A possible solution to our torture problems.

[Jontg]

Let 'em do it.
...
No, bear with me here, and pardon me if I get any legal aspects wrong. Consider the concept of the "citizen's arrest." Those nutbags who tried to detain Dick Cheney aside, this is the legal construction that allows a citizen witnessing a crime to temporarily assume the power of arrest--that is, to act as an officer of the law with respect to apprehending and restraining a miscreant until actual police arrive. If the arrest is performed more or less by the book and it's proven that the citizen acted properly, he or she is granted legal immunity from the charges of assault, wrongful imprisonment and so forth that one would normally incur by leaping upon somebody and wrestling them to the ground. If, however, the arrest is unjustified, the citizen is not protected and remains fully liable for the fact that they just tackled and hog-tied some random dude. In other words, if you can prove you were justified after the fact, you have the right under the law to do some pretty metal stuff to a guy--as long as you don't mind the risk that you'll be prosecuted if you can't.
See where I'm going here? We should accept that sometimes (once in a few hundred cases, IIRC) a federal agent needs to take monstrously inhumane measures to save lives--but we should also make it very clear that they will not automatically be granted the leeway to do so. If you can definitively prove (for a pretty steep definition of of the word) that hooking a man's testicles up to a car battery saved an oil tanker full of orphaned puppies, fine, we'll pardon you after the fact. If, as in most cases, it turns out you just pried the fingernails off some Sikh cab driver whose closest brush with ammonium nitrate was during his stint as a gardener, then we take you into a little room somewhere and hit you with a brick until you stop twitching. And we make it clear by both word and deed that when in doubt, we'll go with the brick.
Sound fair?

[Praktik]

I thought the solution to the torture problem was to redefine torture so it really isn't torture any longer...

Or is that not working out anymore??

[theprestige]

I thought the solution to the torture problem was to redefine torture so it really isn't torture any longer...

Or is that not working out anymore??
That's funny. I thought the solution to the torture problem was to redefine all interrogation techniques to be torture, and then abolish the lot of them.

[Fiona]

I have a better solution: don't let 'em do it.

[theprestige]

Let 'em do it.
...
Sound fair?
Not even remotely. Choice of interrogation methods is a judgement call. Your solution amounts to telling interrogators to exercise their judgment, on the understanding that they'll be second-guessed after the fact, and if the ACLU or partisan granstander or other backseat driver manages to find a dissenting opinion, their judgement will be disregarded and they'll be beaten to death with a brick.

Might as well tell them not to bother, because that's the way they'll take it.

I could try to save lives. I could even torture to try to save lives. I could even live with myself if I tried to save lives by using torture, and failed, because it was worth the attempt. But if I try, and fail--or even if I succeed--and then the opposition faction comes into power in the next big elections, unseals the classified records of my work, puts me on trial, and decides to beat me to death with a brick, why bother?

Is that really the standard you want to apply: "Do everything in your power, no matter how heinous, to save lives. Don't worry--if we disagree with you, we'll beat you to death with a brick"?

I'd prefer to establish a clear policy, based on clearly-enunciated principles, ahead of time, and use that. Among other things, it gives interrogators a solid legal and ethical foundation to stand on, when the opposition faction comes to power and tries to score political brownie points by crucifying them for failing to save lives (or for torturing too many people, depending on their ideology and the mood of their constituency).

[theprestige]

I have a better solution: don't let 'em do it.
As much as I disagree with your solution, I still think it's better than the OP's.

[Ladewig]

.
Sound fair?

If I were innocent and were tortured before being discovered that I am innocent, how would killing my torturer make it fair to me?

[theprestige]

If I were innocent and were tortured before being discovered that I am innocent, how would killing my torturer make it fair to me?
Isn't your question just a specific instance of the general case of "how does punishing criminals help their victims"?

[Lord Muck oGentry]

Isn't your question just a specific instance of the general case of "how does punishing criminals help their victims"?

Punishing criminals.

Torturing suspects.

[theprestige]

Punishing criminals.

Torturing suspects.
Please re-read Ladewig's question, and my answer, again.

[Ladewig]

Isn't your question just a specific instance of the general case of "how does punishing criminals help their victims"?

No, because the criminal in this case is not a citizen who has committed a wrong against me, it is an agent of the federal government acting with the approval of the government. My question, in its entirety, is how is it fair to me if the government, albeit conditionally, approves of my torture and then later brutally executes one government official.

[Lord Muck oGentry]

Please re-read Ladewig's question, and my answer, again.

Very well.

Ladewig asked a question:
If I were innocent and were tortured before being discovered that I am innocent, how would killing my torturer make it fair to me?

You answered by asking a question:
Isn't your question just a specific instance of the general case of "how does punishing criminals help their victims"?

[leftysergeant]

Torture does not work. If it did, the Nazis would have known to have Rommel sitting on Omaha Beach instead of the Pas del Calais.

The only people I can see deserving to be tortured to extract information would be Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzalez and John Yoo.

They approve of the method.

[Alt+F4]

We should accept that sometimes (once in a few hundred cases, IIRC) a federal agent needs to take monstrously inhumane measures to save lives--

Where's the proof that torture produces any useful information that saves lives?

[Praktik]

That's funny. I thought the solution to the torture problem was to redefine all interrogation techniques to be torture, and then abolish the lot of them.

Interesting reversal. Is this an apt characterization of the anti-tortureenhanced interrogation crowd in your opinion?

[theprestige]

No, because the criminal in this case is not a citizen who has committed a wrong against me, it is an agent of the federal government acting with the approval of the government. My question, in its entirety, is how is it fair to me if the government, albeit conditionally, approves of my torture and then later brutally executes one government official.
The government condones behavior all the time, and then punishes people who engage in that behavior inappropriately.

How is it fair to you if a police officer, authorized by the government to shoot you any time he believes it necessary, shoots you and is subsequently punished for shooting you unnecessarily?

In fact, how, exactly, is being shot in the knee unfairly by an interrogator any different than being shot in the knee unfairly by a policeman, both in terms of government pre-approval for the shooting and the amount of fairness to you in punishing the shooter?

[Safe-Keeper]

I thought the solution to the torture problem was to redefine torture so it really isn't torture any longer...

Or is that not working out anymore??Most people seem to have seen through it by now, yes.

I want some of what the OP has injected into himself, though.

[Praktik]

Ya... maybe you don't really....

lolz

[Peephole]

I have a solution to the torture problem: stop being a bunch of psychopaths.

[Dave Rogers]

The government condones behavior all the time, and then punishes people who engage in that behavior inappropriately.

How is it fair to you if a police officer, authorized by the government to shoot you any time he believes it necessary, shoots you and is subsequently punished for shooting you unnecessarily?

In fact, how, exactly, is being shot in the knee unfairly by an interrogator any different than being shot in the knee unfairly by a policeman, both in terms of government pre-approval for the shooting and the amount of fairness to you in punishing the shooter?

It's a question of justification before the fact versus justification after the fact. Let me suggest a couple of examples.

Suppose a policeman sees a man acting in a way that suggests he is about to do something dangerous with a weapon, issues a warning, and then shoots him, having complied with official guidelines as to when and how to go about the procedure of warning and shooting. When it turns out that the man was simply carrying a chair leg and was deaf, the policeman can still be judged to have acted correctly, because on the basis of the information available to him at the time, his actions were justified.

Suppose a second policeman sees a man acting suspiciously, and promptly shoots him dead, from behind, without warning. Even though it subsequently turns out that the suspect was about to carry out an armed robbery of a nearby shop, the policeman is found to have violated guidelines and is therefore put on trial for an unlawful killing.

The procedure analogous to the OP, however, is that the first policeman should be punished and the second exonerated on the basis of information that became available after the fact. That's not a good precedent to establish. It weakens the onus on a policeman to follow correct procedure, and allocates punishment largely on the basis of random, rather than controllable, factors. It's fundamentally anti-justice.

In the case of torture, it's morally perhaps an even worse situation. If we allow retrospective justification of torture, then there is more motivation for the torturer to extract a false confession that will serve as sufficient retroactive justification for his actions.

Dave

[Fiona]

Well said, Dave Rogers

[Ryokan]

I think the best solution is to follow international law, which the US has signed, making it US law as well, and not torture people whatsoever.

[Darat]

A simpler solution would be just to make it legal. Then USA citizens would know that if the security services have some reason to suspect that, for example, their grandmother is linked to some suspected terrorism activity she may be tortured. And then everyone can stop all this silly playing with semantics and get back to those good old fashioned USA values! Granted granny may no longer be able to make a thanksgiving apple pie because the bones in her hands never quite healed but at least everyone can sleep easy at night knowing that they are safe, well except for granny who wakes up screaming at 2am most nights and has to be drugged.

[Ocelot]

Let 'em do it.
...
No, bear with me here, and pardon me if I get any legal aspects wrong. Consider the concept of the "citizen's arrest." Those nutbags who tried to detain Dick Cheney aside, this is the legal construction that allows a citizen witnessing a crime to temporarily assume the power of arrest--that is, to act as an officer of the law with respect to apprehending and restraining a miscreant until actual police arrive. If the arrest is performed more or less by the book and it's proven that the citizen acted properly, he or she is granted legal immunity from the charges of assault, wrongful imprisonment and so forth that one would normally incur by leaping upon somebody and wrestling them to the ground. If, however, the arrest is unjustified, the citizen is not protected and remains fully liable for the fact that they just tackled and hog-tied some random dude. In other words, if you can prove you were justified after the fact, you have the right under the law to do some pretty metal stuff to a guy--as long as you don't mind the risk that you'll be prosecuted if you can't.
See where I'm going here? We should accept that sometimes (once in a few hundred cases, IIRC) a person needs to take monstrously inhumane measures to blow their load--but we should also make it very clear that they will not automatically be granted the leeway to do so. If you can definitively prove (for a pretty steep definition of of the word) that the winsome slut in a low cut mini dress was begging for it. Yes, fine, we'll pardon you after the fact. If, as in most cases, it turns out you just ripped the belly out of someone's daughter, whose closest brush with swinging was in a playground next to the slides, then we take you into a little room somewhere and sodomise you you with a rubber cock until you stop twitching. And we make it clear by both word and deed that when in doubt, we'll go with the rubber cock.
Sound fair?

[Ladewig]

We should accept that sometimes (once in a few hundred cases, IIRC) a federal agent needs to take monstrously inhumane measures to save lives

IIRC? What exactly are you recalling?

[Almo]

Torture provides unreliable info. Figure it out, people.

[GreyICE]

Wow...

I'm not even sure what to say. There's a long history of terrible ideas at the JREF, but this has to be up there with implementing Tippit's economic solutions.

[theprestige]

In the case of torture, it's morally perhaps an even worse situation. If we allow retrospective justification of torture, then there is more motivation for the torturer to extract a false confession that will serve as sufficient retroactive justification for his actions.
Jontg has that covered. If the confession can't be substantiated, we get to beat the interrogator to death with a brick.

[Eyeron]

The United States doesn't torture. It uses advanced interrogation techniques.

Or the US'll just take the unlawful combatant to a country that will do the torture for them.

[theprestige]

Jontg has that covered. If the confession can't be substantiated, we get to beat the interrogator to death with a brick.
Also, for the record, I'm absolutely against torturing people to gain confessions.

I am, on the other hand, in principle willing to consider torturing people in certain cases to try to obtain actionable operational intelligence, where lives are at stake. I'm also absolutely opposed to using intelligence gained in such a way and for such a purpose, in a criminal trial as evidence for the prosecution (or the defense, really).

[Dave Rogers]

I am, on the other hand, in principle willing to consider torturing people in certain cases to try to obtain actionable operational intelligence, where lives are at stake.

OK, time to start being skeptical then. What is the evidence that torture is effective as a means of obtaining actionable operational intelligence?

Dave

[Darth Rotor]

A bit of out of the box thinking here:

One way to reduce the problem of detainees and torture of same is to change the kill or capture policy for certain terrorists.

Delete "or capture" from the orders.

DR

[theprestige]

OK, time to start being skeptical then. What is the evidence that torture is effective as a means of obtaining actionable operational intelligence?

Dave
Couldn't tell you, honestly. I'm sure you're already aware that high-ranking Bush administration officials have claimed that it does, but I haven't looked into those claims and have no idea if they're true.

However, if evidence supporting such claims does surface, I'm willing to consider torture, in principle, as I described above. Are you?

Meanwhile, here's a simple protocol:

Politely ask a subject to make testable claims about terrorist activity they've been involved in. If they refuse, ask... impolitely. Escalate until testable claims are made. Test the claims. If they are false, keep escalating until claims are made that test true. Reward the subject whenever progress is made. Escalate whenever progress is not made, or is reversed. Optionally, begin by restricting queries to claims which have already been tested by other means.

It's often claimed that tortured confessions are worthless, because a subject will say anything to stop the torture. They'll even tell false stories, if they don't know any true stories that suit the purpose.

So by the same token, it should be the case that if a person will say anything to stop the torture, they'll tell true stories, in the form of testable claims, if they know any that suit the purpose.

Like I said, I don't have any evidence, but it seems to follow logically that the same principles of human psychology that make tortured confessions worthless, make tortured revelations of operational intelligence worthwhile.

Finally, please help me be clear on where you stand. Some people take the position that torture is unacceptable, regardless of whether or not it is proven to produce life-saving intelligence. Is that your position? Or is your position that if it could be proven that torture, properly implemented, can produce life-saving intelligence, then it would be ethically acceptable to permit it within certain boundaries?

[Toke]

Jontg,
The scenario you describe is more or less reality.
Torture is illegal in civilised countries but it is quite likely that the court would be somewhat understanding it a police officer had a clear case. (1/16)

Theprestige,
Your scenario does not account for the random passer-by with no useful knowledge to save himself with.

[theprestige]

Theprestige,
Your scenario does not account for the random passer-by with no useful knowledge to save himself with.
Sure it does: If we suspect that to be the case, we beat the interrogator to death with a brick. I call it The Jontg Clause.

It's not foolproof, but then neither is the scenario where we put an innocent man in prison for life because he was somehow unable to prove his innocence in a court of law. Or the scenario where we kill innocent civilians who were unable to leave a war zone before the airstrikes started. If we're going to allow policemen and prosecutors and juries and generals to make judgement calls in matters of life and death and human suffering, why not interrogators?

[Fiona]

Because it is torture.

[theprestige]

Because it is torture.
What, exactly, sets "torture" apart from every other judgement call on matters of life and death and human suffering we currently condone?

[GreyICE]

What, exactly, sets "torture" apart from every other judgement call on matters of life and death and human suffering we currently condone?
...

Seriously?

[leftysergeant]

What, exactly, sets "torture" apart from every other judgement call on matters of life and death and human suffering we currently condone?

What's this "we" garbage? That lower forms of animal life like Cheney, Rummy, Gonzo and Yoo apporved it does not mean that America did.

[theprestige]

...

Seriously?
Seriously.

We allow generals to make judgement calls on whether or not to drop bombs and roll tanks. We allow policemen to make judgement calls on whether or not to use deadly force. We allow juries and judges and state governors to make judgement calls on whether or not to imprison (and even execute) alleged criminals.

Matters of life and death and human suffering. Judgement calls. Condoned by governments. Accepted by citizens. All day, every day.

But when it comes to interrogation, "torture" gets blurted out like a magic word in an FOTL admiralty court.

Every time this topic comes up, I ask what sets interrogation apart from every other case of making judgment calls in matters of life and death and human suffering. And every time, all I get in return are appeals to incredulity and emotion.

Seriously? If you have a rational answer to my question, please just give it already.

[leftysergeant]

Every time this topic comes up, I ask what sets interrogation apart from every other case of making judgment calls in matters of life and death and human suffering. And every time, all I get in return are appeals to incredulity and emotion.

Torture provides, for all practical purposes, no actionable intel worth having and allows some of the most disgusting excuses for human beings to have fun inventing new ways to be worthless schmucks.

[Dave Rogers]

Finally, please help me be clear on where you stand. Some people take the position that torture is unacceptable, regardless of whether or not it is proven to produce life-saving intelligence. Is that your position? Or is your position that if it could be proven that torture, properly implemented, can produce life-saving intelligence, then it would be ethically acceptable to permit it within certain boundaries?

At the moment, I'm happy not to have to answer that question. As far as I'm aware, there is at present no moral dilemma to address; there is not, and has never been, any evidence of benefit to anyone deriving from torture, so until some is produced it seems clear to me that there's only one possible moral stance to take. If the situation were to change, then it would require re-examination, but at present there is no more lack of clarity on where I stand than where I stand on the torture of heretics; there is no evidence of any specific benefit, so no cost/benefit analysis is worth even attempting.

Dave