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

The Al-Qaeda Leader Who Wasn’t: The Shameful Ordeal of Abu Zubaydah

tomdispatch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 179 posts

Re: The Al-Qaeda Leader Who Wasn’t: The Shameful Ordeal of Abu Zubaydah

#81

Post by pessimizer »

anarazel wrote: post #70
krapp wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Remember all of those scenes in movies from the 70s and earlier when halfway through the rape, the woman starts to get into it, and when we cut to the morning after and she's like "never leave me," and now the viewer is expected to sympathise with the rapist and his victim against the world? Actually, no. I've seen plenty of old movies, but I don't recall many rape scenes, much less such rape scenes where the rapist…

Old James Bond movies at the very least come close to that. I was rather shocked watching over on a plane recently.

James Bond and Pussy Galore - is this rape?

http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/1570613-...

Re: The Al-Qaeda Leader Who Wasn’t: The Shameful Ordeal of Abu Zubaydah

#82

Post by Gracana »

RobertoG wrote: post #29
booleandilemma wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah I see how this site works

It's something that also bother me about HN. People downvote when disagree. I think that downvoting should be used for uncivil comments, not related comments, spam.. Otherwise we will finish in an echo-chamber. When we disagree we should answer. This is what I'm going try to do. First, you say "If given the opportunity, they would kill every single one of us". That's not true. Those terrorist acts have politic goals.…

> People downvote when they disagree.

And of course they do, because the implementation encourages it. Downvoting has no consequence, it allows people to express disagreement with zero effort, and they even get a chance to hide posts they don't like. If I were designing a site to be an echo chamber, reddit-style voting is the killer feature I'd want to have.

Re: The Al-Qaeda Leader Who Wasn’t: The Shameful Ordeal of Abu Zubaydah

#83

Post by overcast »

naasking wrote: post #78
overcast wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but the point of the article is that they were doing it to the wrong person. That doesn't mean it does not work. Causation does not imply correlation.

> Right, but the point of the article is that they were doing it to the wrong person. That doesn't mean it does not work. Causation does not imply correlation. I think this case make it obvious that it's impossible to tell if the person you're torturing has the information you're looking for and is withholding it, or simply doesn't have the information. That's a textbook definition of "ineffective".

What's the alternative? I'm generally curious as to what would be considered more effective.

Re: The Al-Qaeda Leader Who Wasn’t: The Shameful Ordeal of Abu Zubaydah

#84

Post by ikeboy »

hartpuff wrote: post #66
spangry wrote: post #47

Interesting implication from the title of the article: that it would be 'right' to waterboard some other men. Who are they, and what justifies their torture? And before someone says it, I don't think "gathering intelligence" is a sufficiently moral or practical justification. People being tortured don't tell you valuable information; they tell you whatever they think will make the torture stop. The CIA is a sickening…

> The CIA is a sickening and surprisingly amateurish organisation. Their actions over the past decades have ruined the United States' international moral authority. I'm not even sure that's true. I think the perception of the CIA (perhaps due to generally positive portrayals of it on TV and in movies) is completely different to, say, the perception people have of the Stasi or KGB. And yet did those organizations, whi…

>And yet did those organizations, which people rightly consider to be bad, actually do anything worse than the CIA has been doing in the last 70 years?

The average American is not personally affected by anything the CIA does. Can the same be said about the KGB?

Re: The Al-Qaeda Leader Who Wasn’t: The Shameful Ordeal of Abu Zubaydah

#86

Post by blowski »

zyxley wrote: post #71
ikeboy wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Who are they, and what justifies their torture? >People being tortured don't tell you valuable information; they tell you whatever they think will make the torture stop. You're already asserting your position, and disguising it as a question. Virtually everyone seriously condoning torture believe it is effective. If they were to believe it wasn't effective, they wouldn't order it to be done. You may think it's not e…

> You may think it's not effective Torture factually isn't effective. https://www.cgu.edu/pdffiles/sbos/costanzo_effects_of_interr...

In a "24" like scenario, if you knew that torturing 100 people, all of whom you believe to be terrorists, was 50% likely to yield useful information would you do it?

For me personally, the effectiveness of torture is irrelevant. Maybe it is for you as well, I don't know from your comment. It's something we should not do, full stop.

Re: The Al-Qaeda Leader Who Wasn’t: The Shameful Ordeal of Abu Zubaydah

#87

Post by kstenerud »

spangry wrote: post #47

Interesting implication from the title of the article: that it would be 'right' to waterboard some other men. Who are they, and what justifies their torture? And before someone says it, I don't think "gathering intelligence" is a sufficiently moral or practical justification. People being tortured don't tell you valuable information; they tell you whatever they think will make the torture stop. The CIA is a sickening…

You can read any implication you want into 11 words of text.

"If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged."

- Cardinal Richelieu

Re: The Al-Qaeda Leader Who Wasn’t: The Shameful Ordeal of Abu Zubaydah

#88

Post by elcapitan »

HillRat wrote: post #68
elcapitan wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are right in your perception of his thinking, and I didn't mean to interpret his views in a friendly way - I just wanted to note that there is a more academic dimension to the way how he meant this. I think you are exactly right in your view that he is basically thinking the opposite of a "negotiated society", this is what I got from his "Constitutional Theory" of 1928 as well. It is very instructive thou…

That's interesting -- I generally think of Schmitt as constructing a theory of dictatorship, but you're right: he's also black-hat hacking the constitutional order at the same time. That's a fantastic insight, I think, because you're really crystallizing him as a practitioner as well as a theorist.

You may be interested in a recent revival of his thinking from the left - [1][2] - the idea there is that he doesn't mean "enemies" in the sense of a mortal fight, but rather "agonists". This is explicitly directed against the Habermas type of discourse that is directed towards achieving a consensus, and advocating not to bury conflicts. Basically in response to a "mainstreaming" of political parties (probably not so much in the US, but in many European countries you will find that the major established parties seem to agree fundamentally with very little differences, with the rise of extreme right and left parties at the same time as a reaction). Not a view I share, but I find it interesting that they are now going back to Schmitt for that.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Agonistics-Thinking-Politically-Chanta... [2] http://www.amazon.com/Political-Thinking-Action-Chantal-Mouf...

Re: The Al-Qaeda Leader Who Wasn’t: The Shameful Ordeal of Abu Zubaydah

#89

Post by astazangasta »

Sometimes I question whether there is the possibility of change, here. The CIA has started openly torturing people - they have no doubt been covertly torturing people for years; we've been showing this in our fiction for decades, and this is probably largely the public's view of how the CIA is - unsavory characters who do the "dirty work" that needs to get done to keep us safe.

Why do we accept this notion of torture as a heroic virtue, when it's obviously not? I think we're unable to assimilate the alternative - that our national myths are all false, that we are subject to an evil torture state, that our security apparatus is beyond democratic control or the rule of law. All of these are horrific, monstrous possibilities that we can't confront, so it's much easier for us to rationalize them away by suggesting that the CIA's actions are not, actually, evil.

Determining otherwise requires an act of national catharsis, a revolution in our understanding of ourselves as a political entity. We are not safe, good, democratic. We are venal, aggressive, evil. Making this confrontation will take more than just a factual understanding.

Re: The Al-Qaeda Leader Who Wasn’t: The Shameful Ordeal of Abu Zubaydah

#90

Post by chishaku »

overcast wrote: post #83
naasking wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Right, but the point of the article is that they were doing it to the wrong person. That doesn't mean it does not work. Causation does not imply correlation. I think this case make it obvious that it's impossible to tell if the person you're torturing has the information you're looking for and is withholding it, or simply doesn't have the information. That's a textbook definition of "ineffective".

What's the alternative? I'm generally curious as to what would be considered more effective.

The alternative is to operate within the law and international convention.
Post reply on HN