US Torture Report

[Jubal]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-30420364

Not that this is news to anyone, but it turns out that torture is ineffective and that America tortured a hell of a lot of people in very brutal conditions.

I think releasing this report was the right thing to do; there should undoubtedly be prosecutions as a result, though I bet there won't be.

[Pentagathus]

Yarp.

[comrade_general]

Didn't torture lead to the finding of Osama? Or at least "advanced interrogation" which is different.

[Pentagathus]

I'm pretty sure the leading dude on the osama finding team thing specifically said they didn't use torture to find him because its not effective.

[comrade_general]

Of course he would say that.

[Jubal]

Advanced interrogation is only "not torture" in a purely legal sense.

And Bin Laden was found using conventional techniques, not interrogation. It's been well known for years that torture very rarely provides reliable evidence. It's much beloved by the security services because they're judged on how much evidence they get more than the eventual accuracy of it half the time, but pretty much zilch useful information has come out of torture and a huge number of Americans around the world have been put in very great danger as a result of its use.

[comrade_general]

Advanced interrogation is only "not torture" in a purely legal sense.

No it's things like not letting people sleep by playing loud music. Similar to things that are done to our own military recruits except with the aim of breaking their will instead of creating a killing machine.

[Jubal]

Enforced sleep deprivation and things like that are forms of torture by most definitions*. The fact you do inhumane things to your own armed forces doesn't make it more okay to do them to other people - especially when, as this report has pretty clearly noted, you get basically no benefit from it. It's very simply a form of cruelty that has no reasonable evidence to back up its usefulness.

*See, for example, Chinese water torture, which I'm sure the US government wouldn't consider "torture", but pretty definitely and objectively is.

[comrade_general]

What about locking someone up in a prison cell?

[Jubal]

That isn't putting them under direct and continual physical stress*. If you're in prison you can still stand up, sit down, sleep, eat, etc. There's an obvious difference between that and forcing someone into particular physical positions or states of consciousness in order to damage their mental state.

*enforced sleep deprivation is a physical stress, since your body physically needs sleep to function.

[comrade_general]

What about the psychological stress?

[Jubal]

Well, there's clearly a cost-benefit analysis there. I'm of the opinion that we should basically only collectively do things to people as a society when a) it doesn't breach a right to some basic level of dignity and b) it can be proven that the disbenefit to the individual is counteracted by the benefit to society as a whole.

It is clear that torture and advanced interrogation methods fail on both points, firstly because it does destroy basic dignity and secondly because we gain no benefit from it. Prison for individuals who would otherwise be dangerous to society* can be justified on the grounds that if we let them out they might kill people. Nonetheless I think there is a basic standard of welfare that should be provided in prisons, not least because I firmly believe (and it's not like there's a shortage of evidence to back me up on this one) that America's torture programmes have created a great deal of worldwide resentment that is to this day decreasing vastly the safety of US citizens worldwide.

*Not that I'm saying non-dangerous criminals should never go to prison, but prisons for people who aren't dangerous should fundamentally focus on rehabilitating the individual rather than locking them up. Scandinavia's model works well here.

[comrade_general]

What about using a truth serum during a regular interrogation? Can the interrogator raise their voice? Make threats?

[Jubal]

Truth serums have never been proven to give any benefit at all (at least, in finding out the truth). I think I'd say that interrogators can threaten and raise their voice in that I don't think those things necessarily violate the rights of the suspect, but that it seems from the available evidence that that's unlikely to help much.

Obviously there is a case of "where do you draw the line" as to what are acceptable tactics - but I think this report makes very clear that torture and many forms of advanced interrogation are pretty much wholly ineffective as well as inhumane. It's telling of course that the most outspoken Republican in favour of the report's findings is also pretty much the only one in congress who's personally had to endure a number of these techniques. If it's cruel, useless, and endangers Americans around the globe, why allow the security services to do it?

[comrade_general]

Indeed, but I know I would be much more inclined to give up information if not doing so would involve a chainsaw and my kneecaps.

How would you go about getting information from someone?