The Al-Qaeda Leader Who Wasn’t: The Shameful Ordeal of Abu Zubaydah • Hacker News Board

Re: The Al-Qaeda Leader Who Wasn’t: The Shameful Ordeal of Abu Zubaydah

#141

Post by lvs » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 6:00 PM UTC

1024core wrote: post #61

The sad part is: despite reading this article and fully agreeing with it, conservatives in this country will just shrug and say: mistakes happen, let's not dwell on it. And they feel justified in taking this view because they know deep down that it would never happen to a white person in today's US. Case in point: John Walker Lindh -vs- Jose Padilla. JWL (a white guy) was actually fighting against the Americans; was…

Obama, for his part, also committed not to pursue any prosecutions for the misdeeds of his predecessor's administration.

Re: The Al-Qaeda Leader Who Wasn’t: The Shameful Ordeal of Abu Zubaydah

#142

Post by Aelinsaar » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 6:02 PM UTC

iandanforth wrote: post #135

overcast wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it didn't deliver results, because none of it was true. So how could the guy give up any information that didn't exist?

Imagine you had a scale, onto which you put a weight labeled "100kg". You know it weights 100kg because it says so right there. The scale however, only registers 85kg. You take it off, you put it back on, the scale always says the same thing. You try different scales, they say 85kg, but you keep going because it's 100kg and you're going to find a scale that's accurate! Eventually you find a scale that says what you w…

It's more like, you will extract information, but only in hindsight can you ever know if it was worthwhile, accurate, a trap, etc. You will also kill some people, some people won't break easily, and some will babble anything and everything. You won't know which is which in the moment, and usually you're torturing for time-sensitive information.

What you get is what happened during WWII, when the resistances knew they just had to withstand torture for 24 hours, 48 at most. It's amazing what motivated people can do when they have a goal, and that goes for the tortured as well as the torturers.

Re: The Al-Qaeda Leader Who Wasn’t: The Shameful Ordeal of Abu Zubaydah

#143

Post by npx » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 6:03 PM UTC

I think it's time to confront the reality that we have a serious asshole epidemic in America. It has gone unchecked for a few centuries and it has reached a fever pitch of state sanctioned torture and Donald Trump supporters.

Much like idiots, assholes cannot possibly realize that they are being assholes. It's one of the symptoms. They're actually completely confident that what they're doing makes total sense. It's a touch-and-go sorta thing; how do you openly confront assholery without becoming a huge asshole? I call this the Snowden dilemma. It's a real problem.

We are well past the point of occasionally waking up to find feces on the kitchen table. The majority of this country is subsisting entirely on a diet of pure shit. I don't want to seem elitist - I regard myself as a world class dummy - but I do know what shit tastes like and I understand that eating it is bad for you. I don't have any answers but I think we're in a lot of trouble here.

"Democracy always seems bent upon killing the thing it theoretically loves. [...] It not only wars upon the thing itself; it even wars upon mere academic advocacy of it. I offer the spectacle of Americans jailed for reading the Bill of Rights as perhaps the most gaudily humorous ever witnessed in the modern world." --H.L. Mencken

Re: The Al-Qaeda Leader Who Wasn’t: The Shameful Ordeal of Abu Zubaydah

#144

Post by Aelinsaar » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 6:03 PM UTC

yuzi wrote: post #112

patrickg_zill wrote: post #41

Before, we were told how tough it was on a person to be waterboarded. That it was so debilitating that it was only used in extreme cases. Now this guy is waterboarded 3 times a day for a month, basically at every meal (if you want to think about it in terms of frequency). It seems clear that it is not rare; and that it doesn't really deliver results. Again and again, we have been lied to about waterboarding, how ofte…

> If waterboarding was a piece of software it would be considered too crashy and unreliable and a replacement that worked better would be sought immediately Only there is no possible replacement so they just continue using the same horrible thing. If there is one thing people are terrible at it's understanding that not doing something is often a viable option.

They think there is a replacement though. They always keep searching for something, but the realities of torture mean they never will. In reality, inevitably, torture is kept hidden anyway, so improvised means and methods because the norm. You couldn't deny soldiers field telephone magnetos for most of the 20th century, which meant you couldn't deny them electroshock torture devices either. Same with rubber hoses, or basins of filthy water.

Re: The Al-Qaeda Leader Who Wasn’t: The Shameful Ordeal of Abu Zubaydah

#145

Post by Aelinsaar » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 6:05 PM UTC

jmnicolas wrote: post #21

This article will not change anything. By the time our day end we will have been bombarded by so much other information that it will just be one more forgotten thing. And there's so much things that are revolting that our brains are just shutting down as a self defense mechanism. Sociopaths in power don't even need to hide anymore, they know they are hidden in the noise. I mean look at Turkey : they help ISIS, they s…

Pretty much. Of course, all of that stands to change if the quality of life for the people "shutting down" their brains suddenly plummets. Then, magically, you would see people flip out. Short of that, they'll just take the suffering of others as their own possible worst end.

Re: The Al-Qaeda Leader Who Wasn’t: The Shameful Ordeal of Abu Zubaydah

#146

Post by zyxley » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 6:19 PM UTC

blowski wrote: post #98

zyxley wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe torture is morally wrong, but it's easier to point out the practicalities of coercive interrogation (even of a nontorturous kind) producing useless bullshit most of the time. Also, your hypothetical is absurdly biased in favor of torture, given that any real information retrieved would be a needle in the haystack of the aforementioned useless bullshit.

The problem with debating it on a practical level is that it sounds like you're haggling over what kind of ends are required to justify the means. Even if it were 100% effective - every person tortured did exactly what the torturer wanted - it would still be unjustifiable because it is so morally repugnant.

Part of my point is that there will literally never be an end that justifies the means with torture, because torture factually does not and will never return any kind of reliable information.

Trying to stress the point with weird hypotheticals just emphasizes that the weird hypotheticals don't reflect the facts of what results torture gives.

Re: The Al-Qaeda Leader Who Wasn’t: The Shameful Ordeal of Abu Zubaydah

#147

Post by woodman » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 6:20 PM UTC

rjett wrote: post #129

As a free member of the western world, happily able to pursue "the dream," and unexposed to the direct effects of war and humanitarian crimes, what am I to do? If you think about it, the domestic conditions in the US, relative to many of the places in the non-western world, are such that we have no incentive to ACTUALLY do anything to change things for the better. Sure, we get upset about reading articles like this.…

So here is a false choice, but consider which one would have a greater and longer lasting impact:

A) You dash to the rolltop and feverishly write letters to every politician you can think of. You then get on a bus with a bunch of other upset people, go to DC and wave signs with clever catch phrases. You then live in a tent on public space for several weeks.

B) You consider this information, your feelings, and your prior model of the way the world worked. Methodically you reexamine long unchallenged precepts related to morality, the role of the state, and the logical consistency of the entire endeavor. After a while you find that things make a lot more sense, you are no longer experience the effects of cognitive dissonance when new information hits your brain. You share this new understanding, through example (maybe by pestering strangers online, either or).

Clearly I favor option B, but one could easily deride it as slacktivism - though the self reflection is not something you often see in #Kony2012. Every example of positive change that I can think, involved marching and rhyming slogans, would not have been possible without a great deal of uncomfortable self examination.

Re: The Al-Qaeda Leader Who Wasn’t: The Shameful Ordeal of Abu Zubaydah

#148

Post by shostack » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 6:25 PM UTC

fucking_tragedy wrote: post #65

patrickg_zill wrote: post #41

Before, we were told how tough it was on a person to be waterboarded. That it was so debilitating that it was only used in extreme cases. Now this guy is waterboarded 3 times a day for a month, basically at every meal (if you want to think about it in terms of frequency). It seems clear that it is not rare; and that it doesn't really deliver results. Again and again, we have been lied to about waterboarding, how ofte…

If your goal is to utterly break and dehumanize a person until they're rendered psychotic, incontinent, incapable of human interaction or ever being able to take care of themselves again, this is how you accomplish it. We handled interrogations with Nazis better. We showed them respect and they gave us valuable information. It leads me to believe intelligence wasn't the main motivator for the continued torture of the…

"If your goal is to utterly break and dehumanize a person until they're rendered psychotic, incontinent, incapable of human interaction or ever being able to take care of themselves again, this is how you accomplish it."

Not to mention make them more pliable and potentially willing to give a false testimony just to make it end. Not that false testimonies have ever been tortured out of people by governments before.

Re: The Al-Qaeda Leader Who Wasn’t: The Shameful Ordeal of Abu Zubaydah

#149

Post by blowski » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 6:50 PM UTC

zyxley wrote: post #146

blowski wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with debating it on a practical level is that it sounds like you're haggling over what kind of ends are required to justify the means. Even if it were 100% effective - every person tortured did exactly what the torturer wanted - it would still be unjustifiable because it is so morally repugnant.

Part of my point is that there will literally never be an end that justifies the means with torture, because torture factually does not and will never return any kind of reliable information. Trying to stress the point with weird hypotheticals just emphasizes that the weird hypotheticals don't reflect the facts of what results torture gives.

I imagine that if you torture 1000 of your enemies you will get at least some useful information from them. Sure, they will also give you a lot of rubbish and you'll struggle to know what's true and what's made up. But that 1% nugget of truth is what the Donald Trumps of this world use to justify torture.

I imagine for the head of the CIA or Mossad or MI5, these aren't weird hypotheticals but real decisions. We need to tell them as a society that we do not accept torture, whatever results it would bring.

Re: The Al-Qaeda Leader Who Wasn’t: The Shameful Ordeal of Abu Zubaydah

#150

Post by titzer » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 6:53 PM UTC

npx wrote: post #143

I think it's time to confront the reality that we have a serious asshole epidemic in America. It has gone unchecked for a few centuries and it has reached a fever pitch of state sanctioned torture and Donald Trump supporters. Much like idiots, assholes cannot possibly realize that they are being assholes. It's one of the symptoms. They're actually completely confident that what they're doing makes total sense. It's a…

I don' think there's a magic bullet to asshattery. There has to be a cultural shift away from asshattery as acceptable behavior. The same way there has been a cultural shift away from domestic abuse and racism being acceptable (though they both have their stragglers).

The problem is that the diet of pure shit serves a purpose. It keeps people both agitated and docile at the same time. The kind of agitated and docile you would recognize in a cranky 80 yr man who shouts at clouds. Angry and uncomfortable, but ultimately harmless; miles away from taking an AK-47 and marching on Washington, and ultimately willing to pull the lever for the blue or red party, or best, not vote at all.