Can torture be justified?

....

Speaking to newly minted officers at West Point, some of them headed for combat in Iraq, their commander in chief said they must "take the battle to the enemy ... disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge."

More than ever, disrupting plans and confronting threats takes good military intelligence - much of it from captured sources. But reported abuses in US-run prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, focus attention on how harshly suspected enemies are treated in the process of finding out what they know.

Use of torture (an imprecise term for extreme physical and mental duress) raises two fundamental questions: Does it work? That is, does it produce the "actionable intelligence" that might save lives on the battlefield or at home? And can it be justified on moral and ethical grounds?

Such questions will be the backdrop for a hastily called Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Wednesday featuring top Army officers responsible for prisoner treatment in Iraq: Gen. John Abizaid, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, and Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller.

Can torture be justified?....

those kids shouold be getting a firm education on why it is wrong

not why it can be justified... or how


DAMN THEM, the work will be hard after this is over

Must_B_Free did some great work on this.

It's going to be really hard to undo this; I'm beginning to wonder how we're going to be able to undo this damage.

On edit. Really frightening.

It's inhuman.

Any nation that stoops so low as to use torture has lost all moral authority and is no better than what they are fighting against.

:spank: General Abizaid:

"Okay, Okay. Torture sucks."


:spank: General Sanchez:

"Okay, Okay. Torture sucks."


:spank: General Miller:

"Okay, Okay. Torture sucks."

Torture doesn't even WORK,...goddamnit!!!

Why is this even being discussed when a bzillion studies have PROVEN torture DOESN'T WORK!!!!

:argh:

is the day we abandon all pretension to being 'civilized'. I know many already use it merely as a nebulous racial demarcation - but for those for whom it really means something - we cannot become the monsters who assail us.

Now the use of drugs is entirely different. They do work.

Unfortunately, the fact that this asinine question keeps raising itself (which is to say, I don't hold GottaB responsible for posting this) makes me think that there are forces at work trying to make the idea of torture more palatable to the public at large. If only those damn pictures hadn't surfaced, everything would be fine.

The trouble with spinning out a scenario wherein torture is justified is that suddenly that scenario crops up all the time! For example, we have Moammar Badguy, who's part of a terrorist cell. They're planning an attack for tomorrow, and we need to get the information out of him, but quick. Bring out the bamboo shoots, the red-hot irons, and electrical leads!

Really quickly, we no longer need to know that Moammar is part of a terrorist cell. Or if he is part of a cell, that they're planning some wickedness to happen tomorrow. Soon, it's enough if we know he's a bad guy that might be part of a cell. Then, it's okay if he's just a bad guy. Shortly after that, it's that we're pretty sure he's a bad guy. Then, it's because we don't like the way he looks, which is different from us.

Does the guy in the room has the password to deactivate the nuke?

If you answered yes to both questions, then you might have justification for even having the question come to your mind to be asked.


If you answered no to either of my above questions, you do not have the right to even consider bringing up justifications.

used against anyone. And our soldiers should get the money that they were awarded. Let GWShrub use the ME analysis...if he allows torture for anyone (including his s0-called enemy combatants), then he should endure the same personally.

only retrospectively, when its been demonstrated that the information was necessary to avert a disaster and no other practical means were available AND that the torturee was indeed a source and the only available source for the infomation.

SO, how are you going to justify it before it's used ?

it's all ex post facto. That's not a foundation for justice.

How do you suppose the trained lawyers who argue for torture get around that little hurdle? IMO, they assume the guilt of the tortured person, or some kind of basic prejudice that a tortured person is worth less than other human beings. It's the ideological foundation of terrorism, the notion that enemies of the people are to be treated harshly.

I'm stating a conundrum.

There are circumstances which could morally justify torture to avoid a greater evil.

However, you will only know in retrospect if the circumstances were in fact so.

Are you claiming that torture should always be avoided even if the results cause immense destruction and death ?

The difficulty, if not impossibility, is knowing beforehand when those precise circumstances will justify its use.

And, of course, if there are circumstances that indeed justify it and it is so permitted, how will society prevent it from being abused.

I dont think you can have perfect answers to the question about torture unless you are willing to concede the acceptability of the potential consequences of never using it.

EVERY freakin' study has proven, time and time and time again,...that TORTURE DOES NOT WORK!!!

Damnit!!! What does it take to get this one fucking TRUTH through?

IT IS THE TRUTH,...TORTURE IS A FAILED PROSPECT!!!!

God. I cannot believe that we are even discussing this bullshit.

If so, I would concede it probably rarely works and is almost never justified and, of course, is used almost always for immoral purposes and by immoral agents.

That's hardly the same as saying its never justified on moral grounds. And I fully concede the difficulty of establishing and controlling a moral use.

Say a guy has a bomb under a school but wont tell you which school.

If nothing else is going to work, hell yes, toruture him. Of course, you'll forego the possiblility of using anything he says in a court of law, but there's a bigger, more important goal -- save the lives of a lot of people.

So, why are we toruturing people in Iraq?

Well, if this is the ONLY way to get Iraqis to help you give them freedom, then maybe it's not freedom you're giving them?

If they can't find a single person in that country who can help them in a less coersive setting, maybe it's time to ask ourselves what we're really doing there.

To me the question isn't, "torture, when it helpful?" It's, "why the hell do we need torture in Iraq?" Aren't millions of people stepping forward, willing to give us all the information we need to help them be free?

can you believe this is what is called a modern civilized society?

What's the difference between now and ancient barbaric times?
none.

And nothing is ever going to change at this rate.

There is no reasoning with those who support reptilian primal methods.

They are likely using the side of their brain that we have all inherited but unlike higher thinkers, these guys are limited in their scope because of an innate inability to access the evolved side of their consciousness(that we also have all inherited)-the part that has mercy and compassion on those who are suffering even if they are different than ourselves.

It's almost as if these reptilians are mentally "handicapped".
Try and teach calculus to an uneducated illiterate person and you will have no luck. They lack the skills to interpret numbers and words on a page.

So don't even try and explain anything to these people who are retarded in consciousness.
These people who support killing and torture(for the greater good of course) don't even know they are "mentally" handicapped.
Those who have inherited the ability to access the higher understanding of unity between all humans cannot verbally share that ability with these handicapped individuals.
All we can hope for is that our World Leaders posses this ability of using their "higher" mind and can outrank others who don't.(like Gandhi and MLK)

Our country currently has a leader who not only has an IQ of 91 but can't even come close to accessing the evolved side of the human mind.
His entire "family" who is in charge appears to lack any ability to comprehend anything past the cave man "me" & "mine" -
-Me good --You evil-Me take your stuff-
Me hurt you if you no want give me your stuff.

IS this who we really want leading in our "modern" civilized society?

THERE is NEVER a RIGHT time the do the WRONG thing.
period.