Freedom on the March

The government is arguing for rules of evidence that allow for the admission of any evidence as long as the military judge decides it is a a reliable basis for decision.

The defense attorneys are arguing that it can’t be left only to the military judge, and due process requires that all evidence gained under torture be excluded, and the district court should order this.

I don’t think any military judge worth his salt would conclude that any evidence obtained under torture could ever be reliable. I am told that the military judges in charges of these tribunals are people of integrity who take their jobs seriously. However, I have done a lot of research that strongly suggests that the United States has sent a suspect to be tortured in Syria, when the only real evidence against him was other suspects’ confession under torture in Syria. It now looks like the guy was totally innocent. It also looks like the other suspects may well have been innocent.

I have done further research that suggests at least two Guantanamo detainees were sent by the United States to Egyptian prisons from Indonesia and Australia, tortured in Egypt, and then flown to Guantanamo where they were allegedly denied medical care as an interrogation technique.

So I don’t trust the Bush administration even a little. I have some trust in the military judges on a personal level, but I don’t think they will be able to make these real trials without some assistance from Article III courts. I would also really like to see the Bush administration given a disincentive to torturing prisoners. A per se exclusion of evidence obtained under torture would do this.

caveat: not a real lawyer, just a law student.

Even if moral arguments mean nothing to you (i.e., you are a sociopath) there is still an overwhelming realist case for not routinizing torture because of the risks it exposes your own people to down the road.

If I were a sociopath with tribal mentality – I wouldn’t see much of an overwhelming realist case here.

What risks are you talking about – the risk that the US government is going to extend this practice domestically and start torturing filthy hippies and peace activists? Fine with me.

Or the risk is that Saddamite-Islamofascist enemies are going to torture me? But I don’t expect anything else and besides they’ll never get me alive.

Are you sure about the “overwhelming realist case”?

When Bush said “Freedom was on the march” even I didn’t realize that he meant it was marching away from us.

Boyle replied that if the military’s combatant status-review tribunals “determine that evidence of questionable provenance were reliable, nothing in the due-process clause prohibits them from relying on it.”

Kieran misquotes this in one instance as “questionable providence”.

Since Boyle is talking about the “integrity” of the information given under torture, rather than the “source” of the information, a better word might be “probity“.

Are you sure about the “overwhelming realist case”?

Abb1 has once again backed into a perfectly valid point. Americans have no interest that I can see in restraining their use of torture against non-American suspected terrorists. The organizations to which these terrorists belong would not hesitate to use torture on Americans–or, for that matter, kill them outright at every opportunity–so there’s no prospect of a mutual agreement that would trade away the use of torture in return for greater protection of Americans. And as long as a clear distinction is made between American citizens and non-Americans, the risk of torture being used on any of the voters to whom the torturers are accountable is negligible. Thus for Americans to give up the use of torture against non-American detainees captured by the American military would be, as a matter of cold calculation, highly counterproductive.

Even more counterproductive, then, would be the deliberate refusal to use evidence already gathered via torture. (I assume here that the evidence is corroborated–obviously, evidence obtained by torture alone must be considered completely unreliable, as a purely practical matter.) Since the incentive value of reducing torture of non-Americans is negligible, and the potential net loss resulting from freeing a known terrorist is huge, the original rationale for the application of the “exclusionary rule” in American justice is not relevant in these cases.

The more interesting case is the attitude of Europeans–the only people really in a position to argue against the Americans’ use of torture, as far as I can tell. (Citizens of Middle Eastern countries are obviously on rather shakier ground making such complaints.) Now, I don’t doubt that many Europeans see the threat of American torture of non-Americans as greater than the threat of provably guilty terrorists going free. The interesting question is, why? How many Europeans have been tortured by American government personnel in the last several decades? How many Europeans have been murdered by Middle Eastern terrorists in the past several decades? Are the threats even comparable? Why does the clamor about the former so overwhelm concerns about the latter?

Dan, do you trust the US government to restrict the use of torture to non-(US)-citizens? IIRC, we were promised that US citizens wouldn’d be detained without trial. Until Hamada and Padilla.

Abb1 has once again backed into a perfectly valid point.

Well, I should’ve mentioned that there may be also some propaganda value in taking the moral high ground (or, rather, not sliding to the bottom of the hole).

Oh, I see Katherine did spell it out.

Yeah, but at this point it seems that both domestically and internationally the lines have been drawn already; after Abu Ghraib, Falluja, etc. this will hardly add anything new.

The government didn’t concede this, but claimed it. This is a maximal assertion–we can keep these people even if the only evidence we have is from an illegal source. That argument is likely related to the claim made in a separate hearing, that the prisoners don’t have any constitutional rights enforceable in the courts.

The claim that, whatever the source of the information, there’s nothing in the due process clause preventing its use seems related to the claim that the prisoners have no constitutional rights enforceable in the courts. If they don’t have any due process rights enforceable in the courts, that means they have no due process rights, even when torture is or may be implicated.

Boyle’s claim, then, is that the military tribunals can do what they wish without worrying about whether the civil courts will intervene. It isn’t a claim about what the military tribunals should actually do.

I’m glad that Dan is not an American. The America I know, the America I grew up in, does not torture people. That America may be vanishing before my eyes, but at least Dan is not part of it.

The America I know, the America I grew up in, does not torture people. That America may be vanishing before my eyes, but at least Dan is not part of it.

Yes, that America vanished before everybody’s eyes–two tall skyscrapers at a time. We’re all sad to see it go–myself no less than anyone else.

“We’re only talking about corroborated information here. I assume we’re all in complete agreement that uncorroborated information obtained under torture is highly unreliable, and should therefore be discounted on practical grounds.”

Yeah, we agree. Unfortunately there is reason to believe that Bush administration does not agree, as we appear to be sending people to be tortured in Syria when all of the serious evidence against them was obtained under torture in Syria.

Most of your other comments completely overlook the idea of nationalism.

When people belonging to the same group as us commit bad acts, we impute it to the individuals. When people belonging to a different group do it, particularly a group we distrust, we impute it to the group. When their are allegations of bad actions, we are more likely to believe them if they are against members of a group we distrust than a group we belong to.

The Arab world does all this to an extreme degree. That may be wrong of them, but it’s a fact we have to deal with it. And everyone does it to some degree, including us.

Also, if you truly believe that we have no power to influence Arab hearts and minds for good or ill, please never, ever, ever, ever try to sell me the democracy domino theory of the Iraq war. (I don’t know if you have done so, but I vaguely think you have.)

I figured you’d mention the fake surrenders.

The thing is, if there are no genuine surrenders by insurgents, we will have no insurgents to interrogate and get intelligence from. The military generally considers the Geneva convention to be in their interest and torture by U.S. troops to be against their interests. It’s not because they are naive about who Zarqawi is. They know what they’re doing. If “shoot and torture them all” were a good strategy, there would be some attempt to make the rules of engagement reflect this. The rules of engagement say no such thing, and pressure to allow torture has come almost exclusively from the civilian leaders at the defense department and been resisted by the military.

“Again, if people who turn over neighbors to the Americans as insurgents can be confident of the complete safety of those insurgents, then that strikes me as a far, far more dangerous situation for the informers—and the Americans—than the opposite.”

This one is simply nonsensical. I am not suggesting that we not interrogate and imprison insurgents. I am suggesting that we not torture them. I fail to see what torturing them does to protect the people who turn them in.

It seems more likely to lead to retaliation against informants by the detainees relatives, and more likely to make Iraqis feel like it is morally wrong to collaborate in any way with U.S. intelligence.

kevin–thank you for writing that. It needed to be said.

It’s one of the most disheartening things: we’ve been lucky. I never would have guessed we could go three years without another attack. But instead, even as our initial fear has faded back into complacency, we’re going further and further off the rails morally. Bush appeals to the worst in us, and the Democrats are very often too afraid to appeal to the better angels of our nature.

Sorry, shd read ‘would frankly love the answer to be no’. I can’t believe Americans will just say ‘torture? We can live with that.’ Are the media telling them this is happening?

You have the indecency to call for torture and you’re whining about insults? Beyond parody. Want me to say something useful? Okay. The US Armed Forces take Canadians. You like this war- you join up. Email me and I’ll advise you on fitness and similar matters.

Katherine is quoting soldiers- soldiers, boy, men with the guts to do what you’re frightened to do- who *don’t want to tear up the Geneva Convention* because they *know it protects them*. And the British officers I know think the same thing. Want to know, you ignoramus, the only recent success of a Western army against Arab guerrillas? The British in Oman, 1970-75, due to their use of ‘firqat’- turned guerrillas who defected and fought against their ex-comrades. Kind of unlikely if you torture their relatives, don’t you think?

And gutless scum like you fantasise about *torturing* people and you whine about a few words? (What kind of torture, Dan? Whipping? Electric shocks? Needles under the fingers? Dogs, maybe? Rape of relatives, like Pinochet used, or is that going too far? Would torturers be tried for murder if they killed anyone under interrogation, or would that be no big deal? Come on- you’ve trotted out a lot of empty verbiage in favour of torture- let’s have a few specifics on what kind of torture you favour. Oh, sorry- is that ‘insulting’? Dear me, you do get hurt easily for a prospective torturer.

I apologize to the real Dan Simon. I will assume for the moment that the fake Dan Simon is an agent of al Quada trying to destroy America from within.

Dan (Hardie): I hope you’re right, but I think there’s is danger of falling into the democratic equivalent of “if the Czar only knew”: if the people only knew. Abu Ghraib got widespread press, and the recent Red Cross report produced front-page headlines, so it’s quite possible that we do know, and many of us don’t care.

“What’s dying is the America that believes that such things—and such things alone—will save the world from violent Islamist terrorism. It was nice living in an America where that fantasy was sustainable, but that country simply doesn’t exist anymore.”

That world never existed. People always knew that military and police strength were required – -but they also always knew that justice and decency, in the end, meant more. It wasn’t a fantasy, dan, and it is only your overwhelming terror that makes you think it ever was. You have traded your decency and your humanity away because someone tells you that giving it up is the only way to keep you safe. That is the fantasy, dan — that you can defend yourself from monsters by becoming one.

You know why we won the cold war? In the end, it wasn’t our military or nuclear weapons or even the Soviet Unions economic problems (the Chinese have proved a hundred times over that totalitarianism can coexist with capitalism quite well). It was the simple fact that we convinced the Europeans and the Japanese that our ideals were better than theirs. This war will be won the same way.

Yes, military action is sometimes required, as will police action. but in the end, the question comes down to this: which side will be able to convince enough of the Arab Muslim world that its ideals are correct, and thus neuter the other side? The monsters tell the Arabs that they can provide a good life, a safe life, a proud life, for them and their families because the monsters are close to God’s heart and know what God wants. So if you turn life over to them, if you do Gods will as they reveal it to you, they will give you the life for your family that you desire. It is a powerful idea, one hard to defeat.

But we have a better idea: we will let you be your own person, find you own way to heaven, build your own independent life with dignity, free from orders and monsters who dare to tell you what God really wants, protected by the law that you yourself helped create. It has won every single time it has been given a chance to be put in practice, our idea. But it it can only work if it is put into practice. Refuse to practice it, forget its power, lie about your adherence to it, flaunt it’s restrictions, ignore its laws, become a monster in defense of it, and it has no power.

And that’s what you advocate, dan — telling the world a lie, giving up on our ideals so that you can feel safer. Trying to fight a monster by becoming a monster. Instead of a choice between freedom and tyranny, you offer them a choice between an honest tyranny and a lie. Why should they believe in our ideal when we so obviously don’t?

You know what? You have already lost the war on terrorism. Al-Qaeda has gotten into your head, has so frightened you, that you run screaming from everything you know to be right and good in order to feel safe again. And that’s just sad.

Actually, Dan, I find it fucking repulsive that you argue that because Arab governments torture their own people, no Arab has any right to complain when our government tortures Arabs.

Allow me to clarify my position: citizens of Arab governments (all of them repressive tyrannies) are in a bit of a bind–they cannot criticize the use of torture in their own countries without risking a dose of it themselves. Hence they can either criticize the much milder cruelties perpetrated by the Americans, while remaining silent about the monstrosities running rampant in their own region–a rather hypocritical public posture–or they can remain silent and trust that we know what they’re most likely thinking: that torture is bad, and that they’d rather everyone avoided its use, except when absolutely necessary.

You also seem to ACTIVELY WANT TO BELIEVE that torturing Arabs make you safer. Instead of demanding any evidence at all if this is true, you excuse it on those grounds, based on nothing but a bunch of arguments that are completely unsupported by available information and that contradict themselves at every turn.

This is a perfectly legitimate point: even if torture is sometimes an awful necessity, gratuitous torture is both awful and unnecessary. And I don’t have access to any of the information that goes into deciding whether torture is used on a particular detainee or not. How, then, do I know that the torture that’s been committed by US government agents in the last few years isn’t totally capricious and indiscriminate?

In fact, I can’t know, in a world where American intelligence isn’t an open book to its enemies. What I can observe, however, is that the torture that is going on seems to be highly selective. For all the yelling that we’ve heard here, the number of actual cases is obviously just a tiny, carefully chosen subset of all the detainees. (At least some of the Abu Ghraib cases may be an exception to that rule–but then, the soldiers responsible are being punished for those lapses.)

I don’t pretend that weighing the necessity of a particular use of torture is an easy task. I welcome serious debate about its moral and practical costs and benefits in various situations. (And let’s not forget that the definition of “torture” in international legal circles is very vague–probably quite deliberately so. The line between “interrogation”, “spartan conditions” or “punishment”, on the one hand, and “torture”, on the other, is often a matter of personal judgment.)

What I reject is the assertion that torture is never of practical value, that its benefits can never outweigh its costs. I consider that position completely unrealistic. The arguments given in its favor here–all of them essentially variations on, “it makes the war harder by alienating the locals”–simply don’t hold water.

BTW, enlisting isn’t the only way to support the war in Iraq. I’m sure that Halliburton is still hiring, as are some US government agencies. Which would eliminate any problems due to age, fitness, etc.

It is very interesting to see that the voice legitimating the use of torture is using “pacifist” as a dirty word and relinquishing any personal responsibility for deciding whether any particular act of torture is an “awful necessity” or not because of lack of access to military intelligence.

Pacifism, of all things, requires the most careful analysis of choices of action and leaves the responsibility and consequences in the hands of the individual. But I guess that’s what scared people do–give up personal responsibility to a greater power (miltary or divine).

Democracy is for grown ups. You have to take responsibility for setting the boundaries of acceptable behavior by your government and its agents.

I would add two points here:

1. I have noted before how stupid and pointless is the American cult of personal authenticity, which implies that the validity of Dan Simon’s argument turns on how American he is. I am not only a born American citizen, but indeed a Mayflower descendent, and I basically agree with Dan Simon. All the available evidence indicates that the majority of soldiers and their families voted for Bush. So please, drop the personal attacks, much less then attacks on personal authenticity, and address issues on the merits.

2. Those who argue that we won the Cold War because of our commitment to liberal values will be much more convincing if they can present convincing evidence that they supported the policies of the Reagan and Bush administrations that actually won the Cold War. I doubt that they can, which is why I never find such arguments persuasive. Ad hominem? Sue me.

A question that is only somewhat relevant in this case but has plagued me for a while, concerning the First Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions (from 1977, that’s the one that deals with treatment of guerrila fighters). Do I read the list on the ICRC website correctly: The US did not ratify (and hence is not bound by) this protocol?

That is correct. We are not signatory to that protocol.

Don’t worry, though — we’re already violating the conventions to which we are signatory plenty enough to go around without it.

I can’t believe Americans will just say ‘torture? We can live with that.’

Didn’t they do that when they voted for Bush?

Dan Simon wrote:
“‘How many Americans were murdered in Saddam?s torture chambers?’

No idea. Not very many, I would guess. Are you suggesting that anybody ever tried to justify the overthrow of Saddam Hussein on the grounds that he tortured many Americans?”

No. Many, many Americans apparently think that $200 billion, more than a thousand dead soldiers, and possibly 100,000 excess dead Iraqi civilians is a price worth paying to get rid of a man who tortured many *Iraqis*.

Isn’t the point that torture is such a serious moral wrong, that any attempt to analyse whether we should be doing it or not by a cost benefit analysis is wrong: that implies it’s not clear that the pure utilitarian benefit of the information obtained by torturing outweighs the cost of torturing, and if it’s not clear, then the presumptive weight of the horror of torture should surely rule it out. We torture in the bomb cases, if we do, because there is the benefits of torture are so abundantly clear, because of the specification of the case. We don’t torture in the real world because the benefits are never going to be that abundantly clear.

I thought the one of the points of us being us and them being them is that we don’t approve of torturing people and they do.

So we have to become the enemy in order to beat them? In that case, who wins?

(I think we’ve tortured dan simon enough)

Addressing myself to Walt Pohl, Katherine and the Americans here- I surprised myself, last night, with just how much disgust I felt reading Dan Simon’s sophisms. I asked myself why this was, and I can think of several reasons:

1) I’m proud of my country (Britain) and I’m proud of the British Army, in which my father and grandfather served, as well as a number of my Irish mother’s relatives. I accept that soldiering is a tough profession, and I’ve seen some of the reasons why. What I will never accept is that Britain becomes a country that employs torturers, and that the British Army degenerates from being a tough outfit to a criminal organisation.

2) How do the Geneva Conventions protect servicemen? Firstly they DO- not in all, but in many, circumstances-stop servicemen from being executed and tortured and otherwise maltreated: think of how the Argentine military behaved towards their own people, and then think of how they stuck to the Geneva Convention when treating Brtish prisoners. Think of the difference in treatment of Western and Soviet POWs in the Second World War. But beyond that: I’ve met enough soldiers to know that all of them are capable of violence (goes with the job) and that at least some of them are capable of sadism and racism; and, truth to tell, I know enough about myself when I am angry and frightened to be worried about what I might do if I were in particularly extreme circumstances. The Geneva Convention doesn’t just protect servicemen from being tortured; it protects them from BECOMING TORTURERS. I could go home to my mother and sister having killed someone in war. I don’t think I could go home having tortured people.

3) This won’t occur to the cowards here who want other people to go and torture on their behalf, but aren’t lining up to, you know, personally become torturers. But it’s important to anyone who knows anything about the military.

*A British or American soldier may refuse any unlawful order.

By contrast, a British or American soldier can and will be punished for refusing to obey any lawful order.

If chickenhawks like Dan Simon have their indecent way, torture will be legal and British and American soldiers can be ordered to assist in torture sessions- either directly torture captives, or guard them in between sessions- and punished if they disobey.*

That is a grotesque prospect.

3,000+ Americans were murdered by a sadistic gang of thugs under the orders of a man who despises Western civilisation. The solution? Become sadistic thugs and drop the values of our own civilisation. Obviously.

I’ll say this clearly. In a democracy, it is perfectly okay for someone to call for soldiers to go overseas and fight and kill on his behalf. That’s what civilian control of the military entails.

But if you want soldiers to go overseas and *torture* on your behalf- go do it yourself. Now back to your sadistic fantasies and your Lynndie England photos, chickenhawks and clowns.

Jesus Christ, we’re talking about _torture_. How did this happen? If you told me, even on September 12th 2001, that within three years we would be torturing people, I wouldn’t have believed you and I might have punched you. But here we are.

I can’t believe Americans will just say ‘torture? We can live with that.’

Well, let’s see:

In my ethics class, at a mainstream Christian college with strong liberal theology and social justice teachings, in 1990, out of a class of 25-30 students, I was the only one to argue that torture of [presumed] enemies of the state was wrong, that this was not a slope on which you could set foot and remain upright. (The prof was rather aghast at this – not at me, that two dozen nice young people were all cool with the idea of torturing bad guys, so long as it didn’t happen to them, which it wouldn’t.)

That was before movies and TV shows and novels justifying it and priming people for the “ticking time bomb” belief, had become anywhere near as common as they are – let alone actual terrorist attacks on US soil.

Naive faith in intrinsic human goodness is a wonderful thing – in the traditional sense of “wonderful,” meaning amazing, something to be wondered at. I honestly can’t remember when I had any: I know it was all gone by third grade. And I never had any illusions that Americans were any nicer or morally superior or more intellectually honest by right of birth than anyone else in the world, either. The people who threatened me with rape in HS and the people who turned a blind eye to my harrassment all equally being Americans, for one. And most of my childhood friends being European.

But hey, it worked for Anne Frank, so if it keeps you smiling…

What’s dying is the America that believes that such things—and such things alone—will save the world from violent Islamist terrorism. It was nice living in an America where that fantasy was sustainable, but that country simply doesn’t exist anymore.

Whereas, sadly, the America that believes that torture will save them from violence without tarnishing their souls is alive and kicking… though no less fantastical.

I don’t think I’ve become a monster.

Monsters rarely do.

Not that I think you’re there yet, but you’re teetering on the edge of a very deep abyss.

Dan Simon wrote:
“First of all, I doubt many Americans have ever believed the enormous costs of the Iraq campaign were worth it for the sake of reducing the amount of torture occurring in Iraq.”

You may doubt that, but that *is* exactly the rationale making the chickenhawk rounds now that the al-Qaeda/WMD rationale is moribund.

“Operation Iraqi Freedom” I believe the operation is called.

“Indeed I am—as are we all, in fact. Unfortunately, not everybody realizes that. And it’s the ones who don’t, I suspect, who are at the greatest risk of falling in.”

What a lot of condescending bollocks. Only drug addicts manage to tell themselves more self-justifying nonsense. But at least they’re only harming themselves.

Nevermind, continue your mission, keyboard warrior, people like you realise the dangers, people like you get it, for real. The rest of us softies and snobs and Europeans and appeasers and people-who-dont-get-it will one day fall into that abyss and turn into psychopath killers, *precisely* because of having so long suppressed that powerful primal instinct to torture that has been so reawakened by this epochal battle, and then, ah then, we’ll come back here weeping and beating our chests to say, oh, that Dan Simon was so fucking right!

Some of those technicalities are addressed here: Dershowitz: Torture could be justified. By the guy who used to call himself ‘civil libertarian’. Wonder if he still does.

This is basically a discussion of humanism vs. tribalism, torture is just one of the manifestations.

“Listen up, fellow liberals: let’s have a polite, rational discussion of why we should institutionalise the sadistic physical abuse of detainees.”

Well if it is sadistic it is definitely unacceptable. If there is sexual pleasure involved then of course it’s wrong. Now if the interrogation team merely takes professional satisfaction out of the fact that information has been extracted in a cost-effective way, that may be all right.

[End of ironic response; now seriously:]

There is an issue worth discussing here. The use of the term “institutionalise” raises a question. There are times when cops break the law. Sometimes they get results by doing so. How do we feel about that? I don’t agree with Dan Simon, but I know of at least one case where a kidnap victim’s location was divulged by a man in severe pain. I really haven’t made up my mind what the rules should be in such cases. For now I am reasonably happy with the law as it stands: if a policeman beats the crap out of a suspect in order to obtain information, he faces the prospect of criminal charges. If the jury cannot be persuaded to convict him then he is not guilty.

This isn’t ideal. It is a difficult problem. My impression is that the USA is pushing the boat out farther than it should.

There are times when cops break the law. Sometimes they get results by doing so. How do we feel about that?

Certainly one of the reasons for considering “institutionalizing” torture is that in the end, doing so may actually reduce the amount of torture ultimately committed, by discouraging the kind of “cowboy” behavior that often arises when those responsible for “just getting the job done” feel that they are being denied the tools they need to do it. It is my strong suspicion, for example, that the enormous burden of rules imposed by civil liberties advocates on American police officers via the judicial system, simply encourages the police to flout the rules discreetly on a regular basis in order to “get the job done”. And of course once the police no longer feel bound by the rules imposed on them….

My impression is that the USA is pushing the boat out farther than it should.

As I’ve already pointed out, we don’t really have any idea just how far the USA is “pushing the boat out”. My impression, in fact, is that the current American use of torture is extremely narrow and selective, affecting only a very few detainees. (Again, Abu Ghraib appears to be an exception–but then, those involved are apparently also receiving serious punishments for their misuse/overuse of torture.)

It may be, for all we know, that there is already a set of procedures in place to regulate the use of torture by the US military, in order to prevent its use from becoming excessive or indiscriminate. If there isn’t such a system in place, then I believe there should be–if only to distinguish the military’s policy on torture from a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, in which torture is officially banned, but quietly continues to be used. Such unsanctioned (and hence unregulated) use of torture can easily get wildly out of hand–as the Abu Ghraib case has amply demonstrated.

Dan Simon,

The problem with changing the rules so that a little bit of torture is sanctioned in exceptional circumstances is that those rules, like the current ones, have to be interpreted. All you really accomplish is a lowering of the barrier.

We don’t know how extensively the USA is using torture. The fact that there is precious little audit is not reassuring.

Nic [in ironic mode]: “Good, then, I’m convinced, let’s scrap the Geneva conventions.”

What I am suggesting is that there is no good reason to ease the rules, even though there are cases like the one I mentioned where reasonable people will excuse police brutality. If those accused of torture are entitled to trial by jury, the jury can decide to acquit even if the evidence is pretty conclusive.

My point is that the rules always get stretched, so it is better that the rules should be strict.

“Perhaps you’re unaware how utterly perfectly your rhetoric matches that of a pacifist. The only difference is that you’ve drawn a line in a slightly different place: it’s apparently okay in your book to send soldiers out into the field to hunt the enemy down and kill them, but to torture them under any circumstances is to have abandoned all “justice and decency”. Make the appropriate substitutions in the above paragraph, and it would apply equally well against making war in the first place.”

Well, no, of course not. The difference is that a decent country fights wars only when required, and fights them in such a way as to minimize civilian death as much as possible. Torturers, on the other hand, operate under completely different rules. They are designed to inflict as much physical and psychological damage on people under their power. And they do this knowing that they will do it to perfectly innocent people. Yes, perfectly innocent people do get killed in war, but at least in war, a decent army takes steps to try and prevent it. Torturers do not and cannot because of the nature of their work.

It is not that I draw a line in a different place (as if that is somehow intrinsically wrong. After all, we all know that murder and shoplifting should get the death penalty — crime is crime), dan, it is that you do not draw a line at all. If you advocated carpet bombing Mecca, for example, I would come to the same conclusion.

And if the moralizing bothers you, well, I don’t really care. You, dan, are the on that used the image of the towers to justify your stance. You are the one who tried to play on the dead of that day as a justification for your own decisions. The moralizing began with your posts, dan. I just thought you needed to be reminded that your idea of morality is not universally accepted.

He still hasn’t answered the Dan Simon Torture Questions.

Now then: 1) Dan- as an advocate of torture, what specific methods would you approve of: Whipping? Electric shocks? Burning? Asphyxiation and submersion in water? Beating with boots and fists? Anal penetration with truncheons and similar objects, as per Abu Ghraib? Rape of family members, as per Pinochet and Saddam?

Further questions above- medical treatment (or not) of detainees, use of dogs, rape of women- all the sorts of details that a forward-looking fellow needs to think through when coming up with a few civilised torture guidelines. Come on Dan, why are you holding out? You’ll have to answer these questions eventually. Not replying now just increases the amount of pain and humiliation you’ll suffer in the meantime. Yes, some might call my methods barbaric, but I’m doing this for the greater good…

What kind of torture does a responsible fellow like you advocate? Electric shocks? Partial asphyxiation? Denial of medical treatment? Dogs? Torture to death? Torture of women?

I’m far from an expert on this topic. It’s my vague understanding that the most effective means of extracting information do not involve the application of severe pain, but rather what might be described as “persistent, extreme discomfort”–sleep deprivation, meager food and drink rations, uncomfortable physical positions, sensory extremes (loud noise or silence, bright lights or darkness), and so on.

Until fairly recently, none of these techniques would have been characterized as torture–they’d more likely have been described as “vigorous interrogation”. Indeed, if Frank Abagnale’s description of his six months in a French prison in 1970s, as a convicted white-collar criminal, is at all accurate, then at the time these measures could quite accurately have been labeled, “relatively pleasant conditions for a French prisoner”.

(Of course, the same kind of slippery slope that everyone here worries about with respect to torture also applies to the opposition to torture: once electric shocks and the like are banned, then anti-torture activists have to find something to protest, so they begin relaxing their definition until anything short of hotel-guest conditions qualifies as “torture”.)

I could have been coy, and claimed to be against “torture”, intending to distinguish between the infliction of severe pain and other forms of harsh treatment. However, since I myself don’t know where exactly the line should be drawn, nor whether the most effective information extraction techniques ever cross it, I deliberately chose not to take that escape route. Instead, I’ll just reiterate my points:

1) Under extreme circumstances, it might well be necessary–even morally so–to inflict very harsh treatment on detainees, (only) for the purpose of extracting their cooperation. Depending on the defintion of “torture”, it might (or might not) apply to some of these forms of harsh treatment.

2) In contexts where such harsh treatment is already commonplace, its relatively indiscriminate use on detainees most likely has negligible direct, negative practical consequences. However, there still are obvious moral arguments for restricting its use to a (hopefully) very few extreme cases, even in those contexts.

3) Because the gradations of severity of treatment and necessity of its imposition are arbitrarily fine, distinguishing among them requires extremely careful examination and discussion of the moral and practical consequences of of any particular choice of distinction. It only hinders such careful consideration simply to proclaim all harsh treatment to be torture, and all torture to be so unthinkable that anyone who is willing even to contemplate its use must therefore be subhumanly evil.

(Of course, the same kind of slippery slope that everyone here worries about with respect to torture also applies to the opposition to torture: once electric shocks and the like are banned, then anti-torture activists have to find something to protest, so they begin relaxing their definition until anything short of hotel-guest conditions qualifies as “torture”.)

Proof?

(Of course, the same kind of slippery slope that everyone here worries about with respect to torture also applies to the opposition to torture: once electric shocks and the like are banned, then anti-torture activists have to find something to protest, so they begin relaxing their definition until anything short of hotel-guest conditions qualifies as “torture”.)

Proof?

I believe the paragraph in my comment immediately preceding the one you quoted covers that point.

Look at the fine company you keep:

Comfy with that?

I also hear that when Iran’s ruling theocrats get into arguments, they routinely use that stupid polemical gimmick where you pick the very worst person in the world who could plausibly be said to have taken your opponent’s side, and then accuse your opponent of being the moral equivalent of that person. I, of course, would never use such lame sophistry. But look at the fine company you keep….

Kevin – I absolutely agree on this: My point is that the rules always get stretched, so it is better that the rules should be strict.

I had misunderstood the point of your example of the person who’d given useful information while under torture.

In general, what strikes me as surreal about discussions like these is, there’s no point in trying to argue about all possible cases, theoretical or otherwise, where torture could be excused. There’s many reasons why it’s been made illegal. All the possible theoretical what-ifs have already been examined to reach that conclusion. It’s been decided that the principles according to which torture is wrong supersede any possible benefit in any theoretical what-if scenario. So, yes, like you say, the rules themselves should remain as strict as they have been so far (even if in practice they have already been broken a thousand times).

What’s so surreal and sad, is not just the disregard for ethical principles shown by torture apologists, but their complete shameless disregard for legal principles, international and national. As if they were only formalities.

Until fairly recently, none of these techniques would have been characterized as torture—they’d more likely have been described as “vigorous interrogation”.

Again, not that torturofans should care, but there are laws according to which those techniques are torture. No matter how often a law has been broken, it’s still a law.

An hypothetical abusive father may not consider beating his children and depriving them of food as child abuse, he may see it as only deserved punishment and strict discipline, but if the kids or wife call the cops, it’s the laws who get to decide what definition counts.

This basic principle of social cohabitation of course does not apply to torture! the only crime for which everyone and his nanny can play the definition game, safe in the knowledge it’s always going to be someone else who’ll be tortured, and someone else who’ll be the torturer, so even if the crime should be uncovered, it’s never their problem. They just like to play torture scenarios. Like it was a game of Mortal Kombat.