Most Americans believe torture can be justified - poll

end of the road

Xios wrote: »

Do you guys think it's justifiable? I personally don't think it is, and I'm certain that 99% of people have never actually seen what torture is actually like, I saw what Christopher Hitchens did for waterboarding, he didn't last 3 seconds on the board. Granted, he's not a hardened criminal/soldier, but still, he must have some resolve and he gave up instantly.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2014/1216/667281-torture/

i don't agree with it either. as far as i'm concerned, if you support it, you support terrorism and condone the likes of isis and other nut jobs. they're is no place for it in a so called modern civilized world

end of the road

Tzardine wrote: »

Absolutely it is justifiable.

It's the reality of the world we live in. If the torture of a person leads to the prevention of killing of innocent people then what is the problem.

Nice, law obiding people rarely get tortured.

because it doesn't lead to anything, and legitimizes what these people are suspected of doing. you support torture, you support terrorism

Grand Moff Tarkin

Some people are not suited to such a nasty task but I am thankfully that there are people in this world who will do the nasty jobs which allow the rest of us to sleep at night.

ShowMeTheCash

DeadHand wrote: »

I stretched nothing, I stayed within the timeline you set yourself ie 10 decades.




Yes. You were spouting nonsense. It's good you realise it now.

Point well made your contibution to the thread has been amazing!

end of the road

irish_dave_83 wrote: »

Torture itself is justifiable if managed responsibly.

which it can't be, and can't be justifiable. ever.

irish_dave_83 wrote: »

If it prevents the death of innocents then I see the justification.

it doesn't, so no justification

irish_dave_83 wrote: »

The question of whether it has been managed properly should be paramount here and evidentally it has not been which is more worrying.

because it can't be.

irish_dave_83 wrote: »

Dont get me wrong the act itself is horrendous and possibly for little gain, but if they torture a known member of a terrorist organisation and find that he does not have any information, that in itself is information gained.

its not. no justification for such an act. you can't gain imformation you all ready have by torturing, all it does is lead to false information.

irish_dave_83 wrote: »

As a previous poster said innocent people do not get tortured

neither do they get arrested, tried, and sent to jail or sentenced to death. gway all that with that gullible nonsense. of course innocent people get tortured.

irish_dave_83 wrote: »

lets not be naive - if a US operative was captured I have little doubt that they would be tortured also.

yeah, so therefore the US condones one of their own being tortured as they are happy to do it to others.

MonkeyTennis

The US has prosecuted people for torturing by the way.

c_man

Grand Moff Tarkin wrote: »

Some people are not suited to such a nasty task but I am thankfully that there are people in this world who will do the nasty jobs which allow the rest of us to sleep at night.

By 'nasty' you mean illegal and ineffective right? And that helps you sleep at night...

end of the road

irish_dave_83 wrote: »

Well thats not exactly what I said, Im sorry you took it that way. What I meant was that the interrogators will suspect that this member of the terrorist organisation does have information, which is a fair suspision. If he is not giving any information and they then decide to torture him to get it. It is only after the torture that they can be convinced of that he doesnt have any information which inturn tells them that he either is very low level or there is no immediate threat etc - or im sure a number of other things.

Of course its brutal, and it should be used a last resort but it should not be banned, there would be less fear from extremists if it was, no?

As I said previously is should be managed better.

it should be banned. it causes more extremism

end of the road

irish_dave_83 wrote: »

Well to say it doesn't/never prevented the death of innocent people is a stretch. Its not full proof, far from it. If the information supplied may not always be reliable, but it has to be corroborated against other inteligence information/recon to prove its unreliablity. Absence information is always worse for any investigation.

no matter what way you spin it, it doesn't work. that is it. nothing you say will change that. it failes. every time

Streetwalker

Grand Moff Tarkin wrote: »

Some people are not suited to such a nasty task but I am thankfully that there are people in this world who will do the nasty jobs which allow the rest of us to sleep at night.

No. It's never acceptable. I'd rather I slept uneasy than to know it goes on.

end of the road

Yeah_Right wrote: »

I love the tired line - torture doesn't work. Studies show it doesn't work. Get real. Such BS. It does work if done right. And those people aren't taking part in any studies.

it doesn't work. done right, done wrong, done whatever way. end of. studdies done by people in the know cary weight, unlike gullible nonsense from those who have a questionable agenda

end of the road

Yeah_Right wrote: »

No. I just think torture has a real and genuine benefit. If it's done right. Everyone breaks and they can be a fountain of information.

yeah. they can tell you all sorts of **** you want to hear. "if done right" you can only do it one way. wrongly as its wrong, of no benefit, and has no place in a civilized society. if one supports torture, they support terrorism

end of the road

Yeah_Right wrote: »

This is brilliant!! I am giving you a standing ovation. This is the stupidest thing I have read all year.

Be nice to religious extremists and they will hate you less. (They still want to kill you for being a non-believer and an infidel but they hate you less).

well, the fact britain america and other countries have been targeted and we and others haven't, says your wrong

end of the road

irish_dave_83 wrote: »

Well yes, you seem to think that if false information is given they let the detainee go? If anything i can imagine that it is worse for them if it is found out to be misleading/false.

Absence of infromation does not create any other lines of investigation, misleading information brings to you back to the source to try again. That would be common sense.

I'm not some advocate for mass torture, I just dont think it should be removed as a one of the many tools in intelligence gathering.

even though it fails. even though its a waste of time. it doesn't work. end of discussion

end of the road

Grand Moff Tarkin wrote: »

Some people are not suited to such a nasty task but I am thankfully that there are people in this world who will do the nasty jobs which allow the rest of us to sleep at night.

if your gullible enough to believe that nonsense, i'm sorry for you.

wylie

I would agree with torture, If the person is convicted of acts of terror. Of course anyone being tortured will confess eventually. torturing someone to get them to admit to a previous acts is pointless, as i said someone being tortured will always talk, but torturing someone to get information on active terrorist cells or weapon caches that can be checked and verified would work. Guerrilla warfare is so hard to fight against. Isil/taliban with IED's, suicide bombers and attack/retreat tactics make you lose more men than you kill. The coalition forces clear a town and bring some security/stability to the region but as soon as the army moves on terrorists move back in, thus making the army return and clear the area again, Its known as "mowing the lawn". This has been a tactic by the taliban to draw out the conflict and put political pressure on world leaders.

Yeah_Right

Do you all consider the following torture (some of them are very specific to Islamic prisoners) -
Water boarding?
Sleep deprivation?
Shaving the heads and beards?
Denying access to the Koran, prayer mats etc?
Using pigs (or pig meat/blood)?

Just to be clear, I don't consider any of them to be torture.

diomed

Americans see the rest of the world as a place to go on a hunting trip.

Grand Moff Tarkin

end of the road wrote: »

if your gullible enough to believe that nonsense, i'm sorry for you.

Question for you.

Half the people you care about are in a tight spot with lives on the line. Now the CIA or FBI have a suspect on ice who can end the entire nightmare but he is not taking. Would you not want them to use any mean necessary to get that information? For the record if it was me I would let them go for it if it helped to save my loved ones. I can worry about my morals on my death bed.

end of the road

Yeah_Right wrote: »

Do you all consider the following torture (some of them are very specific to Islamic prisoners) -
Water boarding?
Sleep deprivation?

yes.

Yeah_Right wrote: »

Shaving the heads and beards?
Denying access to the Koran, prayer mats etc?
Using pigs (or pig meat/blood)?

i'd class that as insulting muslims and their beliefs, and a form of bigotry

end of the road

Grand Moff Tarkin wrote: »

Question for you.

Half the people you care about are in a tight spot with lives on the line. Now the CIA or FBI have a suspect on ice who can end the entire nightmare but he is not taking. Would you not want them to use any mean necessary to get that information?

no . as it may be false information, and it could mean more people i love getting caught up in something else in revenge for torturing the suspect. so i'd rather they get the information via the proper channels

Jawgap

Yeah_Right wrote: »

I love the tired line - torture doesn't work. Studies show it doesn't work. Get real. Such BS. It does work if done right. And those people aren't taking part in any studies.

Really? Because this guy would seem disagree - I'm open to correction but I'm guessing he'd have more practical experience of interrogating people than everyone on this thread times a million.

The crux of the argument over the CIA's techniques lies, not just in whether they constituted torture, but in whether or not they worked: did detainees like Abu Zubaydah — the first to go through the controversial coercive interrogation program — give up vital information? Defenders of the program have claimed that Abu Zubaydah, an al-Qaeda recruiter and close associate of Osama bin Laden, did provide crucial information, including the identities of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of 9/11, and "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla. (See six ways to fix the CIA.)

In an op-ed piece in the New York Times, Soufan says Abu Zubaydah gave up the information between March and June 2002, when he was being interrogated by Soufan, another FBI agent and some CIA officers. But that was not the result of harsh techniques, including waterboarding, which were not introduced until August. "We were getting a lot of useful material from [Abu Zubaydah], and we would have continued to get material from him," Soufan told TIME. "The rough tactics were not necessary."

UCDVet

end of the road wrote: »

because it doesn't lead to anything, and legitimizes what these people are suspected of doing. you support torture, you support terrorism

Except when it does.

Torture has a very high rate of false positives. People being tortured will say anything to get you to stop. But that anything *also* includes information of value.

So, if you're looking for something like a body or a bomb that could be virtually ANYWHERE, and you torture five people who were involved in planting the bomb - you might get 10 different locations. But the one who knew is very likely to tell you the truth, and also, a lie.

It's not fair to say it doesn't lead to anything. It does.

In the case of Magnus Gäfgen, who was suspected of kidnapping 11-year-old Jakob von Metzler and arrested in October 2002 by German police. Police surveillance had observed Gäfgen pick up a €1 million ransom demanded from the von Metzler family and proceed to go on a spending spree. After the ransom was paid, the boy was not released. Fearing for the boy's safety Frankfurt's deputy police chief, Wolfgang Daschner, had Gäfgen arrested and when he would not talk threatened to cause Gäfgen severe pain.

Gäfgen told police where he had hidden von Metzler's body.

This was a form of psychological torture, but that's really no different than physical forms. In any case, it's not fair to say it never works. It is fair to say it's not very reliable and arguably not very cost effective.

Timberrrrrrrr

Yeah_Right wrote: »

Do you all consider the following torture (some of them are very specific to Islamic prisoners) -
Water boarding?
Sleep deprivation?
Shaving the heads and beards?
Denying access to the Koran, prayer mats etc?
Using pigs (or pig meat/blood)?

Just to be clear, I don't consider any of them to be torture.

Water boarding is the epitome of torture

Maximus Alexander

It sometimes seems like some people don't really understand that other people have like feelings and stuff just the same way they do.

end of the road

UCDVet wrote: »

Except when it does.

Torture has a very high rate of false positives. People being tortured will say anything to get you to stop. But that anything *also* includes information of value.

So, if you're looking for something like a body or a bomb that could be virtually ANYWHERE, and you torture five people who were involved in planting the bomb - you might get 10 different locations. But the one who knew is very likely to tell you the truth, and also, a lie.

It's not fair to say it doesn't lead to anything. It does.


This was a form of psychological torture, but that's really no different than physical forms. In any case, it's not fair to say it never works. It is fair to say it's not very reliable and arguably not very cost effective.

it doesn't work. these people would have talked via conventional ways. if they are going to tell truthful information, they will. if they aren't, then they will just feed you bull when tortured just to stop it

JaseBelleVie

So many scientific and anecdotal sources believe it to be an ineffective method. And yet it continues.

Of course, anyone who is being tortured will want to end the torture by any means necessary. Lying is one such method.

The only way for torture to be "effective" is if it is the punishment in and of itself, and not an interrogation technique. If the ultimate goal of the torture is to simply inflict pain as a punishment, then it "succeeds". If the ultimate goal of the torture is to glean information, then it will fail.

Try telling that to the masses, however.

the dark phantom

Looking at America today one can see parallels with Nazi Germany. The Nazi leadership just weren't as clever or devious as the oligarchy that rules America. People often say why didn't the German people say stop, But by looking at America now its easy to see how propaganda and nationalism can keep the people content and feeling like they are the ones under attack which to them justifies the terror they have brought to other nations...

BuilderPlumber

end of the road wrote: »

yes.



i'd class that as insulting muslims and their beliefs, and a form of bigotry

Shaving beards, forcing them to eat pig meat and forcing them to drink alcohol is about as insulting to Islam and Muslims as forcing people to wear beards, not eat pig meat and not to drink alcohol. Both are forms of fascism based on one person's superior opinion and both abuse religious beliefs. Same thing as telling women to wear a scarf v telling them not to and it being 'law'. People should be free to do what they want as long as it does not harm someone.

end of the road

BuilderPlumber wrote: »

Shaving beards, forcing them to eat pig meat and forcing them to drink alcohol is about as insulting to Islam and Muslims as forcing people to wear beards, not eat pig meat and not to drink alcohol. Both are forms of fascism based on one person's superior opinion and both abuse religious beliefs. Same thing as telling women to wear a scarf v telling them not to and it being 'law'. People should be free to do what they want as long as it does not harm someone.

thats not what was meant by the original poster and me. but nice twist of words.