US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program • Hacker News Board

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#361

Post by ahomescu1 » Tue, Dec 09, 2014, 9:10 PM UTC

mark_l_watson wrote: post #216

anigbrowl wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure who said, maybe it was Slavoj Zizek, about how if we are even debating "is torture right or what advantages it might have" we have already lost. It was, and I think his point is borne out in the fact that numerous films and TV shows have depicted torture that would formerly have been the preserve of pure villains to tools available to heroic protagonists in sufficiently urgent circumstances. Never do you see…

I have a family member who was hooked on the TV show "24" which featured torture. I think that it is quite possible that there is some purposeful desensitization going on.

Huge 24 fan here (watched all seasons), I loved the show but that doesn't mean I support torture. I always found the following things ridiculous (and pretty unrealistic):

1) The ridiculous urgency of it, where they're running against the clock to "stop the bomb" or something like that. These kinds of scenarios are highly unlikely in real life, IMHO.

2) That Jack Bauer always got away with all the things he did. AFAIK, he did not spend even a single second inside a US prison (although he did come pretty close a few times).

I always looked at the show as fiction (like a superhero show), not something to be emulated in real life. I really hope most of its viewers looked at it the same way.

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#362

Post by Synaesthesia » Tue, Dec 09, 2014, 9:10 PM UTC

chroma wrote: post #328

It's a shame the report is so partisan. The democrat and republican sides disagree on basic facts, such as whether torture worked in extracting information, and whether that information helped to save lives. Both sides accuse the other of cherry-picking to bolster their cause. Since the primary records are unavailable to us, there's no way to get a more trustworthy opinion on the program. The CIA's behavior is probab…

Firstly, torture doesn't work, but it's not about that.

Violence simply isn't morally legitimate ever, whether it's aggression or as a response to violence (possibly even greater violence).

Whether it's torture, murder, whatever, it doesn't matter. Doing it in the name of war or national security doesn't make a moral difference.

The ticking time bomb thing is just an excuse for this behaviour.

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#363

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Dec 09, 2014, 9:11 PM UTC

woah wrote: post #353

waterlesscloud wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Risk of revenge attacks leading to severe injury and death. People working for the US government overseas. Or just Americans. Or even just westerners in general. Security is heightened, units are on alert worldwide. The risk is real and serious. Remember, radical elements killed people over a silly video on youtube. This is much more inflammatory.

Would this revenge be unjustified?

[deleted]

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#364

Post by waterlesscloud » Tue, Dec 09, 2014, 9:11 PM UTC

woah wrote: post #353

waterlesscloud wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Risk of revenge attacks leading to severe injury and death. People working for the US government overseas. Or just Americans. Or even just westerners in general. Security is heightened, units are on alert worldwide. The risk is real and serious. Remember, radical elements killed people over a silly video on youtube. This is much more inflammatory.

Would this revenge be unjustified?

Absolutely unjustified.

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#365

Post by rayiner » Tue, Dec 09, 2014, 9:15 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #169

leroy_masochist wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say that any of these techniques are "basic/standard", and I used to work in the field. You can get plenty of information out of someone without laying a finger on them. In my opinion the question is the extent to which it's OK to play with people's psychology through isolation and misinformation, while still giving them 3 hots and a cot. The important thing to note here is that you can still damage people…

"Then again, these guys did not get rolled up for signing too loud in church. They have valuable intel in their heads." Why does terrorism frighten people so much that they're willing to throw away basic principles like "innocent until proven guilty"? Honest question. I see comment after comment after comment in this thread that indicates the commenters are unbelievably frightened of terrorism, to the extent that the…

The intelligent people who support the government actions aren't afraid of specific terrorist acts. They're afraid of what a failure to stop terrorist movements could lead to. I imagine there were a lot of people sitting in the cafes of Rome who said: "I can't believe you think those germanic barbarians could possibly ever pose a threat to us!"

And of course, it doesn't help that the folks who are captured are mostly objectively bad people. There are some people who can muster a lot of moral outrage for the rights of bad people, and there are ones who can't. This isn't a new phenomenon.

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#366

Post by tinalumfoil » Tue, Dec 09, 2014, 9:17 PM UTC

disposition2 wrote: post #209

sd8f9iu wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"The Republicans have issued a rebuttal. I assume this means they support torture." >"Clapper has issued a rebuttal, claiming that the report isn't neutral. I assume he also supports torture." >"The White House attempted to keep this report from coming out...I assume that the White House supports torture..." Politics is a dirty, complex game. If you treat every news event as black and white like this, you will form…

This is black and white, unless you have no morals. We tortured people and now some people are defending those actions.

Let me ask you this: What if this report came out and said the exact opposite? What would your reaction be if the interrogation techniques were in no way overly brutal, if everything was done to the books, and the information collected saved millions of lives.

I'm going to take a guess and say you'd be very skeptical of the contents. Maybe you'd go so far as to say everything about the document was a lie perpetrated by the Republican party and other supporters of "advanced interrogation techniques".

This is just a prime example of confirmation bias [0]. If a report comes out saying torture has worked, you dismiss it. If a report comes out saying the opposite, you hail it as the only evidence that even matters (obviously I'm exaggerating a bit to make my point, but I'm sure you get the idea).

A very strongly-sided report just became declassified with little insight into any biases that its writers may have. I highly doubt anyone in the government lacks the integrity to put out a completely fake report of this caliber, but everyone should be looking at this with at least a little cynicism.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#367

Post by Confusion » Tue, Dec 09, 2014, 9:18 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #130

rdtsc wrote: post #25

> Interrogation techniques such as slaps and "wallings" (slamming detainees against a wall) were used in combination, frequently concurrent with sleep deprivation and nudity. Records do not support CIA representations that the CIA initially used an "an open, non-threatening approach," or that interrogations began with the "least coercive technique possible" and escalated to more coercive techniques only as necessary.…

Not sure who said, maybe it was Slavoj Zizek, about how if we are even debating "is torture right or what advantages it might have" we have already lost. It was, and I think his point is borne out in the fact that numerous films and TV shows have depicted torture that would formerly have been the preserve of pure villains to tools available to heroic protagonists in sufficiently urgent circumstances. Never do you see…

A relevant recent article, arguing basically that, from 3AM magazine: Saying no to Jack Bauer mainstreaming torture [1].

Google cache as 3AM magazine seems to have some troubles at the moment[2]

[1] http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/saying-no-to-jack-bauer-mains...

[2] https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.3a...

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#368

Post by bediger4000 » Tue, Dec 09, 2014, 9:20 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #220

lotharbot wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understand (from talking to now very old Japanese-American men who were in the camps as young adults) it was unpleasant and caused significant hardship, but not even remotely similar to what's in this report. It's important to teach about what happened in those camps and to understand why they were wrong. Drawing inappropriate comparisons between those camps and the absolute atrocities in this report isn'…

The difference, of course, is that those in the internment camps were Americans, while most of these guys are terrorists captured on the battlefield. I do think the comparison is inappropriate, but internment was the atrocity, not this.

More legal argument. Given that the current US legal system doesn't apparently protect me, a US citizen, from administrative assassination, I'm worried that I can be administratively shipped off for torture.

That is: the actions outlined in this summary of a report, and in other tacit admissions by US elected leaders, go way beyond arguing that the actions are "legal" or "illegal". The actions outlined in the summary speak to a government that does not care about most human beings at all.

All of morality is not contained within the law. Segregation was legal for a while. Apartheid was legal for a while.

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#369

Post by harryh » Tue, Dec 09, 2014, 9:21 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #231

leroy_masochist wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why does terrorism frighten people so much that they're willing to throw away basic principles like "innocent until proven guilty"? Great question, and one we should always keep in mind. The death toll from terrorism on US soil since 9/11 is indeed very low. That said, the people plotting against us are intelligent and adaptive and wish to do us harm. If they succeed, they might destroy the free society which we've…

Remember the Cold War, when the threat wasn't that someone might figure out a way to smuggle a small weapon into NYC, but that we'd have fifteen minutes' warning before NYC was subject to multiple megaton-class detonations, along with every other major city in the country? There isn't even any evidence that the threat of nuclear terrorism is credible. Nukes aren't something you pick up at the local Safeway on your wa…

What do you mean we weren't having debates like this then?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#370

Post by mikeash » Tue, Dec 09, 2014, 9:22 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #365

mikeash wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Then again, these guys did not get rolled up for signing too loud in church. They have valuable intel in their heads." Why does terrorism frighten people so much that they're willing to throw away basic principles like "innocent until proven guilty"? Honest question. I see comment after comment after comment in this thread that indicates the commenters are unbelievably frightened of terrorism, to the extent that the…

The intelligent people who support the government actions aren't afraid of specific terrorist acts. They're afraid of what a failure to stop terrorist movements could lead to. I imagine there were a lot of people sitting in the cafes of Rome who said: "I can't believe you think those germanic barbarians could possibly ever pose a threat to us!" And of course, it doesn't help that the folks who are captured are mostly…

That really doesn't answer my question at all. I asked why so many people are terrified of terrorism, and all you tell me is that they're afraid of some nebulous future. Well yes, obviously they're afraid of the potential future, as it would be pretty odd if they were afraid of the past. But why does terrorism get so much emphasis compared to other potential dangers?