Moral Question: Is TORTURE ever justified?

I am a Vietnam veteran. Most of the time I was a REMF, but because I worked in intel, and dealt a lot with field troops, I learned that troops in the field, who mostly want to be alive tomorrow, will take many matters into their own hands, and the field commanders will look the other way. Prisioners will often be badly hurt, or killed in front of other prisioners to get them to talk. Since I never stood in their boots, I won't judge them, although I must hold against torture.

Recently I read, but don't remember where, about some guy that was suggesting that governments should have the authority to torture, and that it should be handled the same way wiretaps and searches are handled - with warrants, and for extreme situations only. Obviously I completely disagree with that guy. No way do I want any gov't to have that power. But it started be thinking about it again. So I want to set this scenario before DUers and see what you say. Please don't knee jerk. Give a reasoned and thoughtful response. Since I want the emphasis to be on the scenario, and not on my own answer, I shall withhold my comments until later. OK, here is the scenario.

For the sake of the discussion, these are the facts.

A terrorist organization has hidden a nuclear bomb in Chicago. It is due to go off in 2 hours. You have just made the discover of the plot, and you and the other police/operatives have captured, unhurt and alert, a member of the group. You know, (Please, never mind how you know. You know, OK?)that this individual knows exactly where the bomb is. A member of your team is able to quickly disarm the bomb. (Real world, that is easy to do. Just spray it with gunfire. The bullets hit the high explosive part causing a single point detonation, but it doesn't go nuclear. It is just a highly radioactive ordinary explosion. Yeah, that's bad, but better than an atomic fireball.)

Anyway, you got the guy and you want to know where the bomb is. You got two hours. What do you do? This is supposed to be a forced choice of two alternate paths. Sometimes life doesn't give us good choices, only least bad ones.

NO ..TORTURE is not justified.

I didn't vote in the poll...it was too much like a push poll designed to offer me NO OPTIONS.

The purpose of the exercise is to ask fundamental questions that define us. I have come to suspect that many DUers have never deeply thought about their stances. So from time to time I ask questions like this. I also once posted if we should GM engineer our children?

I think it does good to step back and think about things sometimes. "Normally" (you proved that doesn't really mean anything) I would say NO WAY! But, and it's a big but...in the real world....in the scenario you gave, it would be irresponsible to NOT do whatever is necessary to get the information from the person. Not doing that is taking the whole "protect the criminal" to an entirely different level. You're right....it made me think.

so sayeth Spoke. it's a slippery dlope but in the scenerio given, heaven help anyone who didn't do whatever possible to save the lives of millions.

it is us that can only hold two....if the question was the high rise you are in is on fire...do you jump or burn? I might buy it. What I see more often than not are people who will cling to the notion that they only have two options because they are forced into binary thought.

I still disagree that torture is justified nor necessary in order to accomplish the same end. In fact, you forgot, TORTURE THE GUY AND STILL RUN THE RISK THAT CHICAGO BLOWS UP.

If the moral dilemma is shoot or be shot, then fine...does one sacrifice many for the sake of one? Of course not...I still reject the exercizes anyone has to offer me that would force me to not consider beyond two narrow options.

and it's a favorite of those who see the world in black and white, and will do anything to avoid the reality of multiple choices. That's why silverhair says "You know, (Please, never mind how you know. You know, OK?)that this individual knows exactly where the bomb is."

The fact that s/he's asserting knowledge that can't possible by known for certain demonstrate the unrealistic nature of the question. So does his/her failure to contemplate the possibility that torture won't produce the result's s/he desires.

The False Dichotomy requires "one choice - good" vs "other choice bad". The possibility that neither (or both) "choice" offers the desired outcome is too much for the black and white thinker.

sometimes life does give us only two choices. There are many examples of such up/down type choices that life may force on us. To deny their existance, albiet on a lesser scale than my question, is to deny part of the reality of life. Life is real tough sometimes.

The only thing that limits the choices is your own imagination. Furthermore, even if I'm wrong, the scenario you present provides more than two choices, as we have made clear, even to you.

Do you make a habit of determining morality by disregarding the facts that show the situation is more complicated than "up or down"?

I ask because in an earlier post you said "The purpose of the exercise is to ask fundamental questions that define us. ...So from time to time I ask questions like this...". Since you make a habit of asking these sorts of fundamental question, I wondered if you also made a habit of ignoring the facts when asking these questions.

Patient has diabetes, blood circulation to leg is insufficient. At the present state of medical science there is no cure. Soon the flesh will start to die and kill the patient unless the leg is amputated. Lose leg or lose life? That one is a binary problem. Please show a third way. There are thousand of diabetics in the U.S. that would love to have that third way.

Sometimes, life is indeed binary.

Both of those two choices (ie lose leg/lose life) are far more complicated than you portray. "Losing leg" offers choices like type of prosthesis, course of therapy, etc. Losing one's life simplifies in a way that completely ignore quality of life issues.

I am about to have surgery in the near future. I recognize that the only way this decision can be portrayed as "get operation or don't get operation" is if I completely ignore the various other related decisions I've had to make regarding my treatment, my career, and my personal life.

I would also point out that your assertion "At the present state of medical science there is no cure" falsely implies that the absence of a cure means that there is only one treatment option available. I'm not saying there is more, but there might be, and even if there is only one, there are still more decisions to make.

on edit: I'd like to add that even if this scenario does indeed present an either/or choice, the situation that you describe in your initial post does not.

They are not part of the primary binary choice. First you chose lose-leg/die, then everything else. My point still stands. Often life gives us binary choices.

My surgery isn't for two more weeks, and I've made a number of related decisions. But even if you are correct, you've only refuted a corollary issue, and not my main point which is that the scenario you ask about in your initial post is not an either/or situation.

And identifying one either/or situation (or more) does not lead to your conclusions that "Often life gives us binary choices."

"Sometimes" maybe. "Often" is a relative term.

Also, you never answered my question about whether this was the only time you ignored some facts in order to make it fit the either/or model, or if it was a habit of yours

"often". As to whether or not I take all factors into consideration, I honestly can't say. That is one of those parts of personality that others can see, but that we can't really see in ourselves. I like to think that I do, to a reasonable extent. However, it is also possible to let the search for more info lead one into endless indecision. And often, (And yes I mean often here.)you don't have the luxury of extended contemplation. All the professions that I have held in my life, have been those that prize fast accurate decision making, and usually with only partial information. So I am attuned to seeing when I have enough information vs waiting for the last scrap to come in.

I didn't ask if you take all the factors into consideration. I asked if you deliberately eliminate some of the factors. I apologize for not making that clear.

Now due to the vast interconnectedness of life itself, one can get into a debate on what may or may not be relevent. However, in a scenario, to focus on one question only, other things may indeed be left out, as not being part of the exercise.

Reread my original post, first paragraph. It will give you the mindset that I am asking this from.

Though it may not be intentional, I perceive a distinct effort on your part to dismiss relevant facts in order to maintain the appearance that this is an either/or scenario. Since you are interested in ethical questions, you might want to consider the significance of your efforts (conscious or not) to avoid disturbing your dichotomy. You might ask yourself "What good is an ethic that can't survive the real world?"

all other ethics, and sometimes they can conflict each other. Part of the human situation is to find a parth in such a time when good ethics cross. One has to assign priorities depending on the situation.

nor widely used in the US to treat it. WE got it for my father when it happened...no amputation and he died with his last leg in tact (he had previously been an amputee) See...thrid ways do exist...btw can't remember the exact anme of the drug but it starts with an A. It all became possible when his doctor gave us TWO options.

on the shores of reality

we are GEARED to an either/or paradigm in our thinking. It is drilled into us. The cost of the thinking, however, is underscored in this thread. Either you save the city or you compromise your own ethics in the matter.

The threadstarter is asking us to choose but even the notion that there IS a choice is a matter of conjecture since any FORCED choice is no choice at all and actually KILLS off any possibility of choice.

Again go back to my first response..certainly if I have methods of torture available, I have methods of truth extraction such as sodium pentathol.

How can I be certain that torture will work on time?
Did I even ASK myself what will work before undertaking any actions?

I think working on one's thinking skills when NO emergency is present is the key to being effective once an emergency IS present.

Most martial arts instructors would agree with me.

I'm critical of false dichotomy precisely because we ARE geared (I prefer the term "predisposed") to use them. IMO, one of the strengths of propoganda is that it exploits out human nature and it's predispositions.

:(

Violence is the last resort of the incompetent.

Torture is never justified. The hypothetical has been set up to force a false dichotomy, torture the guy or Chicago dies. There is always another way.

Another story comes to mind, Those Who Walk Away From Omalas - is it okay to accept a Utopian society if it meant only one person suffered horribly?

should be well taken....Life sometimes DOES demand simple yes/no....up/down thinking. Example: 9-11. The planes are in the air....you find out where they're heading....you must make a decision: shoot them down ---- or not? Yea/Nay. There is no time to convene a sensitivity conference. Is shooting down the plane and killing the people onboard (to save thousands) the right thing to do? Is killing worse than torturing? Can we say "yes" on one and not the other? Why? Questions.....but all sometimes require up or down answers. Yes or no. Moral or immoral. Death for one or two hundred VS death for thousands...possibly more? No easy answers, but the decision is up or down.

Torture suspends the victim in a state where he or she would prefer to be murdered. It is therefore more evil than murder.

ties his robot works and his foundation works together. Your last question, about the Utopian society, (Have you ever read Utopia? I would rebel against that society.)at the price of one person suffering horribly is exactly what the Christian faith, (Yes, I am a born-again Christian.) believes has happened.

The dichotomy is not false. Often life doesn't give us the options that we want. Often it is either/or.

Thanks for a reasoned response.

First and foremost, it simply doesn't work. People will balbble whatever they think the torturer wants to hear, especially if they have no pertinent information. A recent quiz show (on Faux, of course) demonstrated that people under even mild physical stress can't remember the answers to simple, general knowledge type questions. Expecting people undergoing torture to remember anything in detail is just plain nuts.

The second reason is that it debases the society which engages in it. People realize that everybody is at risk for suffering it at the whim of whoever happens to be in power. A climate of fear and mistrust of the government ensues, and that is not good for any society, although it may enable a government to achieve a sort of macho frenzy in the short terrm.

The best way to avoid scenarios like the one above is to avoid invading other peoples' countries to make them save for multinational corporations.

it's easy enough to make the statement but i'd like to hear your other way?

I'm Quaker, and we hold that evil means never justify the end, no matter how good the end. This forces people to look at more options, among other things. We hold, as part of how we live, that how you get there, the seeking, is what the faith should (and does, for us) address. Once you have that in mind, it's amazing (no sarcasm here) how other roads will open up - not always easily, but there they are.

Alan Dershowitz is the one who recently came up with the idea of "torture warrants". A recent Atlantic Monthly had an in-depth story about interrogation and torture.

NSMA: Sodium Pentathol doesn't work with any degree of reliability. Of course, spy agencies have tried for decades to find a drug combination that guarantees truthful confessions, to no avail.

But that being said, neither does torture work very well. It tends to bring about a lot of false confessions.

As to psychological pressure, it DOES work, pretty well, given enough time. You must keep the person disoriented, uncomfortable, unaware, exhausted, cold, etc. and give him/her reason to believe that the information s/he has is no longer secure.

However, in the case described above, it might work (we're told to presume the detainee KNOWS for sure where the bomb is, and we KNOW s/he knows). In that case, the THREAT of torture is often as effective as torture itself.

As difficult as it is, I voted for torture in THIS case (given all the facts we have). A chance to save millions of lives is worth the pain of one person.

Shoot the bunny or the puppy gets it.

Mr. Winkle gets it between the eyes. That dog creeps me out.

nuff said.

torture is used to impose the wanted answers on any victim, and then to force the confession of these imposed answers from the victim.

It is very effective for this, and this alone...if this is the system we want.

Good for you.

and everyday living in this world of war is torture.

War is torture, upon those we wage war with, and by anyone with enough consciousness to question why it is waged.

why not Peace?

dp

then both will have war. The lamb wants peace, the lion wants a meal, the lamb gets war - that is the way of life. To try to deny that is to try to hide from reality.

and that takes at least one.

i have been given this 'that's the way it is' argument before, and lambs/wolves/lions whatever only implies and imposes human attributes upon animals and sadly not the other way around. It doesn't work that way.

As you propose it, the whole natural world is at war, for as birds eat insects, or a cat eats a mouse, or whenever destruction of one species of another takes place, it justifies (in some strange way) a warring mind.

i differ. That is nature, and it is held in check by natural selection, natural give and take, natural population control of the species. When over-breeding takes place without predatory control, the over populated species suffers. If over-kill takes place, the predatory species suffers. When all is in balance, that is Nature's way.

The sad case that you don't want to acknowledge is what caused the 'terrorist threat organization' to exist to begin with, for then you would have to look inside yourself and consiousness and face your own reality.

Peace, one mind at a time.
dp

This question reminds me of that movie.

While she was boarding the train for the concentration camp, one of the guards came to her in line and made her choose which of her children she could keep. (assuming the other would be killed)

Was absolutely the most depressing movie I've ever seen. (But then - all holocaust movies are depressing.)

Thanks - I don't think I'll revisit this thread.

If the pain of one person means the lives of(pick a number, say 40 million? 300 million? 2 billion?? so be it.

If we have to torture that one person to save those 400 million lives.... you betcha.

Tough choice but who said life is fair? Its rough out there man, rough.

Because I dislike this kind of question in these times.

I was pretty horrified at the calm, reasoned discussions that were going on right on my TV in my livingroom after 9/11 debating whether we should torture our "enemies". I was even more horrifed at the open response to such an idea. And this was without "do or die" scenarios.

Fortunately, unless in the midst of a war, this type of choice isn't something that needs to be thought about, let alone legislated. If it came to life or death in the field, I think we all know the answer. I doubt your scenerio would ever happen except in the movies, thankfully.

one for its extremely high contrast. Of course, as another responder pointed out, that same choice was put to our leadership about that one flight that was still in the air and heading for DC. Not at the same scale, not the same precise topic, but still a decision now, do or die, situation.

But, yes, I'm shooting those poor fuckers down, ok?

is (hopefully) only movie-fodder.

But it DOES raise the bigger question that many of us don't consider - how absolute are morals?

Most of us agree stealing is wrong. But what about the classic case of a man stealing to feed his family, or to get medication for a sick child? We make allowances (or at least I hope we do) for those situations.

This is similar - all people of good spirit can agree that torture is a bad thing. But is it ABSOLUTE? Is the immorality of torture worse than the immorality of annhilating millions of people? Probably not.

All of this is at the heart of ethics. We need to realize that trying to live by an absolute set of ethics can lead to some very illogical outcomes. In this case, our reluctance to hurt one individual leads to the deaths of millions. Not to sound too Spock-like, but that's illogical.

way not many people would have looked at the thread. Using the title & scenario that I did got more people to look and comment, and I hope - for some to look at how absolute morals may or may not be. The unexamined life, (for me anyway) is not worth living.

if the person is willing to DIE for "the cause", why would they care about some pain for a few hours/days. They may even be able to will themselves to DIE while under duress, knowing that "the afterlife" is waiting for them.

It's NEVER justified!

are two different things. However, there are often people who will suffer horribly for their religion. One needs only look at the early Christians in Rome for an example.

1) As far as I know, no government has *ever* been in a position like the one you describe, where torturing a single person would save millions (or even hundreds) of lives. But governments which felt they could get away with it have tortured thousands of people who were entirely innocent, and thousands more who might have been guilty of something but nothing that justified torture.

2) Torture isn't reliable. Suppose your hypothetical terrorist holds out for an hour, then spends a half hour giving a vague yet elaborate description of where the bomb is located. Your team spends another half an hour pinpointing the precise building and apartment, then just as they get there -- bam! at the other end of Chicago.

3) Speaking purely for myself, I think the chances of me or someone I care about being blown up by terrorists are considerably less than the chances of me or someone I care about being tortured by a government which has been given the right to do so. And frankly, those are the only odds I care about. Your scenario where torturing one person saves millions of lives might look good in a movie, but it is completely irrelevant to the daily reality of being a citizen of a country which allows torture.

That said, I think I can accept that there might be situations where it is appropriate for a soldier or policeman to do a little arm-twisting while their higher-ups look the other way. The fact that torture is both illegal and immortal is a pretty fair guarantee that it will be used only in the most extreme circumstances. But the moment you make it legal, any such guarantee evaporates, no matter what the law may promise.

The bottom line is that I trust people (by and large) to do the right thing, but I don't trust governments. Governments are soulless machines that will screw us all if we don't keep a tight control on their actions, and the less power they have to do us harm the better.

have that power. I was asking a moral question, not a question of legal rights.

far-fetched hypothetical scenario designed for an ethics class than like anything that would actually happen.

Back in the 1970s, when Italian prime minister Aldo Moro was kidnapped by the Red Brigades, the authoriities were already holding other members of the Red Brigades. Some commentators suggested torturing the people who were being held in order to make them reveal where Moro was being held.

Whoever was in charge at the time (I forget his name), said something very wise: "Italy can survive the loss of Aldo Moro. It cannot survive the introduction of torture."

The question is, when do you stop? If you can torture people to reveal information about a bomb, why not torture them to reveal info about an assassination? Why not do it to prevent a bank robbery? Why not do it to prevent them from campaigning for an anti-government political candidate?

In every country I know of where torture has been introduced, it has quickly become a habitual tool of the authorities, used to suppress the people. The Argentine government abducted and tortured and killed people in order to stamp out a small group that had carried out perhaps 20 bombings and assassinations. In doing so, they had the support of the public. But the government didn't stop there. Before they were deposed, they had killed 30,000 Argentines, the vast majority of whom were NOT terrorists.

not the introduction of torture? Yes, my question was an ethics-class style question, designed to focus on one narrow aspect of a problem.

One year when I was in college, I had a free hour in my schedule and thought I'd try sitting in on an ethics class. After a couple of weeks, I gave it up, because it was just one of those damned hypothetical scenarios after another. It seemed like nothing but mental game-playing that didn't engage any actual philosophical issues at all.

The only kind of ethics questions that I think are valid are those which ask a person what they personally would do in a situation that might actually occur. Would you lie if your boss ordered you to? Would you tell your friend that her husband was cheating on her? Questions like those force people to look deep inside themselves and figure out what really matters to them.

But the moment you get into the realm of the purely hypothetical, you are on very dangerous ground -- because there are no personal consequences.

In the examples I gave above, there are very obvious personal consequences. Will I be fired if I refuse to lie? Will I risk being arrested if I do lie? If I lie once, will I compromise my moral ability to be truthful in the future?

But in the torture-the-terrorist scenario, there are no personal consequences. There's no "I" anywhere in the story. You're not being asked to identify with any of the purely hypothetical individuals involved -- not with the congresspeople who approve the legalization of torture, the officials who decide to apply it, the judge who signs off on it, or the functionaries who actually do the dirty work. You don't have to think about what happens to them afterwards or how they sleep at night.

What's more, the whole setup carefully shields all these individuals from any sort of moral responsibility. The elected representatives aren't torturing anybody -- they're merely setting up a legal framework and trusting that it will only be used in extreme cases. If things get out of hand, it isn't their fault. And the government people aren't making moral decisions either -- they're just following the law.

That is perhaps the most dangerous thing about governments -- that they remove both those who run them and those who serve them from the moral sphere. Everybody works for the system and, at the end of the day, nobody is responsible for the results. (Corporations are an even more acute example of the same problem.)

So your scenario isn't really posing the question, "Is torture ever morally justified?" If that was what you were interested in, you would have stuck with the Vietnam soldiers and the captured enemy. Instead, it's a setup, designed to make people think torture might be morally acceptable. And as such, it's foully pernicious.

But there's that part of me that says "what if your daughter was missing, and the puke you had tied up knew where she was?"

He'd still be begging to die a week after he assumed room temperature.

in the debate he was asked whether or not he would want the death penalty if his wife, Kitty, were raped? He gave a dry policy wonk answer, and lost the election.

what good has been accomplished?

what if you torture him and he DOES talk and you spare the city? Then you're a hero.

The possible outcome (saving millions of lives) is the payoff. The bet is torturing someone.

And he could lie. How successful is torture anyway? Maybe the threat of torture is more successful.

How long do you bluff?

I'm suggesting you bring in a big burly guy and a tray of scary looking equipment without saying what it is or what he's doing there. Every few minutes there's a sound of screaming from somewhere distant. You torture the guy's mind, but don't get your hands dirty smacking him around. Not if you're an official of the state in an official capacity. Some might say mental torture is worse than physical torture. I don't agree. With mental torture, you let him do all your work for you.

aty least according to the article I just read in the Atlantic Monthly about interrogation techniques.

However, those mindgames tend to work over time, and when the detainee is disoriented, fatigued, isolated and feels like his cause is lost. We DO use exactly the techniques you proposed. They work pretty well, too, given enough time. I would hate to be a high-ranking Al Quaeda in captivity these last few months.

But the techniques probably wouldn't work within a few hours. Again, it is also known that torture doesn't work very well either. But it works often enough that it's something to consider in this situation.

armed store detective to catch shoplifters. When we caught one we would take him/her to an office, read him his rights, and wait for the cops. Often the teenage boys would try to give us an attitude. Since we had the video tape of the shoplifting, we only wanted the perp to sit quietly. But teenage boys often don't do that. Now the New Orleans yellow pages was pretty thick and we kept a lot of last years YP on hand. So we would say, "Kid, you are getting on my nerves. Why don't you shut up?", and then tear the phone book in half. Worked every time.

BTW - I wasn't that strong. There is a trick to it that the other guys taught me.

However, in the scenerio, you only have two hours to work with.

We torture and presumably get the truth, or not torture and everyone in Chicago dies? In Philosophy class that was called being on the horns of a false dilemma. There are other choices.

This is the same as painting those of us who opposed going to war in Iraq as favoring Saddam Hussein's brutal regime. Not!

us on the horns of a dilemma. My scenario is far out to put the question in high contrast.

for a willing mass murderer's. It would be moral to me to do whatever is necessary to save the lives of many innocent people. The world is not black and white. You have to use your brain and realize that. That being said, it would definitely have to be a last resort.

torture will save no person's life. It will not bring out the truth from the honest man or the lier.

It is used to impose vengence and anger on a prisoner. And it is used to ruthlessly beat confessions out of individuals who may or may not of committed the crime.

If they are liers they will confess to end the pain. If they are honest they will confess, because they know that to do otherwise would be hopeless. But excepting a confession induced by those willing to use torture, proves nothing other than fear and ignorance of justice is alive and well!

Evidence and independent testimony are the necessary tools for proving guilt, not torture or even testimony of the accused.

about - "Where is the bomb? Show us right now!" You have a controling element for lies. If he takes you to a spot where the bomb isn't, then you know he has lied because it isn't there.

We aren't concerned with a confession. We want information that we have the ability to verify. "We know you know, so where's the bomb?"

both are ineffective and wrong, but both will get you answers.

Which is the most likely to get you the answer that you desire most, $10 million or 10 million punches?

Either one sounds like a waste of tax money, when sharing intelligence and more money in legislation like Nunn-Lugar would of prevented this.

just addressing the situation of the need to save thousands of lives. First, I would try persuation with incentives such as being immune from prosecution of the death penalty or a deal of some sort. To just let them be silent while thousands die would never be justified if your duty was to protect lives. This reminds me of those twisted scenarios they give you at Sunday school where they try to give you scenarios to force you to say the moral thing to do is to save everyone, so do nothing. But the real world doesn't work that way.

I think you are lying. I believe if we gave you the basebase bat treatment you would admit your guilt, and finally explain why you really support using torture. then after cutting off your legs, your arms, and cutting out your eyes..then and only then would you see the real truth and give it ya creep!!!

a confession. We are talking about, "Where is the bomb?"

I suppose the difference in our discussion comes from the section of the world we have been in. You keep talking about confessions and courts and legal folderal.

I am talking about extraction of information in a hurry on the battlefield. Read my first paragraph about Vietnam. Soldiers in battle have always wanted information NOW and have always looked to freshly captured prisioners as a source of that info. If you have more than one prisioner lies can be checked by questioning them separately. In the real world, that kind of torture happens, and ALL armies do it because the soldiers want to be alive tomorrow.

My scenario was just the soldiers battlefield dilemma, with the scale turned up to heighten the problem.

Now could you address that type of situation, instead of babbling about confessions?

No justice, evidence, or rights to worry about. As Sherman stated War is Hell.

If you wish to make the War on Terrorism a nonstop affair, will you risk turning our nation into another hell?

My impression has been the purpose of fighting terrorism was to protect our laws, liberty, and freedom..not to destroy them.

"personal moral purity"?

to finance torture and wars in Iraq.

But I would rather die before I surrounder equality, justice, and liberity to any power, or allowing this power to rule over my children. GIVE ME LIBERITY OR GIVE ME DEATH!

to solve problems that they didn't create. So you would stand by in moral purity and watch it happen.

There is no moral or immoral answer to a question that is not based on morals or reality.

I am not allowing them to die, this is my point. And you asked me, would I allow them to die because of moral purity.

I simply answered your question, if I am guilty of allowing others to die...then torture and kill me as well!

Are we all interconnected? What responsibility would we have toward Chicago? If I am innocent of causing the problem, do I carry any responsibility for it's cure?

BTW, In the scenario there would be no need to do anything to you. You are inside the fireball radius.

and you are my keeper..of my liberity, life, and pursuit of happiness. Life is not worth a pitcher of blood without justice, liberity, and the pursuit of happiness.

I do not live merely to survive, only an animal would do this.

if you think I lie, torture me;-)

That is what your scenario amounts to: Dershowitz's "ticking bomb" scenario. And Amnesty International's answer:

http://www.amnestyusa.org/askamnesty/torture200112.html (kudos to ajk at U75):

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The ticking bomb scenario falls apart upon careful scrutiny. It assumes that law enforcement has the right person in custody. That is, the suspect knows where the bomb is and when it is scheduled to detonate. What if there is only a 50 percent chance that the suspect knows the information? What if this number is only 10 percent? Second, it assumes that torture will be effective in gaining access to the critical information. In fact, however, torture is notoriously unreliable. What if there is only a 60 percent chance that the suspect will reveal accurate information? How about 20 percent? How low are we willing to go? How should we make the decision whether to torture? How many people must be endangered before the torture option can be considered?
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Further, silverhair, I think your scenario is a red herring because almost universally societies that torture use torture not to gain information but to terrorize insurgent populations. We don't need to be debating whether or not our soeciety should condone torture -- it shouldn't -- and we should actively pursue and bring to the light of day if some of the stories coming out of Gitmo are true (torture there and torture by proxy when we ship high-level suspects off to countries willing to torture for us).

Post 9-11 one of the most chilling things I witnessed in the U.S. media were the shallow arguments made for use of torture.

Back in the late seventies and early eighties a heroic woman was writing a "poetry of witness", Carolyn Forche. She witnessed (on Amnesty International assignments) the horrors aided and abetted by the USG in Central America (think "School of the Americas"). Again, torture is not used so much to obtain information, but as an instrument of terror to control an insurgent population. Such was/is the case in Central America.

I offer a snippet of Carolyn's poetry here as an appeal to the heart:

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Return
(for Josephine Crum)

Upon my return to America, Josephine...

<snip>

...Lil Milagro Ramierez,
who after years of confinement did not
know what year it was, how she walked
with help and was forced to sh*t in public.
Tell them about the razor, the live wire,
dry ice and concrete, grey rats and above all
who f*cked her, how many times and when.
Tell them about the retaliation: Jose lying
on the flat bed truck, waving his stumps
in your face, his hands cut off by his
captors and thrown to the many acres
of cotton, lost, still, and holding
the last few lumps of leeched earth.
Tell them about Jose in his last few hours
and later how, many months later,
a labor leader was cut to pieces and buried.
Tell them how his friends found
the soldiers and made them dig him up
and ask forgiveness of the corpse, once
it was assembled again on the ground
like a man. As for the cars, of course
they watch you and for this don't flatter
yourself. We are all watched. We are
all assembled.

<snip>

And so, you say, you've learned a little
about starvation: a child like a supper scrap
filling with worms, many children strung
together, as if they were cut from paper
and all in a delicate chain. And that people
who rescue physicist, lawyers and poets
lie in their beds at night with reports
of mice introduced into women, of men
whose testicles are crushed like eggs.
That they cup their own parts
with their bedsheets and move themselves
slowly, imagining bracelets affixing
their wrists to a wall where the naked
are pinned, where the naked are tied open
and left to the hands of those who erase
what they touch. We are all erased
by them, and no longer resemble decent
men. We no longer have the hearts,
the strength, the lives of women.
Your problem is not your life as it is
in America, not that your hands, as you
tell me, are tied to do something. It is
that you were born to an island of greed
and grace where you have this sense
of yourself as apart from others. It is
not your right to feel powerless. Better
people than you were powerless.
You have not returned to your country,
but to a life you never left.

--- from The Country Between Us, 1981

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Aside: Most of the arguments for torture that I've seen in the major media are fear-based. Always it's "us" against some horrible, less than human "them". There is, for those that would torture, no middle ground, no alternate way, except to get "them" before they get "us". I admit that my mind does not work that way. I cannot accept my government torturing anyone for any purspose.

There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that use of torture as a means to an end is an evil act, regardless of ends achieved. I ascribe to the notion, "cease to do evil; try to do good". We would not need to debate these points if everyone ascribed to the first term. And as my avatar says (to the left of my post), "You must be the change you want to see in the world."

and an excellant post davekriss!
:thumbsup:

dp

What I meant to say, only much more eloquent.

But first let me say this. I greatly enjoy intellegent discussion of issues with those who may are may not share my view. I have especially enjoyed the fact that everyone seemed to take the question seriously, even if you disagreed with the scenario. You have given me food for thought.

I would never, ever, want a gov't to have the power to torture, even by warrants. I should have stated that the agent in my scenario would be acting on his own.

When I was young, I was an absolutist in morals. I was totally certain of my rightness, and held that I should be morally pure, whatever the cost. But life taught me that sometimes it isn't me that pays the price for my moral purity, but someone else may have to suffer. I finally understood that I have to consider the propable outcomes of my actions, the results, and chose the action that will most likely result in the best, or least worse outcome. Of course, there are no guarantees that my action will yield the expected result. I am not an island, but am connected with the world around me.

In this scenario, I would do whatever I could to obtain the information, and worry about the consequences later. If I saved the city I would be happy.

When I was young, I too considered myself a moral absolutist..a puritan of the mind and body. But my views were extremely different!

I felt that if someone steals from another, let them lose their hand. If someone rapes a women or a child, let them be castrated. If someone thows trash on the street, let them work on chain gangs to pick up the trash. If someone beats up another person, let them receive a public wipping in the town square. If someone kills another human being, let them be crucified in public for all to see.

But then something happened to me, I began to grow up. And with age came tolerance and guilt. I began to acknowledge my own imperfections, and at the same time began to question my right to judge others. I began to see like you did..the world is not black and white but merely a reflection of frequences absorbed by matter, but perceived as having many colors. I heard an innocent man in Texas whose entire family was killed, but who was nearly executed for the murder. He lived only because he was pardoned, and now he actively preaches against the death penalty. No innocent person should ever die to avenge another person's death. I began to realize how many times I had borrowed things that were not mine as a child, and asked myself..should I lose my hand because of my hypocracy? I thought of a fight I had in school with someone who is now a close friend, and ask myself should he of been wipped publically? Should someone who throws trash on the street be forced into a chain gang for just doing what I do to the inside of my car? I think of an elderly neighbor, who was related to ole Boss Crump in Memphis. He once committed rape, but now had children..a family that cared and he was just an old man doing no one no harm after years of prison. What would of happened to his happiness, his second chance, or his wonderful grandchildren had he been castrated?

Times have changed since 9/11...but this is no reason for us to lose our heads. Just the contrary, we need to keep our heads and must think clearly about the best actions needed for this situation. Vengence and torture are not solutions to terrorism, they are just other forms of it!

yes, but for other party affiliations no.

It is widely assumed that torture works because it is some human desire to 'avoid' pain, but if one notices, generally the rule in 'extracting' information in most western justices systems are 'incentives'. Either plea bargains, witness protection, money or simple 'freedom'.

Someone quite rightly alluded to the fiction of the ticking bomb scenario; this rarely happens in real life, but is a popular notion among legal scholars like Dershowitz and Hollywood producers.

In the Atlantic, Mark Bowden (Black Hawk Down author) did a essay on the </a>'The Dark Art of Interrogation' about torture around the world.

Not a great article, but interesting that in the entire length and breath of it, there was only one example of 'information' gained under a time constraints ('ticking clock') and that was a kidnap victim buried.

There were interviews with one of the Israel's head 'torturers', but although the slant was in favor of the necessity of torture, there were no 'life'/death examples. Most of the so-called torture consisted of good old fashioned manipulation and informants.

Torture is generally done to 'terrorize' people and set them up as an example to others.

No necessarily to coerce information out of someone, but were one of my loved ones to be murdered by someone, I dont think I would have any qualms about torturing them before I killed them.

I support cruel and unusual punishment for people who commit cruel and unusual crimes.

:shrug:

no.

"No necessarily to coerce information out of someone, but were one of my loved ones to be murdered by someone, I dont think I would have any qualms about torturing them before I killed them."

Now tell me, how a murder of a loved one would justify YOU torturing and killing any person?

but I would think that it would make me feel better.

So allowing you to break the law makes you feel better? Then it should make you feel better if we suspend the law, so that the criminal's family will then freely torture and murder you for your criminal act against their loved one.

never want any gov't to have that kind of authority.

This would be the ultimately rare type of scenario where ANYTHING would be justified.

when someone is being tortured, they tell you what they think you want to hear, not the truth.

Torture is wrong and not very effective.

Unless you like fiascos like the plastic wrap and duct tape scare, or the hightened alerts that the Golden Gate Bridge was going to be blown up.

truth, then lying does them no good. Remember, in the scenario you are after informantion that can be quickly verified.

You invent the "fact" that the info the prisoner provides can be quickly verified, even though you don't know what the info is until AFTER he's been tortured. How can you know the info can be quickly verified if you don't even know what the info is?

You dismiss the possibility that the info can't be verified. You also dismisss the possibility that in verifying the false info, the Feds tip-off the prisoners accomplices, who are monitoring the location they all agreed to "confess" to the Feds in case they were captured and tortured.

In your scenerio the pain of one would save the lives of millions. I don't know if I could ever make such a choice, much less cause the pain, but I wouldn't be able to look at thousands of children saved and say it was wrong.

would you give $10 million or 10 million punches to receive the answer you desire?

Why couldn't this effort and money of been used more effectively, rather than being wasted on the torture tactics we are using now?

If you use torture as a weapon, what makes you different from the terrorist?

He uses murder and vengence to fight for religious purity and his dying people. You justify murder and vengence to defend American lives and freedom.

in my home and I grab a gun a kill my attacker, who almost certainly would have killed me, someone may ask, "You used violence. How are you different from your attacker." My answer would be, "I am alive." It is moral to fight for survival, and in such a fight there are no rules except winning.

Was our invasion and occupation of Iraq just another means of survival?

To "bring the war to the terrorists". And to prevent the war with those WMD from being brought into America. It is done for "our security". This was the justification...

Sounds like your justification of "survival", for using torture and violence against others.

But what we just did in Iraq was not.

Say for example China got pissed off and decided to nuke us. Say we found out about it and confirmed the threat. A pre-emptive strike on their missle silos would be considered a defensive attack. You are attacking for the purpose of stopping a attack on yourself.

However, compare that to the Iraqi scenerio. China has nukes, China doesn't like us, so thus we must assume China will attack us. THAT is not the same thing, and completely offensive in nature.

that is a simultaneous strike.

A pre-emptive strike would be attacking China's missle silos just because they were there, and those missles happened to be pointed as us. Pearl Harbor was a Japanese pre-emptive strike against that "threatening" U.S. Pacific fleet.

But should China do the same to our missles pointed at their country?

but can be quickly retargeted. That is to prevent the start of a nuclear war in the event of an accident launch.

The pre-emptive defensive strike is always a problem, for it presupposed an accurate knowledge of the enemies capability and intentions.

he also advocates buying up nuclear and biological materials before they fall into the wrong hands.

But let me suggest a truce and give my reasoning behind this. Once the bomb is set, it is already to late. Just as it was to late when the planes took off on 9/11. Torturing a victim, no matter what scenerio you dream up..would never save an American city. However torture does undermine the search for the truth, basic justice, and everything which is necessary to maintain law and order over anarchy and terrorism. And to me, war is the state of anarchy and terrorism.

Bringing war to the world has always been easier than bringing peace.

1- In the above scenerio you have captured the bomber, he's not dumb enough to think you will give him money and let him leave. He won't believe the money trick

2- Do you really want to reward terrorists with money? That strikes me as the wrong road to take.

3- Defending life is a reason to kill. Always has been.

You are a government law enforcement agent, and you have in custody someone (A) who may know something about the whereabouts and/or activities of someone (B) that your government has designated as a terrorist or traitor.

Do you have the right to torture A to find out about B?

That's the real world of torture, not these "hidden ticking bomb" scenarios from bad action flicks.

When governments use torture, they almost never use it against ordinary criminals (robbers, murderers, rapists, swindlers). Rather, they use it against people who challenge the status quo. In Central America, torture was used against labor organizers, advocates of peasant land rights, and religious workers who questioned their government's treatment of the peasants. In Argentina, torture moved from being an intended means of fighting terrorism to a being a means of terrorising people who want rights and freedom.

if they fall, then no confession will be necessary. If they make it, let them say one thing, walk back across and tell their other lies.

Then we'll pay them off, just like shrub flew the bin ladens back to Saudi Arabia..before the FBI could question them.

described, I think it would be justified. The person(s) authorizing and performing the torture would have to be prepared to face criminal charges.

In the situation mentioned, no court in the United States would convict anyone.

While I believe torture to be utterly wrong in most cases, there are certain situations I could imagine where I would deem it acceptable. This is one of them.

Torture is not a method of collecting evidence. Torture is merely another form of imposing terrorism on innocent people. Why even believe a government's or individual's claims of another's guilt, when they would advocate using our tax dollars to torture those of us who they say are also GUILTY?

It reminds me of another case. If we advocate the torture and execution of any individual the government calls guilty, doesn't this give those wronged individuals of that prisoner's family the right to use torture and vengence on those who went after the prisoner? And then should we in turn, allow vengence and torture to be used by the family members of the government workers against the prisoner's families?

With such a system, law and order breaks down. Anarchy is allowed to dominate. When this happens..terrorism and crime has finally defeated freedom, law, and justice. An absolute victory for the worst possible enemy.

but that wasn't the question.

with torture and brutality, only the government asks the questions. And only they know the answer.

You keep talking about collecting evidence. But in the scenario that I gave, the investigator isn't concerned with evidence for a trial or such legal folderal, he wants to find the damn bomb and save the lives of millions of people.

That is the context in which I pose the question. You keep changing the context.

did the Nazi's have credibility when they imposed justice, or were they right to torture all who were guilty enemies of the state? Some were tortured to save German children from falling American bombs, others sent to concentration camps for providing aid and comfort to the enemy.

Some are guilty, but what about those who aren't? Torture distorts justice. It distorts facts, and it distorts the question of who are the terrorists and who is innocent.

Terrorism is a two-way street. But it is always used by the patriot seeking to liberate the oppressed, bring purity to the world, and to save endangered lives. Why then does it always have the opposite effect?

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzing!

I guess that I'd rather not see the windy city leveled. But this scenario seems to have some flaws.

Torture has never been proven to get usable information. Most people will say anything to stop pain, truthfully, or otherwise.

Coercion, on the other hand, generally works quite well.

O8)

If the bomb isn't there, then he lied.

your question isn't a moral one, but an ammoral one.

fair. And it is in those situations that we have to find the best solution that we can.

try treating everyone fairly. Making an already unfair world even more unfair is not the solution. It is division and basic unfairness under the law that feeds these terrorist organizations, otherwise they would have no means of recruiting members.

Islamic radicals are driven by religious extremism, which is not subject to any logic. They view the very existance of western culture as tempting their young away from the true path of their brand of Islam. Their solution is to destroy that temptation.

at least we didn't used to!

If this was the case, torture those who could care less about the IRA, torture the Joviah's Witness followers, torture the Southern Baptists, and torture every single cult in America.

A few terrorists with connections to the wealthy bin ladin family crash planes into the world trade center, and you feel that this makes millions of radical Islamic followers "nutcases?" And who produced bin laden to start with, in that nutty fight against Communism in Afganistan? We did!

Terrorists all use the same tactics. They find an oppressed people. Then they get someone to blame for their pain. In the 30's the Germans were hurting, they blamed the Jews. In Ireland many were hurting from unemployment, they blamed the protestants. In Bosnia the Serbs were hurting, they blamed the Muslims. In the middle-east Muslims are hurting from persecution and wars, they blame the west. And in America we hurt because of our economy and failure to prevent 9/11, and who do we blame? The Islamic Radicals.

(purely hypothetical mind you).

It is 0315 on a Tuesday, I take 5 men into your house and tie you up. I have reason to believe you might be a terrorist. After some hour and a half, I have received no information from you. I take your 13 year old daughter, bring her in front of you and threaten her with a bullet to the head. You know nothing of value, and you try to tell me that. I don't believe you. I shoot your daughter and toss her body into your lap.

I now decide you still won't talk(but you don't know anything, but how do I know that?)....12 year old son is next.

After I've wiped put your family, I rip out your tongue, gouge out you eyes, and emasuculate you. I do not kill you outright, I still want you to think of your family while you slowly die.

Can you still tell me torture is ever justified?

This happens every day, it has never been right, and it never will be.

You cannot justify torture.

First the suspect (just for fun, let's say it's a woman) has to withstand the torture for 2 hours. What are you prepared to do to her, to get the information that quick? Eventhough it's fully possible she will resist long enough to let the bomb go off.

You know, (Please, never mind how you know. You know, OK?)that this individual knows exactly where the bomb is.

The only way you can know this 100% is to have seen her plant it, which would solve the problem right there. Also I find it hard to believe this member of the terrorist group in the city would not have her activites monitered.

a few minutes to construct the scenario. If you want be to take enought time I could come up with a plausable scenario that would but you in the same moral spot. But I didn't want to write a book.

In setting up an ethics problem it is common to simply specify parts of the problem, instead of having to write a novel.

Read my first paragraph. It is the into, and the key to the quandry.

It's been kicking around for twenty years. I've heard it many times. And as I said in my post above, it's cleverly designed to make torture seem morally acceptable -- even morally imperative.

If you toss out a scenario that has been repeatedly used in the past to argue for making torture legal, it's disingenuous to claim that isn't really what you're after.

how does anyone know what information anyone has?

If you go by the logic that torture is sometimes okay to save people from a bomb...

then we can torture anyone and everyone for their protection.

This is the same argument that's made for the patriot act - it's okay to give up rights and freedoms to save people.


It's not okay in either case.


Whether you like it or not, the constitution is clear about what freedoms and rights people have. Those rights outweigh any danger whether you like it or not.


I'm sorry but the bomb has to go off.

question, it is standard to stipulate part of the problem. Otherwise you have to write a novel to arrive at the problem.

The rest of you post deals with the problem. You chose like the poster that referenced the Italian problem. You stance is that America can survive without Chicago better that it can with the indtroduction of torture. OK, I can respect that stance. I may not agree with it, but I can respect it.

Really? In making ethical choices, it's "standard" procedure to ignore some facts, and invent others?

And here I thought it involved considering all the possibilities that might reasonably occur.

stipulate certain parts that are perifial to the primary item being discussed. Stating that something is known, without having to specify how it is known would be one example.

Thanks, I now have a much better understanding of your mind-set.

Nobody is saying "America can survive without Chicago better that it can with the indtroduction {sic} of torture."

A number of people are saying it's a false dichotomy. And they're right.

It's like asking, "If you knew (for sure, but don't ask me how) that a one-year-old child was destined to be the anti-Christ and cause untold suffering, would it justify killing every one-year-old on Earth?"

Or, "If you know that one member of Congress (but you have no way of telling which) was actually an alien working to undermine the United States government in order to further an evil scheme for world domination, would it justify nuking the Capitol?"

Or, "If you knew for sure that the human race was cosmic scum that would pollute the entire Galaxy if it ever escaped from the confines of the Solar System, and you were handed a device that would send the Sun nova, would you do it?"

See, I can make up scenarios like that all day -- but they don't actually justify killing babies (or even Congresscritters.) So let's get real here, okay?

That's what happens when one relies on a False Dichotomy. Instead of acknowledging that the scenario is contrived and unrealistic, silverhair must insist on the impossible, such as how he knows that the info can be verified quickly without knowing what the info is.

There are some things more important than survival.

We will all die anyways,people.We can't control anything here,in any meaningful way,uncertainty rules here.So I would not resort to torture.Torture is wrong. I know this is true because I know
I'm better than this sick sad world it's crazy systems that make having ethical standards,empathy, compassion and character a handicap.With the way the world is ,life feeds off life to live and then you die anyway.Existance like this is a travesty.I don't care why i'ts this way,or if "the creator" did it or evolution..this world is horribly flawed.And abuse doesen't make the flaws any less painful to endure..


All I know is I have choice,a small one that might not save lives or get me rich,even in the face of death I can choose not be a bully,be greedy,be a liar,a manipulator,an abuser, a control freak and act like most forces are on this planet are.
IMHO torture is the root cause of war anyway.
Torture comes in many forms and it warps a person's integrity and sense of self.

When parents are allowed to bully thier kids to contort thier natural identies and make them grow up like thier parents or'normal society'wants them to,it hurts them. When kids are tortured emotionally by peers and pressures in school it hurts them.When a boss extorts thier employees or steals from them it's wrong it hurts them. Torture and the desire to dominate and manipulate to control someone's consent,or eliminate a person's ability to choose what they choose is very,very wrong it destroys what scraps of decency and love in a human heart that can be found here.

Because I want to be different than this world is,better than this fucked up placeI say NO to torture.It's a choice I have in life because all others that matter like where I'm born,to whom,what sex I am born as, how rich my family is,and how ,when and where I die isn't in my hands and it never was.Death is in nobodies hands really.A life can be snuffed out by a sociopath or control freak who can't handle not having control over life and death.A human being's heartthrough torture can be warped into a sociopath control freak that thinks it's ok to kill,extort,dominate and abuse others.
Statistics show how shockingly common rape and child abuse is in this country.We are a tortured people whether a court of law says so or not does not matter.The proof is in our violent culture.

Even if the bomb planting guy in this scenario was tortured and confessed,you still might not arrive in time to stop the bomb or there might be others he didn't have the time to tell about .Life is uncontrollable,unpredictable and uncertain here,life feeds off death to live but that does not mean I have to sell my soul and my freedom to not be like this sick world because of having to cope with this sick sad world and all the cruel assholes it spawns by it's human made cruelties.I value my integrity over my own life and this entire screwed up planet. My own integrity is the only thing I can choose and control in this world..

Don't worry about Chicago either, the Bears just got done kicking the Donkey butts in Denver :kick:

http://810whb.com/scripts/archives/getStory.asp?article=6492

Bears beat Broncos in Denver
Denver Post

DENVER - Slash is back, at least for one game.

Kordell Stewart scored on a 1-yard run after replacing Chris Chandler, and Paul Edinger kicked four field goals, leading the Bears to a surprising 19-10 win over the Denver Broncos on Sunday.

Chicago (4-7) had 217 total yards coming off consecutive two-point losses, but benefited from good field position and two pass interference penalties against Denver's Lenny Walls. The Bears' average starting position was the 38-yard line, while the start of Denver's drives averaged the 19.
(snip)



http://www.raiders.com/

The moment rational discussion starts they feel pain, hee, hee. I likes torturing Repiggywiggys.

These kind of scenarios are incredibly cynical. But, they are useful to justify atrocities. Some examples:

"We had to burn the village in order to save it"

"The soldiers can't tell the difference between the enemy and civilians." Anybody remember My-Lai?

"The Hutu's killed 800,000 Tutsi's to protect themselves."

"We invaded Iraq in response to 9/11"

"We are bombing civilian targets to break the peoples will to fight." Tokyo, Hamburg, London, Rotterdam, Madrid, Hanoi, Dresden, Coventry, and many more.

"We have an embargo against Cuba to protect us."

"We supported Pinochet to protect us from the communists."

"We supported the Contras to protect us from the communists"

"We supported apartheid in South Africa to protect us from the communists."

I imagine you can come up with a "scenario" to justify murdering your wife and kids...but it remains immoral.

is if it was someone who really messed with one of my kids.

And I get to do the torturing.

Other than that I don't know how certain I'd be.

Julie

I assume the parents of the individual you torture should be allowed to then torture you.

Law and order isn't about vengence, it is about keeping us safe from the criminal. The same laws which apply to one person, must also apply to you in a truly just society. And ignorance of the law, nor personal circumstances allow any person to be above the law.

And this is why the accused nor the accuser can be judge, jury, or executioner.