Is Torture a Legitimate Interrogation Tool?

Torture is notoriously unreliable.

Victims, faced with the prospect of more pain, tend to just give the answers the torturers want just to end it.

Torturers have no way of knowing if the initial answers were true and they are torturing people into giving false information or vise versa.

The assumption of some replies here pre-supposes that the victim is guilty. That is not always the case. It could be you or me. If it were you pulled in despite your protestations of innocence who was tortured because you happenned to be in the wrong place at the wrong time then I'm pretty sure you'd be against it as the plyers came out to work on your fingernails after your first and honest response was ignored and the torturers started to extract a confession that suited better their agenda.

How long would you last before you told them exactly what they wanted to hear ??

The answer is exactly the same amount of time as someone who is guilty and lying.

Human resolve is finite in the guilty and innocent alike whether the torture is physical or psychological.

John bull 1, good way to put it...I agree

But in the most extreme circumstances when all other methods have failed you and many others and time restraints are in effect, physical torture may be the only option left to save many lives.

Originally posted by XphilesPhan
What examples of physical abuse can you give us that the US has done? Im not talking about putting trashbags on your head and making you walk naked either, Im talking physical torture, beating, etc.

This sounds like torture to me:

opctj

In the case that drew the stiffest punishment, a one-year prison sentence for the Marine, a detainee at Mahmoudiya was shocked with an electric transformer. Wires were held against his shoulders, and "the detainee danced as he was shocked," the documents state.

The new records — which blacked out the names of soldiers — also show that a Marine was convicted of ordering four juvenile Iraqi looters to kneel down beside two shallow holes in Diwaniya. Then, "a pistol was discharged to conduct a mock execution." The Marine was sentenced to 30 days imprisonment with hard labor.

Other Marines were punished for physically abusing prisoners. In Karbala, a Marine held a 9-millimeter pistol to the back of a detainee's head while another Marine snapped a picture. A glass of water then was poured on the prisoner's head, and he was photographed with an American flag draped over his body.

A detainee in Mahmoudiya suffered second-degree burns and blisters on the back of his hands when "a Marine guard squirted alcohol-based sanitizer" on him. A match was lighted, igniting the prisoner.

Navy investigators found other allegations unsubstantiated, including sexual abuse cases alleging that a detainee's testicles had been squeezed and another prisoner had been sodomized with a rifle muzzle.

There are many other instances of beatings, sodomy and mock executions.

IMHO, torture should not be used.
The persons who we look down upon as barbaric try to justify their use of torture but we can see that it is still wrong.
We should be able to see that it is also wrong when we do it.

[edit on 26-5-2005 by AceOfBase]

if the terrorist has information about the location of one nuclear bomb, and it detonates in 1 hour, but the terrorist refuses to answer questions and knows that u cant torture him and that Americans are too soft because he is in American mainland and is asking for a lawyer and the ACLU would protect his rights and knows it takes time and by that time he waits until it blows. what do u do?

EDIT: NM

Worst case scenarios are uesless because in those cases in wont matter what the rules are.

In normal circumstances though, like in the prisons in Cuba and Iraq, toture should not be used.

[edit on 26-5-2005 by AceOfBase]

arrest the interrogators and move on to the next prisoner. u can answer my question as well.

Originally posted by deltaboy
if the terrorist has information about the location of one nuclear bomb, and it detonates in 1 hour, but the terrorist refuses to answer questions and knows that u cant torture him and that Americans are too soft because he is in American mainland and is asking for a lawyer and the ACLU would protect his rights and knows it takes time and by that time he waits until it blows. what do u do?

Do we betray what those people in the city stands for by tortureing someone?
Or do we betray who we are to possibly save lives?

Originally posted by devilwasp

Originally posted by deltaboy
if the terrorist has information about the location of one nuclear bomb, and it detonates in 1 hour, but the terrorist refuses to answer questions and knows that u cant torture him and that Americans are too soft because he is in American mainland and is asking for a lawyer and the ACLU would protect his rights and knows it takes time and by that time he waits until it blows. what do u do?

Do we betray what those people in the city stands for by tortureing someone?
Or do we betray who we are to possibly save lives?

im sure the people of the city that would have been blown up and in atoms be congratulating u for saving their lives.

Wanna know what TORTURE is?


Make the Islamic terrorists watch 12 hours of Barney and Friends....I promise you they will spill the beans and scream for Allah to kill them and end the misery.

Seriously, if a WMD is involved and millions of lives are at stake.....torture the MFer. Bring in the Vietnamese guys with their bamboo strips under the fingernails and torture them until they talk or die.

Maximu§

Cruel and unusual punishment is unconstitutional, and torture falls under that category. And before anyone goes off about the death penalty, at least prisoners here are not tortured to death--it's relatively quick. And it doesn't matter what country you're in...what kind of example are we Americans setting for other nations if we torture people?

While I believe that prisoners shouldn't have privileges like cable TV and weight-lifting programs, I also believe that they should not be tortured.

I'd like to observe that the torture cases running in the media are just the tip of the iceberg, reports by the few eyewitnesses that survived the CIA's special treatment and still can talk. It is evident that the worst exactions (ex: human boiling by the CIA in Uzbekistan) will never be completely unearthed. In my opinion, torture, and especially the systematic torture of innocents by US officials, should be systematically sentenced with lifetime in prison, for any soldier/agent involved or any administration official remotely connected to the issue. Community Work for regime apologists.



[edit on 26-5-2005 by Moretti]

Originally posted by deltaboy
if the terrorist has information about the location of one nuclear bomb, and it detonates in 1 hour, but the terrorist refuses to answer questions and knows that u cant torture him and that Americans are too soft because he is in American mainland and is asking for a lawyer and the ACLU would protect his rights and knows it takes time and by that time he waits until it blows. what do u do?

1/ Your presupposing that the person in custody is a terrorist.

2/ Your presupposing there's a nuke.

3/ Your presupposing that you have one hour.

Putting aside the ridiculous "24" plotline.

Are you suggesting that every muslim held in custody should be treated as a terrorist with information concerning the existence of a nuke about to go off ?

This is how torture becomes endemic within a system.

Cultivate a climate of fear so that you should torture all captive muslims just to be on the safe side.

You see the imminent destruction of a major U.S city scenario which is something out of the gospel of St Tom of Clancy is fiction!

There does appear to a reasonable amount of support for the view that torture is unreliable because under extreme pressure/pain people will say what they think you want to hear.

I wonder how many times however, that under some form of torture people have actually surrendered the information that was required to avert disaster or in the case of war change the direction?

LA_Maximus. I have a family member who would agree with your statement with respect Barney and friends after a 3-day weekend on a houseboat and 6 hours per day of Barney from his 3-year old.



Also, perhaps in supporting the view that torture is a legitimate tool (please do not read this as I do), we really betray ourselves as individuals.

Interesting discussion nevertheless thank you.

Originally posted by John bull 1
[You see the imminent destruction of a major U.S city scenario which is something out of the gospel of St Tom of Clancy is fiction!

tell those who got killed by 9/11 attacks if i remember correctly, in one of Tom Clancy's book the Debt of Honor a plane piloted by a suicider crashes into the Capitol building killing almost everyone who were present there. fiction it may be, but then some can be humanely possible.

Originally posted by deltaboy
tell those who got killed by 9/11 attacks if i remember correctly, in one of Tom Clancy's book the Debt of Honor a plane piloted by a suicider crashes into the Capitol building killing almost everyone who were present there. fiction it may be, but then some can be humanely possible.

So one event in the entire human history WILL repeat itself and we must believe tom clancy?

Originally posted by devilwasp
So one event in the entire human history WILL repeat itself and we must believe tom clancy?

u dont have to believe in Tom Clancy, he has an imagination on how the political and military world works. the terrorists who have imaginations on how to kill infidels. people have imaginations and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesnt. and Tom Clancy seems to understand how terrorists thinks and he thought of the hijacking and crashing into a building and years later it actually happened because it was thought it be a hostage situation, but instead the terrorists changed it because they have an ideal how their new operation works and wat effect it would do to the world. who knows the novel Sum of All Fears may come to reality if the terrorists in the future hopes to start a war between China and America that will totally annihalate the two superpowers and Islamic Empire takes over. that could be a terrorists' dream.

it is kind of like a "what if" story.

[edit on 27-5-2005 by deltaboy]