phsycological kinds.  I favor tough interrogations.  Stanford Magazine had a good story on it about Afghanistan.  But today, "Stop Torture" means no serious interrogation.

The world has been developing a huge double standard -- the US is supposed to be perfect, and if not, it's terrible, but the rest of the world gets a pass. When US prisons include many stories of rape, and other abuses, I am NOT going to condemn the US military in a war zone, getting mortared almost daily, for being a little too rough.

Yes, Abu was a "little" too rough -- relative to real beheadings the insurgent death squad types carry out, as policy.  And Abu abusers ARE getting punished, and a Gen. was relieved of command.  (Over a year ago.)

Part of torture is intimidation, so that others "co operate" and do as they're told without torture.  The anti-Iraqi death squaders did this, rather effectively, in Fallujah after April 2004.

The unwillingness of the US folk to use more torture reflects well, by our standards, on the US forces.  With no credit by the Left, only continued "not perfect = terrible!"

I'm not at all certain how it is seen by the Arabs -- I get the feeling that many of them knew the "torture", the abuses, that the Leftist press was saying was so terrible, was far less than what actually occurred under Saddam, or under the death squads -- or what will occur to those we render to other gov'ts (including the new Iraqi gov't.)

By THEIR standards, maybe we were too weak; meaning maybe we aren't serious; meaning maybe we're going to leave, and thus lose, and thus the death squad insurgents will take over.  So ... maybe they think their rational self interest is to act enough in support of the death squads to be left alone, since the Americans won't do much, anyway.

The Sunni Arab support for the death squads is why they continue to be successful at killing Americans, and at killing those Iraqis trying to work with Americans.  Remember, the US ran out on Vietnam, and let death squads win there -- and the Leftist press cheered this Leftist "victory".

When one can show me evidence that doing no serious interrogation of spy/ death squad/ insurgents produces faster victory, I'll strongly support ending torture, and rendering. (Utilitarian) Right now I suspect the opposite.  In fact, I think if stronger, more "torture" like sleep deprivation interrogations had been used earlier, there would have been fewer attacks, so hundreds more Iraqis would be alive.

Can one honestly say you think weaker interrogations, rather than stronger, would have stopped more attacks and saved more lives?

The Cold War was a struggle waged against a relentless foe (for most of the period) that  threatened to destroy the world (many times over).  And the "hot" wars it provoked -- Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and others -- killed millions.

At least, that was my thinking.

Was that it's not like we gave two toots about torture then.

I've read the original post and the comments (and I'm very happy to have found redstate.org, even as a resident of a blue state), and one thing strikes me.

First, all of the discussions surrounding the morality or immorality or amorality of torture (including the discussion on what is and is not torture) is interesting but ultimately pointless.  Torture is like pornography -- you know it when you see it.

Second, the original post, however, draws our attention to a specific facet of this story that needs to be focused upon: the practice of extraordinary rendition.  And on that subject, I believe all of us not on the moonbat Left can agree.

However we come down on the issue of torture, I think we must agree that either we do it ourselves or don't do it at all.  One of the respondents on this thread had in his/her sig the motto: "Freedom and Responsibility".  The twin philosophical pillars underlying the center-right perspective must be respected in this case as well.

The practice of extraordinary rendition -- sending suspects to other countries whose interrogation techniques are not like our own -- is indeed a sleazy loophole wiggle; I would expect it from the Clinton Administration with its "Depends on what IS is".  But not from the Bush, or any Republican, Administration.

If we are not proud to do it ourselves, then we ought not to do it at all.  Let's not send our "allies" as our henchmen to do our dirty work for us.

People have cited cases like the ticking nuke scenario in defense of torture.  That's fine; and the vast majority of Americans would be okay with torture in such limited cases.  But then we have nothing to hide, and nothing to be ashamed of.  Let our American interrogator engage in the most extreme and vile torture to rescue 10 million American citizens in such a case.

We, as a country working through our legislators, can explicitly authorize "torture" (however defined) in "extraordinary cases" (again, however defined through national dialogue) -- we can start by repealing the laws that prohibit torture by the U.S. government, or creating specific exceptions to the law/policy.  However, as long as our laws prohibit torture, surely we should close the loophole that allows us to ship suspects off to other countries to be tortured.

Either way, I stand firm in my conviction that we should do it ourselves and take responsibility, or not do it at all.

-TS

we have a ways to go to see the impacts of those wrongs of America's.  I dare predict it won't destroy us... but then, weak defense of the same will.  It's not OK because we've survived it.

The problem with torture is that it destroys trust, and can do so for decades if not centuries.

A brother may turn a brother that is making IEDs to save his brother's life and those of potential victims... if he thinks that his brother will be tortured, it's reasonable to assume he will more likely turn the other way, or even see his brother's point by looking at the nature of his brother's adversaries.

That is, it works both ways... we can say, "oh, they do it!  beheadings!" and so can they.  The difference... these tactics help the underground better than the superground.  The mainstream is better off demanding standards of behavior, because we have other tactics available that they do not have.

It's not about being trusted to be liked, but trusted to get things done... to get our way, rather than adopting their ways.

And it ain't pretty.

And while that's the best argument against torture I've seen outside of a religious context, still not sure it holds water. You presume it's better to be feared than loved. I'm not so sure.

I don't think it's feared vs. loved.  Every real idea has opposing ideas, action comes from the interaction.  You can be feared and loved when you have a reputation as a decent person... you'll still have enemies.

There is a lot of talk about being hated for doing the -right- thing, period.  Well, that really is a powerful choice, but you have to actually do the right thing.  What are the benefits?  They are manifold and every morality on earth sings their praises.

I assure you.

Not many would argue that if you had a captured terrorist who, you knew, had information that could save lives, and you could get with torture and save those lives, you shouldn't do it.  Most people would say torture the guy if you know he's got the information.

The obvious huge problem is that one is rarely in this idealized situation, and that torture as a general policy is a very slippery slope.  The U.S. Military report on Abu Ghraib itself said that 90% of the prisoners there were civilians basically caught up in random dragnets, and had nothing to do with terrorism.  Yet, they were abused and tortured--some were even killed-as a matter of general policy.

The problem is always with the innocent (also true with the death penalty).  You simply can't know that the person you are dealing with has definite knowledge of anything.  As a practical matter, far more innocent people are tortured than guilty.

No moral person can therefore approve the policy, period...

according to our own military, weren't terrorists! Yet they were abused, tortured, and some were even killed in spite of it.

You overintellectualize. You posit ideal scenarios that rarely occur in nature and propose grand principles based upon them, such as that we should torture terrorists who have knowledge of impending terrorist attacks that will kill innocent people.

Who could argue with that?

The problem is, this situation almost never occurs in reality!  Instead, what we have are situations like Abu Ghraib, where hundreds of innocent civilians are caught up in random dragnets and then presumed to be terrorists, merely because they were in Abu Ghraib.

Or Afghanistan, where British aid workers are caught up in a dragnet and sent to Guantanamo Bay for two years and abused.

Merely "regrettable?"  Or perhaps "illegal," "immoral" and "reprehensible?"

I stopped reading National Review half-way through college in the 1970's, after having subscribed since the 10th grade.

There is a place for syllogistic thinking, and a time for simple-minded moral judgment.

If you think intercepting innocent Canadians on their way home from vacation and flying them off to Syria for a torture session, without even informing anyone of their whereabouts, is a defensible act for MY government to be performing, then you have a moral defect that no skill with logic can make up for.

and your point (C) is a truly and admirably conservative position.

British aid workers in Afghanistan who are caught up in a U.S. Military dragnet, sent to Gitmo for two years and tortured as a matter of procedure, and then finally released to Great Britain because they are finally determined to be innocent?

Like the three Brits we just sent home?

probably sodium pentathol (sp?) would be vastly preferable to electric shocks, vicious dogs, and outright murder of innocent people.

But I think they determined some time ago that s.p. wasn't any more effective at getting good info than conventional torture...

morally, diplomatically, religiously, and as a practical matter.

If we were having a high school debate about theoretical justifications for torture in highly idealized circumstances, I might expect to see arguments in favor similar to the ones I find here.

The fact that we are actually now intercepting innocent Canadians and sending them off to Syria for torture without anyone's knowledge is absolutely mind-boggling (to say nothing of Abu Ghraib and Gitmo).

I, for one, applaud your courage.

Speaking of pornography - since when is lap-dancing torture?

I thought that there was still two interrogation techniques left that was permissible - "Pretty Please" and "I will tell your mother" - until my daughter reminded me that first we must find out if the terrorist has a mother.

How long can an army retain prisoners captured on the battlefield?

Some people think we should turn them loose within weeks.

I thought you held on to them until the war ended. The world is not the same as during the Revolutionary War where a prisoner would be offered release if he gave his parole not to take up arms again.

How many battlefield captives do you think we could trust to keep such a promise in the world we live in today?