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Osama found using Gitmo torture info

TmoonII said:
If a person is in Gitmo, they are probably experiencing the same negative effects/torture they acted upon others, either directly or indirectly through orders. The difference is the people in Gitmo are not innocent, the people they've harmed probably were innocent or manipulated.
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This isn't true at all. Wikileaks recently released the files on all the detainees at Guantanamo. It seems that a lot of them were in fact innocent. They were locked up for years, just because they had been at the wrong place at the wrong time, because they had a suspected terrorist as a customer, because someone turned them in for a reward. There was even a case of mistaken identity, and they didn't even let that guy go for several years.

TmoonII said:
Stupidest post of the day.
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Not at all. It's a good way to show how silly it is to argue that waterboarding is OK because it doesn't cause permanent physical injuries.

Edit: This is the thread about the files that Wikileaks released about the Guantanamo detainees.
 
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TmoonII said:
Please name those being held, without a trial, or scheduled trial date.
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It would probably be quicker for you to name all the Guantanamo detainees who are serving a sentence handed down by a judge and/or jury after a conviction, and thus would no longer be considered "innocent" under US law.
 
BenBurch said:
We knew that without Wikileaks' "help."
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We knew that innocent people must have been locked up, mainly because we know that people are ********, but these documents have revealed a lot of new information. For example, they list the specific reasons why each detainee was moved to Guantanamo, and in many cases, the reasons are pure ********. For example, one guy was believed to be able to provide information about the air strikes on his home town. (American air strikes that had already happened?) Another guy was believed to have information about how to go by car between Afghanistan and Iran.

I wasn't really sure about the value of Wikileaks before this, but I think this proves that the world needs them. These atrocities would have been covered up for a very long time if they hadn't published these documents.

TmoonII said:
Please name those being held, without a trial, or scheduled trial date.
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I think one of the articles of the Wikileaks documents said that there were 779 detainees, and only one of them had been tried. He was charged with hundreds of different crimes, but was only found guilty of one. Unfortunately I don't remember where I read that. If I find it, I'll post a link.

Edit: I didn't find it, but it seems the article I read was too old anyway. This one is more recent. It says that 6 people have been tried and convicted. The first one was found guilty of only 1 of 280 charges. This colossal failure seems to have been the reason why they didn't have any more trials. The article is about how they have now started again.
 
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EGarrett said:
How many false leads did we get from torture info? How many people did we torture who didn't actually know the things we wanted to find out? It's quite dishonest to never mention any of the many misses and then jump up and down when there's a hit.

If I torture a million people and demand to know what crimes they committed, I'll probably find out about something I can act on. That doesn't mean that my actions were good or made the world better.
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^^^ This

Torture proponents here are doing a really good job of counting the "hits" and discounting the misses.

In fact, leaving the moral question aside, I'll go one further in the criticism of torture as a useful tool: it is entirely possible that those tortured just made up stuff to a) get the pain to stop, or b) stick it to the U.S. by giving us false leads.

How much time was wasted tracking down false leads & misinformation obtained from torture? As someone already mentioned upthread, this is more than an academic question, because KSM apparently fed our operatives false information when he was being tortured.
 
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BenBurch said:
We knew that without Wikileaks' "help."
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Indeed. I did the math a while back before Wikileaks was even a big deal. The conviction rate for Gitmo detainees was something like 10%. In fact, only about half of the prisoners there were physically apprehended by coalition forces. The rest were handed to us by various forces and factions throughout the area.

The idea that these are all a bunch of people who happened to be picked up by American forces off the battlefield is nothing more than a myth.
 
MattusMaximus said:
^^^ This

Torture proponents here are doing a really good job of counting the "hits" and discounting the misses.

In fact, leaving the moral question aside, I'll go one further in the criticism of torture as a useful tool: it is entirely possible that those tortured just made up stuff to a) get the pain to stop, or b) stick it to the U.S. by giving us false leads.

How much time was wasted tracking down false leads & misinformation obtained from torture? As someone already mentioned upthread, this is more than an academic question, because KSM apparently fed our operatives false information when he was being tortured.
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Indeed, this is at the heart of the false ticking time bomb justification...we know there's a bomb, it is set to go off, we will torture you until you reveal its location. But why wouldn't a determined terrorist lie? It would stop the torture, it would set the torturers off on a wild goose chase and, with luck, doing so would take enough time to allow the bomb to go off. Mission accomplished.
 
Marduk said:
then you don't know what you are saying
heres some links to help you
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_service
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Intelligence_Agency

now you were saying that its unfair that the C.I.A. don't fully disclose all their intelligence data gained through torture.....

who exactly did you want them to disclose the data to for it to be honest ?
:D
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You really are misunderstanding EGarrett. His point (and it's a very good one) is that in order for us to accurately determine the efficacy of torture, we need two different comparisons. First, we need to know how often it succeeds, and how often it fails. In addition to that, we need to know this success rate versus the success rates of the alternatives. You can't just highlight one single case of success (and the one being claimed here is dubious, to say the least), no matter how profound, and say "Ah ha! It works! Torture away!" This still may very well be a fluke.
 
headscratcher4 said:
Indeed, this is at the heart of the false ticking time bomb justification...we know there's a bomb, it is set to go off, we will torture you until you reveal its location. But why wouldn't a determined terrorist lie? It would stop the torture, it would set the torturers off on a wild goose chase and, with luck, doing so would take enough time to allow the bomb to go off. Mission accomplished.
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Yeah, and all the while, said terrorist would be laughing at our gullibility :rolleyes:

As I said, this is more than an academic question, because it has been clearly documented that KSM gave false intel while under torture. How much quicker would we have found & killed OBL had we not been going on a wild goose chase based on this false intel?

Seems to me some of the torture proponents are more concerned about getting their groove on as opposed to getting actual useful intel.
 
EGarrett said:
How many false leads did we get from torture info? How many people did we torture who didn't actually know the things we wanted to find out? It's quite dishonest to never mention any of the many misses and then jump up and down when there's a hit.

If I torture a million people and demand to know what crimes they committed, I'll probably find out about something I can act on. That doesn't mean that my actions were good or made the world better.
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You can replace "torture" with "gave them all cake and presents" and you'd still get the same answer. Semantics at best, and anyone who finds a point in this is better off letting others thinks for them...
 
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Some of this is laughable.

“Mr. Gul was kind, philosophical, devout, and hopeful to the end, in spite of all that our government has put him through … The government charged that he was a prominent member of the Taliban and its military, but we proved that this is false. Indeed, we have documents from Afghanistan, even a letter from Mullah Omar himself on Taliban letterhead, discussing Mr. Gul’s efforts to resign from the Taliban a year or more before 9/11/01.

http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/20...-held-for-nine-years-without-charge-or-trial/

How about "it's none of your ***** business what our intel is, because you could cover your tracks."
 
Lowpro said:
You can replace "torture" with "gave them all cake and presents" and you'd still get the same answer. Semantics at best, and anyone who finds a point in this is better off letting others thinks for them...
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Word of advice, kid: E. Garrett is not the one being obtuse here.
 
The whole idea is just dumb though. If you didn't torture him, and you gave him cake, ice cream, and presents he could STILL lie and give false intel. I'm not saying waterboarding yields higher results in reliable information, but you should also admit that nothing else does either as far as we can tell.

Don't have to be a prick about it Shadow.

And http://swampland.time.com/2011/05/04/did-torture-get-the-us-osama-bin-laden/?hpt=T2

The concensus here is that both KSM and Al-Libbi suffered Enhanced Interrogation Techniques including waterboarding and sleep deprivation. It was part of a larger regimen so they weren't tortured all the time. This regimen eventually had them both yield the name of the courier, not at the same time since Al-Libbi gave it up in a week, KSM much longer.

EIT's (We call them torture I think that's fair) were used but does that mean they were MORE effective than not using them? Who can say...
 
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Lowpro said:
The whole idea is just dumb though. If you didn't torture him, and you gave him cake, ice cream, and presents he could STILL lie and give false intel. I'm not saying waterboarding yields higher results in reliable information, but you should also admit that nothing else does either as far as we can tell.
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Perhaps I'm just nitpicking here, but providing cake, ice cream and presents isn't morally reprehensible and in stark contrast to our value system.

But yeah, other than that, same difference.
 
Moral reprehensibility plays no role in the effectiveness of the method which is why I'm largely ignoring that for the argument itself.

I've already said torturing is evil, but I tolerate the evil if it means it gets the information I need.

The real question is...can you get the same results without EITs. I'm sure you probably can, but then it becomes a question of it EIT's expedite the process on the whole (you get info faster) or more reliable. We don't know that, but so far the methods used involved EIT's and we DID get info using the whole regimen (which included EIT's) so now we need to test and see if we can execute a similar regimen without EIT's and see which method yields better results.
 
Lowpro said:
The whole idea is just dumb though. If you didn't torture him, and you gave him cake, ice cream, and presents he could STILL lie and give false intel. I'm not saying waterboarding yields higher results in reliable information, but you should also admit that nothing else does either as far as we can tell.

Don't have to be a prick about it Shadow.
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Not sure your final conclusion is anywhere near correct. Many skilled interrogators... FBI and CIA ... have argued that they could have and did get far more significant results with interrogation techniques that did not include torutre, fear of death, bodilly harm, etc.

No one is arguing that you do nothing. The question is can the same or even better results...if results are all you are interested in, as opposed to protecting human rights and our Constitituion...without torture. The argument is that you can. So, if torture isn't "necessary" for practical reasons (and thus allowing morality and legality and the contitution to be tossed over the side), than lets get to the moral/ethical arguments.
 
Lowpro said:
Moral reprehensibility plays no role in the effectiveness of the method which is why I'm largely ignoring that for the argument itself.

I've already said torturing is evil, but I tolerate the evil if it means it gets the information I need.

The real question is...can you get the same results without EITs. I'm sure you probably can, but then it becomes a question of it EIT's expedite the process on the whole (you get info faster) or more reliable. We don't know that, but so far the methods used involved EIT's and we DID get info using the whole regimen (which included EIT's) so now we need to test and see if we can execute a similar regimen without EIT's and see which method yields better results.
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You've no evidence for your assertion. If Bin Ladin is your test case and IF torture was used to gain any information there...it was six years + ago. You mean to tell me that in those six years other information couldn't have been developed without torture that would have been just as meaningful or valuable?

You want the time bomb to be ticking. It isn't. It wasn't. And if it were, a committed terrorist would lie and endure the torture to give the bomb time to go off, if for no other reason probably figuring he's dead either way...
 
Besides, if you remover morality and ethical behavior from the equation and assert its ok if it gets me the information I want/need (regardless of whether it is true), how is what you're doing any better than Stalin's GPU, the Nazis or Kim Jung Il's North Korea?
 
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