How sure is sure? How would you know that torture would give you the information you required? Would you do the torturing yourself? Or would you employ someone else to do it for you? What would you do to make amends if you tortured the wrong person? What makes you think you could carry out a better investigation than trained and experienced professionals?
All these questions would go out the window in Vic's scenario Mike.
What worries me more is that faced with the imminent destruction of your family you would stand there wondering what a good member of society would do.
NON - no justification for torture - throughout the centuries it has been proven to be ineffective. There are more humane ways to elicit the truth. (spoken by an American citizen/born British) Dick Cheney is an evil s.o.b.
Brian. Why remind me?. 'Cos unlike some here I actually read & remember what people say. Kindly save your reminders for them wot need 'em :-)
Vero. I get what you are saying & thought I had sufficiently qualified what I had said to make my point clear. However the fact that some country where torture is the norm regularly gets it wrong wouldn't deter me from trying to save my own if I thought I had a chance.
On the other hand if a child of mine was kidnapped and I had the opportunity to discover their whereabouts etc I'd probably attempt torture as a last resort.
If that were indeed the case and I was sure I had the right person then I'd consider it my first and only resort Nick.
Yes, we might all feel like doing that. But everything falls apart in societies where that is allowed to happen. But your original post leads to many other questions.What do you mean by "If I could be sure?" How sure is sure? How would you know that torture would give you the information you required? Would you do the torturing yourself? Or would you employ someone else to do it for you? What would you do to make amends if you tortured the wrong person? What makes you think you could carry out a better investigation than trained and experienced professionals?
Thank you, that is the point. Two hurts are not better than one.
A further point that is unmentioned is what kind of person we produce when we allow or condone torture. Those who actually do it are usually the first against the wall or on the gallows as war criminals in that scenario. Does not being 'properly' at war make it more acceptable to make people into torturers? Would any of you who justify its use be one?
Thus very likely condemning yours to greater torture than the one tortured in order to find them to be almost inevitably followed by a nasty death. Well, that has settled that then.
CIA is in Glen's heading and the big news this week, so why not remind you?
Brian this rule of law that you stoutly uphold, is it not culturally specific? People make laws and interpret them according to the specific situation they find themselves in.
For example I pose this question: What is more important, the humans rights of the individual or the human rights of the community? In other words does the rights of a society not to be terrorized outweigh the rights of the possible terrorist?
I think Vic that quite apart from repugnance on ethical grounds, the big BIG problem with torture is that it simply doesn't work - people will just say anything out of fear/pain/being driven doolally.
I have an example - when I was living in Syria in 1985/86 (delightful régime) there was a local-looking chap whose family had emigrated before he was born, who came back to do some tourism & who got picked up at the Jordanian border and as he had what they decided was a fake passport, they gave him the usual going over (much like Guantanamo etc) and he sang like a bird, he agreed to all their their assertions, that he'd been up to all sorts of no-goodery etc etc. So after the going-over he was sentenced, bang to rights as he'd admitted everything.
Only it wasn't true, any of it. They had got the wrong person, the real target had the same or a very similar name. Luckily for him, he had an EU passport & was fished out of prison - only he'd had 3 weeks of fun & games with the car battery, drugs etc & was in a pretty awful state. I imagine it will have taken him a very very long time to get over. He was lucky an embassy came looking for him & persisted in looking for him, alerted by the family who'd had no news...
Hear, hear again Brian. When did "we" become so "spineless" and unprincipled? Perhaps we always have been? If it's wrong it's always wrong and we used to stand up for what's right regardless of personal cost. Torturing a "perp" after the event doesn't make the victim less dead. Loss of a loved one hurts, but loss of principle makes us less human, less caring for others, and ultimately escalates the hatred.
OK Brian. I haven't got the time or inclination to sit around debating semantics with someone who not only clearly enjoys this sort of debate but who has the knowledge I don't. I'm just an ordinary bloke & I will re-state my ONLY case here. If some group kidnapped ANY OF MINE & I had the CHANCE TO FIND & RESCUE THEM (Caps to make sure there is no misunderstanding) by torturing one of them I wouldn't hesitate. If anyone else thinks it best to stand by playing pocket billiards then they can live with their conscience. I'm NOT talking about the rights & wrongs of anything else & how you can take the leap to mentioning the CIA in the same breath as what I'm simply saying beats me.
Yes, easy to say. Bridger is an alcoholic paedophile who is infatuated with young girls. Just the alcoholic means he is almost certainly mentally ill from what I recall at the time. His infatuation is also deviant. What would be the point in torturing such a man who may well derive pleasure from being tortured as some people do. However, since he is probably ill as well as criminal it may well only have made him sicker. There is a fair chance that having possibly been so drunk on booze and on what he did that he can't even remember where she is buried or whatever the case may be. To use him as an example is thin ice but even then if he was tortured, then would that not justify the use of the practice on other occasions, perhaps even allow it to become common practice and allow coppers to thump the living daylights out of the poor little thief who won't own up to where he has hidden the silver candelabra from Ponsonby-Smythes' house? Where does it end if it is allowed to begin?
So, you believe laws and protections are pick and choose abstract notions. Take the risk of torturing somebody in order to make their comrades twice as nasty and make sure your nearest and dearest have had parts cut of their bodies, ripped out and then they will be shot if they are lucky. Vic, either we have laws that apply to ALL people or we have anarchy. If we have the latter then picking up on people with black boxes is out of the window long before all else, but then you have no protections either and should somebody want to walk into your house and shoot you they will. Get real. Laws for all or for nobody, there is no half way.
Apart from that the question is about the CIA admissions. So, you are saying they are right and from what you are saying that would justify you defending or even doing the same. When we create cycles of particular kinds of behaviour then they are repeated and can so easy escalate, there is no concern for the morality of what a supposedly democratic state is allowing to happen whatsoever and yet it is so easy to use an 'if it was me' justification. There is the seed of anarchy and a large step back toward barbarism.
Mike, if it's not too much trouble please actually read what I said. "if I could be sure it would lead me to the captors & the release of my folk" should have made my point reasonably clear. I don't feel the necessity to justify myself to you or anyone else for that matter. Why muddy the water talking about the NRA ? What the hell have they got to do with it & why mention mistaking you for someone else ? I was simply explaining what, given the chance, I would do to protect my family if the need arose & if you can't see that I give up !!!