Is torture ever acceptable?

[CraigMac]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programme...me/9183832.stm

[japanpimp]

The problem we have now is that recently everyone is talking about torture and screwing up what it means. News, TV, etc...
Torture has nothing to do with interrogation. Many people are confusing interrogation with torture. That being said, Torture is wrong. Torture like peeling the skin off a prisoner of war just to send a message to the enemy that you mean business. Or burning someone in hot oil, or having horses rip them apart as punishment or in order to kill them slowly in the most painful way imaginable. That stuff is wrong.

But, using various means, whatever means necessary that do not result in death, to get information out of someone is not torture. That is called interrogation. And I am 100% in favor of that.

[Humility]

Basically was Japanpimp said.

Waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and other so called "Psychological tortures" and such are not ends unto themselves. They are supposed to break down the prisoner's mental barriers and get them into a suggestive state. Its a power play, you need to put it into the prisoner's mind that they are helpless and that you are something more then just human.

This makes them incapable of beating lie detector tests and easily manipulated into giving reliable information. Ask them a mix of questions that you know the answer to and that you don't know and the prisoner will be too afraid to risk lying. Its a massive mind game.

Although all the torture and such can easily be skipped if they could use the truth serum as that gets them into the suggestive state quickly. But thats illegal.

[jorbaud]

I personally feel it is best to interrogate terrorists using any means. We gain valuable information that will save countless lives of innocent people. We are in war and we need information about upcoming attacks, names and location of leaders, other people in cells.

I do not think we should just go kidnap suspected people. We should know positively about the status of that person. If we only suspect the person, I feel we should only interrogate them like police do, no waterboarding or anything. But once we know for sure or are pretty sure we should get the most information out of them at any cost.

[Moghedien]

No Japanpimp that is torture.
•anguish: extreme mental distress
•unbearable physical pain
•agony: intense feelings of suffering; acute mental or physical pain; "an agony of doubt"; "the torments of the damned"
•torment: torment emotionally or mentally
•distortion: the act of distorting something so it seems to mean something it was not intended to mean
•subject to torture; "The sinners will be tormented in Hell, according to the Bible"
•the deliberate, systematic, or wanton infliction of physical or mental suffering by one or more persons in an attempt to force another person to yield information or to make a confession or for any other reason; "it required unnatural torturing to extract a confession"
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

First of with current laws in the USA the Federal Government does not even need the to prove you are guilty even on US citizens. They can torture you to yield pain. The truth serum might be illegal by international standards but the US federal Government have used it on people.

[DoubleM]

To people you don't know then no. To your little brother or sister then hell yes.

[Fallbreeze]

At times, it does save lives, but I would have to step in on the 'no' side of the debate. Waterboarding and other 'interrogation aids' may not be immediately lethal, but the human body cannot be 100% reliable for survival, even with those methods. IF I had to rely on interrogation methods, I'd use hypnosis. I know there are ways to block a hypnotherapists, but I'd rather use that, and fail, but still have the person alive to try other ways, then potentially cause enough fear and panic to potentially cause the person to die of a heart attack.

Also, what are we teaching our children, if we do use torture as an interrogation technique? That it's okay to torture your spouse to find out whether they've been cheating on you, because that's how the government gets its information? Or your child, to find out where they're hanging out at after school?

[Rodri]

Torture always delivers accurate results?
So Spain at the time of the first inquisition was populated by a massive number of witches and demon worshipers?
(It must have been, as they all confessed under torture even though they knew a confession would lead to a death sentence)

In a recent documentary, Iraqi insurgents (freedom fighters?) said of Abu Graib prison that as an Iraqi, if you weren't an insurgent when you went in there, then you most likely were when you came out.
So that worked out well too, didn't it?

Terrorists? Isn't the threat of torture a type of terrorism?

[Moghedien]

There have been instances where torture has produced results like KSM. But we have proven from other sources that he did have have information. Alot of the people tortured had no information. So they made up stuff hoping there torture would end. I watched a documentary on Abu Graihib. It was a horrible sitution. Alot of those people were "Suspected terrorists" they didnt even know if they had info or not.

[Gnerphk]

Let's keep this apolitical for as long as we can by focusing on the philosophical aspects.

Torture is an extreme activity; it harms both the practitioner and the subject, and it cheapens any cause it is used to support. The same could be said of rape, murder, and war on civilian populations. Land mines. Ocean minefields. Basic terrorism.

The question is, "Is torture ever acceptable?"

My answer would be, no. From a moral and an ethical standpoint, it can never be acceptable - in more than the mildest of forms.

This does not mean that it should never be employed, or that I'd decline to use information gained by these unethical means. Sometimes a person in power finds it necessary to do things in his official and public capacity which in his private and personal capacity he deplores. (I think this is a Heinlein quote, but I'm uncertain.)

I am personally willing to grant those in power a degree of moral latitude that I'd not grant myself; were I in power, I would likely exercise less restraint than I would in private life. This does not mean that I'd find torture acceptable; rather, it means that I'd be willing to perform unacceptable actions at need.

This is one reason I don't pursue elective office, by the way. Even my duties as an Alliance Host cause difficulty in this regard, and I consider the office more of a burden than otherwise.