Posted on 12/17/2014 4:24:07 PM PST by Kaslin
In an interview on Sunday, NBC's Chuck Todd asked former Vice President Dick Cheney whether he is "OK" with the fact that a quarter of the suspected terrorists held in secret CIA prisons during the Bush administration "turned out to be innocent." Todd noted that one of those mistakenly detained men died of hypothermia after being doused with water and left chained to a concrete wall, naked from the waist down, in a cell as cold as a meat locker. Cheney replied that the end -- to "get the guys who did 9/11" and "avoid another attack against the United States" -- justified the means. "I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective," he said.
Charles Fried, a Harvard law professor who served as solicitor general during the Reagan administration, and his son, Gregory, a philosophy professor at Suffolk University, offer a bracing alternative to Cheney's creepy consequentialism in their 2010 book, "Because It Is Wrong." They argue that torture is wrong not just when it is inflicted on innocents -- and not just when it fails to produce lifesaving information -- but always and everywhere.
That claim is bolder than it may seem. As the Frieds note, most commentators "make an exception for grave emergencies," as in "the so-called ticking-bomb scenario," in which torturing a terrorist is the only way to prevent an imminent explosion that would kill many people. "These arguments try to have it both ways," they write. "Torture is never justified, but then in some cases it might be justified after all." The contradiction is reconciled "by supposing that the justifying circumstances will never come up."
The Senate Intelligence Committee's report released last week, for instance, argues that the CIA's brutal methods did not yield valuable information that could not have been obtained through other means. In fact, it says, waterboarding and the other "enhanced interrogation techniques" were often counterproductive, eliciting false information or discouraging cooperation.
Maybe that's true, but it's awfully convenient. If torture is never useful, eschewing it entails no trade-offs. It is a cost-free commitment.
The Frieds' argument requires no such assumption. They acknowledge that torture may save lives but reject it anyway, arguing that "there are things worse than death." They offer an example that most people would consider beyond the pale: Suppose the most effective way to elicit lifesaving information from a terrorist is to torture his child. Is that tactic morally acceptable, provided the payoff is big enough?
If not, then certain forms of torture are absolutely wrong. The Frieds go further, contending that "innocence and guilt are irrelevant to torture," which desecrates "the image of God" or, in the secular version of the argument, "the ultimate value of the human form as it is incorporated in every person."
The Frieds argue that we lose our humanity by denying someone else's, by treating him as an animal to be beaten into submission or an object to be bent or broken at will. "To make him writhe in pain, to injure, smear, mutilate, render loathsome and disgusting the envelope of what is most precious to each of us," they write, "is to be the agent of ultimate evil -- no matter how great the evil we hope to avert by what we do."
That is just a taste of the Frieds' argument, which deserves to be considered at length. It surely will not convince Dick Cheney, but it goes beyond mere squeamishness in an attempt to articulate the moral intuition underlying legal bans on torture and other forms of degrading treatment.
If the Frieds' reliance on the concept of sacredness strikes you as superstitious, consider what can happen when nothing is sacred. During a 2005 debate, John Yoo, who helped formulate the legal rationale for the interrogation techniques the Frieds condemn, was asked whether encouraging a prisoner's cooperation by crushing his child's testicles would be legal, as well. Yoo replied that "it depends on why the president thinks he needs to do that."
You are trying to equate a US citizen suspected of a crime with a terrorist caught on the battlefield. And it isn’t working.
When the government is out of control, which it currently is, it is certainly possible that it and things that are actually torture will be used at their whim.
The only remedy is to bring the government under control of the people again rather then acting as if some people chatting on the internet gives them permission to oppress us.
All those against making terrorists talk please put your name on the list of voluntary sacrifices we can make to appease our enemies.
The torture nuance........
I may be the only person in the world who sees it this way
but so be it. Anyway, to torture people into signing dubious
admissions of guilt as practiced in Hanoi during the Vietnam
is clearly wrong. To torture in order to force revelation of
certain events that have already happens is not good in
most cases, but not all. Torture in order to save people
from impending harm or to recover people could be accepta-
ble to me on a case by case basis.
We saved it up and did it with two bombs.
You have to get their attention.
2. It was clear that the Geneva Convention did not apply to (non-uniformed) enemy combatants. At least until one of the dumbest opinions ever from the Supreme Court. Now, nothing is clear.
3. The Army manual on treatment of prisoners prohibits waterboarding or any abuse of prisoners. The Army manual has been adopted by the other uniformed services. The uniformed services did not use the enhanced interrogation techniques.(All prisoner interrogation teams in all DOD branches consist of directly designated, specially trained individuals, and it was always stressed that improper interrogations would result in military charges of misconduct)
4. There was no torture at Abu Graib. That was a bunch of stupid soldiers taking prisoners out late at night and then for their amusement abusing them and taking pictures that sometimes faked torture. When it was discovered, they were prosecuted and given prison terms. The press did not discover Abu Graib, the Army did and someone leaked information from the investigation to the press. (Exactly IAW the UCMJ, but sensationalized by an equally sick and perverted media narrative)
Ditto.
No.
Because we have a constitutional right not to be compelled to testify against ourselves.
Remember - if you’re too open-minded, your brain falls out.
It’s not a tit for tat Cubs Fan. US acts a certain way because it is civilized. Heathens and pagans can act like pagans, we don’t sink to their level.
Those being waterboarded have no morals, so where’s the problem?
Well we did carpet bomb the hell out of Germany to help win WWII, I’m fine with doing the same thing to all muslim countries. But no torture.
So let me get this straight: it’s morally objectionable to rough up i.e. torture Islamist slime who cut off the heads of little children and laugh about it, but it’s perfectly fine to drop bombs from drones killing them and and their family members? Got it. (snicker)
Actually, I'm alluding to the already-signaled readiness of the government to consider citizens who do not agree politically as terrorists
— remember that 2009 report from the DHS (Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment
), remember the 2012 NDAA and it's suspension of Habeus Corpus, remember how the Bundy Ranch was essentially setting things up for dropping the federal hammer?
We are not all that far from being deemed
terrorists, feeling the full fury of government force, and having the exact same applied to us.
(That is, essentially, what exceptions and exigent circumstance
amount to in questions of Constitutionality: how the government can get around the absolute constraints imposed by the Constitution. Any argument that carves out some exception, like oh, they're terrorists
or oh, they're druggies/drug-traffickers
or oh, they're pedophiles
ought to merit much scrutiny.)
This is 100% political controversy.
In a moral context, I don’t see how it can be a sincere topic because intelligence agencies still hide most of what they do.
Why did they decide to expose the torture question for public consumption, while the rest of the stuff they commit is still a big secret? Answer: to create political theater for the purpose of manipulating our opinions.
If this is inaccurate, let me know.
Interesting.
Amendment VDo you assert that a terrorist is not a person?
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Remember - The whole reason the government carved out the vague third category of enemy combatant
was so that they could use criminal prosecution.
Remember - if you’re too open-minded, your brain falls out.
*shrug* - It hasn't happened yet.
Absolutely agreed, and that is my concern.
The only remedy is to bring the government under control of the people again rather then acting as if some people chatting on the internet gives them permission to oppress us.
True — It's why I've been working on some amendment proposals.
[FR Comment Thread]
Because there is no pressing need for any information that don’t have on conspiracies to kill large numbers of people.
Terroists are special cases that require special measure.
Really, I see no need to ask such stupid questions on your part. If you want to coddle terrorists, you’ll have to do it without me.
Special cases
are often used like exigent circumstances
where the government is concerned.
Really, I see no need to ask such stupid questions on your part. If you want to coddle terrorists, you’ll have to do it without me.
You are a fool if you think that I'm coddling terrorists; I'm saying that these can easily be used as precedent to be applied to us.
Remember the 2009 DHS report?
You appear to be attempting to apply "moral acceptability" in a morally relative way. You establish a false premise in doing so.
We havn't used so called "waterboarding" as an EIT "regularly" with terrorists, quite rarely actually. Only three individuals out of thousands, and those were years ago.
That being the case, perhaps it would be helpful to rephrase your question.
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