Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Matthew Alexander, the former military interrogator who led the team that found Al-Zarqawi in Iraq (and a former guest on my radio show) reviews Marc Thiessen's book gleefully advocating torture. And he gets right to the point in the first paragraph:
My gut reaction on reading Marc Thiessen's new book, Courting Disaster, was: "Why is a speechwriter who's never served in the military or intelligence community acting as an expert on interrogation and national security?" Certainly, everyone is entitled to a voice in the debate over the lawfulness and efficacy of President Bush's abusive interrogation program, regardless of qualifications. But if you're not an expert on a subject, shouldn't you interview experts before expressing an opinion? Instead, Thiessen relies solely on the opinions of the CIA interrogators who used torture and abuse and are thus most vulnerable to prosecution for war crimes. That makes his book less a serious discussion of interrogation policy than a literary defense of war criminals. Nowhere in this book will you find the opinions of experienced military interrogators who successfully interrogated Islamic extremists. Not once does he cite Army Doctrine--which warns of the negative consequences of torture and abuse. Courting Disaster is nothing more than the defense's opening statement in a war crimes trial.
Nails and heads. He continues by puncturing several of Thiessen's major arguments:
First, Thiessen promulgates a theory that Islamic extremists are uniquely deserving of torture because they are doctrinally obligated to resist cooperating, after which they may disclose information. Of course this isn't unique to Islamic extremists. The U.S. military's own Code of Conduct and the resistance training given American soldiers impose the exact same requirements. Article V, pertaining to interrogations states: I will evade answering further questions to the utmost of my ability. Moreover, regardless of our enemy's resistance philosophy, we have legal obligations to treat them humanely. If an American soldier is captured, would we want his obligation to resist turned into a justification that allows him to be water-boarded into cooperating? ...Thiessen also argues that we will never know what other information we would have gotten out of KSM had we not used torture and abuse. But we do know. We need only examine the success of numerous professional interrogators against high-ranking members of al-Qaida. There is Eric Maddox, the U.S. Army interrogator who located Saddam Hussein (as told in his excellent book Mission: Black List #1).There is also Ali Soufan, the FBI agent who successfully interrogated Abu Zubaydah. In Iraq, my own team successfully interrogated many mid- and high-level leaders of al-Qaida while hunting Abu Musab Al Zarqawi. Serious interrogators have little doubt that we would have gotten better information from KSM, and sooner, had the interrogations been conducted by professional interrogators using noncoercive techniques.
Another mischaracterization in Courting Disaster is Thiessen's claim that CIA water-boarding is identical to the water-boarding given American troops in training. Thiessen calls it "absurd" to believe we would torture our own troops. But if it were the same as the training given American troops, detainees would be told beforehand that it's temporary and voluntary; they'd have a codeword to make it stop at any time; and be reassured that it would not harm them permanently. Real water-boarding--unlike resistance training--exploits the real fear of death. The detainee does not know when, or if, it will stop. This is no different than charging the slide of a pistol and pointing it at a prisoner's head. The soldier holding the pistol may have taken precautions (removing the bullets from the magazine and/or getting the Justice Department to produce memos calling it legal), but it's still illegal, as the military courts determined when an American soldier did just this in Afghanistan. Threatening prisoners with death or physical harm is torture. That's precisely why the Geneva Conventions, the U.N. Conventions Against Torture, U.S. law, and military regulations prohibit it.
This is the difference between someone who actually knows how interrogation works and a speechwriter who makes batshit crazy claims like Zubaydah thanking us for torturing him.
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Comments
I have NO PROBLEM with using enhanced interrogation techniques under extreme scenarios: Such as a bomb about to go off somewhere, and time is of the essence.
But I do have a problem with giving that power to the Executive Branch to use on his own. Then it can be abused and used routinely, as we saw in the Bush Administration.
The right answer to this, as to lots of other political questions, is separation of powers: Legislation should be enacted that requires that the decision to employ enhanced interrogation methods should be approved on a case by case basis only, and by at least TWO of the three branches of government, preferably by all three. That means in practice: The President; the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court; and the Speaker of the House.
For example, if we knew there was a small tactical nuclear warhead hidden somewhere in San Francisco, I have no doubt that Speaker Pelosi would approve the use of whatever methods were necessary to get the location of that bomb. Even waterboarding. Even electrodes attached to the testicles. Because the alternative--the bomb goes off--is too catastrophic. Pelosi's own Daughter Christine lives there.
Posted by: sinz54 | March 9, 2010 12:33 PM
sinz54, you do realize that Fox's "24" is not actually a documentary, don't you?
Posted by: tacitus | March 9, 2010 12:38 PM
For example, if we knew there was a small tactical nuclear warhead hidden somewhere in San Francisco, I have no doubt that Speaker Pelosi would approve the use of whatever methods were necessary to get the location of that bomb. Even waterboarding. Even electrodes attached to the testicles. Because the alternative--the bomb goes off--is too catastrophic. Pelosi's own Daughter Christine lives there.
Yeah, yeah, nice dramatic scenario, dude; but guess what -- drama does not make torture a more effective means of interrogation.
First question: if you need torture to get information you don't have, then how do you verify whether the answers you get are true? In fact, how do you even know if you're torturing the right guy?
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 9, 2010 12:40 PM
24 is not a documentary :p
Posted by: JohnV | March 9, 2010 12:42 PM
Because writing speeches for Republicans makes you an expert on everything. It worked for William Safire, Patrick Buchanan, George Will ....
Posted by: Scott Hanley | March 9, 2010 12:45 PM
...Mark Helprin, Michael Gerson...
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 9, 2010 12:48 PM
...Ben Stein...
Posted by: Rick R | March 9, 2010 12:50 PM
I don't necessarily have a problem with torture in extreme situations per se either. I do, however, have a problem with it being legal. I really don't understand the conservative position that keeping it illegal makes it physically impossible. If I magically knew that an action could save millions of lives, I'd do it even if it meant facing a firing squad at the end of the day. And that really should be the standard, is the information worth dying for. (Of course, since torture doesn't work, it would never be worth dying for)
Posted by: Drekab | March 9, 2010 12:57 PM
sinz54, won't work. It needs a Constitutional Amendment. Even then, the Constitution doesn't create rights, it only enumerates rights that individuals already have.
The Universal Declaration of human rights doesn't create any rights either, it only enumerates rights that individuals already have.
Nothing that Congress can do can take away rights that humans already have. Any laws that pretend to do so are of the same force as the memos that legalized torture. They didn't really, no law or Constitutional amendment can do so either.
But actually, using the same "logic" as preemptive war and torture of suspected terrorists, I suggest we use preemptive imprisonment, imprison those people who suggest that government do illegal things, like torture people. People who suggest doing illegal and harmful things are much more of a danger than wild-eyed terrorists. Terrorists can only cause fear and terror. They can't destroy the fabric of our civilization, the rule of law.
Posted by: deaedalus2u | March 9, 2010 1:06 PM
In sinz54's defense, while the "doomsday scenario" may be unrealistic. It serves to demonstrate a point. Are there *any* circumstances under which torture is justified. And if the answer is yes, then now we can talk about where the line is. I think very few people would say that if we knew with 100% certainty that a bomb was going to go off and 100% certainty that this guy knew where it was, that we might want to torture, as a last resort, to save lives. If that's the case, how about 99% certainty and so on.
My point is not to justify torture, but if as a matter of policy, the US decides to torture in some extreme cases, then like sinz54 suggested, and I happen to agree, it should be done on a case by case basis with review from other branches of government, and openly acknowledged that we did it and why.
This to me is far more palatable than the standard conservative position of torture anyone anywhere at anytime if you're Muslim and we think it *might* save lives. And then never admit to doing it.
Posted by: MyPetSlug | March 9, 2010 1:06 PM
Drekalb: the people who want to make it legal -- with "safeguards," of course -- are probably the same people who argued for allowing cops to ignore the Miranda rule if they could "prove" they were acting in "good faith." They really seem to think that if you have "good faith" -- as demonstrated by thinking like them -- then you should be above the law. To them, the law is for others.
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 9, 2010 1:08 PM
That means in practice: The President; the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court; and the Speaker of the House.
Yeah, that would have put a stop to things in 2005.
Posted by: Uncle Glenny | March 9, 2010 1:10 PM
if we knew there was a small tactical nuclear warhead hidden somewhere in San Francisco
To beat the point nigh-unto death (yeah, I know, I'm hilarious!), how do you then know which answer is the correct one? The first? Second, third? 46th?
Posted by: eNeMeE | March 9, 2010 1:20 PM
Slug: what makes you think that people who misuse torture and then try to cover up the results, would comply with any sort of legal review board?
And once such a board was created, they'd be under HUGE political pressure to give the torturers everything they wanted without delay. And of course the torturers would have the same generic justification for EVERY request: there's LIVES AT STAKE and THIS MIGHT SAVE LIVES and WE GOTTA DO SOMETHING!!! And, of course, the details that might or might not prove their case are secret and can't be discussed by mere magistrates. THERE'S NO TIME FOR TALK AND DELIBERATION GODDAMMIT!!!
I'm with Drekalb: keep it illegal, and whoever uses torture can explain his reasons -- and show his results, if any -- to a court or court martial. If he got the information he needed in time to disarm the nuke, then he'll walk.
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 9, 2010 1:30 PM
sinz54 - ...enhanced interrogation techniques...enhanced interrogation methods...
How about a law requiring people to call torture torture rather than employing weaselly, Orwellian euphemisms.
Posted by: Taz | March 9, 2010 1:36 PM
The ticking time bomb scenario is moronic. It is nearly inconcievable that we would know that a bomb existed AND had some idea of a time frame AND have in custody a guy who knew all these details. Drekab has a point,though. If this extremely unlikely scenario were to come to pass I bet someone would put the screws to the guy, consequences be damned.
I could see a bomb set to go off at a specific time to take out a specific target, but how likely would it be that you'd have all this other info and not be able to figure out the target? It's pure Hollywood.
Now with a nuke, why would they hide it and run the risk of detection? Doesn't make sense. By their nature nukes make big holes, plus their true value, when used one at a time, is fear not material damage, though the damage could be immense. Just set it off once it gets into port or where ever.
If the terrorist knew when the bomb was going to go off, he'd know just how long to resist. Or, more likely, he'd give some fake info which would have to checked out, eating into the time window.
What hit home the most in Matt Alexander's critique was this:
"If an American soldier is captured, would we want his obligation to resist turned into a justification that allows him to be water-boarded into cooperating? ..."
So, before we started torturing people, a captured US serviceman would at least know that his own government was above torturing people. He had a little moral highground to stand on. Now that's gone. Now when he is being waterboarded, his torturers can merely remind him that they are just practicing what our government has preached.
Posted by: The Gregarious Misanthrope | March 9, 2010 1:40 PM
If the items raised in this article are correct, it was more than a little "dunk in the water" as cheney called it. (I bolded the final two sentences for emphasis.)
http://www.salon.com/news/torture/index.html?story=/news/feature/2010/03/09/waterboarding_for_dummies
Posted by: dean | March 9, 2010 1:44 PM
MyPetSlug, #10: Are there *any* circumstances under which torture is justified.
Well, a necessary (but probably not sufficient) circumstance is knowing that torture will work.
In real life torture will rarely work because either the victim will give false information knowing that this will delay the bomb squad (we're talking about a "ticking" bomb, right?), or the other perpetrators are smart enough to change their plans, or WE GOT THE WRONG FUCKING GUY WHO DOESN'T KNOW SHIT!
The last one is important. We can never be certain who is being mislead by their own biases, prejudices, or ambitions, and even honest and smart persons can be mislead by false information. That is one of the reasons why we have due process: TO MAKE SURE THAT WE ACTUALLY HAVE THE RIGHT PERSON!
Posted by: Chiroptera | March 9, 2010 1:46 PM
So, before we started torturing people, a captured US serviceman would at least know that his own government was above torturing people. He had a little moral highground to stand on. Now that's gone.
Yeah, now our old enemy Vietnam has the high ground. Why? Because, after torturing John McCain and getting nowhere with it, they renounced torture. Then McCain changed his mind and decided torture was a good idea.
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 9, 2010 1:49 PM
If you want to torture people, and you know it is illegal to do so in the US, take them somewhere it is legal....oh, wait.
Does that mean BushCo knew it was illegal? Damned logic.
Posted by: MikeMa | March 9, 2010 1:50 PM
CIA Chief: "OK, men, we know there is a small tactical nuclear device. We know it is in San Francisco. We know it is about to go off. And we know that this guy knows where it is. Start torturing, boys."
Subordinate: "Um, boss, we know all that, but we don't know where in San Francisco this thing is?"
Chief: "No, that's the only, the single, thing we don't know."
Subordinate: "Surely we have some idea? I mean, San Francisco's only about 47 square miles big. We can probably exclude a lot of places, too, like law firms, movie theaters, Nancy Pelosi's district office..."
Chief: "There's no time!"
Subordinate: "Hold on, chief. How can we have enough information to know there's no time, but not enough to have some idea where it is?"
Chief: "For Christ's sake, Subordinate, don't you ever watch 24?"
Torture ensues.
Suspect: (gurgle, gurgle) OK, I give in! It's at 90 7th Street, Suite 2-800!"
Chief: "See, it worked!"
Subordinate: "Um, Chief, how do we know he's telling us the truth?"
Chief: "Because we just waterboarded him, you idiot! Let's roll. Go, go, go!"
Posted by: James Hanley | March 9, 2010 1:59 PM
Bee,
Well, by making clear the procedure, if it's not followed or the doomsday scenario turns out to be a dud (they tortured the guy and there turns out not to be a bomb) questions are more likely to be asked and people held responsible. By keeping torture in murky legal water, you think that's better? You get what we have now, torture on someones authority, we don't know who, denial it happened, and justification that it would be ok if it did.
I see it more like the FISA court. There was a need seen for some situations in which they needed warrants and wiretaps super quick. How do we know those procedures are being followed (And in fact with Bush we know they weren't, but ignoring that for now)? We don't, and I'm sure FISA isn't perfect, but it's better that no FISA and individuals wiretapping whenever they want and denying it. Hypothetically, someone who did that would be held responsible.
And since you seem to acknowledge that there are some situations in where torture can be justified, instead of having lone wolf hero torture and then justify why he did it at his trial, why not spell out that it's illegal expect under these very specific situations authorized by these people. And if they're wrong, their heads roll.
Posted by: MyPetSlug | March 9, 2010 2:01 PM
Chiroptera, #10,
I get what you're saying. I'm not trying to say torture is effective or that it's even a good option. But part of the point of the "doomsday scenario" is that when you don't have a lot of time, *there are no good options*. Torture may not work even in that situation. Then again, many people see it as having the greatest chance to work given the time constraints of the scenario. And of course the reward is if it does work you've saved many lives at the cost of not even one. The question is when is it worth the risk?
All of your objections are based on real world concerns. Most of the time, in fact all the times that we've encountered would-be terrorist, we haven't had absolute certainty of an imminent attack and we may never. And torture isn't 100% effective. But, I ask you are there *any* circumstances where it is justified. If that answer is yes, then you can start talking about where the line is.
Anyway, this is kind of derailing the topic of the post. Sorry.
Posted by: MyPetSlug | March 9, 2010 2:14 PM
I have some questions.
Which country and which specific security agency has the highest ratio of torturing to find ticking bombs to torturing to get other kinds of information? What is this ratio? How low does this ration have to be to admit that torture isn't actually done to save lives?
Posted by: Chiroptera | March 9, 2010 2:17 PM
I agree with you in some sense Chiroptera. Certainly the torture done so far hasn't been done to save lives. It's been done as a political litmus test. If you're against torture, Republicans can brand you as weak on terror and not willing to do what necessary to protect Americans.
Republicans want the "if Americans are worried about their security they'll vote for us" card and so they have to "win" on the torture issue to do that.
Posted by: MyPetSlug | March 9, 2010 2:27 PM
Funny how the people trying to justify torture keep on coming up with these dramatic, button-pushing, heart-pounding "ticking time-bomb" scenarios. As if, in their opinion, torture is only justified when time is short and it may already be too late. Of course, if torture actually WORKED, why not use it to catch up with the terrorists before they actually plant their nuke?
Deep in their hearts (what's left of them), the advocates of torture understand their scenarios are bogus. Even in a hypothetical/fictional setting, they still have to gin up fear and urgency to keep us from thinking too hard about it.
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 9, 2010 2:29 PM
MyPetSlug, #23: And of course the reward is if it does work you've saved many lives at the cost of not even one.
Even if it can be demonstrated that a life somewhere was saved, I think we can ask a little more at what cost. Sure, the victim may not have lost his or her life. But he or she was tortured. And there were presumably other people who were tortured under the same protocol but lives were not saved, so several lives were ruined, perhaps some innocent, just to save a life.
Was it worth it? I don't think so. Evidently the Constitution doesn't think so either, otherwise it wouldn't list the rights held by people suspected of crimes and by people actually convicted of crimes.
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If that answer is yes, then you can start talking about where the line is.
And this is the other concern. I think this is an area where we are justified in worrying about a "slippery slope." Once we lift the absolute prohibition, then we lose control over when and where it will be used. Again, I don't think the potential benefits are worth it.
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Of course, this is just considering the "practical" concerns. I don't think it is bad that we, as a society, decide that some things are so abhorrent that we simply will not resort to them even if one can construct a hypothetical scenario where a life will be saved.
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Anyway, this is kind of derailing the topic of the post. Sorry.
Seems on topic to me. Unless I'm missing something subtle. ("Subtle" meaning I'm too dense to see it.)
Posted by: Chiroptera | March 9, 2010 2:53 PM
MyPetSlug: If terrorists get to the point where they've got a bomb near a major metropolitan center, we have already lost. There is no longer any reward; you will not be able to find the bomb and that's final. There will be no successful last-ditch heroics, because this is reality and not 24.
Posted by: Tacroy | March 9, 2010 2:57 PM
Torture is an ancient practice. Surely, then, the "ticking bomb" scenario has actually happened at least once. If torture works, it would've proven itself by now.
So there should be case studies in the training manuals of the Intelligence Community. CIA handbooks, FBI/Police textbooks... do they cite examples?
Posted by: David Ratnasabapathy | March 9, 2010 3:02 PM
When performing an immoral and illegal act, you tend not to leave an easy to follow paper trail.
Posted by: MikeMa | March 9, 2010 3:14 PM
The ticking time bomb scenario is a red herring promoted in order to avoid the discussion what is actually happening and the ramifications. I assume because the advocate of such an argument is either a totally uninformed moron who created a position prior to doing any research on the empirical evidence for/against or feels membership with the people who implemented torture where defense of political power is more important than the national interest.
It should also be noted that all the empirical evidence we've collected notes that professional interrogators who do not torture are far more effective at gaining intelligence and that the number one motivator of al Qaeda recruits in Iraq was because of our torture policies. So even if one entertained such 24-style mental exercises, such flights of fantasy still need to be weighed against the very real lost blood of American soldiers coupled to the lost soft power that reduces the amount of military and diplomatic support we'll get from other countries.
People that avoid what's actually happening in their arguments or who promote torture are enabling a primary reason for post-invasion American casualties in Iraq. This argument, and the actual torture policy that was implemented are two illustrative examples that conservatism as its currently practiced in American is incapable of competently governing - getting elected yes, but governing? The damage from the last decade will last generations, in both blood and treasure and even if Iraq becomes politically stable by mid-2011.
Posted by: Michael Heath | March 9, 2010 3:24 PM
Whatever your opinion about the actual use of torture, I think people should stop insisting that torture "doesn't work". That would be news indeed to the Gestapo and the NKVD and the French paras in Algiers. It does work, and lots of resistance or espionage networks have been rolled up by use of torture. The problem may be is that, while it does work, it's inefficient and slow. Even with skilled interrogators (themselves a rare breed), it takes time to go through the prisoner's defenses, including false answers. And there's...wastage. Not every prisoner will have information or even be an actual enemy agent/terrorist/partisan. That didn't bother the Gestapo or the NKVD--- they weren't concerned about wastage. "Wrong guy" is not a concept that ever bothered Heydrich or Beria or the Iraqi Mukhabarat. Autre temps, autre moeurs...
There are clear and convincing reasons not to employ torture. But let's be clear: "it doesn't work" isn't correct.
Posted by: DesertHedgehog | March 9, 2010 3:30 PM
I think you are splitting hairs, DesertHedgehog. Torture doesn't work as well as other interrogation techniques. Do we really need to say the whole sentence every time? Or can it be assumed that by "torture doesn't work", we clearly mean in comparison to other interrogation techniques?
Posted by: James Sweet | March 9, 2010 3:35 PM
This whole argument swings on the supposition that coercive techniques are somehow uniquely more effective than any other in obtaining reliable information.
It isn't.
In a hypothetical doomsday scenario, you *might* decide to authorize "any and all means necessary" to get the information you need, but those means will not include torture because torture is not necessary because doesn't work.
per Alexander:
Posted by: amphiox | March 9, 2010 3:40 PM
Eh, the "There are no good options" line of argumentation gets you absolutely nowhere.
I get what you're saying. I'm not trying to say that sacrificing a goat is effective or that it's even a good option. But part of the point of the "doomsday scenario" is that when you don't have a lot of time, *there are no good options*.
Clearly, the Obama administration's non-goat-sacrificing policy is yet another demonstration of how he hates America.
Torture is probably your worst option in a "ticking time bomb" scenario, because a single false answer moots the entire interrogation. You actually probably would be better sacrificing goat, because then there's at least a minuscule chance that your bomb squad will look in the right place. If you use torture, there is a 100% guarantee your bomb squad will be in the wrong place.
Posted by: James Sweet | March 9, 2010 3:40 PM
Bee, #26
*If torture is ever justified* then, in my opinion, it is only justified when time is of extreme essence. It's the first part of my statement that I'm trying to get you to address. In post #14, paragraph 2, you seemed to indicate that in some cases it was justified. But now you're seeming to back track from that.
Chiroptera, #27
You keep trying to inject realism into a hypothetical situation that we both agree is unrealistic. Instead, answer the question the scenario is meant to address. Are there *any* set of circumstance where torturing someone is justified?
Ok, well at least that's finally an answer to the question. So, to follow up, just to be clear, would you be willing to give up your own life knowing that torturing some guy (who was going to spend the rest of his life jail anyay) *may* have saved it. Again, hypothetically here.
This is why I'm going through this whole exercise here. These questions are really at the root the "ticking time bomb" scenario and these fears about life or death are what it and the Republican part, who constantly brings it up, are trying to exploit. I always cringe when I see people miss that point and point out how unrealistic it is.
Posted by: MyPetSlug | March 9, 2010 3:42 PM
It does work, and lots of resistance or espionage networks have been rolled up by use of torture.
No, from what I understand, they were rolled up by a combination of factors, including counter-espionage, superior intelligence-gathering, multiple sources for verification, defectors, and plain old mistakes by by the networks themselves.
So far, I've seen NO RECORD of crucial information being gathered solely by torture. Do you think the Gestapo and NKVD are the only people who ever managed to crack a spy ring? We've cracked plenty of their rings without torture.
And there's...wastage.
Yeah, wastage of time and resources by people who THINK it's how the big guys get what they want.
Posted by: Raging bee | March 9, 2010 3:44 PM
Obviously James, torture has more of a chance to work that sacrificing a goat (or praying to magical sky faeries for that matter). So, your argument is that torture *never* works? I mean, I don't have any statistics or anything, but I'd think it's success ratio is above never.
Posted by: MyPetSlug | March 9, 2010 3:47 PM
And how does torture get around these problems? How does torturing prevent or identify false answers better than non-coercive interrogation techniques? How does torturing a prisoner who does not have information result in less wastage than interrogating such a prisoner non-coercively?
What evidence do we actually have that the Gestapo and NKVD and any other such group got information faster or better or more reliably than other groups that did not employ torture?
Throughout WWII, Allied intelligence consistently obtained better, faster, and more reliable information than the Germans. It was one of the major factors in winning the war. I don't know if the Allies did or did not use torture, about certainly you can't say that the Gestapo's use of torture gave them any obvious leg up on the issue of obtaining reliable intelligence.
Posted by: amphiox | March 9, 2010 3:48 PM
In post #14, paragraph 2, you seemed to indicate that in some cases it was justified.
No, I was indicating how supporters of torture would most likely PRETEND torture could be justified, given an opportunity to get themselves exempted from laws against torture.
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 9, 2010 3:53 PM
Not so obvious at all. The goat gives you no information. If the chance the torture will give you false or unreliable information is sufficiently high, then it is worse than no information.
Posted by: amphiox | March 9, 2010 3:54 PM
Does it? I am referring specifically to the ticking time bomb scenario, i.e. if the torturee gives even a single false answer that is believed by the torturers to possibly be true, then the jig is up. In that case, I am not so sure that torture has more of a chance to work than sacrificing a goat. If you sacrifice a goat and then have your bomb squad look in wherever you think the most likely place for a bomb is, hey, you might get lucky. But if you torture a guy who knows he only has to lie once, there's a very high probability he will do so -- especially because he's pissed off that you are torturing him!
Well you have to inject an ounce of realism, or else the question is meaningless. Or at least, irrelevant to any practical moral/ethical concerns about torture.
If we assume an alternate reality where torture is more effective in the short term than other techniques, then I suppose we could debate whether it is justified. Is that the hypothetical you are asking about?
Posted by: James Sweet | March 9, 2010 3:56 PM
It seems to me that torture - ineffective as it generally is - would be even LESS effective in a "ticking time bomb" scenario.
If I'd planted a bomb and knew it was going to go off in, say, an hour, I'd have even more incentive to hold out.
After the bomb's gone off, what? Are they going to keep torturing me? Not in the scenario of the "ticking time bomb" torture apologists. So I'd endure until my objective's complete.
Posted by: Josh | March 9, 2010 4:00 PM
In that hypothetical, I suppose the answer could be yes, IF the harm from the torture (the sum of the physical and psychological harm on the torturee, the psychological harm on the torturer, and impact that might have on the torturer's future effectiveness as a reliable interrogator, the harm resulting from acting on false information x the likelihood of getting false information by torture, the harm to the nation in question's moral standing and international prestige, etc, all added up) is less than the harm of failing to prevent whatever short-term disaster needs to be prevented.
That'd be quite a doozy to add up. . . .
Posted by: amphiox | March 9, 2010 4:03 PM
Outside of the ticking time bomb scenario, I agree that torture would be more effective than goat sacrifice. As you point out, torture has frequently been used for interrogation throughout history, and it worked at least some of the time. Absent any moral or ethical concerns, or any secondary practical concerns (e.g. public relations damage, etc.), it is a workable method of interrogation. It's just not a very good one, even without the moral/ethical/long-term can of worms.
In the ticking time bomb scenario, though, I would argue that torture is completely useless. The biggest problem with torture as an interrogation technique is that it is indeed quite effective at inducing the victim to supply an answer to the questions they are being asked -- so effective, that it induces them to supply an answer before you are able to do anything else to prime them to tell the truth.
Put a time limit on getting the right answer, and the whole method falls apart. Torture almost by definition will generate some false intelligence before it obtains an accurate answer. Outside of a ticking time bomb scenario, that might only result in wasted time and wasted resources. In the ticking time bomb scenario, it renders the technique completely ineffective.
Posted by: James Sweet | March 9, 2010 4:04 PM
MyPetSlug @ #23:
Oh, so you're saying we shouldn't base national policy on "real world concerns" but on made-up shit.
If there exist any circumstances where torture is justified that can actually occur in the real world, unlike the idiotic "ticking bomb scenario", then it would be possible to provide an example. No realistic scenario has even been contemplated, much less actually occurred. If you disagree with this, feel free to present a situation that could actually occur in the real world where torture would be, at the very least, more effective than sacrificing a goat and reading the entrails. If you can pull that off, you can try for the much higher hurdle of a situation where it would be more effective than other means actually known to be useful for obtaining legitimate information in the real world (rather than for extracting false confessions, the standard use for torture).
If you want to justify legalizing torture in the REAL WORLD, you have to present some evidence that it is effective and necessary in the REAL WORLD. So far you've only managed to justify it in a fantasy world.
Posted by: phantomreader42 | March 9, 2010 4:05 PM
MyPetSlug, #36: So, to follow up, just to be clear, would you be willing to give up your own life knowing that torturing some guy (who was going to spend the rest of his life jail anyay) *may* have saved it. Again, hypothetically here.
Actually, I would. I wouldn't expect anyone to torture anyone else, even it it's supposed to save my own life.
Would you (or, if you're just playing Devil's Advocate, a torture advocate) be willing to be tortured because someone thought you might have information about a ticking bomb?
Posted by: Chiroptera | March 9, 2010 4:07 PM
Absent any moral or ethical concerns, or any secondary practical concerns (e.g. public relations damage, etc.), it is a workable method of interrogation.
Yeah, and absent any concerns regarding comfort, safety, capacity, cost-effectiveness, range, etc., the Wright Brothers' biplane was a workable method of transport.
This assertion -- which is still unsupported by any documented fact -- seems contrary to what actual interrogators have been saying.
And this, I suspect, is why people continue to think torture works: enough people keep on repeating the assertion, so it just SEEMS that way to people who keep on hearing the same assertion over and over and have no way to verify or test the claim. I mean, peole keep on SAYING torture works, so that means it must be true, right? People NEVER keep on repeating things that aren't true for so long, right?
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 9, 2010 4:12 PM
@amphiox #44: And that's only if you take a utilitarian stance on morality. There are many valid bases for morality in which it would still be wrong even if the net cost-benefit was positive.
I'm not sure exactly how I fall on that question. I think utilitarianism is a useful jumping-off point for morality, but it tends to result in some pretty repugnant tradeoffs.
Of course, maybe one way of looking at it is that if a utilitarian argument seems to advocate for some intuitively immoral action, there is a good chance you have missed something in the cost-benefit equation. For instance, you mention in your tally of costs and benefits of our hypothetical-torture-that-works, "the harm to the nation in question's...international prestige" -- which is of course a result of our intuitive moral notions.
Posted by: James Sweet | March 9, 2010 4:13 PM
James Sweet, #45: As you point out, torture has frequently been used for interrogation throughout history, and it worked at least some of the time.
Actually, torture worked great most of the time. Let's remember what the main historical use of torture was: to get confessions and to produce accusations against others when guilt was already a foregone conclusion or when the actual facts were politically irrelevant.
Posted by: Chiroptera | March 9, 2010 4:14 PM
Raging Bee, I do not think what I said contradicted what professional interrogators have said. You may have misinterpreted what I was getting at. In particular, I want to highlight this in your reply, which I agree with:
That's exactly what I was getting at with the statement you were replying to. I was not trying to say torture is a useful means of interrogation -- I was saying quite the opposite, that it's useless because it barely works.
By saying that it was "workable", I was trying to address some of MyPetSlug's arguments. In particular, MyPetSlug cited historical examples when torture was used, and apparently at least sorta kinda worked. Yes, exactly -- just like the Wright Brothers plane was a historical example of flight that sorta kinda worked.
I struggled with the word "workable" in that phrase, trying to find a phrase that was sufficiently guarded to convey my meaning. It appears based on your response that I failed :)
Posted by: James Sweet | March 9, 2010 4:18 PM
1) If you get an answer from the torturee, it at least has a chance of being right, where you don't have that chance with our unlucky goat. Maybe you get lucky, and this guy cracks. And again, in this scenario that's what you'd need, luck. But a chance is better than no chance.
2) Assuming the torturing was done by the government and not the lone wolf, multi-tasking is possible. You get some false info, but one answer may be correct. Just because you get some info does not mean you trust it uncritically.
But I guess this is all besides the point. I have a hard time believing that your position is that torture has never worked in the history of human civilization. Anyone who has ever been tortured has never supplied the needed information. All the regimes throughout history that have done it I guess where really just thinking about things uncritically, eh?
The analogy that comes to mind is, you're in a very tall burning building. You're going to die from the fire, do you jump out the window? Obviously, you don't have a good option and you'll probably die either way, but at least jumping you have a chance, however, slight of getting extremely 1/billion lucky. But some chance is better than no chance.
Or for sake of argument, instead of arguing about the minutia of the ticking time bomb scenario, address the question I keep asking, If torture did work, however rarely, is it justified under any circumstances.
Posted by: MyPetSlug | March 9, 2010 4:20 PM
Raging Bee, you're probably right, though, that given the lies being spread, the phrasing I used was probably not appropriate.
I'm not sure how else to say it though. Torture, in a non-ticking time bomb scenario, is the blind squirrel that finds a nut? heh...
Posted by: James Sweet | March 9, 2010 4:23 PM
Why do you not have a chance of being right from reading the goat entrails? You have a non-zero chance. Just like with torture. I'm just saying, with torture your chance is lower because the torturee has a powerful incentive to give you false information, whereas the goat entrails have no such incentive.
Um, this is the first time you've made it explicit that your hypothetical scenario also modifies reality by assuming that torture is effective, which it isn't. In fact, I explicitly asked that hypothetical before you did, and you will see there has been some discussion of it at #44 and #49.
If you read carefully, you will see that is not my position. And in fact I got some flack from Raging Bee for it ;)
I'm just saying, for all of its ineffectiveness in comparison to modern interrogation techniques, it performs even worse in the ticking time bomb scenario.
Actually, even if torture never ever worked, that would not mean that the regimes throughout history that have used it were "thinking uncritically", as Chiroptera points out:
Posted by: James Sweet | March 9, 2010 4:28 PM
James: Yeah, that pretty much covers it.
There are two problems with torture as a means of getting information: the torturee, and the torturer. The torturee is unreliable, for all the reasons described above; and the torturer is also unreliable: once he has an idea that a certain detainee has the answers he wants, he'll simply disregard any answer that isn't what he expects to hear. Which means he'll just keep on torturing the guy until he hears the answer he already expects -- whether or not it's true. And how does he verify whether or not the answers are true? By means of other sources; and if he had other reliable sources, then torture is, at best, redundant.
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 9, 2010 4:36 PM
MyPetSlug @ #52:
If you are torturing the right person (which is by no means guaranteed) then they will be motivated to give you false information, which will waste resources, and the answer is virtually guaranteed to be a lie. If you are torturing the WRONG person, they will give you random information in a desperate hope to make you stop, and totally random information is actually LESS likely to be wrong than information that is deliberately chosen to be wrong. The chances of you winning the lottery aren't that good to begin with, but they drop a lot when all the balls with your numbers on them are taken out of the machines.
So, what you're saying is that we should throw away any semblance of morality because there's a miniscule-to-nonexistent chance that we might get lucky in a scenario that's already been established to be impossible.
I'm beginning to suspect you're a terrorist. Please cut off your toes one by one until you admit it.
Posted by: phantomreader42 | March 9, 2010 4:40 PM
I agree with Drekalb and Bee. Judges have a good deal of discretion when it comes to sentencing, and there are always presidential pardons if all else fails. Besides that, any situation where it's clear that the use of torture by an interrogator saved lives would probably arouse sympathy in a typical American jury. And having to rely on the mercy and understanding of others for vindication would provide a powerful incentive for a would-be torturer to pause and consider carefully whether torture really is the best option in a particular situation.
I'm not sure time bomb-like scenarios are as rare as people typically assert, though. Consider a scenario (based on a real event, I'll have to search for the reference) wherein a man with a record of violent sexual assault has kidnapped a child, the police have his brother in custody, and the police have good reason to believe that the brother knows where the kidnapper and child are. Are the police justified in using coercive techniques to find the child?
In such a case, I would still say that coercion should be illegal -- the policemen in question have to weigh the moral value of (potentially) finding the child against the unambiguously criminal action of torturing a suspect. Note that the policemen will most likely base their choice on how sure they are that the brother knows the kidnapper's whereabouts and how sure they are that torturing the brother will cause him to yield that information (accurately). No law could possibly include such contingent and subjective factors as an individual policeman's state of knowledge and certainty. That is, the ambiguity of the situation forces the policemen to make a moral judgment. In my opinion, creating a law that allows torture in certain circumstances gives the policemen an out -- they can abstain from making a moral judgment, but later claim to have done so within the context of good-faith compliance with said law. For example, the policemen might not actually have very good reasons to believe that the brother knows the kidnapper's whereabouts, but if the "limited torture act of 2010" is in place, they can proceed to torture the brother anyway knowing that they can misrepresent the state of their certitude later in court.
The default penalty for a representative of a government institution who is convicted of torturing should absolutely be removal from that institution and a stint in jail. I believe that this is the only way to ensure that such representatives only make the decision to torture when the outcome of that decision is relatively unambiguous, or when the representative feels strongly enough about the situation that he is willing to put his job and freedom on the line for the sake of making it.
Posted by: Dan L. | March 9, 2010 4:47 PM
James Sweet @ #54,
Yeah, I saw some of your responses after I posted mine.
Poor wording on my part. I assumed in my first proposals of my question that we were all on the same page with torture working sometimes (however rarely), which was implicit in my question. Obviously, if you take the position that torture never works, my question is meaningless.
But it's not enough to say torture works worse in the "ticking time bomb" scenario. All techniques work worse in that scenario. The question is will any other techniques work at all within the time frame? And I'm talking about torture as a last resort after whatever other technique can be applied have been and haven't worked.
And even if torture's main use was to coerce false confessions, that discounts that it was also used to get real confessions. I really have no idea what the success rate of torture is, but I will agree from everything I've read, it's less reliable than other methods. But, I'm taking the position it works sometimes, at least more than reading goat entrails. And I think the same goes both for the people who pose the ticking time bomb scenario and to those for whom it means something.
Posted by: MyPetSlug | March 9, 2010 4:47 PM
Maybe you get lucky, and this guy cracks.
Define "cracks." It might mean he loses his ability to resist telling you the truth; or it might mean he loses his ability to distinguish truth from fantasy. When was the last time you were in excruciating pain? How sharp were you at separating fact from fiction at that time?
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 9, 2010 4:49 PM
Dan L. @ #57:
The rarity (actually, impossibility) of the ticking bomb scenario is due to it requiring a bunch of unwarranted and unexamined assumptions to work. Basically, it requires the following:
And so on, and so forth, just trying to unpack the whole load of unwarranted assumptions would take forever.
If there's any possibility of you having the wrong suspect, or of the right suspect holding out until the bomb goes off, or of there being a more reliable way to find the bomb, or any of countless other things happening, the whole thing falls apart and becomes worthless.
Posted by: phantomreader42 | March 9, 2010 5:02 PM
phantomreader42 @ 56,
I've mentioned a couple times, I don't think arguing about the realism of a hypothetical situation gets you anywhere. The whole point is that it's hypothetical and not meant to be realistic. I've posed what I feel is the main point of the question. You can back through my posts and find it and see if you think it's fair.
No torture or throw away and semblance of morality are not the only two options here.
Posted by: MyPetSlug | March 9, 2010 5:02 PM
MyPetSlug @ #61:
So, you believe we should base national policy on hypothetical situations that have no relation to reality at all?
Should we choose our next President by tossing all the candidates into Lake Erie, on the grounds that there hypothetically might be a woman waiting there with a magic sword to bestow upon the truly worthy leader? Does supreme executive power derive from some farcical aquatic ceremony?
Should we replace the Supreme Court with a Magic 8 Ball and a Ouija board on the grounds that they might hypothetically really be capable of channeling the wisdom of magical beings from another world?
Should we be putting all our military budget into robotics research and training of child pilots on the grounds that the fate of the world might hypothetically rest on the outcome of an interstellar war involving mecha that for some reason can only be operated by people under 15?
Posted by: phantomreader42 | March 9, 2010 5:16 PM
I think the reason people keep re-injecting realism, though, is because they are trying to show that our conclusions in the case of the hypothetical have absolutely no bearing on public policy.
I think the hypothetical if-torture-really-worked-and-there-was-a-ticking-time-bomb scenario is philosophically interesting, because it stimulates us to think about the strengths and weaknesses of a utilitarian view of morality. But it is practically irrelevant, because it could never have any bearing on a real-life policy decision regarding torture. And this blog has more to do with public policy than abstract philosophy :) Hence the continuous critique of the hypothetical's lack of realism.
On a side note: Dan L.'s position is intriguing, even though I disagree with some of his premises. (Namely, since I don't think torture would be any likelier to locate the brother than modern interrogation techniques, I don't think it would ever be ethical for the police to violate the law) It's still intriguing, though, because it acknowledges that even if we accepted that torture was ethical in some situations (which I don't), it still needs to be illegal because no law could ever mandate the narrow conditions without being inevitably exploited.
Posted by: James Sweet | March 9, 2010 5:30 PM
phantomreader42 @ 62,
Again, go back through some of my posts and see what my actual position is. In summary, the point of the hypothetical situation is really to ask "Are there *any* situations where torture is justified?", assuming torture does indeed work at a level above what could be achieved by guessing. My position is not, should we torture all the time? It is not, torture is the most effective means of interrogation. So, you can skip over those argument, and maybe please reread some of what I actually wrote and address some of my actual positions.
Bee @ 59,
Can we get past this arguing about minutia of a hypothetical situation? I feel like I'm in that scene in Blade Runner -
Holden: You're in a desert, walking along in the sand, when all of a sudden you look down...
Leon: What one?
Holden: What?
Leon: What desert?
Holden: It doesn't make any difference what desert, it's completely hypothetical.
Leon: But, how come I'd be there?
Holden: Maybe you're fed up. Maybe you want to be by yourself. Who knows? You look down and see a tortoise, Leon. It's crawling toward you...
Leon: Tortoise? What's that?
Holden: [irritated by Leon's interruptions] You know what a turtle is?
Leon: Of course!
Holden: Same thing.
and so on.....
Come one people, do we know what a hypothetical situation is? Look past the details and see what it is actually trying to get at, which is what I'm attempting to do. If you accept that torture works *at all*, even a tiny tiny bit, then is its use ever justified? As in *any* situation no matter how far fetched?
Posted by: MyPetSlug | March 9, 2010 5:40 PM
That's where I disagree. Because once you accept that torture is acceptable in one situation, then it may be acceptable in others and where do we draw that line? Perhaps that is why so many people concentrate on the details, precisely to avoid the moral dilemma.
I keep harping on this for a couple reasons. First, if you acknowledge that it may sometimes be justified or at the very least that some people taking the position that it's justified is not unreasonable, then you can begin to have a sane policy discussion about where that line should be. Which would be superior to what we have today which is legal quagmire.
Second, a lot of people today already do think the ticking time bomb scenario is justified. Even if you don't think it is, you should argue on merits, not things that miss the point like arguing over the details in a hypothetical situation or that torture never works ever. I don't think those are winning arguments with most people.
Third, just the fact that so many people are persuaded by the ticking time bomb stuff really does mean that our public policy is affected by it, whether we like it or not.
Posted by: MyPetSlug | March 9, 2010 5:52 PM
The problem is that the hypothetical isn't really that controversial anyway. If it ever happens and the President orders torture to be used and then came clean and explained what he did, why he did it, and what it achieved, it would then be up to Congress and the Justice Department to decide what to do.
Something tells me that if the scenario is even half as justifiable as the hypothetical ticking time bomb, public opinion would be behind him (or her) all the way, and no legal action would be taken.
I would far rather a President make such a decision, in extremis, knowing that it was illegal going into the situation and having to justify its use after the fact rather than keeping torture as a legal instrument on the shelf ready and waiting for him to use whenever he or his band of lawyers thought it was okay to use.
Posted by: tacitus | March 9, 2010 5:55 PM
MyPetSlug, #64: If you accept that torture works *at all*, even a tiny tiny bit, then is its use ever justified?
It could be that I really don't understand what you are asking here. I think people have been explaining that torture doesn't work at all. The "if" part isn't satisfied, and so the "then" part doesn't follow.
For torture to work "at all" we need to be able to distinguish false information from true information. That can't be done without verifying through other means. If other means are available, then the torture wasn't necessary to begin with.
It isn't enough that there was or might be one case somewhere where someone tortured someone and that piece of information happened to be correct. That doesn't count as working "at all, even a teensy bit," because anything can be potentially justified at that low a standard.
The use of public funds for police psychics can't be justified because some psychic somewhere happened to be correct. It's not even something that "might be worth trying" -- the money spent could have been spent on real forensic resources that would have a better chance of answering the relevant questions.
In the same way, torturing someone isn't just something that just might work in this one case. Because once the protocols are set up, people who don't know anything, even people who are totally innocent, end up tortured. Worse, real intelligence, real useful information is not gathered in these circumstances because techniques with known reliability haven't been used.
Maybe your question still isn't being answered here, but that would because I may still not understand what you are asking.
Posted by: Chiroptera | March 9, 2010 5:57 PM
And, just by the fact that if the President authorized this illegal action and no action would be taken against him, then you feel the action would be justified?
Also note, that by leaving it illegal, again it's a quagmire. Say Obama goes your route, but the next pres elected goes back to the way Bush did it, torture quite often, deny he ever did, and then claim it would be ok if he had anyway. This is what we want?
Posted by: MyPetSlug | March 9, 2010 6:09 PM
Oops. I let my purple prose get the better of me. My use of "worse" in the preceding post wasn't really appropriate, nor did I mean it literally. I don't think that bad intelligence is worse than torturing innocent people, and I hope I haven't offended anyone.
Posted by: Chiroptera | March 9, 2010 6:11 PM
Sin54: I would imagine that torture would be even less effective in a situation with a specific timeframe than in an open ended one. I say I would because torture is already 0% effective at getting actual, useful information in open-ended situations, and thus, cannot be any less effective. Torture's true effectiveness lies in making innocent people confess to things they haven't done, which is why people like Khalid have confessed to everything from masterminding September 11th to assassinating the Pope.
As to the moral issue, even if torture was effective at getting to the truth, which it never is, it would still be morally, ethically, and legally reprehensible. It is pure sadism.
Posted by: Julian | March 9, 2010 6:11 PM
Hey, hey!
I was a speechwriter for a Republican, Orrin Hatch. I've written speech chunks for a couple of others, including Bill Bennett and Lamar Alexander.
I must be king of the experts, eh?
Listen to me: Waterboarding is wrong, morally, in all ethics systems, and legally.
Listen to the experts.
Posted by: Ed Darrell | March 9, 2010 6:31 PM
Now you're mixing hypotheticals with reality, and it doesn't wash -- which is why most people here refuse to be drawn into any admission that torture can be justifiably used.
In that hypothetical, I am assuming that torture is illegal and will continue to be illegal after its use in extreme and extremely rare circumstances. Not every illegal act is punished -- the law has great leeway in deciding whether someone should be prosecuted or not, even if the act itself is deemed to be illegal. If a President takes such an illegal action, then he should acknowledge that it is illegal and say that he will pay whatever consequences were deemed necessary.
Hypothetically, of course.
Posted by: tacitus | March 9, 2010 6:33 PM
@phantomreader:
I think you're being way too restrictive. Notice I used the phrase "time bomb-like."
Maybe, since you guys are so opposed to thought experiments and hypothetical scenarios, that I need to be more precise. Let's simply assume the following:
-There is reliable evidence to the effect that some crime will soon be committed.
-The authorities have in their custody a person who, according to the best evidence available, is part of a conspiracy to commit that crime, or otherwise knowledgeable of details of the crime.
-Reliable evidence suggests that the crime would be destructive of property and of innocent lives.
That's all. That's what I mean by a time bomb-like scenario. Nowhere near the precision you seem to think is required.
Whether or not torture is the best option in such a situation is a different question entirely from whether time bomb-like scenarios occur. I think the scenarios occur infrequently but not rarely, though I have no particular evidence for that. The point is, I think in almost no time bomb-like scenario is torture the best option. I wouldn't necessarily rule it out epistemologically -- it's certainly logically possible -- though I am quite comfortable with ruling it out legally.
At any rate, my belief is that in such a situation (which again, is much less restrictive than the situations you're talking about), the would-be torturer has to make a decision, and part of that decision factors in some of the concerns you mention; the policeman cannot be sure that torture will work in the same sense that he can be sure that the three angles of a triangle add to 180 degrees, but his internal state of certitude could still be quite high. If that's the case, he has to weigh that certitude against the possibility that he's wrong and will have to pay for it.
I think you're arguing past me rather than arguing with me.
Posted by: Dan L. | March 9, 2010 6:43 PM
MyPetSlug, @52, wrote:
Knowing 2, and therefore knowing that no answer he could give would cause the MyPetGoat administration to stop torturing him, hypothetical-evil-guy would have every incentive to just make up lies until the bomb goes off.
Honestly never thought I would say this, but this goat sacrifice idea is looking better and better.
Posted by: Douglas McClean | March 9, 2010 9:05 PM
Bill Cowan spent three and a half years fighting the war in Vietnam. He was a young Marine captain assigned to the Rung Sat Special Zone, a putrid swamp that begins just south of Saigon. Miles and miles of thick, slurping mud that swallowed soldiers to their waists, it is populated by galaxies of mosquitoes and other biting insects, snakes, crocodiles, and stands of rotting mangrove. It is intersected by the saltwater rivers of the Mekong Delta, and features occasional stretches of flat, open farmland. The Marines knew that several battalions of Vietcong were in the Rung Sat. The enemy would lie low, building strength, and then launch surprise attacks on South Vietnamese or U.S. troops. The soldiers in Cowan's unit played cat-and-mouse with an enemy that melted away at their approach.
So when he captured a Vietcong soldier who could warn of ambushes and lead them to hidden troops but who refused to speak, wires were attached to the man's scrotum with alligator clips and electricity was cranked out of a 110-volt generator.
Posted by: Gingerbaker | March 9, 2010 11:40 PM
"I'll tell you how to make a man talk," a retired Special Forces officer says. "You shoot the man to his left and the man to his right. Then you can't shut him up."
Posted by: Gingerbaker | March 9, 2010 11:43 PM
And the final example of people actually experienced with the use of torture, testifying to its utility to produce useful information,
From the Atlantic article I have provided now for the third time for all the folks here at Dispatches who have dropped too much lsd in college to remember anything but the dominant meme:
If there is an archetype of the modern interrogator, it is Michael Koubi. The former chief interrogator for Israel's General Security Services, or Shabak, Koubi probably has more experience than anyone else in the world in the interrogation of hostile Arab prisoners, some of them confirmed terrorists and religious fanatics—men, he says, "whose hatred of the Jews is unbridgeable." He has blue eyes in a crooked face: time, the greatest caricaturist of all, has been at work on it for more than sixty years, and has produced one that is lean, browned, deeply lined, and naturally concave. His considerable nose has been broken twice, and now ends well to the right of where it begins, giving him a look that is literally off-center. His wisdom, too, is slightly off-center, because Koubi has been given a uniquely twisted perspective on human nature. For decades he has been experimenting with captive human beings, cajoling, tricking, hurting, threatening, and spying on them, steadily upping the pressure, looking for cracks at the seams.
I met Koubi at his home on the beach in Ashkelon, just a short drive north of the border with the Gaza Strip, in whose prisons he worked for much of his career. He is comfortably retired from his Shabak job now, a grandfather three times over, and works for the municipal Inspection and Sanitation Department. There are still many things he is not free to discuss, but he is happy to talk about his methods. He is very proud of his skills, among them an ability to speak Arabic so fluently that he can adopt a multitude of colloquial flavors. Koubi came to his career as an interrogator through his love of language. He grew up speaking Hebrew, Yiddish, and Arabic, and he studied Arabic in high school, working to master its idiom and slang. He also had a knack for reading the body language and facial expressions of his subjects, and for sensing a lie. He is a skilled actor who could alternately befriend or intimidate a subject, sometimes turning on a dime. Blending these skills with the tricks he had learned over the years for manipulating people, Koubi didn't just question his subjects, he orchestrated their emotional surrender.
To many, including many in Israel, Koubi and the unit he headed are an outrage. The games they played and the tactics they employed are seen as inhumane, illegal, and downright evil. It is hard to picture this pleasant grandfather as the leader of a unit that critics accuse of being brutal; but then, charm has always been as important to interrogation work as toughness or cruelty—perhaps more important. Koubi says that only in rare instances did he use force to extract information from his subjects; in most cases it wasn't necessary.
"People change when they get to prison," Koubi says. "They may be heroes outside, but inside they change. The conditions are different. People are afraid of the unknown. They are afraid of being tortured, of being held for a long time. Try to see what it is like to sit with a hood over your head for four hours, when you are hungry and tired and afraid, when you are isolated from everything and have no clue what is going on." 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.
Under pressure, he says, nearly everyone looks out first and foremost for No. 1. What's more, a very large part of who a man is depends on his circumstances. No matter who he is before his arrest, his sense of self will blur in custody. Isolation, fear, and deprivation force a man to retreat, to reorient himself, and to reorder his priorities. For most men, Koubi says, the hierarchy of loyalty under stress is 1) self, 2) group, 3) family, 4) friends. In other words, even the most dedicated terrorist (with very rare exceptions), when pushed hard enough, will act to preserve and protect himself at the expense of anyone or anything else. "There's an old Arab saying," Koubi says. "'Let one hundred mothers cry, but not my mother—but better my mother than me.'"
Posted by: Gingerbaker | March 9, 2010 11:49 PM
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/10/the-dark-art-of-interrogation/2791/
Posted by: Gingerbaker | March 9, 2010 11:52 PM
sinz54 | March 9, 2010 12:33 PM:
This argument in favor of torture assumes there is evidence that torture aids in obtaining useful information. There is not. In fact, all available evidence is overwhelmingly in the other direction. Start here.
Posted by: llewelly | March 10, 2010 12:58 AM
It's always good to know we really do have great soldiers. The macho toy soldiers are the ones who are prominently in the headlines though - the criminals who advocate torture and a special supremacy of US troops which exempts them from participating in any international war crimes tribunal. A soldier carrying out their duties deserves the full support of the government and the nation, but criminals in soldiers' uniform only deserve the nation's best effort at a successful prosecution and international condemnation.
Posted by: MadScientist | March 10, 2010 4:12 AM
@MyPetSlug: Throughout history the greatest use of torture was to extract confessions in order to unjustly prosecute individuals, and that is very well documented. Claims of successful use of torture to obtain crucial information in war times is not well supported; selecting the insignificant minority of cases in which torture yielded useful information does not help the case. In fact in a war, the vast body of military information is not obtained through torture. Of the tens of thousands tortured and murdered by the Japanese, how many were active opponents of the Japanese and how many (including soldiers) had any significant information to offer? If you look at the information which the NSA is free to release about historical operations, how many of their operatives have been tortured and murdered and yet surrendered no information? How many had been tortured and murdered and have given up critical information?
Posted by: MadScientist | March 10, 2010 4:27 AM
There was a case of police (illegally) threatening torture in Germany in 2003 to find a kidnapped boy, see
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/10/world/kidnapping-has-germans-debating-police-torture.html?pagewanted=1
The kidnapper provided the information, but the boy was already dead.
Posted by: MartinB | March 10, 2010 4:37 AM
Hey, you people against torture seem to forget that WE are Umericans & only do what is right. So what if no information is forthcoming ? They are foreigners & probably deserve it. god dint say nothing about torture in the bunch of commandments, did he? So Umerica has changed itself into a 3rd world country & aiming for 5th but don't forget that god is on our side.
Hurray! 37th & striving for 50th.
Posted by: Old_Ed_inVN | March 10, 2010 5:36 AM
Yeah! Because it shouldn’t be okay to abduct people, illegally torture them for years without due process, and not have to tell anybody about what we did to them. What kind of Nazis could be in favor of that! Thank all that is righteous for the ACLU! There is no more freedom in this country, but they keep trying anyway. Take a look at this: http://pltcldscsn.blogspot.com/2009/04/is-waterboarding-torture.html
Posted by: David Scott | March 10, 2010 10:51 AM
Thiessen was on the Daily Show last night with an extended interview and Jon Stewart does not like him either:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/
Posted by: Kele | March 10, 2010 12:54 PM
Here's a big reason torture won't (and really, can't) provide any reliable info at all: You have no way of knowing if the answer provided was correct or if it was what the torturee thought you wanted to hear.
Also, it falls victim to the preconceptions of the torturers.
I'm from New England. We had witch trials. That really was a "ticking time bomb" scenario as far as the torturers were concerned. They really thought witchcraft was as big a threat as we think terrorism is today. They tortured people and got all kinds of answers -- black masses in the fields, people flying through the air, et cetera.
But they were wrong. Witches don't exist.
Now, to a 17th century person, a witch is as logical and unassailable a fact as physics is to us. But it's wrong.
If I am torturing you, my basic assumption is that
1. you have the information
2. you will tell me what is true, not what you think I want to hear
That means, by definition, you can't torture reliable information out of anyone any better than chance would dictate.
Someone brought up the NKVD et al. Part of their problem was that they would get a stack of information that was a combination of truth and what the detainee thought they wanted to hear.
Now let's get to why people torture at all, then. It is not to get information. It is to scare people. To terrorize. The NKVD didn't just disappear you permanently. You were supposed to go back out and tell your friends what happened --or be so obviously traumatized that you would scare the hell out of them.
The problem is, at a certain point people don't like being intimidated. Then you face resistance, big time. And that means more terrorists.
Posted by: Jesse | March 10, 2010 2:15 PM
Jesse "I'm from New England. We had witch trials."
And you don't anymore. I rest my case.
Posted by: Modusoperandi | March 10, 2010 2:26 PM