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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

#351

Post by CyanBird »

dc-programmer wrote: post #327
cheeze wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's totally okay to get political about COVID and deny, deny, deny here. Such an odd cross section of libertarian "freedom above all else" people and legitimately smart technical folks. I like the technical part, the "this is binary and I believe in freedom above all else" cohort turns me off pretty hard though.

Anything short of libertarian anarchy is a dystopia to these folks. You would actually think that people with a “rationalist” bias would care more about outcomes than elevating deontological ideals above all else but I guess not

"Outcomes"?

I am sorry, what "outcomes"?

Only outcome I see here is the hegemony of the planet abusing brown people simply because it suspected that they could have been dangerous at some point in the past so it tortures them to try and prove how "dangerous" they truly where, but ofc bc torture doesn't even work these poor sods end up with all sorts of health problems or brain damage in this case, and the cia ends up with a notebook full of lies, extracted under torture with which they will use to bomb the shit outta more poor brown people elsewhere

Yeah... "outcomes"

> “Ammar fabricated the information he provided when undergoing EITs,” it said. “He later admitted to his interrogators/debriefers that he was terrified and lied to get agency officers to stop the measures … Ammar also explained that he was afraid to tell a lie and was afraid to tell the truth because he did not know how either would be received.”

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

#353

Post by worik »

naniwaduni wrote: post #271
worik wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

War is not an extension of "diplomacy by other means". War is a crime. The war crimes I listed were a catastrophe for everybody connected.

The idea that war is a crime at the international scale is underpinned by the threat of war, just as the idea that murder is a crime at the personal scale is underpinned by the threat of murder. We fully intentionally put a lot of steps in between because it turns out that dying sucks a lot,[citation needed] but the fact that they stand between radical disruption of quality, er, quantity of life is what gives those s…

No.

Diplomacy is not crime.

Try living in a small country!

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

#354

Post by [deleted] »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #81
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.

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…

[deleted]

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

#355

Post by endominus »

ALittleLight wrote: post #141
a2800276 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>It's not obviously wrong to break a law to save a child's life though.

I don't think that's a fair interpretation of what was said. The claim made was that they broke the law, which is wrong to do on deontological grounds, especially for the institution tasked by society with enforcing the law. They may be justified by utilitarian ethics, but a police department setting the precedent of "if we believe the need is great enough, we are free to ignore the law" is both wrong and illegal. That's the fundamental principle at stake here - the same base argument that leads governments to suspend civil rights for the sake of security. "It is terrible for these people to die, so we need more power to prevent it." A ratcheting system that cedes ever more ground to autocratic forces. It's not like this process has been particularly hidden from us; there are many here who remember the US before the PATRIOT Act was put in place, after all.

The cost of not beating this thief might have been a child's death. The cost of beating him is instilling a norm that police have the right to beat prisoners. And because the change in societal norms is so slow, and the grief of a dead child so sudden, this always seems like a good trade. You would be a monster for saying that the rights of a car thief are worth a dead child. Until police prisoners have no rights. Until political prisoners have no rights. Until people have no rights.

End-to-end encryption is evil! Only a criminal would want to hide their activities from the police! A social credit system rewards pro-social activity and prevents instability! This state of emergency is only temporary - life will return to normal very soon! A surveillance state is much safer than a free one. As long as you have no issue with the state.

The civil rights we benefit from are measured in the blood of innocents. As cold-hearted as it is to say, if we are not willing to allow innocent people to die to protect civil rights, we will not have them for long.

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

#356

Post by CyanBird »

anon_2022 wrote: post #245

Making the post as anon. I fully support the CIA to use torture even on US Citizens. If you're caught planning a terror attack or something similar that could cause mass loss of life, torture is a reasonable last resort to extract information from a suspect

Sure, but this guy wasn't caught planning anything, he was just a rando family member and as the article mentions the cia itself already assessed that was the case, that he wasn't a danger

Yet they decided to use him as a training dummy anyway, why? Because the cia is just fucking evil and it ought have been disbanded in the 1960s with JFK

Anyhow, what I just wish is that more world powers had their own CIAs and dedicated themselves to hunt down and kill US cia agents as needed to defend their national sovereignty and population

The US doesn't understand anything but violence, I just wish there were more tools to deter the US from using it, forcing it to a dialogue table, terrorist country.

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

#357

Post by dragonwriter »

endominus wrote: post #355
ALittleLight wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>It's not obviously wrong to break a law to save a child's life though. I don't think that's a fair interpretation of what was said. The claim made was that they broke the law , which is wrong to do on deontological grounds, especially for the institution tasked by society with enforcing the law. They may be justified by utilitarian ethics, but a police department setting the precedent of "if we believe the need is g…

> The claim made was that they broke the law, which is wrong to do on deontological grounds

That...depends on your chosen deontological framework. In deontological ethics some acts are morally obligatory (or prohibited) independent of their effects on human welfare, but which acts are obligatory or prohibited depends on the deontological framework selected.

You could select a deontological framework where “obedience to the letter of the law” is always morally obligatory, but I think most people who subscribe to deontological ethics would nonetheless reject that framework.

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

#358

Post by LadyCailin »

cryptonector wrote: post #325
lesuorac wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With The View calling for Tucker Carlson to be tried for treason by a military tribunal Isn't that the exact opposite of disappearing? I think the examples you're looking for are DHS hotel/detention centers [1] and Chicago's hidden detention centers [2]. [1]: https://abcnews.go.com/Business/marriott-choice-hotels-serve... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homan_Square_facility

> Isn't that the exact opposite of disappearing? Asking for a civilian to be tried for treason by a military tribunal for saying... the same things that a government official has said, but in a way that makes the government look bad, is the same thing as abandoning the rule of law. We've only ever done such things during the Civil War, and even then Lincoln only suspended Habeas Corpus in limited places as needed. An…

Why is a military tribunal so bad? And if they’re bad, why are they used for military personnel? I can’t recall anything in the constitution suggesting that military personnel are exempted from having constitutional rights.

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

#359

Post by cryptonector »

nkmnz wrote: post #350
cryptonector wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a very small step from this to disappearing and torturing dissidents at home. With The View calling for Tucker Carlson to be tried for treason by a military tribunal, I think we're approaching that point. Then when we get there and someone disappears (say, a colleague, a friend of a friend), some will think and even say "they must have done something". How do I know? Because that is what happened in Argentina du…

> So, yes, these things very much can happen here in the U.S., and in Canada, and in the UK, and in France and Germany and Spain and Italy and Netherlands and Belgium and Norway and Sweden and so on. These things not only „can happen“, they happened in the not too distant past - much less than a generation ago: 1. There is strong evidence that the CIA ran - and maybe still runs - black sites across Europe used to kid…

Yes, and "those people probably did something" :(

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

#360

Post by cryptonector »

LadyCailin wrote: post #358
cryptonector wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't that the exact opposite of disappearing? Asking for a civilian to be tried for treason by a military tribunal for saying... the same things that a government official has said, but in a way that makes the government look bad, is the same thing as abandoning the rule of law. We've only ever done such things during the Civil War, and even then Lincoln only suspended Habeas Corpus in limited places as needed. An…

Why is a military tribunal so bad? And if they’re bad, why are they used for military personnel? I can’t recall anything in the constitution suggesting that military personnel are exempted from having constitutional rights.

The Constitution specifically provides for Article III courts for civilians. Using military courts for civilians would be a gross violation of the Constitution.

Military tribunals are used for military personnel because that is part of the deal, and our military services are professional (not conscripted). Yes, the UCMJ would apply to conscripts, should we return to conscription, but conscripts would still not be civilians, and most civilians would not be conscripts.

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