Holes In Thoughts: Torture, Cont.

Friday, December 07, 2007

Torture, Cont.

"There are been several Gitmo detainees who've confessed under those circumstances. The issue is morality, though, and is water boarding unethical." - Ms. Proctor

Confessions under torture - and waterboarding has been recognized as torture since the Inquisition - aren't reliable, since people in that situation will say anything to appease the interrogator. That's why the Inquisition liked it so much: get the confession and execute.

Confessions under torture are the source for so much wasted paranoia and, I would think, wasted work for our Intelligence workers about plans that never existed. Some of that has leaked to the public, and so it is also the source of a great deal of, well, terror.

So by dropping all of its previously-untouchable moral standards about torture, the U.S. has helped terrorists succeed in their main goal: terror.

This exact issue about whether nor not the only problem with torture/waterboarding is the morality or legality has been addressed already by professional interrogators before the Senate:

"I find it curious that in the debate involving the so-called “ticking bomb” scenario, there has been a pre-supposition that physical, psychological, and/or emotional coercion will compel a source to provide actionable intelligence, the only issues in contention being those legal and moral arguments in favor or in opposition. To the best of my knowledge, there is no definitive data to support that supposition and considerable historical evidence to suggest the contrary."

- Former USAF interrogator Steven M. Kleinman's Statement before the Senate 9/25/07

So, despite from the fact that up until now, the U.S. was a bulwark against torture (Reagan, Eisenhower, Washington) and causeless imprisonment and nobody would've even thought that in America we would even have to debate it, torture doesn't work anyway.

So despite some people's problems with finding moral problem with causing excruciating mental and physical pain, hopefully I've at least appealed to their sense of practicality. Lord knows that's the only way to get any corporation to stop amoral behavior.

Labels: conspiracy, idiots, politics, torture

posted by Steve @ 11:15 AM

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