I’m reluctant to link to young Conor now that he’s certain to become a full-time Daniels fluffer, but this is a very good point about “ticking bombs”:
The return of the torture debate is striking because its apologists no longer feel the need to advocate for a narrow exception to prevent an American city from being nuked or a busload of children from dying. In the jubilation over getting bin Laden, they’re instead employing this frightening standard: torture of multiple detainees is justified if it might produce a single useful nugget that, combined with lots of other intelligence, helps lead us to the secret location of the highest value terrorist leader many years later. It’s suddenly the new baseline in our renewed national argument.
That’s torture creep.
Ticking time bomb scenarios happen rarely, if ever. The price of obsessing over them, rather than seeing the wisdom in an outright ban? It’s going from “torture rarely, if ever” to “torture whenever it might help kill Al Qaeda’s leader in the distant future” in less than a decade. This is exactly what torture opponents predicted.
freelancer
And they’ll have an alleged dataset of exactly 1 to work from.
The Drake equation has less speculations about hypotheses than this shit.
Zifnab
What’s this “going from”? It was always about torturing whenever and wherever torture was even remotely considerable. Torture first, ask questions later.
The ticking time bomb stuff was just fluff thrown over the top of what the Bush Admin was actually doing. Do you honestly believe the several hundred people we had in Gitmo were all there based on ticking time bomb scenarios? Get real!
At least now we’re dealing in realistic terms. “We tortured. Ten years later, we got Bin Laden. Torture is a success!” is a step forward from “Ticking Time bomb, torture, ???, profit!”
Wag
I read Conor’s post this morning, and agreed with every single word. Well stated, and 100% true.
skippy
naw…dick cheney or donald rumsfeld…now that’s torture creep!
cmorenc
Note that NONE of the torture-effectiveness proponents have, so far, volunteered themselves for experiments to prove its effectiveness, say to see what sorts of delicate or embarrassing information can be extracted from them. Since so many of these proponents purport to also be firmly avowed hetro types who more often than not are on the side against e.g. gays being allowed to serve in the military, the extent to which they’ve personally engaged in any form of homosexual conduct might be an interesting sort of to test by torture-extraction. My guess is that within a fairly short time, most of them could be induced to confessing that they’ve been involved sexually for years with male sheep and goats. The rest might only admit to the sheep part without more extended torture.
KG
here’s something I never got about the ticking time bomb scenario. Let’s say we knew that a bomb was going to go off, and we had a guy who we thought knew where it was… what makes anyone think that by torturing him, he’ll actually give the true location? I mean, LA, Chicago, New York, those are big cities… He could send you to lower Manhattan when the bomb is on the Upper East Side; or to Santa Monica when the bomb is in Beverly Hills.
scav
@KG: Don’t drag reality into things, it gets too confusing.
JPL
@KG: You’re trying to apply logic. There is no logic for those that love the idea of torture.
Jay C
And for their prescience, got roundly abused by virtually every mainstream media outlet (and a large swath of the blogosphere) as pussyfooting dirty-fncking-hippie peacenik terror-loving anti-American wusses, who should enjoy a piping cup of STFU, and leave the job of defending our precious bodily essences to REAL
menAmericans, who alwys know what’s right.That is, when they weren’t being simply ignored or dismissed.
Shoemaker-Levy 9
Yes, and it’s important to point out that this is the best case for torture in the present scenario. And it’s also important to add that it’s a stunning display of amorality to advocate for torture on such a flimsy pretext.
scav
With only minor tweeks, this might serve as justification for killing a lot of babies to prevent the birth of a future king.
PeakVT
@KG: For the ticking time bomb scenario to work, the torturer has to know there is a bomb, has to know that the subject knows where it is, and the subject has to be willing to release the information in exchange for something, probably his life, and, finally, the subject has to have a reason for trusting the torturer’s word. Unlike an open-ended torture situation, it’s quite likely that subject can hold out if he wants, because he knows the torture will end one way or another at some point in the future.
It’s ridiculous, basically.
ETA: I suppose a total wimp could have planted a bomb and would crack, but in the scenario the wingnuts fantasize about, the guy is a hardened terrorist, so he wouldn’t be easy to crack.
WaterGirl
Kind of OT, but has BJ set a record with the 524 comment ‘Not Helping’ post?
Or maybe not completely off topic, reading the 524 comments (and counting) could be torturous.
Edit: Just making a silly joke, it’s not my intention to make light of torture.
Keith
Torture is extrajudicial punishment, plain and simple. All of these “justifications” for it are just ways to back into doing it.
kerFuFFler
Exactly! Keep torture illegal. In the extremely unlikely event that someone successfully tortures someone (preventing a disaster) under dire extenuating circumstances (“ticking bomb”) either the jury will acquit, or they can beg to be pardoned. But torturing as a regular means of gaining intel will lose us more intel in the long run. Who would be willing to report suspicious behavior if they had good reason to believe that the suspicious party would be tortured rather than merely having to face increased scrutiny and/or questioning?
'Niques
OMG! Are we through the Looking Glass, here? Didn’t we have the same exact discussion a year or so ago? Wingnut is in re-runs already?
gex
@cmorenc: I like how you think. In as much as I approve of torture, which is not at all. (Not implying that you do.)
I’m really tired of the manliness issue defining the right’s politics so much. Torture is about being tough. Abortion is about controlling women. Gay marriage implies spouses are EQUAL, so we can’t have that. If those guys could get over 1) their daddy issues and 2) the fact that they can’t birth a child it seems like we could start to have reasonable debates on issues. But not when they have to assert their manliness (or lack thereof) into every issue.
Cat Lady
@WaterGirl:
No, I think the record is a 1000+ comment thread from last year where Greenwald and his minions showed up to call us all cultists of Dear Leader. Good times.
SFAW
“There are four lights!”
On the other hand …
You bleeding-heart-Lieberals just don’t get it. As anyone who follows Jack Bauer knows – torture works! Sometimes even before they go to commercials.
sneezy
Fixed.
gex
@kerFuFFler: Yup. And from now on, our soldiers can face combatants who know it is better to die than to be taken alive. That should work well for them.
Bobby Thomson
@scav:
With a few notable exceptions, this strategy is 100% effective.
Calouste
Totally OT, but I just saw a headline flashing on the BBC that the Brazilian Supreme Court has approved same-sex partnerships by 10-0. Any bets that the US will be the last country in the Americas to have nation-wide same-sex marriage/partnership rights?
slag
Whatever happened to just a few bad apples? Into the compost bin of history already?
No one of Importance
When the first suggestions came out that bin Laden’s position may have been detected through the use of torture, I thought, no – finding him was not worth sacrificing the inarguable stance that torture is utterly wrong. For one thing, he wasn’t that powerful any more, and finding him was more a psychological than military victory.
Now I’ve sat through days of insanity (mostly here but filtered through other sites like the Southern Poverty Law Centers) I’m even more sure torture was unjustifiable for such an end. Even if it was a psychological victory, the Republicans, the wingnuts, and Joe Beese and his kind are doing all they can to destroy the value of the act. The idea that torture could be used so Joe Beese could have yet another stick to beat Obama’s arse with, is sickening.
Torture in the very, very limited sense of preventing a massive, present threat to many civilians, is still sickening but I know in my heart if it was my child or husband or lover on the bus with the bomb, I wouldn’t be too upset about a terrorist getting bruised if it saved their lives. I’d be sickened at myself, but I would think the price was worth it – if it worked.
And the point about torture is that it so rarely works, destroys the souls of those involved in it, and coarsens the soul of the nations involved in it. The price is very, very high – so you want to be damn sure it’s the only possible way to get the information you need to do something a hell of a lot more important than killing one has-been lunatic.
Though knowing bin Laden sleeps with the fishes gives me a happy. I guarantee it gives almost everyone in the world a happy – and those people aren’t paying the slightest attention to the poo-flinging primates in the political zoo.
Chad N Freude
@scav: I am so going to steal that.
mclaren
There’s a much worse downside to torture creep, and people like have been pointing this out for more than 5 years.
The real torture creep occurs when torture starts out as permissible for extreme crimes — nuclear terrorism, biowarfare, whatever. Then, gradually, torture becomes permissible for major crimes: here’s this guy who’s an alleged serial rapist and he’s got a partner and the partner may be holding a girl and raping her so let’s torture him and get his partner. Or child molestation: this guy was alleged to have molested this kid so let’s torture him to find the body and give the parents some closure.
Then torture becomes permissible for serious crimes. This guy is a mafioso so let’s torture him to get proof on his accomplices. This guy is part of a gang of bank robbers who’ve murdered a bunch of innocent security guards, so let’s torture him to find out the next bank they’re going to rob so we can save another innocent bank guard.
Then torture becomes permissible for any crime. Hey buddy, you ran a red light. Gonna admit it, or do we have to taser your testicles again?
This isn’t hypothetical. The Israeli Supreme Court put a stop to torture because when the Israeli security forces started torturing Palestinians accused of being in league with suicide bombers who were blowing up pizza parlors, before long the Israeli security forces wound up torturing everyone. Torture started out as a rare exception but it wound up being just another routine tool of police work.
That’s what’s going to happen with torture if we don’t put a stop to it. It’s going to become a routine tool of police work. If you get arrested, you’ll get tortured until you confess.
People forget that this is the way law enforcement used to work. Back in the middle ages, everyone who was arrested was routinely tortured. It was the standard way of investigating crimes. Want to go back to that? No?
Then ban torture. It’s the only way.
Suffern ACE
@Zifnab: Well there’s always torture for no real information gathering purpose at all. Some might argue that we’re sending information to certain groups of people and not gathering information at all.
Batocchio
It’s a good point, but there’s been “torture creep” for a long time. The Bushies tortured because they wanted to, not for any other reason. They were warned torture didn’t work for intel, and warned it would make trials difficult. They did it anyway.
One of the defining features of torture apologists and proponents is that they don’t want to look at all the evidence against torture, and against the supposed virtue of the torturers.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@mclaren: We’ve already had tough guy cops creeping towards torture as well. There’s where the creep comes home to roost. But the people who support torture are not in any of the demos most likely to receive it, so they don’t care.
Omnes Omnibus
@Batocchio:
This is pretty much why anyone tortures. Posturing, sadism, or some combination of the two.
henry
Let’s take it personal. If I “knew” my family or community was facing disaster if I didn’t extract information I “knew” someone had then I could, as an individual, resort to torture. But after doing so, successful or not, I would want to be imprisoned for the rest of my life because allowing torture is not in the morals a civilized society lives by.
arguingwithsignposts
For the record, let’s just remember that young Conor also said he had “long admired” Jonah Goldberg’s writings. Broke clock and all that.
opal
@mclaren:
I was under the impression that we had done so.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
Ticking time bomb scenarios happen rarely, if ever. The price of obsessing over them, rather than seeing the wisdom in an outright ban? It’s going from “torture rarely, if ever” to “torture whenever it might help kill Al Qaeda’s leader in the distant future” in less than a decade. This is exactly what torture opponents predicted.
Timothy McVeigh was a white, tax-protesting anti-government terrorist. Therefore, America should be torturing white, tax-protesting, anti-government dissidents to possibly prevent the next Oklahoma City bombing.
henry
Let’s take it personal again. If I was an American soldier with Osama bin Laden in front of me, unarmed, trying to surrender, I would kill him. I believe it would be better for our country in our hearts-and-minds “war on terrorism”. But having done so, I would hope to be court-martialed and spend the rest of my life in a military prison. Because assassination is not in the morals a civilized society lives by.
Brian R.
Off topic, but Lawrence O’Donnell is kicking the everloving shit out of Condoleeza Rice right now on MSNBC. I’m waiting for the ref to stop the fight.
jwb
@Suffern ACE: No one who knows what they are doing tortures for information. Torture can inspire fear and it can force people to say—and, according to some, come to believe—what you want them to. I have always presumed that those in charge of torturing during the Bush administration understood this perfectly well and what they wanted is for the subjects of torture to say certain things that would justify the actions the Bush administration wanted to take anyway.
Katie5
@mclaren: Torture creeps because it also damages the humanity the torturer.
MattR
@Brian R.: I hope Rachel wasn’t supposed to be the ref :)
Unfortunately I missed the actual interview with Rice, but I got a pretty good feel for it based on the extended toss between shows.
Steeplejack
@mclaren:
We have already seen this slippery slope with tasers. When they were introduced they were sold as a humane alternative to the use of lethal force. Now you can get tased for mouthing off to a cop or being that drunken idiot who thinks it’s a good idea to hope the fence and run around on the ball field.
stuckinred
@MattR: If it was a fight they woulda stopped it!
Katie5
Joe Scarborough had a perverse twist on the “Did they or did they not extract actionable intelligence from torture?” Apparently, interrogation is complicated (and foggy, I guess). For us to argue that the intelligence did not come from torture is the same as questioning from whence the actionable intelligence came. This apparently is naive and so typical of a leftist.
MikeJ
@henry:
By next week you’ll say he was handcuffed. The week after he will have been delivering a baby.
PS
The main point of torture is pour encourager les autres — there’s actually not much value in doing it unless people know you are doing it and therefore treat you with the obsequious respect you crave. Well, there’s the sheer fun of it, I suppose, if you like that sort of thing. I don’t. I think it’s disgusting and deservedly illegal. I am frankly ashamed that I live in a country (a world) where even a minority of people condone torture. But they do, and I am not even talking about gray areas of definition at the margin. I suppose I should forgive them, but I have a hard time with that.
Stillwater
@jwb: and what they wanted is for the subjects of torture to say certain things that would justify the actions the Bush administration wanted to take anyway.
Not to go all NUTTY here, but could you be referring to AQ’s known presence in a tantalizingly unknown location northeastsouthandwestsomewhat of Baghdad doing unknown harmful knowns with the consent and known cooperation of unknown Saddam?
stuckinred
@henry: Sheeeeeet, you’d shit yourself do death getting on the chopper.
WaterGirl
@Cat Lady: Now that you say that, i do remember that epic thread. GG doesn’t interest me much so i didn’t read it.
Edit: my first post from my iPad and it gave me he mobile version, yay!
Elliecat
Don’t you people know that it doesn’t matter if torture produces false information? The guy I heard on NPR this morning (some military or CIA guy, didn’t catch the name) explained it all. The “harsh techniques” are not used for getting information, they are used for “inducing compliance.” After a prisoner has lost all hope, learned resistance is futile, etc., then they will be willing to give up all their intel in regular interrogations.
Gosh, doesn’t that make it SO much more justifiable?
BTW, this might be a good time to start planning activities to observe the annual United Nations International Day in Support of Torture Victims and Survivors (June 26th).
stuckinred
A germane comment from one of Pat Lang’s posse:
Corner Stone
@SFAW: Super sweet ST:TNG reference there.
Mike M
I just watched Elliot Spitzer interview John Yoo. It was the first time I have ever heard Yoo speak, and wow, what a piece of work! I didn’t read his article in today’s WSJ, but apparently he is on Obama’s case because, since his administration began, we have killed rather than captured Al Qaeda leaders. “Not one person has been added to Guantanamo since Obama took office,” he said, with outright disdain. In Yoo’s view, those people were valuable subjects for interrogation, and the president was irresponsible for not assigning the right resources to secure a live capture rather than being forced to kill.
When pushed by Spitzer, Yoo refused to concede that waterboarding was torture (“We stopped just short of torture”) and insisted that even though Khalid Sheikh Mohammed lied about OBL’s courier even after being waterboarded 183 times, that lie was still an important piece of intelligence that we would not have had otherwise.
Some people from the Bush administration are so self-righteous about their actions, that they will not concede the least bit of doubt about their actions. And they will not acknowledge any positive contribution from the Obama administration, despite this week’s events.
fasteddie9318
Nobody is watching this fine collection of Republican Titans?
Corner Stone
@Steeplejack:
Or not producing your ID quick enough. Or having your radio set to the wrong station. Or making the mistake of having your hands cuffed behind your back while you’re face down on the ground.
Corner Stone
@Shoemaker-Levy 9:
On any pretext.
KG
@Bobby Thomson: the only examples I can think of are fiction. And Oedipus was the most believable.
Suffern ACE
http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/fox-business-reads-list-people-viewers-want
Stealing Freelancers link. Torture creep happens as well, of course, when serious new anchors clown like this. Honestly, I think Keith Olberman is a bit of a blowhard to talks too much without thinking. What actionable intelligence do they think they could gather from him that he wouldn’t have provided simply by talking all the time?
Corner Stone
@kerFuFFler:
I despise this rationale.
“Hey! Had to, right? He was brown. Bygones, bitches.”
mclaren
@opal:
Then you are mistaken. Torture continues at the second secret prison at Bagram airbase. Witnesses describe being tortured during Obama’s presidency. The torture continues.
(We now pause to pre-emptively debunk your lies when you claim “this is torture that occurred under Bush, not Obama.” That’s a lie. This Red Cross report dates from May 2010. Unless you want to try to convince us that George W. Bush was still president in May 2010, there is no alternative to the conclusion that Barack Obama has signed off on torture at the 2nd secret prison at Bagram airbase.)
Moreover, torture has now spread and widened to the point where police today routinely use “pain compliance.” That’s torture, in case you haven’t figured it out.
Here’s one of the most grotesque examples of “pain compliance” by police — tasering a boy with a broken back 19 times because he refuses to get up. This has now become routine police procedure.
America is now Torture Nation. There are no longer any demographic groups which can count on not being tortured.
Corner Stone
@No one of Importance:
Yes. Let’s be god damned sure when we crush that boy’s testicles it’s going to mean something good for us in return.
alwhite
The ends do not justify the means – the means tend to dictate the end.
we are becoming what we hate
Corner Stone
@opal: No. We haven’t. That is clear.
KG
@fasteddie9318: just flipped over… Herman Cain just told the moderator that his experts were wrong about the Fair Tax.
arguingwithsignposts
Why no clown car fail parade open thread?
TD
@henry: It’s possible that you would feel that way if you were *actually* in such a situation, but I kind of doubt it.
Thomas Mann penned a few paragraphs in The Magic Mountain in which one of the characters (Herr Setembrini) reprimands another (Hans Castorp, I think) for naively believing that those who suffer from illness are particularly brave or special for enduring their affliction. Setembrini presses Hans on the point that he is viewing their predicament–their illness–through the eyes of a healthy person; what Hans is *imagining* they are experiencing, according to the Italian, is significantly different than what they are actually *experiencing*. Sickness provides its own narcotic, numbing its sufferer to its “abnormality”. The healthy, when they empathize with the sick, can only do so to a limited degree.
This is a roundabout way of saying that you are looking through the eyes of that hypothetical soldier, and through those eyes taking a very bold action and nobly accepting a very severe punishment in return. You are, however, looking through those eyes with the eyes of someone unable to fully appreciate the emotional reaction both preceding and proceeding from, that particular action and the consequences that spring from it.
It just seems to me that if anyone was anyone making similarly glib/self-righteous (don’t mean to be harsh) arguments 10 years ago on the subject of torture, I bet it would be the exact same folks now doing their best to avoid 50 years hard-labor.
Most of us find rationalizations to avoid following our diets, I’m sure when it comes to breaking rocks for half-a-century…
Edit: This is a response to Henry’s post at 36.
MikeJ
@fasteddie9318:
I find it amusing that AP says they won’t file one word on it.
mclaren
Incidentally, the ‘ticking time bomb’ scenario makes no sense whatsoever.
If a fanatical Islamic fundamentalist set up a nuclear weapon in a major U.S. city with, say, a 12-hour timer, logic suggests that this would make the Islamic fundamentalist much more resistant to torture.
All he would have to do is hold out for 12 hours. The terrorist would know that no matter how bad the torture got, he only had to last 12 hours. Then it wouldn’t matter. Moreover, any torture severe enough to break him fast would almost certainly kill him (acid poured down his throat, acetylene torch applies to his eyeballs, etc.) while any torture not severe enough to immediately break him (waterboarding, for example –which takes time, and thus would allow the victim to count down: that’s 1 waterboarding with a duration of 10 minutes and 2 minutes for the doctor to check him to make sure he’s not drowning or dying or having a heart attack, so I only have to endure 49 more waterboardings before the nuclear weapon detonates and it doesn’t matter anymore) would also most likely not be extreme enough to force him to break when he knew he had only to hold out for X hours in order for his plot to succeed. As a practical matter, this would make him impossible to break by torture.
So the one scenario cited by people as the rationale for torturing a terror suspect is the very scenario in which torture would be least likely to work.
sneezy
@PeakVT:
And even before all that, you have to know you have the right guy in the first place. On TV and in the movies, you always have the right guy. In real life, how do you know? What is the standard of certainty that must be met before you’re allowed to torture?
stuckinred
The endless loop.
opal
@mclaren:
Just out of curiosity, who would you like to see elected president in 2012?
KG
I think Santorum just explained why he’s such a dick… his grandmother didn’t speak English, and his father refused to teach him Italian because “English is the language of success in America.”
Uh huh, so all those people who grew up speaking multiple languages had no chance of success.
ETA: ok, I can’t watch anymore… back to Swamp People.
cleek
@mclaren:
from the quoted article:
note he doesn’t say the shouting was at him, or intended to keep him awake. he doesn’t say they shouted at him to keep him awake. it is, simply, a loud and unpleasant place. as you would expect a jail to be.
yet you claim this is torture.
stuckinred
@opal: Leon Trotsky, of course.
Suffern ACE
@MikeJ: No way. The same AP that posted a news brief today covering the sword vigilante’s opinion that he should receive part of the $25 million Osama Bounty can’t be bothered to cover a debate of Republican candidates?
Corner Stone
@cleek: This is snark, right? Because you wouldn’t be doing the straight man routine on something so stupid and obvious, right?
“Noise machines fill their cells with constant sound, and prisoners are sleep deprived as a matter of policy, with each cell monitored by a camera, so the authorities will know when someone is falling asleep and come to wake them. “
arguingwithsignposts
@Corner Stone:
Sort of like a college town during bar crawl weekend.
ETA: *that* is snark
stuckinred
@Corner Stone: “Some” would consider your posts torture too!
SFAW
Corner Stone –
Thanks. And it was germane, too. Or, as germane as a work of fiction can be.
Of course, the real point was his comment during the follow-up session with Troi. (At least, I think it was Troi.)
Suffern ACE
@KG: Perhaps his father knew what his grandmother would want to speak with him about and decided to spare his son the dressing down.
MikeJ
@Suffern ACE: The debate rules said no photographs during the event, only beforehand. They said if we can’t send our photographer to cover it, we won’t send anybody to cover it. And we won’t send a photog with rules like that in place.
WaterGirl
Stuckinred, I can’t figure out how to reply from my iPad. Help?
Edit:also can’t click on @Whoever to see what a reply is about.
arguingwithsignposts
@MikeJ: Isn’t the thing being presented live on TV? If not, why not? If so, why the dickhead photog rules. And third, AP has no right to be such WATBs about coverage rules given how much bullshit they put up with in the white house briefing room.
mclaren
@opal:
Someone who can’t be elected president in 2012 because he’s Jewish: Russ Feingold.
As a matter of practical reality, Feingold’s political career is over because he tried to swim against the tide of Torture Nation and Forever War.
I’ll wind up voting for Obama when the Republicans nominate some lunatic like Huckabee or Palin or Bachmann, and that doesn’t mean that Barack Obama shouldn’t be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors including violating the 4th and 5th and 6th and 8th and 14th amendments of the constitution by engaging in murder, conspiracy to commit murder, murder with special circumstances (torture), conspiracy to commit kidnapping, aggravated assault, obstruction of justice, perjury, conspiracy to destroy evidence, reckless endangerment, depraved indifference, abuse of authority, miscarriage of justice under color of authority, illegal search and seizure, and so on. The list of indictments would run to 20 pages or so but would be short compared to the Manhattan-telephone-book-sized list of felonies and war crimes committed by Bush and his cronies.
Suffern ACE
@MikeJ: Ah. I see. Control freaks are being controlling freaks is hardly news.
MattR
@Elliecat: I think I heard a former Bush administration official make the same argument. IANAL, but the first thing that popped into my mind was that it seemed like they were pretty much admitting that their actions met the legal definition of torture. I also thought it was notable that it was new spin that I had never heard while Bush was in power.
opal
@stuckinred:
Oh well. It’s the journey that matters.
cleek
@Corner Stone:
the prisoner in the second article, which FDL quotes, said he can’t sleep because of the shouting. his words. he doesn’t say the shouting is at him, or intended to keep him awake, or is torture. he says there is too much shouting to sleep. it could be anything – imagine all the things in the world that lead to “shouting”. could be a ping pong match, could be people watching TV, could be interrogations in the next cell. could be anything. but the article doesn’t tell us. FDL says that’s torture.
the BBC article, quotes the prisoner as saying:
it doesn’t say what kind of machine. doesn’t say if the machine was intended to keep people awake. could’ve been an AC unit, an ice machine, a karaoke machine, a 500-hp rhinestone-studded mechanical bull. the article doesn’t say. it doesn’t say “Noise machines fill their cells with constant sound for the purposes of torture or sleep deprivation.” what you quoted was 100% pure FDL spin.
arguingwithsignposts
@WaterGirl: click on the “link” button once and the “reply” button shows up.
mclaren
@cleek:
SHORTER CLEEK: “It’s no worse than what a fraternity does when they haze a new pledge!”
Next up? Cleek will channel Don Rumsfeld and claim stress positions “aren’t torture because I stand at my desk eight hours a day.”
What we need instead of a pie filter is a “Cleek filter” that replaces all of Cleek’s posts with the phrase The constitution is just a goddamned piece of paper!
Corner Stone
@stuckinred: Shouldn’t you be reminiscing with someone about a bar or band in GA that ceased to exist 25 years ago?
SFAW
opal @ 70
Either Harold Stassen, Eugene V. Debs, or Gus Hall.
Or Eddie Quinn.
(Speaking only for myself, not for mclaren.)
Corner Stone
@cleek: You are hilarious dog. Keep fucking that chicken.
Batocchio
@SFAW:
That was a good Star Trek reference (and one of TNG’s best episodes), but that device was adapted from 1984… and probably some real-life stories. That’s not a slam; I think it’s further credit to the ST:TNG writers that they borrowed from the best, and did it well. (Incidentally, driftglass wrote a post using a clip from that show several months back.)
Cacti
@mclaren:
Maybe he could run on his vote to confirm John Roberts as Chief Justice instead.
cleek
@mclaren:
that’s right: FDL baits the hook. you swallow it. and i’m the fool.
Little Boots
No Conor …
EVERRRRRR!!!!!
Corner Stone
“We only have someone telling us his cell was filled with noise and guards checked to make sure he couldn’t fall asleep.”
“But that doesn’t mean his cell was supposed to be filled with noise, or the guards were planning to make sure he couldn’t sleep.”
Little Boots
Actually, I don’t mind Conor
Actually, I don’t mind anyone. what the hell is my problem?
SFAW
Batocchio –
OK. It’s been a large number of years since I read 1984, so thanks for the ref.
But I agree re: the episode being one of the best.
Omnes Omnibus
@mclaren: Jesus, are you capable of telling the difference between an incorrect statement and a lie? Sometimes people are wrong about a fact, sometimes they are misinformed, and sometimes they simply misstate something.
Little Boots
And I don’t even mind, no, actually, I actually like Corner Stone.
Little Boots
And Omnes, though he can be a bit lawyerly.
SFAW
Ah, putting the “lit” in Little Boots, I see.
+12?
mclaren
@Omnes Omnibus:
When a person consistently makes “mistakes” time and time again, after a while you begin to realize what’s really going on.
Why not rely on the old standby? He wasn’t lying, he was only joking!
Or you could try the classic Nixon gambit: that wasn’t a lie, that statement is “inoperative.”
arguingwithsignposts
@mclaren:
Yes, we realized with you and joe beese a long time ago.
Little Boots
@SFAW:
do not start with me!
(although that’s sort of accurate, yes.)
mclaren
@Cacti:
You have a point. Even Feingold descended into the swamp.
SFAW
Too late
WereBear
Torture is for confessions; not information.
Maybe I’m weird; I don’t mind the pragmatic approach to torture being used as an argument against it. It friggin’ doesn’t work, mmmmkay?
So don’t be stupid AND sadistic.
Little Boots
@WereBear:
Exactly.
mclaren
@arguingwithsignposts:
Great! Provide evidence that I made a mistake and let’s start with my citation of the Red Cross evidence above.
Provide hard evidence that the Red Cross testimony about Bagram airbase is in error, or stand revealed as a character assassin and liar.
Omnes Omnibus
@Little Boots: Sorry. Occupational hazard.
Little Boots
@Omnes Omnibus:
yeah, yeah, yeah, the important thing is that I get an injunction against SFAW. Can you help?
arguingwithsignposts
@mclaren:
Well, I’d have to wade through 9^25566 pixels of bullshit doom and gloom you’ve posted on these threads for the last umteen months to document them all.
First I don’t have to assassinate your character. You do quite well at that your own self.
Second, oooh, I’m quaking in my internet boots there, you libertarian doomsayer.
opal
@mclaren:
If you’re talking about the taxi driver, that has nothing to do with Obama.
Omnes Omnibus
@Little Boots: Before I answer that, I have a question. How much can you pony up for a retainer?
arguingwithsignposts
@Omnes Omnibus: spoken like a true lawyer.
SFAW
Two things:
1) Omnes will just steer you to eemom
2) I don’t think an injunction is the
droid you’re looking forhelp you need.Omnes Omnibus
@WereBear: As I said on one of yesterday’s threads: Do you really want to be the bad guy? And if so, do you want to be the dumb bad guy?
SFAW
Despite Omnes’s “retainer” comment, you’ll still get steered to eemom, or perhaps Glenn Greenwald.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@arguingwithsignposts: It gives them an event to point to where they were “tough” with politicians. They’ll crack down like this like nobody’s business and later become perfectly compliant stenographers so they can earn their keep.
Little Boots
@Omnes Omnibus:
Not a whole lot, buddy. For friendship (and by friendship, I mean occasional commentary on Balloon Juice. which counts. sorta). Okay, not much.
Omnes Omnibus
@SFAW:
Depends on the retainer. I steered people to eemom the other day because I don’t need that 3am call ( I am not running for president) from jailed and drunken strippermongers. I am not judging though.
Omnes Omnibus
@Little Boots: Have you considered Glenn Greenwald?
Little Boots
@Omnes Omnibus:
Oh god, all those words!
SFAW
I guess it’s not perjury if you haven’t been placed under oath, but still ….
SFAW
There’s that damn echo again.
mclaren
@arguingwithsignposts:
Shorter arguingwithsignposts:
Omnes Omnibus
@mclaren: It is more fun.
Corner Stone
@cleek:
I’ve read this a few times now.
You are one sick motherfucker.
You really want to stake out this position? The “shit happens” to people in our custody position?
Little Boots
corner stone is angry.
Judas Escargot
Aren’t people awful?
cleek
@Corner Stone:
that is a spectacularly bad interpretation of what i wrote. you are truly and profoundly wrong.
with reading comprehension and strawman-crafting skills like that, you could write for FDL.
Corner Stone
@cleek: No, cleek. Stop running away from what you wrote here by trying to bullshit us with FDL nonsense.
The BS you’ve put down here isn’t something that can be parsed the way you’d like to try it on.
opal
@Corner Stone:
Continuing with my informal poll, who would you like to see elected president in 2012?
cleek
@Corner Stone:
WTF?
i write that FDL has no evidence for two of its central claims (i’ll give you camera/guard thing – that’s the least dismissible part of both articles) and you claim that i want to put it all off to “shit happens” ? i never wrote anything like “shit happens”. i wrote that FDL is hyperbolizing – because they are.
it’s not that i’m cool with torture, it’s that those two articles are weak and sensationalized; they don’t substantiate the claims FDL makes of them. yet you two are quoting FDL’s even-more-hyperbolic interpretation of them as fact. and then you make up some bullshit position for me?
what the fuck is wrong with you?
mclaren
The debate on torture so far involves exactly two alternatives: [1] America tortures because of sadism (the Democratic position), or [2] America tortures because it works (the Republican position).
Everyone seems to have overlooked a third alternative, which seems far more likely than either of these two.
Namely, [3] America tortures because our torture methodology was dervied from Communist torture methods used during the Korean war to induce prisoners to lie.
The evidence seems clear that the Bush administration tortured KSM and others precisely in order to get them to lie. The drunk-driving C student ordered people tortured in order to get them to lie to back up the increasingly shaky claims about WMDs, Saddam’s alleged involvement in 9/11, and all the rest of that provably false nonsense.
Why did Bush & company want to invade Iraq and crank up a global war on terror?
Take a look at the 3-part documentary The Power Of Nightmares.
The thesis of this series of films is that when progress began to falter in the industrialized nations at the end of the 1970s and politicians became unable to deliver on promises to create a better world for the voters, the pols realized that they could still retain power by promising to protect voters from increasingly lurid threats. By the early 2000s, the most powerful Western politicians were those able to create the most bizarrely lurid and most psychologically potent nightmares.
The entire War on Terror is largely a scam. There have been fewer terrorist incidents in the last 10 years there were in the heyday of international terrorism, the 1970s, when Carlos the Jackal ran amok financed by the Soviets, and the Red Brigade ran around shooting European magistrates in the knees with machine guns.
The scam War on Terror proves tremendously profitable to both Democrats and Republicans. It helps both parties keep power, it provides both parties with talking points, it creates vast fiefdoms together with infinite largesse from the public trough for administering those bureaucratic empires. Torture is one of the means by which this scam gets perpetrated. Waterboard some schmuck into admitting that he was armed with eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil scaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaary superweapons, or that he intended to use eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil scaaaaaaaaaaaaaary superwweapons, and you can squeeze more trillions out of the American taxpayer. Cushy jobs, nice limos, big office buildings…and when the American people demand jobs, you tell ’em, sorry! Can’t create any more jobs. And when the American people demand streetlights that work and roads without potholes, you tell ’em, sorry! Don’t have enough money to keep the streetlights on or pave the roads.
But hey…listen, American people, at least we can keep you safe.
And where’s the proof we can keep you safe? Wheel in the guy we tortured and let him gibber about the made-up bullshit. Jose Padilla tortured until his mind broke — everyone knows he’s the dirty bomber! Radioactivity! Terror! Nuclear death! FACE-MELTING SCREAMING MUTANT H-BOMB HORROR!
Except of course that Padilla never built a dirty bomb and never had anything to do with any radioactive materials…but no one remembers that, because after he was tortured until his brain melted, he was willing to tell anyone who would listen that he was Strangelovian monster madman armed with TERRIFYING NUCLEAR DEATH!
mclaren
@Corner Stone:
But…but…that’s the entire purpose of the cleek pie filter!
arguingwithsignposts
@mclaren: Shorter mclaren: tl;dr. flame away firebot.
mclaren
@arguingwithsignposts:
ts;cts.
“Too shallow, can’t take seriously.”
Yevgraf (fka Michael)
My rule of thumb on a torture policy is that it should only be undertaken if you have a belief that the circumstances and consequences are so profound that you would get a Presidential pardon for your crime.
DKF
@skippy:
Dick Cheney is the Torture Creep! He’s a-comin’ to get ya!
kerFuFFler
@gex: You have misread me. I said torture should be ILLEGAL and that it is a very poor way of gaining info. The reason you cite is just another reason that torturing creates problems for the side that tortures.