AG nominee "unsure" about waterboarding

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We're in a war, one that is vastly different than WW I, II, or any other past war. You do what you have to do in a war. I know it's not very politically correct. Neither is war, especially when the enemy is willing to blow up themselves and innocent women and children so that they receive 89 virgins in heaven. The wacko terrorists are going to cut off the heads of our captured troops whether we waterboard or not.

There may be situations involving captured terrorists that require waterboarding. The technique is used because it works.
 
Again, I don't think what we have done is even in the same league as what the Japanese did to our troops, nor what the Islamic radicals do to any American troops they catch.

I don't think physical torture is that particularly effective though. I would prefer we load them up with sodium pentathol combined with sleep deprivation and drain them of everything they know.
 
It's difficult to threaten someone with death when they believe with all their hearts that death is a magic carpet ride to paradise.

Personally, if a terrorist or anyone else who is a threat to my country has information I need, I will do whatever necessary to get that information, (including breaking out the car battery and jumper cables to attach to said terrorist's family jewels) because the needs of the many outweight the needs of the few or the one.

I have never had any trouble sleeping.
 
Personally, if a terrorist or anyone else who is a threat to my country has information I need, I will do whatever necessary to get that information, (including breaking out the car battery and jumper cables to attach to said terrorist's family jewels) because the needs of the many outweight the needs of the few or the one.

I have never had any trouble sleeping.
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Except that you don't always (generally?) know if they actually have the information you need (or sometimes if they're even a "terrorist") until after you've applied said treatment to said jewels. So you may end up with an innocent person sobbing on the floor, bound to have serious psychological trauma for the rest of their lives, for nothing.

Even if they do give you information, you still won't know if it was true until you act on it...if you ever know.
 
This explains the technique. This also explains why we shouldn't do it.
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When I was in the Navy, it was called "training," not "torture." Has anyone heard of SERE training?

The arguments against torture generally run on three false premises:

1. Torture doesn't work. False. If it didn't work, people would not have resorted to it for thousands of years. Stalin used torture successfully to stay in power for decades.

2. If we do it to them, they'll do it to us. False. This argument presupposes that our enemies are run by basically decent people. First, why would we be at war with basically decent people? Wouldn't we negotiate with them instead? We tend to war with basically bad people who will torture us or saw off our heads. This has been true of our prisoners captured by Japan, Germany, Korea, Iraq, Al Qaeda. They're already doing it to us and have done it to us for a very long time.

3. If we do it, we're no better than them. False. Ask yourself: If a group of Marines encounters a group of insurgents, and the Marines fire first, are they acting just like the enemy and thus are no better than them? I don't think so. They torture indiscriminately. When we waterboard and the like, we do so to gain information that might save hundreds, thousands, or hundreds-of-thousands of lives. We should do so only under very narrow, specific, and monitored circumstances.
 
A scenario for discussion with a twist on the war on terror.

Hillary becomes president. She manages to get a draconian gun law set through the Congress. Basically, it takes away everything but O/U duck guns.

As we saw in Oklahoma City and hinting at in the 'shall we fight' thread on various forums, a set of die-hard 2nd Amend advocates adopt an extended Muir Building strategy. Various places are blow up with truck bombs. Police are targeted with IEDs.

Would it be acceptable to water-board suspect American citizens to prevent future attacks? Folks can become suspects as their internet postings are traced to them for example. Do you have a copy of Unintended Consequences at home?

Saying such techniques could only be used on foreign terrorists who kills thousand is a cop out. What about good ol' Americans like McVeigh who do such?

Would it have been acceptable to waterboard the church bombers of the Civil Rights era in the South?

Is it principle or expediency? Is it only ok to do to 'dirty' foreigners?
 
Would it be acceptable to water-board suspect American citizens to prevent future attacks? Folks can become suspects as their internet postings are traced to them for example. Do you have a copy of Unintended Consequences at home?
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What if you know the attack is imminent, you have a very limited time period to prevent the attack, can you use the technique to find the exact location and prevent the further loss of life?
 
That,Charles, is known as the ticking bomb problem. Many different answers and wide discussion.. Some folks say that our principles are more important. Some say, principles be damned but where is the line or slippery slope on this?

Others feel that - yes, you could use torture but then be accepting of your own prosecution as a violation of the law. Don't fight it or whine. You did what needed to be done.

The problem is that the absolute standard is clean and morally defensible.

The ticking bomb instance has some validity but it is fuzzy. It easily spreads to the assembling bomb, to the owner of plans for a bomb, to the reader of how to make a bomb on the Internet, to the buyers of books from Paladin Press, to those who say - let's fight on the internet if an antigun law is passed.

There are all kinds of variants. You capture a ticking bomb team member with his child. He is resistant to torture and the clock is ticking. Do you threaten to rape his child in front of him to make him talk? That's one that's been kicked around as a hypothetical to test principle of whether there are limits.
 
That,Charles, is known as the ticking bomb problem.
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I was aware of that. I honestly interjected to get a read on the thoughts of those who contribute on this board. I realize that it changes that complexity of the problem, as did your scenario.

I honestly am interested if individual's answers are fixed or are scenario based. E.g. the answer we all hate to hear (some call if the lawyers answer) it depends.

Is torture wrong? It depends.

For me there instances that are black and white and there are moral absolutes. However there are areas of gray.

Would I shoot someone in the back? The obvious answer is no....or is it. I certainly would if I felt they were a threat to a member of my family.

I certainly don't mean to troll or just stir the pot. I mean to add another degree of complexity and depth to this conversation (I have been following from the inset).
 
The problem is that the absolute standard is clean and morally defensible.
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Clean and morally defensible? Maybe. But the moral high ground is a lonely place when the absolute standard costs you everything else that's important to you.

There are all kinds of variants. You capture a ticking bomb team member with his child. He is resistant to torture and the clock is ticking. Do you threaten to rape his child in front of him to make him talk? That's one that's been kicked around as a hypothetical to test principle of whether there are limits.
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Let's play with that one. The evidence indicates the bomber put the device in an elementary school, such as the one you're child is currently at. If the bomb goes off and your child dies, will the headstone say "her daddy let her die but he had clean hands?"

These are great theoretical questions. Personally, I think I'd fall in the category of the officer who saved the lives of his men and innocent Iraqis without causing permanent harm to the insurgent. It might cost me my career or freedom, but I'd be able to look myself in the mirror and have my child visit me from time to time.
 
Buzz, that's the debate. Given I teach this stuff all the time and am engaged in some research on it - the nuances are everywhere.

In some theories of moral action, the greatest moral actions are ones where you stand by absolute moral precepts and your own conscience. Even if the outcome is one that will cost you - as your child's death or damage to your country.

Other theories of moral action take into account some variant of the greatest benefit of the action vs. its downside.

The person who violates the abstract code for the greater good and then accepted punishment would be seen as moral. The person who violated the code and fought the punishment on the grounds of expediency wouldn't.

The child example was developed to argue that even the expediency argument has limits. I might support leniency for the officer you describe. I probably wouldn't for the rapist. The latter is to abhorent and allowing that to become part of our arsenal would be long term detrimental to who we are.

But none of this is clear. If one invented a baby ray - that just killed babies and argued that we should have used it on Hiroshima, you might be scorned. However, nuking a city that contained babies was OK as it had other targets in the mix.

No clear answers, are they?

Great discussion, BTW.
 
No, I believe in absolute morality. Some things are right, some are wrong. But how those absolute facts line up with what most people consider "moral" can be often quite different.
 
The child example was developed to argue that even the expediency argument has limits. I might support leniency for the officer you describe. I probably wouldn't for the rapist. The latter is to abhorent and allowing that to become part of our arsenal would be long term detrimental to who we are.
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Absolutely agreed, with the caveat that you don't need (and absolutely don't want) the child harmed for that scenario to play out.

The scary thing is that such scenarios happen all the time. "Do what we want or we deport you and your family back home where everyone will be [fill in with atrocity of your choice." And yet, no one calls it torture, though it's the same scenario you point out. When an investigator or DA does it, it's coercion at most. When the CIA or mil intel does it, it suddenly becomes torture.
 
Can anyone post a definition of "torture" to which we can agree? Then we can discuss its merits.

BTW, we like to wag a finger at misbehaving Japanese during WWII. Look carefully into the history and you'll see that we (meaning the forces of the USofA) were not pure and innocent of any unpleasantness.
 
BTW, we like to wag a finger at misbehaving Japanese during WWII. Look carefully into the history and you'll see that we (meaning the forces of the USofA) were not pure and innocent of any unpleasantness.
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I'm not aware of any action or actions either official or widespread that came close to the officially sanctioned actions of the Japanese. Individual atrocities might have occurred, but nothing that came close to Nanking, bayonet practice with babies, the officers' racing to see who could behead the most, destroying villages that assisted American aviators, the Batann Death March, or the biological warfare units.
 
Saying such techniques could only be used on foreign terrorists who kills thousand is a cop out. What about good ol' Americans like McVeigh who do such?

Would it have been acceptable to waterboard the church bombers of the Civil Rights era in the South?

Is it principle or expediency? Is it only ok to do to 'dirty' foreigners?
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The priniciple is the prevention of mass casualties. I don't see how it matters who commits the mass casualties.

If I kill someone, am I guilty of murder? Sort of depends on why I killed someone. The ultimate right is the right to self-defense; without that right, no other rights matter.

I would have found it acceptable to waterboard the church bombers. And McVeigh. But it has to be done under certain conditions, just as certain conditions determine whether you killed another person in self-defense or not.

Sleep deprivation and waterboarding don't sound like torture to me. They sound like interrogation techniques. I find it a strange inconsistency that it's acceptable, and valuable, to waterboard members of our military and that isn't torture, but it is torture to do the same to people who would love to saw off our heads individually or incinerate us en masse with nuclear weapons.

Nick Berg wasn't beheaded. That would have been relatively quickly and painless. Instead, his head was sawed off. That took time, agony, and horror. Watch the Nick Berg video - hear him gurgle as he screams through his own blood while his head is being sawed off - and then tell us how our refusal to waterboard terrorists will protect us in any fashion.
 
then tell us how our refusal to waterboard terrorists will protect us in any fashion.
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There are more important things than "protecting" us. I think the fact that our nation is having a discussion about what does and does not constitute torture is just another sign that we are on a moral decline. I don't think I could waterboard someone, and I don't want anyone to do it for me.

Is waterboarding forbidden under Geneva and Hague conventions? I know it doesn't apply to the civilians we have been doing it to, but could we do it to uniformed soldiers as well?
 
Since I have been condemned already, try this one.

Schools are a legitimate target for terrorists because in this country, schools are not defended, and in most cases, very lax in terms of security.

I receive information that a school in a certain part of the country has been targeted and a suspect has been detained. It has been determined the suspect knows who will be initiating the attack and where and when, but will not divulge said information. Secondary sources have indicated the attack will occur within the next three days.

What would be acceptable in getting this information when "Pretty please?" didn't work?

I believe as strongly in the rightness of my position (as a protector of innocent lives) as those who would maim and kill in the belief of thiers.

It would be harder for me to try and comfort a grieving parent of a child who had been blown apart when I feel I did not do EVERYTHING to try and prevent that tragedy.

Do not release me to make war if you cannot accept the war I make.
 
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