Effectiveness of torture in gaining information.

[True_Moose]

Torture is effective in terms of getting information. Whether that information is any good at all is totally dependent on whether the person saying the information has any actual information - obviously torturing someone for information they don't have is useless.

The major problem I see with torture is that the people who have the most valuable information tend to be able to resist it. In many military special units, there is training to resist torture, and even in the case of fundamentalists, the rewards (eternal whatever) outweigh the temporary physical pain. I further think that most of the time, when a person with important information is captured, their organization would tend to change their methodologies, etc, so that anything the person says is worthless and obsolete.

So it gets information, but really, is overrated as a source of quality, reliable information that can be acted upon.

EDIT => If you really want to prove this guy wrong, Alan Dershowitz's book,Why Terrorism Works, has some concrete examples. Check chapter 3.

[ 02-26-2006, 08:55 PM: Message edited by: True_Moose ]

[Lucern]

Wanderon: I couldn't bare to get through those threads, but the entire premise of the original one is off base, and thus so was their insistence that you come up with an example that's saved lives (I agree on the absurdity of defending a 'never statement' covering 100,000 years on absolute terms).

First the obscure premise of the argument:
I feel obligated to point out that I've obtained and read extensive ethnographic data that indicate that the very question - outside of wording - is all but moot. Torture as it exists around the world is about power and domination. Torture as it exists in popular imagination, movies, recent training manuals, and US discourse is about information gathering. It's still important to discuss, of course, because powerful governments (ie, mine) are raising it as more and more possible as a (public) interrogation technique.

Chiapas, Mexico, Iraq, Cameroon, Angola, Zimbabwe, El Salvador, Argentina, Columbia, Guatemala, Iran, Syria, Egypt, Turkey, Cambodia are examples that come to mind that demonstrate common institutional repressive torture, sometimes for decades, without interrogation or any goal other than repression. The questions I've come across are either designed to humiliate or to make torture seem legitimate - or to find other people of a certain ideology to torture. Everyone I've known who has been tortured - dozens and dozens of people - were each seen as a threat by ruling members of a state.

And there's some evidence that torture 'works' in the torture-as-dominance paradigm. I've known people whose names were given -reliably- as a part of a political party under torture. No lives saved - but that's an expectation of the rare but so popular torture-as-interrogation paradigm, not of the prevalent torture practices.

And you can tell them we called them a bunch of excrement slinging chimpanzees if you report back

[ 02-26-2006, 07:57 PM: Message edited by: Lucern ]

[Aerich]

The fact that torture may work occasionally to elicit useful information is no reason to legitimize its use. It is more valuable to speak of the probability of eliciting useful information and the potential for misuse, two points already raised by True_Moose and Lucern. I find it ironic that the use of torture was once the basis for Western (especially American) distaste for certain regimes, and now it is being used by the West under the banner of security for the free.

Let's see: use of torture, check. Torture based on suspicion of having information, check. No independent controls on the system, check. Prisoners with no access to lawyers, no knowledge of what they have been charged with, and secret trials, check.

Conclusion: barbaric system just waiting to be misused, check. Hypocritical protection of "freedom" by removing every vestige of freedom's protections from people accused, check.

Stalin would be smiling.

[wanderon]

Well I didn't call any names when I gloated over the preliminary poll results but it does restore my faith in mankind to see that only a few oddballs did not figure out that claiming torture NEVER did something was ludicrous...

I also apologize for utilizing this forum and the good folks who come here to make a point (or at least gather some evidence)to someone on another forum.

Oddly enough I do happen to agree that torture may indeed be ineffective for information gathering and may only yeild reliable results in some situations.

I do think it should be avoided and only put on the table at all in extreme cases and that it should probably NEVER be "legal".

I also however think we may be widening the definition of torture way beyond what it should be and in general we should stop coddling prisoners of all types. Treat them humanely yes but interrogate them as needed and keep the amenities to a minimum don;t send them to Club Med and offer weekly facials and pedicures...

[Timber Loftis]

Torture is extremely effective in getting the victim to tell you what you want to hear.

The truth or falsity of what they tell you depends on how stupid your presumptions are, and how stupid what you want to hear is, because that's what they're going to tell you.

Torture can not be said to have NEVER gotten good information. Of course, that's the dumbass way to look at it. Flip the burden of proof. Has torture ALWAYS gotten good information? Can you even show it is LIKELY to get good information?

This is just so logically stupid it boggles me. It's parallel to so many ignorant thoughts. I mean, if we kill EVERYONE in a city, we will certainly kill all the criminals, won't we?

[wanderon]

Well also I think there is probably a lot of information that might be used to show some of the times when torture has proved useful and perhaps saved lives that is unavailable to the general public so to state that the lack of being able to show such information means it does not exist is also an unfair argument.

Torture results even when positive is not something likely to be bragged about or even documented simply as a matter of course.

[Timber Loftis]

Any argument based on assumptions about the substance/content of secret information are worth nothing. Any argument requiring me to trust my government and how it deals with secret security issues is f-tarded, because: (1) it is my duty as an American to mistrust my government, and (2) we know that in other instances they f'ed up all the time, so why are we to presume the secret security stuff is any different?

[ 02-27-2006, 06:03 PM: Message edited by: Timber Loftis ]

[Aerich]

Without documentation of "successful" cases, how can there be proof that it works? Without proof, how on earth can it be accepted as a legitimate method in light of its dubious effectiveness, unmistakable barbarity, and potential for misuse? While I do not doubt that torture has proved effective in the past, that contention/"benefit" does not nearly overcome the arguments against its use. In medieval times torture was used to secure confessions - no confession, no end to torture. What do you think was the percentage of torture cases that led to confession? Now what about the percentage of true confessions? Taking a more modern example, the show trials coming out of Stalin's purges of the 1930s saw dozens of high ranking officials, including founding members of the Communist Party with previously untouched reputations who were political rivals to Stalin, testify against each other and against themselves that they had conspired to overthrow Stalin and the Communist Party. Were those confessions true? Was that evidence reliable? Did the torture those people were subjected to save lives? Maybe in 1% of the cases.

Saying that torture is obviously effective but proof isn't necessary is like me saying that I can teleport across the room, without allowing anyone or any recording equipment in the room when I "prove" that I can do it. I open the door and say I was on this side of the room and now I'm on the other side, proof that I teleported.

In any event, proof of a few successes, even if released, is no reason to allow the torture of hundreds. At what point do the security forces rely on just capture and torture to "prevent" terrorist activity instead of on proper investigative techniques? How many innocent people will be tortured? How do you distinguish between breaking a terrorist into identifying his cell and breaking an innocent person into identifying plausible but innocent acquaintances just to make the torture stop?

Additionally, the potential of misuse for political purposes is utterly staggering. Just look at all the labels placed on accused opponents of regimes past and present, look at their actions, and determine if the torture they were subjected to was warranted. Then ask yourself if you can rightly trust any government not to misuse, or not to negligently use, an unlimited power of life, death, and pain. As it stands, the most vicious convicted serial killers in the country have protections far beyond those afforded to persons who are only accused. Realistically, is a person who might be involved in a plot to set off a bomb deserving of worse treatment than someone who has raped and killed dozens? Putting the offences on the level of future intentions/plans, should we allow the state to torture persons fitting the demographic or psychological profile of a killer to see if they had any intentions of killing anybody?

A guy was just released from prison in China, after nearly 20 years of imprisonment and torture. His crime? Throwing red paint on the portrait of a state official in Tiananmen Square in the famous rally/bloodbath. His family says he is insane and cannot speak, and other prisoners have confirmed that he was finally broken, after other torture techniques failed to do it, by 3 years of solitary imprisonment in the dark.

Any step taken along this path is a wrong one.

Btw, I voted "obviously false" in the poll. A few successes, proven or not, do not counteract considerations of proportionality and misuse.

[wanderon]

I am neither suggesting nor condoning the use of torture I am merely suggesting that to argue that its ineffective due to lack of proof to the contrary is a shallow argument considering the secret nature of many of its uses.

It can certainly be argued that its very nature may be ineffective but again broad generalizations are likely to be faulty.

I think its better to attack it from the standpoint of barbarism and human rights and leave the whole effective or not issue aside myself.

On the other hand I don't see the point to tossing every interogation tool out of the window and treating every prisoner like they just won the lottery either. They should be treated humanely but not comforted and coddled and granted their every desire.

[True_Moose]

Originally posted by wanderon: They should be treated humanely but not comforted and coddled and granted their every desire.

If they're PoWs, they probably should be treated quite a bit better than the average prisoner anyway.

Also, have you ever been to prison? Because I haven't and I'll tell you, if they were coddled and granted their every desire, I'd be in there.