Says the man who carefully edited out long sections of my post, added numbers to make it seem like a listed argument, etc.
The term "Enhanced Interrogation" was meant to approve of waterboarding and to avoid it's long-held definition. It is contrary to how the U.S. government had already defined torture, thus nobody here is burdened to define it either way.
This would be the U.S. accusing and convicting a Japanese man for water boarding in 1947.
Yes, I've seen this argument made before. The point I will make is that A) It was very similar, but not quite the same and B) the Justice Department went to quite some effort to delineate, define, and demarcate that border.
The point being made that I was responding to was the claim that "torture doesn't work". Torture can indeed be effective work. For example:
...I was party to a quick beat down on a street during Fallujah I in 2004, after we caught an insurgent digging in an IED. The beat down led us to another IED he had already dug in, in which we called in EOD....
It can cause people to give up information very quickly, rather than slowly.
2) In December 2014, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence issued a declassified 500 page summary of its still classified 6,700 page report on the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Detention and Interrogation Program. The report concluded... There was no evidence that information obtained from the detainees through EIT was not or could not have been obtained through conventional interrogation methods.
:lol: oh my gosh, you mean Democrats who approved of EIT at the time later decided they never heard anything about it, and claimed that
in magic alternative history land they are sure we could have gotten all the information we got from EIT in other fashions? Well.
I have equal proof, mind you, that
there is no evidence whatsoever that we could not have gotten all the information we needed - and more - by dressing up as giant pigeons and singing Buddy Holly Songs. After all, that's the beauty of non-falsifiable alternative history - you can easily point to the impossibility of proving a negative, and sounds very assured indeed.
If you want to bitch about the EIT program, go on ahead. It has nothing to do with the fact that claims that "torture didn't work" and "EIT was torture" have to run afoul of the fact that we did, indeed, clean timely and detailed information from the EIT program.
3) Sharia has nothing to do with it
Actually, since the question was
Does torture work, the philosophical model to which the detainees attempt to adhere is, in fact, highly relevant.
4) In an "urgent and rare instance" means an urgent and rare instance. It does not mean policy.
That, of course, would suggest that
Torture can, in fact, work, which would be the question under discussion
. Glad to see you on my side.
5) I was party to a quick beat down on a street during Fallujah I in 2004, after we caught an insurgent digging in an IED. The beat down led us to another IED he had already dug in, in which we called in EOD. This would be an "urgent and rare" instance.
Gosh. Sounds like that worked.
This is not strapping a man to a chair long after the fact, helpless to defend himself, and cowardly torturing him for whatever information we might or might not discover.
In a magical future where there are no ongoing EXOPS planning, sure. Hopefully some day we get there. Until that time,
regardless of the interrogation methods we use, some detainees will indeed have timely information regarding current threats to US, Coalition, or other military or civilian populations.
We have lost our way when we pretend that every Islamist we capture holds information for the next 9/11, which is hours from being realized.
Had that ever occurred, I would wholeheartedly agree. Fortunately, that's not how detainee operations work
.
