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CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach torture techniques

theguardian.com

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Re: CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach torture techniques

#111

Post by ZoomZoomZoom »

ALittleLight wrote: post #96
rendall wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it possible for you to construct a scenario where torture is morally acceptable? Yes, it's possible to concoct a fictional scenario whereby torturing one person saves millions of lives. Heck, why not a more plausible scenario where torturing someone saves 2 lives. But it's a non-sequitur: a true statement that is irrelevant. I won't argue this well, especially not well enough to convince someone for whom "tortur…

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy discusses a real case where a car thief stole a car with a child in the backseat. The car thief had abandoned the car somewhere, and, as it was summer and daytime, the child was going to cook to death in the car. The police detain the thief and ask him where the car and child is, they offer to reduce his charges, and he denies it was him though they have him on video stealing t…

>Would you say the police did anything wrong?

Yes? They beat the man.

Re: CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach torture techniques

#112

Post by nonrandomstring »

deutschew wrote: post #98
mrtksn wrote: post #11

This is the kind of stuff that probably makes some people’s job down the pipe easier and at the same time undermines the Western civilization. Make no mistake, no US citizen outside of the political class benefits from this or other atrocities. The exact same goes for the surveillance programs. Losing the moral high ground degrades the whole society. The whole anti establishment movement rallies around stuff like thi…

> Losing the moral high ground degrades the whole society. There never was any moral high ground, the establishment were successful at making people FEEL as such. We are quick to point fingers at Nazis, Terrorists, Enemies yet the Western perspective is always 'we can do know wrong, if we did, its justified' which is exactly what the opposing side does. Once a subtle reminder that many supported Nazi ideals early in…

> There never was any moral high ground, the establishment were successful at making people FEEL as such.

I understand what you're trying to say with respect to dirty hands, and not wilfully misunderstanding you.

But, wrong. There _was_ a moral high ground. It subsisted within the group of people you claim were duped. Those were and always will be the people who count, who hold the _normative_ values of a society. What they "feel" is American Values (more broadly "western ones").

The "establishment" you mention were the bad guys, and remain so. To the extent they spit on normative values then claims refuge in the necessity of dirty hands, they are unsoldierly and they play into the hands of the enemy who seeks to divide us and undermine our values. They may was well be KGB/FSB agents in our midst.

Re: CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach torture techniques

#113

Post by newuser94303 »

ALittleLight wrote: post #96
rendall wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it possible for you to construct a scenario where torture is morally acceptable? Yes, it's possible to concoct a fictional scenario whereby torturing one person saves millions of lives. Heck, why not a more plausible scenario where torturing someone saves 2 lives. But it's a non-sequitur: a true statement that is irrelevant. I won't argue this well, especially not well enough to convince someone for whom "tortur…

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy discusses a real case where a car thief stole a car with a child in the backseat. The car thief had abandoned the car somewhere, and, as it was summer and daytime, the child was going to cook to death in the car. The police detain the thief and ask him where the car and child is, they offer to reduce his charges, and he denies it was him though they have him on video stealing t…

As long as the police are willing to face a jury for their crimes, it is fine. A jury will probably let them off but the police can not be judge and jury because the line keeps moving.

Re: CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach torture techniques

#114

Post by michaelt »

jonnybgood wrote: post #15
bogantech wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No president is going to do anything about it because the intelligence agencies almost certainly have blackmail material on them all

How does that work exactly? CIA: If you don’t let us torture people just because then we’ll make a scandal of you. President: Oh no. I guess I have to let you. I have no power whatsoever. Can’t get the FBI on it, because they’re blackmailing me too! The US government and intelligence agencies is not like what you see in the movies.

Presumably bogantech is thinking of the likes of J. Edgar Hoover - who had his federal agency spy on political leaders, and "amassed a great deal of power and was in a position to intimidate and threaten others, including multiple sitting presidents of the United States." according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Edgar_Hoover

Re: CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach torture techniques

#115

Post by a2800276 »

ALittleLight wrote: post #96
rendall wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it possible for you to construct a scenario where torture is morally acceptable? Yes, it's possible to concoct a fictional scenario whereby torturing one person saves millions of lives. Heck, why not a more plausible scenario where torturing someone saves 2 lives. But it's a non-sequitur: a true statement that is irrelevant. I won't argue this well, especially not well enough to convince someone for whom "tortur…

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy discusses a real case where a car thief stole a car with a child in the backseat. The car thief had abandoned the car somewhere, and, as it was summer and daytime, the child was going to cook to death in the car. The police detain the thief and ask him where the car and child is, they offer to reduce his charges, and he denies it was him though they have him on video stealing t…

Ok, I'll bite:

> Would you say the police did anything wrong?

Yes, obviously. At the very least, they very obviously broke a law. They should file charges against themselves. The legal system is not absolute and a court / jury can decide about extenuating circumstances.

I can think of few laws that don't allow me to construct some extremely hare-brained counterexample where it might be morally justified to break them.

Re: CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach torture techniques

#116

Post by throwaway894345 »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #92
throwaway894345 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely agree about leading from the moral high ground. It's been frustrating talking with ordinary Russians who are reluctant to condemn (even anonymously) that their invasion of Ukraine (including the targeted murder of civilians) is an atrocity because the US invaded Iraq under false pretenses and without UN approval. Of course, it's a significant error of degree to conflate these anomalies in US behavior wit…

> Of course, it's a significant error of degree to conflate these anomalies in US behavior with the standard behavior of Russia or China or whomever, Why so? Perhaps for Iraq you've forgot about the fact that VP Cheney's former company made significant gains from that lie? The idea that one side's lies and unjustified violence are better than the other side's is why the wars and hypocrisy continue. Either we - the on…

> The idea that one side's lies and unjustified violence are better than the other side's is why the wars and hypocrisy continue.

First of all, I'm advocating for American behavior to remain beyond reproach and I favor prosecuting the American officials who misled the American public in the case of the Iraq war.

That said, I heartily reject the binary categorization between unblemished and blemished countries because all countries fall into the latter group. Of course there are differences in the quantity and degree of lying and unjustified violence that your scheme glosses over--the idea that no country is better than say, Nazi Germany or Stalin's Russia or Maoist China serves only gives rhetorical cover to the worst offenders/offenses: "who is Canada to criticize Nazi Germany considering its track record of unjustified violence against its own native population?". This is the worst kind of race-to-the bottom rhetoric.

Re: CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach torture techniques

#117

Post by dash2 »

jMyles wrote: post #18

Holy shit. This is nauseating. Why do we tolerate the existence of the US state anymore? What's the point of any of this? I _hate_ the feeling of the smacking the back of my head. And they did it, against a plywood wall, by gripping a towel wrapped around his neck and slamming him into it, for two hours at a time, just to 'train' people. Everyone involved - perpetrators and victims - needs therapy and rehabilitation.…

I think the perpetrators need to be tried, found guilty and put in jail. Then they can apologize if they want.

Re: CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach torture techniques

#118

Post by FpUser »

ALittleLight wrote: post #96
rendall wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it possible for you to construct a scenario where torture is morally acceptable? Yes, it's possible to concoct a fictional scenario whereby torturing one person saves millions of lives. Heck, why not a more plausible scenario where torturing someone saves 2 lives. But it's a non-sequitur: a true statement that is irrelevant. I won't argue this well, especially not well enough to convince someone for whom "tortur…

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy discusses a real case where a car thief stole a car with a child in the backseat. The car thief had abandoned the car somewhere, and, as it was summer and daytime, the child was going to cook to death in the car. The police detain the thief and ask him where the car and child is, they offer to reduce his charges, and he denies it was him though they have him on video stealing t…

This is very different and clear cut case. I will leave it to legal scholars to debate whether the police was justified. Trying to compare this to a case when the guy is being tortured for training purposes is sick.

In theory since the case is so trivial they could be convicted and immediately given complete presidential pardon with clean record or whatever is the equivalent.

Or jury nullification can be used. There would be no way I as a juror would declare them guilty.

Re: CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach torture techniques

#119

Post by belorn »

ALittleLight wrote: post #99
belorn wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you know with certainty that the person knows the location of the bomb then you also know where the bomb is located. It the same issue when the police and prosecutor know all facts with certainty. At this point you don't need a court, a judge or a jury. In an artificial system where everything is know with perfect certainty you don't even need police and prosecutors, just a method to punish the guilty. A legal sys…

Would you torture a person if you were 90% sure they knew about the dirty bomb?

How would you know its 90% certainty? Even attempting to measuring certainty has an uncertainty factor in it.

We know with some uncertainty the murder rate each year, and from this we have some measurable number that a person might be murdered. But we also know that murders tend to occur in non-random ways. At what murder rate should we start to arrest people at random?

They are fun thoughts experiments, but as guides for real life they work about as good as extreme simulations which removes mass, gravity and air friction.

Re: CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach torture techniques

#120

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

mrtksn wrote: post #11

This is the kind of stuff that probably makes some people’s job down the pipe easier and at the same time undermines the Western civilization. Make no mistake, no US citizen outside of the political class benefits from this or other atrocities. The exact same goes for the surveillance programs. Losing the moral high ground degrades the whole society. The whole anti establishment movement rallies around stuff like thi…

What I found particularly depressing that all this was done with an explicit purpose of obtaining a cert. In terms of human level absurdity, I could only think of Brazil movie. It is both ridiculous and absolutely believable.

I agree that the cost of moral high ground is a great loss to the society as a whole. We may never be able to recover from this. Guantanamo Bay is part of normal conversation and barely raises an eyebrow. Without going into details, my boss's kid recently said his dad drone strikes people ( he does nothing of the sort ).

This is the new normal.

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