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It really depends. If it's a terrorist who we know has information, one that can save the lives of millions of people, how can you not do anything to get the info from him?
Torture is never acceptable, no matter what the cause. I will not give up my freedom for the sake of safety and to torture is simply wrong. However, it's how we define torture that is at issue here. I don't think the enhanced interrogation techniques that were under scrutiny were actually torture and therefore were good ways to get information without using torture.
Problem.
How do you know that the individual really is a terrorist and how do you know that he/she has information beneficial to your cause?
You don't, and you have no way of finding out.
"Torture" has a bad history – the NAZI's used it but got more misinformation than truth. the North Koreans and Communist Chinese had the same results. Why? The individuals being tortured knew that if they said something, anything, the torture would stop and when the torturers found out the truth they would immediately kill the false informant and the torture would stop = death is a welcome relief to someone who knows there is no escape, therefore torture is a useless waste of time and effort.
Not really. What it was amounted to college style hazing that was more comical than useful.
Interviewing techniques utilizing misinformation and misdirected thoughts have had tremendous results in the solving of crimes. These tactics can be very effectively used in the field during wartime. I have heard of some very good results from those kind of tactics back in the Viet Nam war.
I see no reason why we cannot use these same techniques in this war.
How can you prove that a terrorist has this information (or more commonly and worse, that they do not) or that other methods would not be equally effective to elicit it?
Have you read any of the CIA documents on what these techniques were? Placing an insect in a confined box with a prisoner is almost straight out of 1984. Waterboarding used to be considered torture by our own legal system (Reagan called it as such in reference to the Khmer Rouge and Maoist China). Holding a drill near a hooded inmate or staging mock executions?
The amount of legal and moral circumlocution required to declare that these techniques were not torture, and were somehow more effective than FBI and military interrogation methods that have been used for decades without physical and mental cruelty, is truly staggering.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanns_Scharff
That guy was pretty good at it. And he basically trained a generation of interrogators for us. Why we had to move to savagery and barbarism instead is more about the satisfaction of revenge than the actual effectiveness of interrogation techniques.
I agree.
Does it matter that we are destroying the agency that has kept us safe since 911? does it matter that inteligence agencies around the world will no longer share vital information with us for fear that the information as well as the source will be publicized? This is pure Saul Alinsky tactics. Prosecute your oponents with their own rules. What a country! Terrorists deserve Miranda rights while the elderly get last rites.
I'm not quite following you here…
If you torture, then you will just be as bad as the suspected terrorist, also torture will cause many problems for the country like having to shut down terroist prisons. How do you know that the terroist is actually a terrorist? are you seriously going to believe the government when they have a 100 billion security system and cant even stop a few terrorists with box cutters?
Totally agree with you papadawg.
Hey im new on here, but this is something we have to study ourselves at the moment, we have to add good and bad points, but with torture is there any good points?? There is ideas that goverment use torture as an interrogation tactic, though this may just be a rumour set about by the media. Also, there are the ideas that others use torture as a form to get information out of others, but the truth is that people use torture every day, just not physically, they use it mentally, which sometimes contains a longer lasting iffliction on their mind. People use torture, isn't blackmail a kind of torture. But, this may cause afflictions to the person. But, there are mostly bad points, and I think everyone knows what these are.