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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

#141

Post by ALittleLight »

a2800276 wrote: post #115
ALittleLight wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's not obviously wrong to break a law to save a child's life though. In an extreme example, would you speed to take a dying child to the hospital? I think it would be wrong if you would refuse to (unless you had some calculation that speeding would make you less likely to save the child).

Laws are ethics - they are rules that tell us how to act. Right and wrong are descriptions of morality - which is about good and bad. It's certainly a violation of the clearly established rules to beat a man to save a child, but it's not obviously wrong to do so. I would say it's not wrong at all.

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

#142

Post by ALittleLight »

FpUser wrote: post #118
ALittleLight wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My comment was in response to the "torture = bad" part of the parent comment, not an attempt to justify using detainees to practice your torture techniques.

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

#143

Post by nicholasnorris »

belorn wrote: post #95
adamsmith143 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible for you to construct a scenario where torture is morally acceptable? E.g. you have a virtual certainty that a dirty bomb is going to be detonated in NYC and will kill 1M+ and potentially irradiate the city for decades. Is torturing one person who you know with certainty knows the location of the bomb defensible? Basically, how many lives would you be willing to sacrifice to prevent the suffering of a s…

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…

You know, a lot of times, people think they know things with absolute certainty, but then it turns out that they don't.

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

#144

Post by Semaphor »

yardie wrote: post #20
14 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that but it is considered a war crime to torture from my understanding. So how can we look at Russia and say they are committing war crimes if the US blatantly does things like this. We need to lead on a moral high ground.

Russia is basically stating the justification for the invasion of Ukraine by saying the US did it first in Iraq. The US has already proven how toothless the UN Security Council is and Russia is reinforcing that idea.

Wasn't that the point? That no country inside it could be acted against (veto), as otherwise neither China, Russia, nor the US would have agreed to join?

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

#145

Post by philovivero »

pmarreck wrote: post #37
adamsmith143 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible for you to construct a scenario where torture is morally acceptable? E.g. you have a virtual certainty that a dirty bomb is going to be detonated in NYC and will kill 1M+ and potentially irradiate the city for decades. Is torturing one person who you know with certainty knows the location of the bomb defensible? Basically, how many lives would you be willing to sacrifice to prevent the suffering of a s…

Let’s make it personal. Someone’s kidnapped your 2 year old kid and you know that this person knows where they are.

Yeah. Let's do make it personal. (I'll rephrase another commenter's comment)

If I disassemble you and redistribute your body parts, I could save several people who are in dire need of a heart, some kidneys, some blood.

Should I just go ahead and do this? If not, why not?

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

#146

Post by arcbyte »

Loughla wrote: post #137
dhosek wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a HUGE faction in congress (they go by a name that rhymes with schmepublicans) that would have punished him severely if he had done that. The presidency is not as all-powerful as some people think it is, sometimes this is good, sometimes not so much.

Didn't the republicans stop him at every turn, no matter what, anyway? Seems like he didn't really have anything to lose, so why not just do it?

There was an opportunity for Obama to have a much more effective and bipartisan presidency early on. It wouldn't have been a friendly relationship, but certainly a more effective government. He rammed Obamacare through Congress very early in his presidency and that pretty much removed his ability to do anything else in his first term.

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

#147

Post by tiahura »

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…

Make no mistake, no US citizen outside of the political class benefits from this or other atrocities.

Given that we don’t have all, or even most, of the data, that’s really just emotionally driven speculation.

And maybe I’m being overly nuanced, but I’m beginning to accept that there’s a qualitative difference between distasteful treatment of dozens of people suspected of having information about terrorists, and the systematic persecution of entire populations.

I’m not terribly concerned that China, Russia, or anyone else is going to snatch and torture random nobody like me, and then justify it by pointing to CIA torture of Al Queda.

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

#148

Post by [deleted] »

foxyv wrote: post #133
joncp wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like: "Hey boss, remember JFK? It would be a real shame if something like that happened to you. Or your family."

How long do you think the CIA would remain as a legitimate organization if something like that happened? All it would take is one public statement by a president that CIA had threatened them and the organization would come down like a house of cards. The entire leadership would be in handcuffs and trying to explain away treason to the FBI who would happily hand them over to military intelligence organizations to rend…

[deleted]

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

#150

Post by naoqj »

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.

How does having "the moral high ground" help the lower class of a society?

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