Per my earlier post – the people who know about torture….not politicians but the people who really know, have said it doens't work: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northam…

Do you have any research that shows it does?

r.

Listen, in a world of ideal scenarios, it'd be awesome if we didn't have to do anything "beneath us" as a culture. But when we have an enemy who refuses to break and is willing to die for their cause, we need to do things outside the box (not just torture them to think they'll die) to get what we need from them. But at the same time, I'd like to believe if we improve our intelligence efforts (part of why Bush had such shitty intel in the beginning of his term is because Clinton greatly decreased resources for those bureaus in his term), we can use enhanced interrogation tactics effectively.

I don't think everything the President says is legit, not from Bush and not Obama either. But we need to let people in charge of watching after national interests, like the CIA, do their jobs as best they can without worrying about bureaucracy. To me, the ends justify the means. We need results right now, not more people whining about things and not getting anything done. It's how society is now. People would rather complain than do. And it doesn't get us anywhere.

You say it should only be used when totally justified, but the problem is, that's not how it happens. If it is allowed, it WILL be abused. http://www.alternet.org/asoldierspeaks/49813/
(that's a former interrogator discussing how they basically tortured people at random, figuring you won't read all these links.)
It has been abused and will continue to be abused until it is banned.

Do also remember your "what they do to us, we'll do to them" philosophy goes both ways. Maybe some day you'll be detained in a foreign country for "looking American and suspicious" and what fun enhanced interrogation methods will you be exposed to now that America has given the big OK on torture. By torturing, we are inviting our enemies to torture us. We are putting our troops at risk.
By your logic we should be beheading detainees on television, because that's what they did to us, but I think you would at least draw the line at that, right?

There is no doubt that there have been people killed while being tortured as well, yet you tout preventing 'loss of life' as the holy grail.

Here's some information about that 'foiled' plot in LA: http://articles.latimes.com/p/2005/oct/08/nation/…
It was not an actionable plan, and wasn't an actual pending threat to begin with, even if it was where are you getting that waterboarding saved the day? You just seem to take everything at face value and put your faith behind it. Oh the president said he foiled it so it must have been foiled. It's bullshit.

Our intelligence has been wrong before (see anything about the iraq war) so I don't think you should be using it for justification of your moral lapses. Act on it, great. Interrogate people, great. There are better ways to get information. Torturing is not good intelligence, never has been.

You said it yourself right there, you have no problem "being a terrorist".
There's nothing else I have to say. I really hope you can think about this and change your mind. You're deluding yourself into thinking that there can be this perfect situation where it's justified. It doesn't work that way. Is it worth willingly equating yourself with a terrorist?

The issue I have with your argument, and many of the other commenters, is that everyone says "There's no proof torture does anything to help get answers from a suspect," yet there continues to be no proof it doesn't. Aggressive interrogation lead to finding out about a plot to attack LAX (I'm not sure if it was waterboarding, but it was more than simple questioning), so don't the ends justify the means if the lead we have is strong enough? If our information is SOUND and accurate, as it needs to be when you're torturing someone, then I have no problem with it. I have no empathy or concern for the health of people who are doing things to harm our people. And if other people around the country have a problem with us aggressively interrogating people who are involved in plots to harm us, then that's absurd. My concern is our people, not the opinions of someone in Sweden or Kazakhstan.

I was also in NYC in 9/11, one of my friend's fathers died. I have a best friend who's in the military. So yes, if we can learn information from people whom we KNOW have information and need to push the boundaries to do that, if it prevents a loss of American lives, then we need to do it. I don't want your noble but impractical ideas of civility to result in someone I care about dying needlessly. Terrorists are not playing by our rules so we need to not extend them any courtesies right back.

My problem is that you have this mythical belief that we've mastered these methods and that they produce anything valid. They don't. The only thing torture is good for is torture. That was well established for years. The only thing that has changed is that some government lawyers recently wrote a memo saying we should do it.
My other point about "brown people" is that we don't know who the terrorists are. If we knew how to find the right people who knew information then we wouldn't even need to interrogate them in the first place because we'd magically know everything.
My point, which you chose to shrug off to label me a liberal, is that your belief in a "proper use of torture" is a dream scenario that will never happen. Real life is cloudy and confusing and has many shades of gray, detainees might be innocent, or might be guilty, or might be somewhere in between. Real life is that people are getting tortured anyway, and in the best case scenario produce information that is not usable. If 'terrorist ties' were that obvious there wouldn't be a problem.
I do have friends in the military, and I was in NY on 9/11. But my real life outside of any "ivory tower" still tells me that torture is wrong. It's inexcusably wrong. An eye for an eye is a primitive way to deal with the world.

I'm not even going to dignify your brown people comment with a response. I'm referring to people with terrorist ties, not Muslim Americans or a random dude selling fruit in Iraq. It's so sad that you're attempt to drag things down to that.

I've seen the Hitchens video and his subsequent article and interviews. He's only against it because he's been personally affected by it. Just like how your stance would change if you had lost a relative to a bus bombing or a friend who's in the military. But I suppose that would require you to leave your ivory tower to actually have a bond with someone then, now wouldn't it?

"Responsible use of torture" what the fuck are you talking about? Torture is fucking torture and that's something that is below the human standard. The only person here who sounds dumber than you is "Symo".

We don't know who we've been torturing. And you know what? it doesn't even matter because it's a really shitty way to get information. The people saying it's helped us are the same people we catch in lie after lie after lie. "America doesn't torture" remember? Who are you trusting to be 99% sure this person is a 'terrorist'? The same people who fuck up the no fly list and harass anyone with a similar name to a terrorist?
They stopped Cat Stevens from getting on a plane so we must be safe now!
Official policy before Bush was that it provided unreliable information, and oh yeah, it was also torture and morally reprehensible.
There is no good that comes out of it. Real life is not 24. The US has hundreds of detainees suspected of terrorism. Think they're all 100% guilty? Think we picked the right ones and got the information to defuse the bomb at the last minute? like Jack Baur? Nope, probably not. Think there's one big master plan that we'll scrape out of them eventually? yeah fucking right.
Waterboarding the same man 183 times in a month is obviously not 'getting information' anymore, it's just outright torture. We executed the Japanese for waterboarding American citizens in world war II, what's so different now? it's ok now because we're mad about 9/11?
You say "they" beheaded Americans and that justifies our use of torture, but who's 'they'? The iraqi government? Al-Qaeda? maybe they were from Saudi Arabia or Iran? who were they? It certainly wasn't the same people we're "aggressively interrogating" 8 times a day. If we ever found them we shot them in the street already. But if they're all brown then you feel ok about it?

If we lie and torture and kill like this we're no better as a nation than the USSR under Stalin. We're almost cartoonishly evil if you look at what we're doing from any other perspective. Seriously. Secret fucking prisons and all.

If our response to terrorism is to lose our moral backbone and commit the very acts we've condemned for years, then the terrorists have won. How could they do better than to turn us into the assholes they were claiming we were in the first place.

I'd love to see Hannity get waterboarded, and not just out of spite. Christopher Hitchens did it for his publishers at Vanity Fair. He had an opinion very similar to yours before he did it (that torture is unpleasant, but a necessary evil), and now he's one of the most outspoken critics of using torture. I'd love to see Hannity's eyes opened, and I know his opinion would be different.

So sorry if it seems "whiny", but I'm a fucking American, and I know Americans shouldn't fucking torture. But apparently we have been, and that should make you sick to your fucking stomach.

If torture doesn't work, then how did we get names? Why did the people conducting the waterboarding say "Oh yeah, it's horrible and inhumane, but we would not have gotten intel without it?"

I agree that we should be "above" this, but how are we supposed to be civilized when they torture and behead our soldiers and civilians to make a statement and nothing more?

People just don't believe that the islamic radicals want us DEAD. Not living happily here in America, or Europe. If you're not a Muslim, they want you, your family, and everybody you know who isn't Muslim, DEAD. This is a jihad, you see, and they will not stop the war unless a) All of the infidels are DEAD. b) All the radical Muslims are DEAD. That's what holy war is.

All of those who believe that "oh, they dont' really believe that, they'll leave us alone as soon as we _____." Bull crap. They call us cowards for exactly the reasons we have for being enlightened… we will not do what it takes, we will not sacrifice our lofty goals and aspirations to win the war, and frankly, they are right. They train their children from birth to hate us, our way of life, our freedom. They don't care about their freedom, they only care about our death. If you think the "peaceful" muslim population will rise up to stop the radicals, guess again. The radicals have already pushed the peaceful into the "If you interfere with our Jihad, you're as dead as the infidels" camp. You're talking about people who truly believe they get 70 virgins when they sacrifice for the Jihad. We don't have that kind of faith here. We get stuck with our wife for eternity. Oh boy! Granted, just the thought of that makes me want to strap a bomb to myself and run into a crowded square.

I'm not necessarily for torture, but we are losing the Jihad because of weakness in conviction and purpose. This Jihad will not go away unless the countries that are sponsoring terrorism are called out by the civilized nations. That won't happen. EVER. Want to know why? Because we don't have the strength of conviction to do it. All the "stop being meanies" camp will call us monsters and uncivilized, and the jihadists just laugh while they're in their little garages, protected by their douchebag governments, making more suicide bombs. I'm going to laugh my ass off when Iran nukes Israel. The worst part? We'll wait 3 months to invade, and not find any WMD's because we gave them 3 months to get rid of the sh*t, just like we did in Iraq. Then "world opinion" will bash us and strengthen the position of who? Oh, that's right, the people who are funding the terrorists.

The problem with torture is we're torturing the wrong f*cking people. Arrest their families. Then we'll get some f*cking answers from the terrorists.

While you are asking for substantial proof/research that torture doesn't work, have you found any that says it does?

Would it be worthwhile talking/listening to the people that the CIA copied techniques from who said torture, in short, doesn't work? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northam…

For any/all knowledge you may have about sports and other topics, I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that your depth of knowledge and experience in this area isn't as…ummm….deep as the people who do it every day – fair point?

As a former US Army officer I can tell you that we were taught from day 1 that torture doesn't work – plain and simple.

Ask someone who survived, John McCain. All the NVA got out of him was the names of some football players – no "real" intel.

Finally, apply some logical analysis to this emotional argument. How effective is torture going to be against someone who thinks that they reach nirvana when they die for the cause?!?!

r.

It appears to be an actual program to build information. In essence its irrelevant if the tortured person provides us with the most important information we need, or just a little something, or even nothing at all. Once its collected and compiled – essentially into a computer – then we can make some tactical decisions.

I do believe we can be above something, and that we should be above a program of torture. Thats my opinion. I dont believe torture has to be the way to do it. I agree that its hard in a 'war' situation, using torture to get information out of people. But in any situation in the past we have always been against it (an official torture program) – and this shouldnt be different. Torture shouldnt be convenient.

I dont know what 'responsible' torture is – but you can't say that we're enlightened and that theyre savages, and then allow us to torture. That in no way is enlightened.

I just think we have different viewpoints on the way to handle dealing with someone who's "not at our level of war." I don't think when lives are at risk, including soldiers..people I know..we shouldn't worry about being "above" things. that might help us gain important intel I want our troops home rather than perpetually in danger because we're too "good" to deal with these people on their level.

@Cablemade — Are you going to protect yourself if a biological weapon is put into our water supplies? Or if someone attacks an airplane you're on? These are things that are planned for years that chatter may not necessarily pick up without aggressive interrogation tactics. Unless you're a John McClane roleplayer, I don't think you're quite equipped to protect yourself from stuff like that.

But even then, you're making all sorts of judgement calls – assuming that these people are in fact deserving of it, and that they're all savages. Its a big call.

As soon as we start torturing innocents (even if they are fighting for our enemy), then thats when we're crossed the line. But anyway, we've never tortured people before in wars – as an official program of torture – so why are we doing it now? Is it worth lowering our values all the way down for – something that hasnt been proven worthy?