CIA admits to waterboarding inmates.

[Rocky]

When you have proof I'll believe you, till then the director of an intelligence agency is more credible than you.

 

[[S]]

Rocky, Avenger may not have proof but think about it logically, when you dumb it down what's happened is the CIA got caught doing something that at this point in time is illegal (torturing people) if not immoral and will spark a long and worn out process of people who respect human rights getting it banned. Now it's too late to deny it because the media had reported that they have been and had backed it up. So what is the next best thing to do?

Say it was only used when it was thought necessary i mean the public would be mad if the CIA was torturing everyone they thought was a terrorist but if the public thought they only used it on people who had been proven as terrorists it would decrease the backlash of the leak significantly.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/11/06/waterboard.poll/

So perhaps it's a possibility that the head of the CIA said that to gain the sympathy of the people by making it seem he didn't want to do it but he had to for the safety of the people and his great country.

EDIT - Real life situation you live in a house with your parents you sneak out every night for 6 months and don't get caught which leads you to partying excessively and having fun when finally 6 months later your parents catch you sneaking out. Now do you tell them I've been sneaking out for the last 6 months on a regular basis or do you pretend like this is your first or second time.

 

[Rocky]

I understand the logic, and this might sound bad but I would personally prefer these people getting tortured to prevent another serious disaster like 9/11 from happening, then have them gain no information by instead of torturing, giving bags of jelly beans in the hopes the terrorists will think America is a sweet guy and to tell him everything.

 

[Avenger]

See, this is the reason we should spend more money on brain probes.

 

[[S]]

Rocky i understand what you are saying but it sounds a bit naive to me

All nations that are signatory to the United Nations Convention Against Torture have agreed they are subject to the explicit prohibition on torture under any condition, and as such there exists no legal exception under this treaty. (The treaty states "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.") Additionally, signatories of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are bound to Article 5, which states, "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."


United States
The United States has a historical record of regarding waterboarding as a crime, and has prosecuted individuals for the use of the practice in the past. In 1947, the United States prosecuted a Japanese military officer, Yukio Asano, for carrying out a form of waterboarding on a U.S. civilian during World War II. Yukio Asano received a sentence of 15 years of hard labor.[31] The charges of Violation of the Laws and Customs of War against Asano also included "beating using hands, fists, club; kicking; burning using cigarettes; strapping on a stretcher head downward."[74]

In its 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, the U.S. Department of State formally recognized "submersion of the head in water" as torture in its examination of Tunisia's poor human rights record,[75] and critics of waterboarding draw parallels between the two techniques, citing the similar usage of water on the subject. On September 6, 2006, the U.S. Department of Defense released a revised Army Field Manual entitled Human Intelligence Collector Operations that prohibits the use of waterboarding by U.S. military personnel. The department adopted the manual amid widespread criticism of U.S. handling of prisoners in the War on Terrorism, and prohibits other practices in addition to waterboarding. The revised manual applies only to U.S. military personnel, and as such does not apply to the practices of the CIA.[76] However, under international law, violators of the laws of war are criminally liable under the command responsibility, and could still be prosecuted for war crimes.

So it's illegal it's against human rights and it's not a gauranteed that it will make the prisoner talk. You say they should do it just incase of another event like 9/11 but if you start giving them the authority to do this what's stopping them from doing it to regular criminals or even people suspected of crimes. There are limits and rules to keep order the minute the rules start bending it's going to errupt in chaos i mean once they can torture prisoners through cruel and unusual means what's stopping them from picking up suspected terrorists and torturing them just incase they know something? What's stopping them from invading oher soverign countries and picking up individuals who they think might be terrorists and investigating them using these methods.

 

[Almighty_Gir]

the problem with torture is that it goes like this:

torturer, thinks his prisoner knows something, and wants the TRUTH.

prisoner, is then tortured, but doesn't confess, why? because he really doesn't know anything.

torturer, vehemently believes (and this is the bad point) that the prisoner actually knows something, but is holding out on him. so he goes in for round two.

prisoner, sometime between this round and when he clicks as to what will make it stop, he decides to tell the torturer what he "knows".


it's unreliable, because the torturer is only trying to get the prisoner to admit to a "fact" that he already "knows", and won't actually get anything useful. well, not normally.


that being said, f'kn towel heads deserve it.

 

[Rocky]

that being said, f'kn towel heads deserve it.

Umm...Is that really appropriate? I'm no fan of terrorists and in general have had bad experiences with muslims but I really think that's crossing the line, especially as a forum moderator.

***

On the subject at hand, what other way is there? Sadly, terrorists do exist, these people hate America, and all it's allies. Are we just to sit idly by while suspects roam freely gathering information on how and when to strike, then when they do strike, launch a full offensive on the country that's allegedly harbouring the terrorist mastermind?

Also don't forget that these people are brainwashed from a young age (most suicide bombers are in their early 20's if not younger) to live and die for their beliefs and must die a martyr in order to be rewarded. These people are told, the more people they take with them, the higher their reward in the afterlife (basically translates to how many virgins you get, with the highest reward netting you 72 virgins and to be able to bask in the presence of Allah and Mohammed). The question is, how do you break into the mind of people who have been programmed like this?

 

[sub]

WW2 Nazi Interrogators said that they found out more, and the stuff they found out was a lot more reliable by playing Chess with a man compared to torturing them.

Not to mention it's ****ing illegal. Our government should not be allowed to pick and choose which of it's own laws (or international) it wishes to obey.

 

[[S]]

You attract more bees with honey the vinegar?

I think that's how the saying goes but you said it yourself i mean if these people are ready to die for their 72 virgins what would make them tell the government what they want to hear anyway?

heh to avengers family guy reference

 

[Avenger]

Conclusion:

Giving terrorists 72 virgins is better than torturing them for information. 72 virgins are easily found at the nearest trekkie convention (they never did say what sex the virgins had to be).

 

[KarrdeKNR]

We find this out repeatedly through history. The Spanish inquisition, Salem witch trials and during many other times. You torture a person, they tell you what you want to hear.

QFT gameover. You can argue that ppl deserver it or X or Y, but at the end of the day, what Deman said is what matters. They'll tell you what you want to hear, ergo it's not a useful interrogation method. Unless your goal is just to punish, torture, hurt and humiliate someone.

 

[Nuttzy]

if simply asking them was all it took, we wouldn't need to drown them =D.

 

[Avenger]

So what you're telling me, is that when my government suspects the US are plotting an attack on my country, it'll be fine for us to obtain and torture your citizens as we please? Alright, I'll make a note of that for later.

 

[Rocky]

So what you're telling me, is that when my government suspects the US are plotting an attack on my country, it'll be fine for us to obtain and torture your citizens as we please? Alright, I'll make a note of that for later.

If it saves you from being attacked, perhaps. But you as analogies go, you can't compare a war between the US and Norway, with known hostile people from the middle east.

 

[Avenger]

I never said there'd be a war. I said there'd be an attack. Either way, we're much too ethical for doing something like that, unless we were played like instruments much like the American populace seems to have been. Thankfully, we are mostly ignorant when it comes to drugs, not politics - not to imply that every, or even most Americans are dumber than Norwegians, it's just that the media and government has a different hold on us. If the government ever decides to make something as ridiculous as the Patriot Act, our king will veto it, and there'll be a huge mess of it in the media.

Anywho, I think we've established that torture is an inefficient method of extracting information. Mind-****ing people is far more efficient (not necessarily "painfully" mind-****ing them) for extracting information. If someone in fact knows something, and hasn't been made resistant of torture, they will likely spill their guts. If someone doesn't know anything, they will likely say something to get out of their jam, because they know they won't be believed.

In short: torture is for people too dumb to be clever about the situation.