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Thursday, July 10, 2008
Christopher Hitchens says it's torture
Christopher Hitchens, the somewhat pompous scribe at Vanity Fair and elsewhere who has debated people like George Galloway, Playthell Benjamin, Mark Danner, and others [you can watch Hitchens undress Ronald Reagan Jr. here], on whether or not the Iraq War was justified, decided to get waterboarded. He recollects his encounter with the waterboarding in an article entitled, "Believe me, it's torture."
He writes:"You may have read by now the official lie about this treatment, which is that it “simulates” the feeling of drowning. This is not the case. You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning—or, rather, being drowned, albeit slowly and under controlled conditions and at the mercy (or otherwise) of those who are applying the pressure. The “board” is the instrument, not the method. You are not being boarded. You are being watered..."
And: "I apply the Abraham Lincoln test for moral casuistry: “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.” Well, then, if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture."
Here's video of the waterboarding:
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on July 10, 2008 in International Affairs | Permalink
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Comments
"Christopher Hitchens says it's torture"
What does PM Jaworski say? Oh, right: he's an evasive libertarian and thinks it's wrong to judge, which begs the question how one might use good judgement.
It's drowning, and of course drowning is torture. The price of an empire is indeed America's soul, and that price remains, for this authentic conservative, too high.
Posted by: Mocker | 2008-07-10 11:13:23 AM
I say it's torture.
Posted by: P.M. Jaworski | 2008-07-10 11:23:43 AM
Does watching "The Love Guru" count as torture?
Posted by: Zebulon Pike | 2008-07-10 11:32:12 AM
Having to read Hitchens is torture in itself.
Posted by: The Stig | 2008-07-10 11:38:33 AM
Hitchens is only somewhat pompous? :-)
I applaud you for not joking in your post that Hitchens would have told a different story about waterboarding if the process involved booze and not, uh, water.
Posted by: Terrence Watson | 2008-07-10 11:55:01 AM
Does watching "The Love Guru" count as torture?
Posted by: Zebulon Punk | 10-Jul-08 11:32:12 AM
Too early to tell, though watching Sweet Home Alabama is.
Posted by: The Stig | 2008-07-10 11:55:29 AM
Anything you're willing to subject yourself to to write an article/make a point probably isn't torture.
Ring me when Hitch decides to have nails driven through his genetalia or his fingernails pulled-off with pliers--then we can talk.
Posted by: ECM | 2008-07-10 12:07:07 PM
I don't know how effective Hitchens is arguing that waterboarding is torture; but he is very convincing arguing that it is effective. It would have taken all of 10 seconds to get a capitulation out of Hitchens, and he states that if a capitulation isn't forthcoming very, very quickly, then the suspect must not have the information being sought. That's a pretty quick and reliable test, isn't it?
Question: Is it wrong to subject someone to between 10 seconds and a minute of waterboarding, if lives depend on getting an answer? Consider: If your child were kidnapped and hidden somewhere, and the police had a suspect in custody who might be able to tell me where s/he is, how long would you hesitate before urging the police to use a little session of waterboarding, given this demonstration?
Posted by: Grant Brown | 2008-07-10 12:20:41 PM
ECM's analogy is flawed. Torture does not necessarily involve permanent physical injury. One might be willing to subject oneself to forms of torture that involve no lasting damage, just to experience what it is like. Yet, consistently, one might not be willing to undergo permanent physical damage to prove a point.
Whether waterboarding a torture or not is a semantic point. The real question is whether it is ever a justifiable means of extracting information from someone, and Hitchen's demonstration suggests that it probably is: it is quick, leaves no permanent damage, and (according to him) very, very effective. It might even be more humane than warehousing suspects in solitary confinement in prisons for years.
Posted by: Grant Brown | 2008-07-10 12:31:23 PM
Too early to tell, though watching Sweet Home Alabama is.
Posted by: The Stig | 10-Jul-08 11:55:29 AM
Darn right it is! Not even close to reality. They didn't even film it in Alabama. Same goes for "My Cousin Vinny." They can't make an accurate movie about life in Alabama because it wouldn't be very exciting - it's quite ordinary here, and that's the way it should be.
But really - the Love Guru is more fantastic than "Lord of the Rings," "The Matrix" or "Star Wars."
Come on - the Make-Beliefs winning the Stanley Cup? Nonsense.
A non-white player on the Make-Beliefs? A French-Canadian player too? Yeah right. Might as well call them "The Toronto Waffen SS" for their racial policies.
Posted by: Zebulon Pike | 2008-07-10 12:43:32 PM
Too early to tell, though watching Sweet Home Alabama is.
Posted by: The Stig | 10-Jul-08 11:55:29 AM
Darn right it is! Not even close to reality. They didn't even film it in Alabama. Same goes for "My Cousin Vinny." They can't make an accurate movie about life in Alabama because it wouldn't be very exciting - it's quite ordinary here, and that's the way it should be.
But really - the Love Guru is more fantastic than "Lord of the Rings," "The Matrix" or "Star Wars."
Come on - the Make-Beliefs winning the Stanley Cup? Nonsense.
A non-white player on the Make-Beliefs? A French-Canadian player too? Yeah right. Might as well call them "The Toronto Waffen SS" for their racial policies.
Posted by: Zebulon Pike | 2008-07-10 12:44:04 PM
"Question: Is it wrong to subject someone to between 10 seconds and a minute of waterboarding, if lives depend on getting an answer?"
But that's almost never the case. America tortures, primarily, to punish and to intimidate and it is critically important you understand this.
For example, the American military admits 90% of those at Abu Ghraib weren't criminals or terrorists and had no business being there. Those "leaked" pictures were intimidating enough, however, to make many Iraqis think twice about opposing the occupiers. That's why they did it.
The hypothetical you propose is just that, and to question whether drowning is torture...you're entering 2+2=5 territory here, Grant.
"Whether waterboarding a torture or not is a semantic point"
OK, after reading this, I cannot possibly take you seriously. You don't speak or think like a normal functioning human. I'd sooner debate a dog or a cat.
Posted by: Mocker | 2008-07-10 12:57:40 PM
A non-white player on the Make-Beliefs? A French-Canadian player too?
Posted by: Zebulon Punk | 10-Jul-08 12:44:04 PM
George Armstrong for one, and Jacques Plante was a frenchie.
Yeah right. Might as well call them "The Toronto Waffen SS" for their racial policies.
Posted by: Zebulon Punk | 10-Jul-08 12:44:04 PM
You really are in serious need of psychiatric help.
Posted by: The Stig | 2008-07-10 1:08:24 PM
It may be true that it's almost never the case that we can torture to get an answer where lives depend on the answer, but what about those rare cases, Mocker?
You can evade the question, or debate cats and dogs, if you'd prefer, but you would still not address the actual question.
So, Authentic Conservative (TM), what say you?
Posted by: P.M. Jaworski | 2008-07-10 1:09:17 PM
If lives really depend on the quality of an answer, why would anyone use torture to extract the answer?
Think of the ways simple anxiety can scramble people's ability to communicate (aphasia etc.) and then imagine the quality of information, much less the accuracy (from an impaired ability to even parse their own memory) or honesty of the answer when ordinary anxiety is replaced with raw panic. It's worthless.
Posted by: Pattern Recognition | 2008-07-10 1:23:23 PM
The absolute refusal to consider "absurd" hypotheticals -- especially when they have implications the person refusing may not like -- is a big pet peeve of mine.
When I discussed torture in one of my phil of law classes, virtually no one had a serious moral problem with waterboarding someone like Khalid Sheik Mohammed. When students had objections to waterboarding (and to several other coercive interrogation techniques) they were always practical objections about the effectiveness of the practice.
By the way, here is a great piece on coercive interrogation I used in the class.
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200310/bowden
Michael Koubi, the Israeli interrogator the author spoke with is apparently very, very good at his job, which is stopping Palestinian terror plots before they kill people, basically. He rarely has to lay a hand on anyone. A lot of what he does involves psychological tricks that play on the fears of suspects. It's really quite clever.
However, lest anyone think this means that coercive interrogation techniques are unnecessary, there is this observation:
"When the captive believes that anything could happen—torture, execution, indefinite imprisonment, even the persecution of his loved ones—the interrogator can go to work." So even when coercive interrogation doesn't and won't take place, you can get much from suspects insofar as they think it _might_ take place.
It might not be a bad idea for the United States to do something to perpetuate that illusion. Why not? All the effectiveness without any of the moral cost.
Best,
Terrence
Posted by: Terrence Watson | 2008-07-10 1:31:02 PM
"but what about those rare cases, Mocker?"
They don't exist. It's a cheap rhetorical tactic which attempts to justify the torturing of tens of thousands based on a hypothetical - I would say apocryphal - handful.
A helpful analogy would be suggesting slavery is OK if mankind's survival depended on cheap labour - it doesn't, it never has, it never will. So I'd never even answer a question based on such a premise.
Posted by: Mocker | 2008-07-10 1:36:52 PM
The biggest flaw with the exercise Hitchens went through is that he trusted the guys who were waterboarding him. He knew he wouldn't have any permanent damage, that they would take care to stop, they weren't going to try anything funny, that he would be rushed to some medical assistance if anything were to go wrong etc.
Compare this to a real situation where an individual would be blindfolded, treated harshly, shouted at, would have no knowledge of what exactly would be done to him. That's the real terror, the real torture. Whatever lingering psychological effects Hitchens experienced can hardly be compared to what is really going on in the US ghost prisons where waterboarding is likely still in use.
I was glad to see that Hitchens had the balls to get waterboarded for an assignment (that's the sort of journalistic commitment I don't think I have), and it's also nice to see Hitchens counter one of the claims made by his allies in the War Party to justify their policies, but what Hitchen experience was 5-star luxury waterboarding, not the real thing.
Posted by: Kalim Kassam | 2008-07-10 1:43:51 PM
Hey, I just got a great idea...
Western Standard reporters undergo other coercive interrogation and report on the experience. We'll have Jaws admitting his crypto-commie tendencies in no time :-)
Posted by: Terrence Watson | 2008-07-10 1:47:50 PM
Pattern Rec
"Think of the ways simple anxiety can scramble people's ability to communicate (aphasia etc.) and then imagine the quality of information, much less the accuracy (from an impaired ability to even parse their own memory) or honesty of the answer when ordinary anxiety is replaced with raw panic. It's worthless."
Actually, "worthless" is trying nothing. Unless you know other ways to convince fanatics bent on destruction to volunteer the information that will save lives.
Yawn. I don't care. I now expect someone to tell me I'm no better than the terrorists. I sleep just fine, thanks.
Posted by: h2o273kk9 | 2008-07-10 3:17:26 PM
George Armstrong for one, and Jacques Plante was a frenchie.
Posted by: The Stig | 10-Jul-08 1:08:24 PM
Tokenism. Armstrong was aboriginal, and played decades ago. Plante was at the end of his career.
Aside from them, there have been no others for years. Non-whites, non-anglos would never play in today's Leafs because Toronto is a whites-only racist society.
Posted by: Zebulon Pike | 2008-07-10 3:38:06 PM
I don't give a rat's ass whether or not it is torture. If it forces the Muzzies to give up secrets then it's OK by me. Those Mohammedans want to destroy our way of life. Fight fire with fire.
As an addendum, Jacques Plante is (was) a fairy.
First guy to wear a mask. First guy to come outta the crease because he was afraid of the puck.
Posted by: atric | 2008-07-10 3:41:04 PM
Here's Muslim "culture" for you!
Georgia honor killer says he did nothing wrong, demands Islamic food in prison
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/021696.php
Human life means little to them. No wonder liberals like them so much. They're the same people who will sacrifice Canada's beloved social safety net, including medical care, to appease the Kyoto Gods.
Fight them. No mercy, no negotiation.
Posted by: Zebulon Pike | 2008-07-10 4:10:05 PM
Hey Grant:
"ECM's analogy is flawed. Torture does not necessarily involve permanent physical injury. One might be willing to subject oneself to forms of torture that involve no lasting damage, just to experience what it is like. Yet, consistently, one might not be willing to undergo permanent physical damage to prove a point."
Your nails *will* grow back after such unfortunate treatment and you might walk funny for a while, but the wound to your genitals will also heal (kinda like if you drive a nail through, say, your hand). After all, we're not talking about dropping Hitch into a situation where there wouldn't be lots of care taken while they yanked out his nails and they'd be sure to use a nice, stainless steel, nail to make sure there's no infection, etc.
The point is, trying to equate having some water poured over your face to things that will actual cause you tremendous physical (and, in the case of your genitalia, psychological) harm is ridiculous on its face. Yeah, it's no fun and, yeah, you probably don't want to have it done to you again, but torture? Talk about dumbing the term down...
Posted by: ECM | 2008-07-10 4:42:52 PM
I don't think that a voluntary show of such a thing can really display the true terror someone would feel experiencing this if it was carried out by hostile people who did not set up safety words. Clearly it is just to show people the types of methods used.....and lets face it a couple hundred years ago what were they doing to there captives? I am sure much worse went on before the Geneva conventions. "Ring me when Hitch decides to have nails driven through his genetalia or his fingernails pulled-off with pliers--then we can talk." Are they allowed to do stuff like that to POWS? I know of the Geneva conventions but not really what each of the treaties restricts...jesus..hopefully the above.
Also I do not think that the American military would let the general population find out about their best techniques.....I am sure they want to keep those a surprise! I wonder though about the kind of people that could carry out such acts...they really must be on a similar level of heartlessness....I had to kill a baby chipmunk with a shovel because my cat was torturing it. It broke my heart the way it was twitching and squeaking so I smashed it in a mercy killing I guess. But I am a women and I guess were just not cut out for that sort of thing (thankfully).
Posted by: maya | 2008-07-10 8:20:15 PM
This technique is a variation of a trick used on Vietnamese prisoners. It always bothered me when they showed it on the nightly news, when I was a very young teenager.
I don't have a hard opinion on the value of torture. It probably works sometimes. Does that justify random torture of detainees? I doubt it.
It amazes me that they're still using techniques from the inquisition era. You'd think they'd come up with some combination of drugs and psychological tricks that are fool proof. Maybe Dr. Phil singing along with Michael Bolton.
Posted by: dp | 2008-07-10 8:32:42 PM
....I had to kill a baby chipmunk with a shovel because my cat was torturing it. It broke my heart the way it was twitching and squeaking so I smashed it in a mercy killing I guess. But I am a women and I guess were just not cut out for that sort of thing (thankfully).
Posted by: maya | 10-Jul-08 8:20:15 PM
It sounds like you could get the hang of it pretty quick.
By the way, was the cat a female?
Posted by: dp | 2008-07-10 8:36:40 PM
No...his name was max.
Posted by: maya | 2008-07-10 8:40:16 PM
"Maybe Dr. Phil singing along with Michael Bolton." Yeah thats a good start...and have american idol or dancing with the stars playing too.......
Posted by: maya | 2008-07-10 8:52:03 PM
Here's a quote from "The Naked Gun 33 1/3rd" about 'torture'
"Hey! You call this slop? Real slop has got chunks in it! This is more like gruel! And this Chateau le Blanc '68 is supposed to be served slightly chilled! This is room temperature! What do you think we are, animals?"
If those detained in Club Gitmo don't like their conditions, we can always hand them over to the NYPD and FDNY. I'm sure they have a few things in store for those who killed their buddies on September 11. After that, they'd be begging to go back to Gitmo.
Hey, three squares a day, nice and warm all year = most of their own people don't have it so good. Whiners. If they still don't like it, then send them to a mainland US prison. Oh, mama.
Posted by: Zebulon Pike | 2008-07-10 9:44:33 PM
So? Our enemies deserve to be tortured, just on general moral principle.
Indeed, so far as torture goes, this is pretty minor stuff. To begin with, I'm not aware of anyone we've actually killed through doing this. If we were to actually do this and just drown a few of the bastards, it'd probably be a lot more effective.
Posted by: Adam Yoshida | 2008-07-11 12:47:26 AM
OK, anyone else want to out themselves as a nihilist in this thread?
So far we've got Yoshida, Jaws (natch), Watson, Brown, Pike, Ice Dog...am I missing anyone?
Posted by: Mocker | 2008-07-11 2:43:13 AM
Mocker
"OK, anyone else want to out themselves as a nihilist in this thread? "
Wrong. I only want it used for the greater good in preventing senseless destruction and death. Just the opposite of nihilism.
Posted by: h2o273kk9 | 2008-07-11 6:14:43 AM
The use of torture by our side demeans us. We are supposed to be better than that. If we western democracies sanction torture, what separates us from barbarian enemies like Muslim extremists?
That's what they do and worse. We tell ourselves that we are morally superior to them but if we use the same techniques they do, we are their moral equivalents. That's not where I want us to be.
Posted by: John Dowell | 2008-07-11 7:13:38 AM
Don't you realize that the detainees are using the torture angle to win a propaganda battle? Anything that happens - even when they commit suicide - will be interpreted as torture or mistreatment. I say to hell with them. We'll do our own thing whether they like it or not (ESPECIALLY if they don't like it) and deride their rants as that of criminals. This is how people like Mumia Abu Jamal become heroes.
Posted by: Zebulon Pike | 2008-07-11 7:34:22 AM
"Actually, 'worthless' is trying nothing. Unless you know other ways to convince fanatics bent on destruction to volunteer the information that will save lives."
Who said we need them to volunteer information? I certainly didn't. Torture—or any other interrogation—is just lazy, too-little-too-late intelligence gathering that gives us flawed and unreliable information at best. Do the real work up front.
Posted by: Pattern Recognition | 2008-07-11 8:58:36 AM
It's saddening to see the infantile level of discussion at these websites. The waterboarding issue is just a side-show, or smoke-and-mirrors, to the real forms of physical abuse carried out by u.s. forces and the CIA.
When they bomb a train in one of our cities or hijack a plane, 'Good God, they are terrorists', but when we torture thousands of their citizens and annhilate entire cities, or imprison an entire population in a cage like the filthy Israelis do in Gaza, 'By God, we are so moral, and our hands so clean."
It sickens me that there are so many ignorant and dim-witted people around. I suppose 'Ignorance is Strength' in the sense of the stupidity of the masses that directly allow the ruling thugs like say Bush/Cheney/Olmert to carry out their blood sucking.
We have to unite and bring down the ideology of Neocondom together with its much more vicious and bloodthirsty analogue: Likudnism. Not since the horrible ideology of nazi terro has an ideology like likudnism caused so much grief and suffering in the world. Hey, the old european beliefs about these people drinking the blood of little children during their Passover was an amazing metaphore: it nicely summed up their blood lust.
Posted by: Alastair Yates | 2008-07-11 10:01:53 AM
Adam wrote: "So? Our enemies deserve to be tortured, just on general moral principle."
And I say: I disagree. For one, we don't know whether or not these people count as our enemies. I thought we believed in innocent until proven guilty, and so far as I know, we have no good, rational reason to believe that any particular detainee at Gitmo is guilty of anything but being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
For two, even if they are guilty, we don't know that torture is ever effective at getting us the information that we need, even if we are in a "ticking time bomb" situation. I don't know of a single study that demonstrates that torture is ever effective. And 24, the TV show, is not an academic study.
For three, I disagree that anyone, ever, deserves torture. Whatever punishment we think is fitting in a particular case, torture will never be fitting. We can legitimately deprive people of their liberty, we can legitimately deprive people of the conveniences of life, but to torture is to go over-and-above what is ever deserved.
Finally, for four, what objection can we have to other nations using torture if we engage in it ourselves? What will the criteria be for when torture is appropriate, and can we draw that line so firmly that other nations recognize the conditions? I doubt it. We lose our moral authority to denounce torture in other places.
It's just barbarism, Adam. It is performed for no good end, possibly on the innocent, and possibly for no good outcome.
That America engages in this sort of thing is shameful, and a reason to think that at least some in America have seriously lost their way.
Posted by: P.M. Jaworski | 2008-07-11 10:29:23 AM
Mocker: "OK, anyone else want to out themselves as a nihilist in this thread?"
Do you even know what "nihilism" means, Mocker? I doubt it. You have no clue what "begs the question" means, you have no idea what "except this" means, and you are intellectually dishonest.
I could accuse you of being a "lout" (natch), and someone who is uninterested in having a reasonable discussion. Or I could accuse you of being a crypto-commie, because crypto-commies would, of course, accuse others of being a crypto-commie to deflect attention away from the fact that they are, themselves, a crypto-commie, but I'm no Straussian conspiracy nut.
And I'm no nihilist. Now go look up the word.
Posted by: P.M. Jaworski | 2008-07-11 10:34:18 AM
Hm.
Alastair's post is a good example of how anti-Israel sentiment is often a cover for full blown antisemitism.
Pattern,
"Who said we need them to volunteer information? I certainly didn't. Torture—or any other interrogation—is just lazy, too-little-too-late intelligence gathering that gives us flawed and unreliable information at best. Do the real work up front."
What about the interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the so-called mastermind of 9/11? As I recall, at least initially, there was a worry that he was involved in the planning of other terrorist attacks that hadn't taken place yet. Maybe the CIA hadn't done its job properly and found out about these plans in some other way -- nevertheless, time was a factor, and lives were at stake. In that case, wasn't waterboarding him at least a good second best option?
Best,
Terrence
Posted by: Terrence Watson | 2008-07-11 10:34:25 AM
I have it on good authority that Jaws is a neo-Straussian nihilist crypto-commie. If you read between the lines of his comments, the way Mocker is doing, you can see it.
/not a Straussian (but if I was, would I tell you? And wouldn't I be a better Straussian by accusing other people of being one first? :) )
Posted by: Terrence Watson | 2008-07-11 10:36:08 AM
Hey Terrence, you wrote: "Maybe the CIA hadn't done its job properly and found out about these plans in some other way -- nevertheless, time was a factor, and lives were at stake. In that case, wasn't waterboarding him at least a good second best option?"
Only if we have reason to believe that actually waterboarding someone ever actually works. I don't have any reason to believe that. In addition, we have to take the CIA's word for it, since they were busy doing what they were doing without a public trial in a real court. I don't trust government agencies without reason to trust them. By default, I distrust them, for structural and incentive-based reasons (for public choice school of economics reasons, and I haven't yet seen a good reason why military and intelligence institutions are exceptions).
Posted by: P.M. Jaworski | 2008-07-11 10:39:17 AM
Jaws,
In this case, I don't think there was ever any question about Khalid's leadership role in the 9/11 attack, and hence hardly any question about his role in other possible terror attacks. While it's probably a good idea to distrust the CIA, I'm not sure that's a reasonable attitude to take in THIS case.
True, there was no "public trial in a real court" before he was waterboarded. But that's kind of the point: you don't interrogate the person after you've convicted the person, but before.
Supposing some legal process should be required before such interrogation, why not bring in something like Alan Dershowitz's "torture warrants"?
http://www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/dershowitz/Articles/torturewarrants.html
Consider this: suppose waterboarding Khalid would have a 0.1% chance of getting information that would stop another terrorist attack. There is no other way to get that information in a timely enough manner to prevent the attack (yes, maybe because the CIA didn't do its job well enough in the first place.) This, I understand, is a reasonable enough view of the situation with Khalid Sheikh Mohammad.
Why not use waterboarding and other coercive interrogation techniques in this case? If it doesn't work, and we get nothing out of him, he gets a little wet but suffers no permanent damage. If it does work, we save thousands of lives.
I'm not sure I see any reason not to use waterboarding in this case, except for slippery slope worries. These can be mitigated to some extent with the use of torture warrants or similar legal device.
And look at it this way: we KNOW that in a situation like this, someone is going to get coerced. It's going to happen, whatever moral arguments we can muster against it. Given this, is it not better to openly regulate the process, rather than allowing it to go on in the shadows, without any regulation at all?
Best,
Terrence
Posted by: Terrence Watson | 2008-07-11 10:52:09 AM
In the great scheme of boiled down actions of war, the ultimate differentiation of nation states, this form of torture is a pimple on the ass of a flee on an elephant. When you are paid (or otherwise inspired) and ordered to incinerate the flesh, dismember, drown, suffocate, shatter, wound, and most humanely, "cleanly" kill with a head shot; your enemy (ideally in uniform) but otherwise those considered likely enemies, lets be distracted by an uncomfortable peripheral intelligence gathering technique.
We're lucky, 65 years ago almost 10% of Canadians were in uniform doing all kinds of nasty shit. Can we can sit back and criticize others? Has anyone else seen the videos of Canadian snipers blowing to bits the Taliban on ridge tops in Afghanistan? They now hold the world's record for the furthest documented kill.
There is no libertopia in the schoolyard (including the Nanny State c/w HRCs) and the battle field. Figure out how to roll back leviathan without replacing it with an Islamic theocracy or get used to it.
Posted by: John Chittick | 2008-07-11 10:57:39 AM
I see where you're going, Terrence. In principle, I'm in agreement with you. On the condition that we know these things, and on the condition that the method has a reasonably good chance of succeeding (maybe higher than 0.1%, but the stats don't matter, since we'll get "reasonable" at some point), and on the condition that it won't lead to a slippery slope through some method (like torture warrants) that we have reason to believe will work, and on the condition that it doesn't serve as a precedent for other countries, and on the condition that it won't... etc., then I am not in disagreement with you.
But those are a lot of conditions to be met in practice...
Posted by: P.M. Jaworski | 2008-07-11 11:06:24 AM
Jaws,
One thing the CIA has done, as you probably know, is send suspects to other countries with lax legal standards where coercive interrogation won't raise eyebrows. It seems to me that this process is bad for at least two reasons, one theoretical and one practical.
In principle, there's something unseemly about the U.S. shifting the moral responsibility to another state. Willfully turning a blind eye to coercive interrogation and allowing the dirty work to be done in a different country seems morally worse than "manning up" and doing the dirty work on one's own.
In practice, I think sending suspects to other nations to be interrogated (extraordinary rendition) makes the whole process almost impossible to regulate (which is the point of doing it in the first place, I guess.) The U.S. sent Maher Arar to Syria, where he was allegedly tortured.
As bad as waterboarding at the hands of the CIA might be, it seems infinitely preferable to interrogation by Syrian intelligence. Even Hitchens would have to admit that, I think.
Best,
Terrence
Posted by: Terrence Watson | 2008-07-11 11:19:12 AM
Mistreatment, yes. But not torture. Torture is hot irons, boots, hooks, racks, whips, strappado, garroting, electrocution, crucifixion, beating with truncheons, impalement, boiling in oil, burning at the stake, having your guts pulled out and wound on a windlass, or being thrown to the lions. And this self-righteous idiot thinks that worse than any of these sadistic and bloodthirsty acts is...having a wet rag on your face?
Basically he wants us to believe it's torture because a) he says it is, and b) it happened to him, even though there was never any threat and he could have said "no" at any time. This wuss doesn't know what torture is. Somebody pull out his nails and hammer red-hot nails into the quick, then carve out his eyeballs, cut off his ears and pump his rectum full of bullet ants. THEN he'll know what torture is.
Hey, I'm good at this.
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2008-07-11 11:56:12 AM
J.M., your argument that torture is not a reliable means of extracting information is a valid one. Essentially they tell you what they think will ease the pain. In this regard it is not so much the method of torture that determines the outcome so much as the questions being asked.
Keep in mind they're not restricted to a single session; it can take a good many sessions over an extended period to break a man. Frankly, with time and resources short, I find it hard to believe the CIA would resort to waterboarding unless there was at least some prospect of success. If not, their time is better spent elsewhere, and they know it.
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2008-07-11 12:00:46 PM
John Dowell wrote: "The use of torture by our side demeans us. We are supposed to be better than that. If we western democracies sanction torture, what separates us from barbarian enemies like Muslim extremists?"
The fact that we make an effort to separate innocent from guilty and, given our preference, target only armed combatants. Terrorists avoid conventional battles and intentionally target civilians, gunning down good and bad alike.
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2008-07-11 12:03:42 PM
John Dowell wrote "we are supposed to be better than that". Why is that?
Zebulon, I heard Cat Stevens use the word torture after he was pulled off a plane a while back. He was on the no fly list, and had to spend a day answering questions. If answering questions is now considered torture, then why not hook some electrodes to his genitals?
Actually, I used to consider listening to Cat Stevens a mild form of torture.
Posted by: dp | 2008-07-11 12:47:38 PM
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