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Why not torture?

dtugg said:
No. Not if the only evidence against them was gained though torture. Torture isn't particularly reliable. While I have no problems torturing confessed mass murdering terrorists because I don't care if they suffer, I do have problems torturing people who might be guilty of no crimes.
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According to our rule of law, everyone is presumed innocent until convicted in a (fair) trial. Do I understand correctly that you thus only accept torture to be performed after a conviction, i.e., as punishment? If not, your statement above basically throws the foundations of our justice system out of the window.

Note also that confessions are amongst the least reliable evidence. See the various famous miscarriages of justice, which nearly always relied on confession of the suspects after being pressured into it (even without torture) by the police.
 
ddt said:
According to our rule of law, everyone is presumed innocent until convicted in a (fair) trial. Do I understand correctly that you thus only accept torture to be performed after a conviction, i.e., as punishment? If not, your statement above basically throws the foundations of our justice system out of the window.
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Innocent until proven guilty just means that the burden of proof is on the state during a trial. People accused of crimes are not actually presumed to be innocent. If that were true, why would they have to pay bail to stay out of jail or have their assets frozen/seized?

Note also that confessions are amongst the least reliable evidence. See the various famous miscarriages of justice, which nearly always relied on confession of the suspects after being pressured into it (even without torture) by the police.
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Since KSM confessed before even being captured, this is hardly a problem in his case.
 
ddt said:
...snip..

Note also that confessions are amongst the least reliable evidence. See the various famous miscarriages of justice, which nearly always relied on confession of the suspects after being pressured into it (even without torture) by the police.
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I think this is a very pertinent point, even under interrogation without any hint or suggestion of torture we know that the stress is enough to cause some people to confess to terrible crimes that they never did, even when such confessions can lead to their lifetime imprisonment. Given that how can anyone argue that increasing the stress would lead to reliable information?
 
The Don said:
I may have yelled at the radio from time to time.......

....although I was stuck in traffic so they may have thought I less of a nutter than I actually was
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I've stayed away from all those debate programmes, especially the ones on Sunday after Andrew Marr ("Does the devil cause car crashes?" We ask our panel of typical morons). Sheer agony.

The only debates that are worth their salt are ones with competent, minimal moderation, that allow rebuttals longer than 2 minutes.
 
There's nothing actually wrong with peeing in the sink. For most men it's at a more convenient height than the toilet and there's no seat to put down afterwards.

The problem is, when you do it once, it becomes a habit.

And your home starts to smell.
 
dtugg said:
Innocent until proven guilty just means that the burden of proof is on the state during a trial. People accused of crimes are not actually presumed to be innocent. If that were true, why would they have to pay bail to stay out of jail or have their assets frozen/seized?
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Or simply be put in pre-trial arrest (most countries don't have bail). Simple: because they're suspect of a crime and we want to establish their (un)guilt in a trial, and want their physical presence there. And they're suspects until judge and/or jury give their verdict. Your exact words were: "I do have problems torturing people who might be guilty of no crimes", and until the verdict their guilt has not been established, so the "might" still applies. Mind, I realize a verdict is not a perfect rendering of the truth, but it is the best general approximation that our justice system offers.

dtugg said:
Since KSM confessed before even being captured, this is hardly a problem in his case.
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Trying to weasel out by singling out one case? With any serious crime that gets wide attention, there are dozens of people who phone in to the police confessing to it. Are you going to torture them all based on their confession? :rolleyes:
 
ddt said:
Or simply be put in pre-trial arrest (most countries don't have bail). Simple: because they're suspect of a crime and we want to establish their (un)guilt in a trial, and want their physical presence there. And they're suspects until judge and/or jury give their verdict. Your exact words were: "I do have problems torturing people who might be guilty of no crimes", and until the verdict their guilt has not been established, so the "might" still applies. Mind, I realize a verdict is not a perfect rendering of the truth, but it is the best general approximation that our justice system offers.
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You act as if it is impossible to know if a person is guilty without a trial. This simply is not true.


Trying to weasel out by singling out one case? With any serious crime that gets wide attention, there are dozens of people who phone in to the police confessing to it. Are you going to torture them all based on their confession? :rolleyes:
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If they are known terrorists and are found with evidence linking them to terrorists acts, sure.
 
dtugg said:
You act as if it is impossible to know if a person is guilty without a trial. This simply is not true.
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No, you're weaseling. Everybody may have their private opinions, but whose opinion matters? IOW, who are you going to appoint to make that judgment? Hint: judge/jury.

dtugg said:
If they are known terrorists and are found with evidence linking them to terrorists acts, sure.
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Sigh. Another judgment to make.

In any case, you advocate torture essentially only as a punishment, not as a means of extracting information (as in the "ticking timebomb scenario"). Why limit yourself to torture? What's wrong with quartering, or impaling? Preferably, of course, in a public venue so we can all get a rise out of it. :rolleyes: Or what about hacking off fingers or hands, or staking out eyes, or other physical mutilation? Why not introduce Sharia law? :rolleyes:
 
Undesired Walrus said:
With the news that Bush is justifying Waterboarding again, the question will inevitably rise again.

Why not torture someone if the information will save lives? Have they not shed their rights by committing crime?
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1/ It is illegal
2/ The USA has bound itself not to do it
3/ The information gleaned cannot be trusted
4/ It is illegal
5/ By torturing you put your own soldiers at risk of torture
6/ It is illegal
7/ It is an abuse of human rights
8/ Did I point out it is illegal?
9/ You do not shed your rights by committing a crime. That is an utter nonsense. Presumably you think that everyone who exceeds the speed limit can be tortured.
10/ Using it shows you have no values.
11/ How do you know you are not inflicting it on innocent people as has been done in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Torture is utterly unacceptable on any occasion. By using it, you are showing your utter contempt for the law and human rights. By using it you have no right to demand that other countries, or indeed anyone, obey the law because you won't. By using it, you rule yourself out of being a decent state.

If you torture people don't try to get into countries that obey the law and respect human rights, as you will probably be arrested for grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions.

If you want to be a criminal, subject to war crimes trials, ensure that your own army and people are at risk from torture, act on incorrect information and become a pariah state then of course you would go ahead and torture people, as many other states have done.
 
rustypouch said:
Besides the ethical issues of causing another human to suffer for your gain, the information gathered through torture is not reliable. People will say whatever they think the interrogator wants to hear if it will make the torture stop.
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What about torturing someone in a effort to save the lives of untold numbers of innocent men women and children?
 
I would say the worst effect of torture is to the torturer himself. Once you let your hands get a little bloody, then what's the harm in doing it again? Going a little bit further? You're already bad, you've already gone that far, so why make moral objections now? Some kinds of dirt don't wash off, and once someone--someone with power--decides they're already irredeemably dirty, then they have nothing left to lose. I'm sure most of them justify it to themselves--it was necessary, for the greater good, etc, etc--and maybe even they believe it. It's certainly easier for us to think that torturers must be mad, flawed, somehow different from the rest of us because we'd never do that kind of thing. But they're not. Everybody's capable of that, given the right circumstances. The question is, can you stop yourself from doing it once? And if you did it once, can you stop yourself doing it again? Can you live with your actions, or lack of actions? People can recover from being tortured, but I doubt they ever recover from being torturers.
 
Cainkane1 said:
What about torturing someone in a effort to save the lives of untold numbers of innocent men women and children?
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Anyone in particular ? I mean if the person has no link to the thing that's going to kill the people then that's not very useful.

Are you getting accurate information ? Chasing your tail following up spurious leads isn't going to help.
 
dtugg said:
You act as if it is impossible to know if a person is guilty without a trial. This simply is not true.




If they are known terrorists and are found with evidence linking them to terrorists acts, sure.
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You seem to be willing to throw all the law aside to get terrorists.
 
tsig said:
You seem to be willing to throw all the law aside to get terrorists.
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Don't you understand that we must shed all of these trappings of freedom and civil liberties in order to secure the safety of our civil society?

/sarcasm
 
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