Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 434 posts

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

#281

Post by Glyptodon »

mywacaday wrote: post #105
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…

Hard to see how the US can claim a moral high ground on anything when it continues to not be a member of the ICC and is even occasionally actively hostile towards individual judges and member countries by threatening sanctions.

Is the ICC subject to the US bill of rights?

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

#282

Post by monocasa »

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…

Yes the police are in the wrong for torturing him. If the thief says nothing and the police find the car with a dead child inside he gets murder charges added to his grand theft auto charges. This is already the established law when a death occurs during the commission of a felony. It's why get away drivers for a bank robbery can be charged as well with the murders that happened at others' hands inside the bank.

You attack the problem with the rule of law, not unleashing your justice system from the reins of lawful behavior whenever they internally deem it convenient.

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

#283

Post by JoeAltmaier »

monocasa wrote: post #282
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…

Yes the police are in the wrong for torturing him. If the thief says nothing and the police find the car with a dead child inside he gets murder charges added to his grand theft auto charges. This is already the established law when a death occurs during the commission of a felony. It's why get away drivers for a bank robbery can be charged as well with the murders that happened at others' hands inside the bank. You…

...says somebody without children?

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

#284

Post by JoeAltmaier »

ZoomZoomZoom wrote: post #111
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…

>Would you say the police did anything wrong? Yes? They beat the man.

...and saved the child. Wouldn't it have been wrong to let a child die?

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

#285

Post by JoeAltmaier »

rendall wrote: post #222
FpUser wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was also tortured in a "regular" way on a basis of being relative. And he is still tortured - what else do you want to call keeping him in for so many years without charges and trial. Any way you spin it it is sick. And what good did it do? Care to share accounts of people saved from an imminent death by torturing this guy?

These kinds of conversations always devolve. "Torture is bad and should be abolished". "Well, what about this other, very contrived situation where it's good?" You can use that non-sequitur to justify literally anything. "Murder, slavery and rape is bad". "Well, what about this situation where it did good?"

That's why law is hard. Even the contrived situations occur.

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

#286

Post by monocasa »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #283
monocasa wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes the police are in the wrong for torturing him. If the thief says nothing and the police find the car with a dead child inside he gets murder charges added to his grand theft auto charges. This is already the established law when a death occurs during the commission of a felony. It's why get away drivers for a bank robbery can be charged as well with the murders that happened at others' hands inside the bank. You…

...says somebody without children?

Literally our entire justice system is built on the idea that the only ethical option is that victims and families of victims don't decide the flow of our justice process, and in fact require anyone who is too close to the victims to recuse themselves.

Turning it around, how would you like if the police tortured your child in a case of mistaken identity? Looking at the members of my high school class who became cops, they weren't exactly known for being the brightest bulbs in the box, but always acted with confidence despite that.

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

#287

Post by freeflight »

mywacaday wrote: post #105
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…

Hard to see how the US can claim a moral high ground on anything when it continues to not be a member of the ICC and is even occasionally actively hostile towards individual judges and member countries by threatening sanctions.

Not just threatening sanctions but actually sanctioning ICC officials [0], and denying ICC investigators visa to hamper their investigations [1].

Which is nowadays commonly handwaved away as the "Embarrassing Trump episode of the US", like it was unprecedented and will never happen again.

But it wasn't Trump who put the responsible ASPA in place, that happened under Bush, and Obama never brought that up as something he disagreed with.

Which is the same dynamic with most of these laws that give more power to the US executive; Both parties keep expanding and enjoying them, it's not seen as a problem because each of them gets their turn to then make use of them.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54003527

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-icc-idUSKCN1QW1ZH

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

#288

Post by dragonwriter »

monocasa wrote: post #286
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...says somebody without children?

Literally our entire justice system is built on the idea that the only ethical option is that victims and families of victims don't decide the flow of our justice process, and in fact require anyone who is too close to the victims to recuse themselves. Turning it around, how would you like if the police tortured your child in a case of mistaken identity? Looking at the members of my high school class who became cops,…

> Literally our entire justice system is built on the idea that the only ethical option is that victims and families of victims don't decide the flow of our justice process

No, it's not, and the divergence between reality and this description is increasing, essentially monotonically, over time, with legal incorporation of “victim’s rights” into the criminal justice process.

That's not to say it shouldn't be as you describe, just that it isn't.

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

#289

Post by freeflight »

teakettle42 wrote: post #139
mywacaday wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to see how the US can claim a moral high ground on anything when it continues to not be a member of the ICC and is even occasionally actively hostile towards individual judges and member countries by threatening sanctions.

I’m glad that my US constitutional rights cannot be abrogated by a supranational judicial system.

They can and have been, you only need to end up with a label like "terrorist" [0] and many of these rights will suddenly make way for national security interests.

[0] https://theintercept.com/2017/01/30/obama-killed-a-16-year-o...

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

#290

Post by dhosek »

arcbyte wrote: post #146
Loughla wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There was good faith negotiation about the plan. It was very close to what the Republican plan was. The problem was that Mitch McConnell stated publicly that he was going to block everything that Obama did. The Republicans blocked stimulus funding. To claim that the failure of bipartisanship was Obama's is to ignore the facts as stated by the Republicans at the time.
Post reply on HN