450 posts IS a worse crime than wanting to kill us .
POSTED BY: AURaptor
UPDATED: Friday, May 22, 2009 14:59
VIEWED: 29463
PAGE 3 of 46
Hello,
I will look into incidents where coerced confessions were proven false, to support my belief. It may be I shan't find any. I'm not the very best researcher. :-)
--Anthony
"Liberty must not be purchased at the cost of Humanity." --Captain Robert Henner
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Quote:How reliable or quickly information is obtain depends on a lot. But when you are dealing with a hardened subject, such as some of the terrorist we encounter, you have to face the reality that these people are trained true believers. They aren’t going to spill the beans because you arrest them. In some cases, the perceived danger to life may be sufficient to believe that it is necessary to cut through the resolve of a hardened subjected.
Originally posted by AnthonyT:
Hello,
Do you believe that information is more reliable when obtained under torture?
Do you believe that reliable information is more quickly acquired under torture?
I'm trying to understand the critical factor of torture that you feel justifies torture, making it superior to other interrogation techniques. What about torture makes it justified as a means of defense? What makes it the better option?
Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.
Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
-- Cicero
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Quote:It probably won’t take the best researcher to find that information. If that’s what you want to believe you will be able to find evidence to support that. I can find plenty of evidence that people get run over while trying to cross the street, and then claim that people should never cross the street. The real test is to find examples of the use of coercive interrogation that worked and decide if that was justified.
Originally posted by AnthonyT:
Hello,
I will look into incidents where coerced confessions were proven false, to support my belief. It may be I shan't find any. I'm not the very best researcher. :-)
Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.
Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
-- Cicero
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Hello,
So far I only have these two examples, as found in the document "Educing Information - Interrogation: Science and Art" by the Intelligence Science Board Phase 1 Report, National Defense Intelligence College.
1) If there was any case whereby harsh interrogation practices would seem justified, it may have been World War II. The world was aware of the atrocities of the Nazi regime and “eye for an eye” seemed to be the rule of the day. The actual record is somewhat surprising: The Western world was so repulsed by the Nazi spectacle that the “high ground” seemed the safest. In fact, the most successful British interrogator was reputedly “Old Tin Eye,” Lieutenant Colonel Robert Stephens at Camp 020, Latchmere House at Ham, on the edge of London. According to his biographer, Alan Judd, his success was a result of thorough preparation by the interrogators, linguistic fl uency, and the right mixture of firmness in questioning and sympathy in handling. Violence of any sort was forbidden. The interrogators who worked at Camp 020 knew the difference between “talking” and “truth.”
2) An account of the conditions in one notorious 13th century inquisitorial prison and their impact on the “truth” paints a grim picture: Some of these cells are dark and airless, so that those lodged there cannot tell if it is day or night…. In other cells there are kept miserable wretches laden with shackles…. These cannot move, but defecate and urinate on themselves. Nor can they lie down except on the frigid ground…. And thus coerced they say that what is false is true, choosing to die once rather than to endure more torture. As a result of these false and coerced confessions not only do those making confessions perish, but so do the innocent people named by them…. Many of those who are newly cited to appear [before the inquisitors], hearing of the torments and trials of those who are detained…assert that what is false is true; in which assertions they accuse not only themselves but other innocent people, that they may avoid the above mentioned pains…. Those who thus confess afterward reveal to their close friends that those things that they said to the inquisitors are not true, but rather false, and they confessed out of imminent danger.
Unfortunately, neither of these examples really meets the criteria of interrogation to get information immediately usable to save lives. I will keep looking.
--Anthony
"Liberty must not be purchased at the cost of Humanity." --Captain Robert Henner
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I've never seen any where near the rage and anger toward the terrorists as I've seen displayed for those who decided that harsh interrogation, and NOT torture, was worth engaging in when the lives of 1000's of civilians was at risk. The phony, mock indignation of the Left over the NON issue of water boarding is a bit much to take.
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Quote:
Lieutenant Colonel Robert Stephens
That man was an absolute master of his craft and has my deepest respect not only for that, but for his firm stance against conduct that winds up poisoning the well with garbage.
"Violence is taboo, for not only does it produce answers to please, but it lowers the standard of information"
""Never strike a man, In the first place it is an act of cowardice. In the second place, it is not intelligent. A prisoner will lie to avoid further punishment and everything he says thereafter will be based on a false premise"
He not only broke enemy spies, but in more than one case turned them, and through them their own assets, to the cause of his superiors therefore doubling them against their own intelligence services.
And never, NOT EVEN ONCE, did he have to lift his hand in violence to them in order to do it.
Violence is the last resort of an utterly incompetent interrogator, or one who has a purpose entirely other than obtaining accurate information.
My primary objection to it has always rested on the grounds of it's ineffectiveness rather than any moral stance - but it's true that any commission of violence, even that which is committed in pure self-defense, does harm to the one comitting it as well, just as the use of a hammer damages it, as well as the struck surface.
The latter is a lesson I'd have liked to have learned a lot earlier than I did, to be honest with you.
-Frem
It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it
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As for you Rappy, your own disgusting conduct in combination with sychophantism, blatant racism, partisanship, intolerance and sheer petty spitefulness, on top of the abject cowardice you display at the thought of being fed into the maw of a political war machine you cheered the construction of before it fell under the control of people who do not agree with your own distorted and psychotic worldview, compounded by your complete refusal to accept any notion of a worldview different from yours, has rendered you unworthy of my time and effort beyond merely insulting you because it amuses me to grind your gears.
I'll gladly discuss matters with the other adults around here, but I have no more to discuss with you than I do than an exterminator would have with a nest of roaches, since I personally consider you in exactly the same level of regard.
By all means continue to spew the vile filth you seem to have mistaken for logical argument if you like, just don't expect me to bother paying any mind to it unless by some miracle you show evidence of something that might cause me to consider you a human being.
-Frem
It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it
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Quote:
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:Quote:If I get at the fruit of an orange with a sledgehammer, there’s a good chance there won’t be much orange left. It is true that the sledgehammer is not the best orange peeler, but that doesn’t mean that other ways of peeling an orange won’t be effective. One of the problems with the issue of torture is that so few people have the courage to discussion it with any sort of intellectual honesty. When we talk about coercive interrogation we aren’t talking about boiling people in oil.
Originally posted by AgentRouka:
I always wonder how anyone can look at the European witch "trials" and come away as pro-torture.
People admitted to having sex with the devil and riding around flying on broomsticks, they admitted to brewing magical potions from the flesh of dead children and causing bad weather. They admitted to causing sickness in other people by the mere power of their evil eye.
All this knowing they would be burned at the stake - or beheaded if lucky.
How can anyone consider torture an effective method of coercing truthful information??
They weren't exactly boiling them in oil, either. Torture 500 years a go was a slow-building process designed to frighten and cause pain, not kill, just as it is now.
The started with plain interrogation, then progressed to show people the instruments that would be used to torture them, procressed to putting the instruments on without pressure, applied slight pressure, and then increased from there.
I don't see how that's necessarily dramatically different from waterboarding or whatever other modern torture techniques are used.
Pain, fear of death, exhaustion... it's all the same.
The point to me is not whether torture is justified under certain circumstances of threat, because that assumes that it is reliable and effective. It is NOT reliable and effective. Therefor it is never justified. You never seem to address that point.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
How reliable or quickly information is obtain depends on a lot. But when you are dealing with a hardened subject, such as some of the terrorist we encounter, you have to face the reality that these people are trained true believers. They aren’t going to spill the beans because you arrest them. In some cases, the perceived danger to life may be sufficient to believe that it is necessary to cut through the resolve of a hardened subjected.
But the hardened, fanatical believer seems to be the best person psychologically prepared to withstand torture or lie in the most convincing way to protect the information that means more to them than their life.
Torture would be what they expect. And nothing would be easier than lying, ESPECIALLY if time is of the essence.
It all just seems wholly uneffective.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Finn:
When we talk about coercive interrogation we aren’t talking about boiling people in oil.
No, we're talking about drowning them in water. That's completely different - one is a slow way of killing someone, while the other is a way of killing someone slowly!
Mike
Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day...
Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
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