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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

#41

Post by tryitnow »

adamsmith143 wrote: post #16
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…

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…

Yes, of course, anyone with a decent imagination can do so.

Unfortunately, that has little practical impact.

I can construct a lot of scenarios where I build an amazing startup and become a billionaire seemingly overnight.

Tragically, my bank account balance always seems to ignore the brilliant scenarios my mind comes up with.

Honestly, outside of philosophy departments questions like this aren't terribly useful.

The problem with your question is that ignores the specific circumstances of this case - where there obviously was no dirty bomb, there was no "certainty", there were not one million lives at stake in some definite deterministic sense.

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

#42

Post by ed_balls »

adamsmith143 wrote: post #16
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…

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…

> torture is morally acceptable?

Someone stole the car with the baby inside. Police caught the thief, but there is no car or the baby. There is a heatwave and the baby can last max 2h in the car. The thief panicked and dumped the car somewhere. He is not willing to tell where it is.

Beating him up to get the info is acceptable ethically.

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

#43

Post by spacechild1 »

adamsmith143 wrote: post #16
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…

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…

People keep bringing up these hypothetical thought experiments, but they are just wildly unrealistic. Also, they approach the topic from the wrong end: I shouldn't have to justify not to use torture. The abolishment of torture is a milestone of Western civilization.

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

#44

Post by gmadsen »

adamsmith143 wrote: post #16
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…

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…

for one, the marine general Mattis said he was against torture. Not because of moral issues, but simply because it was ineffective. People will say whatever they think you want to hear to stop being tortured, which then leads to a lot of really bad and false intel

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

#45

Post by whatshisface »

ejstronge wrote: post #33
whatshisface wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A president was recently elected that had more viable blackmail material released about him than any previous president and instead of launching missiles into Sudan like Clinton did a couple days after his scandal, he just slid past it.

> A president was recently elected that had more viable blackmail material released about him than any previous president and instead of launching missiles into Sudan like Clinton did a couple days after his scandal, he just slid past it. I'm not sure how a scandal during one presidency is comparable in your example to scandals that happened before a presidency. Further, you might recall that there was a 'strategic s…

The Sudan+Afghanistan thing was two days after the scandal broke. I am curious if there were any similar actions by any of the following presidents but launching stuff right after entering office doesn't appear to be the same kind of action.

(Perhaps there is another cynical explanation for the Africa thing but it is probably not to distract from an, as you say, decades-old scandal.)

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

#46

Post by detaro »

krageon wrote: post #38
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.

The US is friends with the regime that has the war crime tribunal, and Russia is not. In the end such things are disappointingly simple.

Neither the US nor Russia (nor China) recognize Den Haag as having authority over them. The US even has a law authorizing the president to use military force to prevent it from prosecuting US service members. It's pretty much irrelevant when it comes to any of those countries. And even outside of that, has ever anyone been prosecuted that didn't comprehensively loose the respective war?

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

#47

Post by catchclose8919 »

pessimizer wrote: post #29
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…

A typical scenario for this question, but not a good one. There's no reason for torture to work on this person, you have no timely way of verifying what they're saying, and you're going to hurt/kill them whether or not they give you the answer. They're just going to lie to you. What you have to do is credibly threaten to torture or kill their family members and loved ones, to rape their children. This works. Are you…

> Are you a bad enough dude to rationalize that?

Probably many are, but for a person crazy enough to do such a horrible act such threats would also likely not work (either "nothing to lose" or "don't care about anything anymore").

As a society I think we can only try to avoid creating enough people who have "nothing to lose" or "don't care about anything anymore"... They're basically "cancer cells", once at least one survives long enough to "do it's thing" (recruit team, deploy destructive thing etc.), there's nothing you can do besides damage control, you don't "interrogate a cancer cell", they're either irrational, or have no rational reason to help you regardless of any threat or pain you apply.

But you're right, torture would only work for "regular criminals/terrorists" for which... one shouldn't need torture, threats and rewards for collaboration would be enough. But these "regular bad guys" would not do stupid s like mass attacks on "civilians".

Generally if you end up thinking you absolutely need actual torture you've already f up badly, you're seeing things wrong, and sooner or later s will hit the fan for you or your organization... it's more of a sign of incompetence!

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

#48

Post by throwawaymanbot »

adamsmith143 wrote: post #16
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…

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…

No post body was provided.

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

#49

Post by throwawaymanbot »

defen wrote: post #27
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…

Do we have any evidence that torture actually works ? That the person being tortured will tell accurate information? Basically do we have any examples of this sort of situation, where there was an imminent threat to life and people were saved due to torture?

No post body was provided.

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

#50

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]
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