I don't know about right-wing leaders, but I do know that a full 45% of people responding to an online poll at CNN.com are answering "YES" to the question "Is Torture Ever Justified During Interrogation?".

I don't think Bush and company are supportive of torture, by the way. Just wanted to state that one for the record. But I do think that this issue is alot like racism in that a big number of people out there are harboring racist views, yet no elected official anywhere is allowed to publicly take their position.

I think of the Trent Lott scandal, right now. My solution to what should of happened to him after he said what he said would have been to somehow hold his seat to a special election in the State of Mississippi or to of had some kind of special referendum on it: Expose the underbelly of support for what he said so we can actually deal with it!

Brushing shit like this under the table in the name of political correctness doesn't solve the problem. Fostering an open-dialogue, however, goes a long way in exposing the illogic of certain beliefs. When damn-near half the country supports torturing prisoners, we ought to be talking about it and not posturing to political correctness. Call it the "PCU Democrat" in me.

Posted by: Grant McEntire at May 3, 2004 11:16 PM

Rumsfeld has been AWOL, perhaps for legal reasons.

Neither he nor Myers have read the Taguba report.

No, they aren't condoning it by any means, but I'd say they aren't exactly winning the PR battle right now.

Posted by: praktike at May 3, 2004 11:19 PM

http://www.fredoneverything.net/Torture.shtml

Posted by: Kmunden at May 3, 2004 11:24 PM

And has anyone ever noticed that it's typically the most strident anti-war "peace on earth" types who are most supportive of political correctness? I think there's a reason for that...

To go about being all anti-war and praying for "peace on earth" above all things is really easy to do, that is to say, it doesn't take much moral strength. When all you care about in foreign policy is "peace on earth" or the absence of war, you conveniently don't have to deal with the issues of injustice and the abusing of human rights across the globe.

In the same line of thinking, when all you care about is everybody talking and acting all politically correct all the time, you don't have to deal with the fact that people, lots of people, are still VERY racist and sexist and bigoted and homophobic in this country. You minimize the public appearance of conflict to substitute for the private absence of tolerance and an open-mind. And nothing ever gets solved, just swept under the table. AND THIS PASSES FOR LIBERALISM NOWADAYS!!!

Both political correctness and anti-war ideology stem from the same place: A moral cowardice in dealing with the truth. Anyone doubt that I'm making perfect sense with this?

Posted by: Grant McEntire at May 3, 2004 11:27 PM

Good point about PC, Grant. I hadn't thought of it quite like that.

I didn't know about the torture poll, either. That's creepy.

Posted by: Michael J. Totten at May 3, 2004 11:30 PM

MICHAEL...

Go and check it out for yourself: CNN.com.

As for my point, yeah, I think that's the biggest problem with the Left these days, hell, ever sense Vietnam: They're stridently opposed to even attempting to deal with reality. Back before liberalism lost its way in the jungles of Vietnam, liberals weren't like this. They spent every waking hour trying to draw attention to some of the ugliest injustices across the nation.

They didn't run from reality or push for policies to cover it up, they wanted to shove the injustice into the light so we could actually start dealing with it. Pre-Vietnam liberals, were they to travel through time to today, would be screaming and yelling for us to start dealing with some of the ugliest injustices across the globe. In other words, they wouldn't be doing what John Kerry is more-or-less doing and calling for a "return to normalcy".

When the New Democrats first emerged in the late-80s, one of their biggest critiques was to decry the nascent "politics of evasion" on the Left. Part of this critique had to do with exactly everything I'm talking about, here. They were claiming, in alot of ways, that modern Democrats weren't dealing with reality enough, that they were in denial, and that they had abandoned their cherished liberal ends for bogus liberal means.

I'm not the first one to make this connection.

Posted by: Grant McEntire at May 3, 2004 11:44 PM

Anyone wanna argue that today's Dems, what with their complete and utter absence of a plan for the War or Terror, haven't returned to the politics of evasion...the politics of sticking one's head in the sand?

Posted by: Grant McEntire at May 3, 2004 11:47 PM

I wonder if what bothers everybody so much isn't the use of torture, but all those lowlife smiling at the camera. That wasn't for the purpose of interrogation, but depraved entertainment.

Posted by: MarkC at May 3, 2004 11:49 PM

Grant

Very interesting point. I'll be thinking about that one for awhile.

Posted by: Paul Young at May 3, 2004 11:50 PM

My solution to what should of happened to him after he said what he said would have been to somehow hold his seat to a special election in the State of Mississippi or to of had some kind of special referendum on it.

Posted by Grant McEntire at May 3, 2004 11:16 PM
************************************************

And to Hell with the Constitutiion? Repudiation by his Party, Yes, loss of his Leadership post yea.

I am willing to let the voters of Mississippi decide the rest.

You remind me too much of Gephardt when he stated.

"If elected I will use executive orders to right any wrong the Supreme Court might do."

Freedom of Speech has consequences, Lott has paid some, may pay more. YOU do not get to decide who has to step down from office.

What he did was stupid, thoughtless, but right now is not an impeachable offence.

Posted by: Daniel Kauffman at May 3, 2004 11:55 PM

Anyone wanna argue that today's Dems, what with their complete and utter absence of a plan for the War or Terror, haven't returned to the politics of evasion...the politics of sticking one's head in the sand?

This is moronic, Grant. The Democrats don't control the executive, or either house of the legislature. How the fuck do you know what they'd do if they did?

Posted by: Mork at May 4, 2004 12:00 AM

DANIEL...

Hey man, I wasn't talking in realistic policy terms there, buddy. I was just saying, in an ideal world, it would of been nice to of had something like that to sort of call a referendum on what he said in the State of Mississippi.

I know this is hugely impractical, Daniel. I'm a poli-sci whiz, dude. Believe me, I know it isn't practical or even something we would want to be practical. I was just trying to be idealistic for a second there. That's all. Though I do wish that Mississippi voters would have had the chance to decide his fate, any and all punishment that is to say, and not his Senate colleagues, somehow.

Posted by: Grant McEntire at May 4, 2004 12:04 AM

Grant, If I would be so brash as to try and postulate a possible reason for why Liberalism has lost its way, then I would say it has to do with guilt. Liberals, in the sense of the word you have used, have historically been motivated by Guilt. It comes from the Judeo-Christian tradition, namely that of righting wrongs. Liberals saw societal ills, and felt guilty about allowing them to develop in the first place, and thus saw it necessary to fix them. They felt a sense of collective guilt for collective wrongs. They were marching with the civil rights movement because they felt guilty about Blacks being oppressed in the South, and their rights ignored. Guilt was a critical component of their personality matrix.

Now we come to the Vietnam War. Here the guilt issue comes in again. Liberals felt guilty about supporting colonial France, and thus felt that fighting against Communism was the least that they could do for the South Vietnamese. The Liberals of that period didn't have any soft spots for Communism. They knew the true horrors of Totalitarianism. And so they opposed the communists in Vietnam. And in the process killed over 50,000 Americans, and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese. The sheer amount of death and carnage threw their moral compasses into a loop. Their sense of guilt was suddenly awakened in full, but it was now transformed into a guilt about what they had actually done themselves, not what they had allowed to happen earlier. They were guilty of killing 50,000 Americans, guilty of resorting to violence when it was not necessary to do so. The Viet Cong were merely fighting to remove another colonial power. To unite their nation. The collective guilt from the loss of life in the Vietnam War scarred the Liberals, who suddenly believed that it was War, and the military, that had done this. Never again would they make the same mistake(they were really big into that concept of "never again"). Never again would they let the US use force in such a manner. No, America's military must be restrained, and used solely to defend American territory, and nothing else. Well, maybe Europe, but that is it. All of this because of guilt.

Guess I was brash after all...

Posted by: FH at May 4, 2004 12:08 AM

The perpetrators of the mistreatment of prisoners, and the officers in the chain of command up to the director of the prison should be prosecuted to the limits set out in the UCMJ.

Their conduct is unacceptable first in light of common sense and criminal under both the UCMJ and the Geneva Convention. It is an insult to every serving and former uniformed service member in the coalition fighting this war, and has directly given aid to the enemy on the very front they know they must win - the battle for the will to win. They have made the job harder for the line troops than it already was.

War is barbarism - but there is no conceivable connection between an act committed in the heat of battle and what these ...idiots...are alleged to have done. This incident illustrates a complete breakdown of discipline and a leadership vaccum of obscene proportions?

Clear enough on where I stand? I hope so. As a former NCO I can tell you without any doubt at all that the investigation will reveal weak officers and fucking worthless sergeants. The photographs alone tell the story on the enlisted side.

I want these sacks in Leavenworth, and I want them to read about the tricentennial in the prison newspaper. Does this incident change in anyway our moral or ethical justification for being there in the first place? No. Does it provide a reasonable snapshot of the prevailing level of professionalism, discipline and honor of the troops currently in the theater? No. By the way, the lede I saw the other day "Troops not trained in Geneva Convention" is a crock. Forget the fact these were MP's, and handling PW's is their job. I understand there's already a probono lawyer move under way to 'protect' these bastards on the basis they are somehow victims. Not unexpected. The first classes you get when beginning basic training are the Law of Land Warfare and the Geneva Convention - pertaining to the treatement of combatants, prisoners, non-combatants, and yourself. What scumbags we encounter when we least can afford them...

Posted by: TmjUtah at May 4, 2004 12:10 AM

You know, Mork, maybe they ought to be telling us what they'd do if they did. You said in another post that Kerry doesn't get more specific because it's more politically wise to talk about a "secret plan" for Iraq, in other words, to emulate Nixon.

Politically, in non-normative terms, you're absolutely right. It is the most politically smart thing for him to do, to stick to the Nixon-Eisenhower strategy. I have to give you that. Nixon won with a "secret plan" and Eisenhower pulled it off by simply saying "I will go to Korea".

But, then again, I don't want a Nixon or Eisenhower in the White House right now. This is the big problem with Democrats, anymore. We don't take chances. We don't have the balls to be a little gutsy and define ourselves. Reagan didn't speak like Nixon and Eisenhower. He told us, in very plain terms, what he believed and what he stood for and what he wanted to do with the country. Poll after poll has shown that the American people didn't even want him to do the things he was talking about doing (thus why he didn't really get to pull much of it off), but he still won in a landslide!

History says Kerry should be as mushy as possible because it worked for Nixon and Eisenhower, you argue. But, beyond getting them into the White House, just what exactly did they accomplish?! What is their ideological mark on American history?

I'm sorry, Mork, but I don't want Kerry to win by being like Nixon. I want him to win (or lose maybe even) by being like Kennedy.

Posted by: Grant McEntire at May 4, 2004 12:15 AM

Reagan didn't speak like Nixon and Eisenhower. He told us, in very plain terms, what he believed and what he stood for and what he wanted to do with the country.

You weren't very old when Reagan was around, were you Grant?

He spoke plainly about principles and values, but very rarely at all about specific policies.

American presidential campaigns have very rarely involved detailed policy discussions - Clinton was an almost unique exception in this regard, along with the "Contract with America" Republicans in 1994.

Posted by: Mork at May 4, 2004 12:21 AM

TmjUtah...

I'm not so sure I agree with you, but you do make a good point. Accepting your assertion of guilt being the motivating factor, which I'm not so sure I do but hang with me, I would have to argue that Vietnam fundamentally changed the focus of it.

Before Vietnam, liberals looked out into the world and felt empathy for the underprivileged. Maybe they felt some guilt, I dunno, but they definitely believed in themselves enough to try and fix things a little. But then Vietnam came along and it sort of flipped.

After Vietnam, I think liberals started looking first and foremost at their own inability to fix things the way they wanted to. Empathy with an optimism and idealism and belief in the human spirit was replaced with empathy accompanied by a cynicism and self-defeat. In other words, I would argue that Vietnam and Watergate so wounded the soul of liberalism that the focus shifted from an outward idealism to an inward helplessness. I know this firsthand and I see this firsthand when I talk to my father about my ideals. He admires them, but so wounded by his own former idealism is he that he insists I try to get over it and just live a life of ease and comfort, mindless of the bigger issues.

I think there's a place, possibly, for the reclaiming of pre-Vietnam idealistic liberalism with my generation. We haven't had our hopes and dreams shattered yet and we do actually believe in making the world a better place. There's a real humanitarian current, here, and it's why alot of us supported the War in Iraq: For the reasons of making the world a better place for the Iraqi people. This is what the post-Vietnam liberals have lost, you see: Their belief in the power to make things better.

Simply Stated: Liberalism without optimism and idealism kinda sucks and is no fun, and no one wants what sucks and is no fun, thus today's liberals lose elections.

Posted by: Grant McEntire at May 4, 2004 12:33 AM

Here's my short version: Vietnam taught American idealists two things: the limits of American military power to achieve political aims, and the fallibility of the judgments of their best and brightest.

Those are two lessons that we are currently learning all over again.

Posted by: Mork at May 4, 2004 12:37 AM

MORK...

Principles and values aren't necessarily meaningless. Reagan's pretty famous for saying, "Government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem," now isn't he? If you don't call that clear and concise, I dunno what is.

Posted by: Grant McEntire at May 4, 2004 12:38 AM

Any further comments directed my way, I'll have to wait and read tomorrow. Got a paper to write. Gotta go.

Posted by: Grant McEntire at May 4, 2004 12:40 AM

Okay, I dunno where in the fuck the whole David Duke thing comes in, but I do need to say one last thing...

Anyone that wants to better understand the evolution of liberalism that I'm talking about needs to go out and read Allan Bloom's THE CLOSING OF THE AMERICAN MIND. There's a chapter in it called, "The Nietzscheanization of the Left" in which he really lays out alot of where I'm coming from, here. He spends the entire book pretty much making the argument, but this chapter is of the most vital importance.

His argument is that, because of Nietzsche, we no longer are searching for Truth in the realms of academia. Instead, he claims our academics and our intellectuals are now only so much concerned with deconstructing it. In this, he implies that we've completely shifted from a modern train of thought to a post-modern one. The title is meant to insinuate that what we conceive of when we try to keep an "open mind" with everything is not an opening so much as it is a closing in that we're closing our minds to truth and right and wrong.

Allan Bloom is absolutely right and it's got everything to do with the downfall of liberalism in America. Liberals have been Nietzscheified, as Bloom would put it. They've embraced relativism at the expense of their core principles.

Anyway, everyone go out and read this book immediately. Alot of Bloom's argument goes off into looney-land when he starts bitching about Mick Jagger and the evils of rock-and-roll, but his main point is incredibly solid and incredibly relevant to the downfall of the liberal majority in American history.

Posted by: Grant McEntire at May 4, 2004 12:58 AM

Well, Mork, if our conflict was a political aim, we could be reasonably disengage and write off the loss, I guess. I've almost recovered from my adolescence in the seventies.

It's not politics. It's survival. Our refusal to confront this enemy won't kill three million Cambodians and a million and change Vietnamese - it will be a fire that burns our own house this time around.

There's not a 'there' for Vietnam in this conflict.

Posted by: TmjUtah at May 4, 2004 01:05 AM

Ah, TmjUtah, always the happy Jacksonian, aren't we? Happy to mind your own business in times of peace and security, but ferociously fierce in times of War. Wilsonian concerns of human rights and global humanitarian interests are only of secondary concern to you. It's a pity. But hey, at least you recognize a threat when it's breathing down your throat. Gotta give you credit for that. And if your ferocious nature in these perilous times leads you to take up the Wilsonian cause, well, at least in fighting for yourself you also happen to be assisting the humanitarian cause of others.

I wish our alliance extended beyond these times of perilous danger into times of peace. I wish you then, too, were so concerned with human rights in far-away lands. Until that day, we Wilsonians welcome your company in fighting the good fight. May the Jacksonian-Wilsonian alliance kick a whole lotta ass!!!

Posted by: Grant McEntire at May 4, 2004 01:30 AM

Torture can be justified during interrogation, in an unusual kind of case. Osama plants a nuke that will kill a million, you catch him, and he smiles in your face, admits it, but won't say where it is. In that case, attempting to torture the information out of him is justified. If you like, make the case fifty large truck-nukes in the fifty largest cities, 400 million dead, and a subsequent 200 years of dark ages filled with untold misery.

MT says it's creepy to believe that torture is justified in some cases. I find it more disturbing to contemplate letting the million die so that I don't cause Osama any pain and keep my hands clean. We believe it right to have killed thousands of innocents civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, in order to save and liberate millions of lives. So, surely it's morally permissible to inflict pain on an evil man in order to save a million lives.

Every moral principle has exceptions. This is because "Do not kill innocents" has exceptions, and it's the most important principle of all.

Perhaps these odd hypothetical cases are so unlikely that they can be written off as irrelevant since too rare to be mentioned. However, al Qaeda is trying to plant nukes in our country and we are trying to catch them. So, the imaginary case may not be so far-fetched.

Posted by: Jim at May 4, 2004 03:24 AM

FH,

If I would be so brash as to try and postulate a possible reason for why Liberalism has lost its way, then I would say it has to do with guilt.

How does "liberalism" lose its way? Liberalism is an ideology with a meaning and a pedigree. Its meaning is mostly fixed since it emerged from the Englightenment. The ideology has not lost its way. Rather, the Democrats have lost their way. They have abandoned liberalism as their defining ideology and embraced statist socialism.

The socialist Democrats have perverted the meaning of liberalism. Today's Democrats are exactly the opposite of liberal. If the dead white male philosphers who defined liberalism were to come back to life today, they would recognize in the Democratic party the reactionary statism they fought against.

Posted by: HA at May 4, 2004 04:18 AM

Those pictures disgusted me. They angered me. I expect heads to roll over the inhumane treatment of the Iraqi POWs.

The only justifications I have heard floated has been from the far left. As Randi Rhodes - and many others - have said: Our soldiers have been driven insane by the horrors of an unjust war. As such, they are not responsible.

Other than the usual crew who will always side with the bad guy, I don't think anyone does not want these dozen people strung up by their toenails.

Posted by: Roark at May 4, 2004 04:57 AM

Mr. Totten,

What you are talking about here is why I think that in the long run, the atrocities committed by some very stupid members of our armed forces will actually end up harming the candidacy of John Kerry.

I explained why I think this here (one explanation about what I wrote-- when I said "in some ways" I meant that the ways they would not be right would be when they go off on Rall-like extremes).

The assholes who did this just brought to life the characatures of the military that Kerry spoke about in 1971. The question will be, is this what the military is like, or was it just a minority? The angry left is going to conclude what Kerry told them in 1971-- it is the nature of the military.

Kerry cannot take that position now. If he does, he's polically dead.

But it will focus what he said in 1971, which will hurt him.

Posted by: Gerry at May 4, 2004 05:10 AM

It's a Private Matter, to wit:

"He further urged that a civilian contractor, Steven Stephanowicz, of CACI International, be fired from his Army job, reprimanded, and denied his security clearances for lying to the investigating team and allowing or ordering military policemen “who were not trained in interrogation techniques to facilitate interrogations by ‘setting conditions’ which were neither authorized” nor in accordance with Army regulations. “He clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse,” Taguba wrote. He also recommended disciplinary action against a second CACI employee, John Israel. (A spokeswoman for CACI said that the company had “received no formal communication” from the Army about the matter.)"

from Mr. Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker on the leaked investigation that Gen. Myers and the SecDef have not yet read as of Sunday.

As the U.S. government uses people not in the military chain of command and beyond the legal reach of the law--military or civilian-- what we have is privatized violence and plausible denial on the part of government. Is this not a win-win situation for both "free enterprise" and "democracy". The U.S. gets to act like a caudillo state on the one hand and promote "Western values" on the other.

The media has been very reticent on the matter of the PICTURES and even descriptions on NPR. Are the Arabic Sat-TV channels so scrupulous?

I think the punishment on this matter should have been harsh, swift and discreet. I fear it will be none of those things.

Posted by: Virgil K. Saari at May 4, 2004 05:27 AM

There was a report late last week, which I cannot seem to find a link for at the moment, that said these photos and this story were discovered as part of an examination of an on-going investigation by the military into the torture allegations. This was not brought to public light by some whistle-blower who was trying to out a military coverup.

As for torture advocates, one of the most public and vocal of these is Alan Dershowitz (the highly public legal scholar and legal practitioner from Harvard). Last I checked he is a card carrying Liberal. Which is not to say that only Liberals support torture, just that the fault line between those who do and don't isn't to be found in party affiliation.

Posted by: steve at May 4, 2004 06:05 AM

Gerry,
Your probably right about that, Kerry has spent most of the last year trying to draw attention away from his statements in 1971. If people start putting up his statements from then, he's dead meat politically.

Slightly off topic, that David Duke comment further upthread, I've seen it in a few other places in exactly the same format. I think we have a spammer.

Posted by: sam at May 4, 2004 06:53 AM

steve writes "There was a report late last week, which I cannot seem to find a link for at the moment, that said these photos and this story were discovered as part of an examination of an on-going investigation by the military into the torture allegations. This was not brought to public light by some whistle-blower who was trying to out a military coverup."

The report in question was brought to light by Seymour Hersh, who received the document from an source who hasn't been named, to my knowledge. The report was complete. It had been for a while. But it hadn't been issued in public form. Is there much reason to suppose that it would have seen the light of day otherwise? And if that's not a coverup, what is? Some of the events described go back to November. That's a lot of time for facts to spend in the dark, don't you think?

steve continues: "As for torture advocates, one of the most public and vocal of these is Alan Dershowitz (the highly public legal scholar and legal practitioner from Harvard). Last I checked he is a card carrying Liberal. Which is not to say that only Liberals support torture, just that the fault line between those who do and don't isn't to be found in party affiliation."

Calling Dershowitz a "torture advocate" is like calling John Kerry a "genocide advocate" because he shot at civilians in Vietnam.

Alan Dershowitz's words can be found here: in a CNN interview with Wolf Blitzer.

His reason for saying that al Qaeda leader Khalid Shaikh Mohammed probably should not be tortured is "This is not the ticking-bomb terrorist case, at least so far as we know." He goes on to say "My basic point, though, is we should never under any circumstances allow low-level people to administer torture. If torture is going to be administered as a last resort in the ticking-bomb case, to save enormous numbers of lives, it ought to be done openly, with accountability, with approval by the president of the United States or by a Supreme Court justice. I don't think we're in that situation in this case."

Well, in Iraq, we had low level people administering torture, and not openly, with accountability.

Dershowitz makes it clear on what level he puts torture morally: "If you're going to have a torture warrant, why not create a terrorism warrant? Why not go in and allow terrorists to come forward and make their case for why terrorism should be allowed?"

Another participant in that discussion, Ken Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch: "... there is no moral or legal difference between torturing yourself and subcontracting torture to somebody else. They're equally absolutely prohibited."

Does the United States have a history of subcontracting torture? Well, why not ask the future ambassador (read: proconsul) to Iraq, John Negroponte. When asked about his coverups of torture by Battalion 316 in Honduras, he shrugged it off. In working with dictatorships, he said, you do what can. Somehow, however, curbing their human rights abuses when they come to light isn't possible in his view. And covering them up is the better part of The Good Fight.

If we end up with an Iraq that is (exclusive of the Kurdish north) run by former Republican Guard officers who employ torture chambers to terrorize suspected enemies of their regime, well, that's Iraqi sovereignty, too, right? And if nobody's running for office without their imprimatur, because of what amounts to paramilitary death squads, we can call it "a struggling democracy," right? Negroponte's good at that sort of thing. After all, it's almost his entire diplomatic track record.

And who signed off on Negroponte as ambassador to Iraq?

George W. Bush.

Gentlemen keep their hands clean. They leave dirty work to those they can reasonably expect will do it. Excuses are made for this when necessary. They are not necessary if the deed remains unknown, however. And if you can cover it up, that's what gentlemen do, it seems.

Somebody explain the moral difference to me. I'm utterly confused.

Posted by: Michael Turner (AKA Treasonous Fucking Bastard) at May 4, 2004 06:55 AM

scenes from a deep sleep and coverup...

http://billmon.org/archives/001446.html

Posted by: calibar at May 4, 2004 07:02 AM

Michael,
While I'm sure that there may be some justified sense of surprise, you should take a look at this Washington Post article from December 2002. Here are some choice quotes:

"If you don't violate someone's human rights some of the time, you probably aren't doing your job," said one official who has supervised the capture and transfer of accused terrorists. "I don't think we want to be promoting a view of zero tolerance on this. That was the whole problem for a long time with the CIA."

According to one official who has been directly involved in rendering captives into foreign hands, the understanding is, "We don't kick the [expletive] out of them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the [expletive] out of them." Some countries are known to use mind-altering drugs such as sodium pentathol, said other officials involved in the process.

After years of fruitless talks in Egypt, President Bill Clinton cut off funding and cooperation with the directorate of Egypt's general intelligence service, whose torture of suspects has been a perennial theme in State Department human rights reports.

"You can be sure," one Bush administration official said, "that we are not spending a lot of time on that now."

Now I don't think that they have been actively seeking to torture people, but for far too long those responsible for these matters in the Bush administration have been dancing on the edge of a slippery slope, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that they have slid down that slope somewhat. The case of Maher Arar is a great example of this slide. The Bush administration's Department of Justice trusted the word of Syria that this Canadian citizen would not be tortured if refouled to Syria despite the State Department's reports of systematic use of torture by Syria. Please forgive me for remaining skeptical.

Posted by: Randy Paul at May 4, 2004 07:03 AM

Justifying torture is alot like trying to justify shooting an innocent man in the head...you have to come up with wildly imaginative and unrealistic scenarios under which it would be okay. And I think that, in and of itself, says alot.

Someone earlier brought up a scenario in which Osama Bin Laden theoretically has planted 50 nukes in fifty cities, he's captured, knows how to stop the bombs from going off, but won't talk. As far as shooting an innocent man in the head, alot of folks answer that one with, "only if I could go back in time and kill Adolf Hitler as a small child". Stuff like this is pretty ridiculous, but it tells the tale.

We know torture is wrong and if you know anything about how best to interrogate a suspect, you know that torture is pretty ineffective in getting the truth out, as well. It's wrong. Period.

Posted by: Grant McEntire at May 4, 2004 07:07 AM

"We know torture is wrong and if you know anything about how best to interrogate a suspect, you know that torture is pretty ineffective in getting the truth out, as well. It's wrong. Period."

I believe that what is at issue isn't using severe pain to extract information, it was part of a pschological process of "softening up" the victim prior to actual interrogation. Still wrong, and forbidden by the Geneva Convention.

MJT: I occasionally stumble across a remark on blogs or in their comments sections to the effect that Bush, Rumsfeld, etc., are either in favor or torturing Iraqis or at least don't mind that it happened.

From Juan Cole today:

Abdul Basit Turki, Iraq's first Minister of Human Rights, had his resignation accepted on Sunday. He had tendered it in response to the way the US dealt with the situation in Fallujah, among other issues. He maintained that he had heard horror stories about abuses at Abu Ghuraib last fall and had briefed American civil administratrator Paul Bremer about them, but that Bremer took no action:

'In November I talked to Mr Bremer about human rights violations in general and in jails in particular. He listened but there was no answer. At the first meeting, I asked to be allowed to visit the security prisoners, but I failed," he said. "I told him the news. He didn't take care about the information I gave him." '

Posted by: double-plus-ungood at May 4, 2004 07:55 AM

Grant, replace 50 nukes with a gallon of VX ready to be aerosolized in New York City (somewhere; that's the piece of info we want). That scenario isn't far-fetched at all. Do you torture the guy who has the location?

The point is humans are good at imagination, and it's a damned slippery slope (especially if you hate the bastard in front of you for good reason) that leads to justifications to torture. That's why there are rules against it. (Dehumanization is also a very human skill; look at other commented blogs for examples.) If you'll pardon the hyperbole, the rules agains torture are there to save the souls of the captors, not so much to protect the rights of the prisoners. Too bad the CO there didn't get that distinction.

The 45% number doesn't surprise me at all, because nightmare scenarios are so easy to build. I would rather have seen an anonymous poll asking if the behavior of the guards in the Iraqi prison was justified. My guess (and fervent hope) is that the response to that question would be real close to zero.

Posted by: Mark Poling at May 4, 2004 08:05 AM

When the US interrogated prisoners in Guantanamo Bay they broadcast 'white noise' at them, it disoriented them and made prisoners more vulnerable to interrogation. Its supposed to be very effective, and doesn't involve torture as people recover easily and without any damage.

Posted by: sam at May 4, 2004 08:05 AM

Or they say whatever they think the interrogator wants to hear and provide them with bad 'intelligence'?

Posted by: calibar at May 4, 2004 08:23 AM

Sam: When the US interrogated prisoners in Guantanamo Bay they broadcast 'white noise' at them, it disoriented them and made prisoners more vulnerable to interrogation. Its supposed to be very effective, and doesn't involve torture as people recover easily and without any damage.

Geneva Convention, Article 13: "Prisoners of war must at all times be humanely treated."

Geneva Convention, Article 17: ""No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted or exposed to unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind."

I guess the way to judge the humaneness of this kind of stuff would be to ask yourself if you'd want these techniques used on captured US troops. Or if you wouldn't mind them being applied to your own person, or a family member.

I think everyone should read this posting from Riverbend over a month ago about a family friend who was interrogated because a neighbour with a grudge falsely informed on her. The last paragraph:

By the end of her tale, M. was crying silently and my mother and Umm Hassen were hastily wiping away tears. All I could do was repeat, "I'm so sorry... I'm really sorry..." and a lot of other useless words. She shook her head and waved away my words of sympathy, "It's ok- really- I'm one of the lucky ones... all they did was beat me."

Posted by: double-plus-ungood at May 4, 2004 08:25 AM

According to Taguba's report, at least 60% of the detainees at that prison are innocent of any involvement with the resistance.

Posted by: calibar at May 4, 2004 08:30 AM

Mark Poling: ...it's a damned slippery slope (especially if you hate the bastard in front of you for good reason) that leads to justifications to torture. That's why there are rules against it.

Interesting point. But I think there should be no such rules. There is no absolute rule against killing innocents; they've been justifiably killed in the past. We haven't seen numerous murders by people getting carried away by their imaginations or hatreds, as a result of the lack of such a rule. Therefore, there should be no absolute rule against torture, either, given that torturing a villain is not as questionable a deed as killing an innocent.

In the 50 nuke/VX aerosol case, not only would it be morally permissible to torture, it would be morally obligatory. It would be wrong to choose millions of innocents' deaths instead of the suffering of an arch villain.

Posted by: Jim at May 4, 2004 08:34 AM

FEI, there was an excellent article on interrogation last fall in Atlantic Monthly, "The Dark Art of Interrogation", that is available on-line. It covers a lot of the ethical issues, legal issues, and techniques used. Highly recommended. By the Mark Bowden, author of "Black Hawk Down."

Posted by: double-plus-ungood at May 4, 2004 08:41 AM

In the 50 nuke/VX aerosol case, not only would it be morally permissible to torture, it would be morally obligatory. It would be wrong to choose millions of innocents' deaths instead of the suffering of an arch villain.

--according to taguba's report, easily 60% of the detainees should not be at that prison...

Posted by: calibar at May 4, 2004 08:48 AM

Grant,

All around good work.

About liberalism - it wasn't Vietnam and Watergate that shook it, these were the aftershocks. What shook liberalism was the inhuman and unexpected cruelty of modernism itself. All the way back to Antietam and Haymarket, through Verdun, Katyn Forest, and Dresden; culminating in Auschwitz and Hiroshima.

We're living through a widespread case of post-traumatic stress syndrome, and it may be that new generations are the only cure for the depth of the disease. That and the inherent strength of liberalism itself.

The liberals alive at the time of these horrors were too close to the events themselves to feel their full impact. It's not entirely fair, but we are the ones with enough distance to face the full dpeth of these events and to try to extract some meaning, if indeed there is any there.

There is one other event that will endure the sands of time until the sun itself expires and all these other nightmares fade away. I suspect that we are still to close to it to even begin to acknowledge what it means. When the time comes to do so, I believe that we will find there rich soil for a new liberalism.

That is Apollo.

Posted by: David Warner at May 4, 2004 08:51 AM

Calibar, you're confusing the case in which we know the villain has planted a bomb with the Iraqi detention center case, in which everyone agrees that the torture was wrong. Or maybe you're suggesting that we simply never know who's guilty and who's innocent. But that's not so, and it would mean that we should never imprison anyone, a result you wouldn't accept, I imagine.

Posted by: Jim at May 4, 2004 09:01 AM

In the 50 nuke/VX aerosol case, not only would it be morally permissible to torture, it would be morally obligatory. It would be wrong to choose millions of innocents' deaths instead of the suffering of an arch villain.

Since we're dealing with the purely speculative, consider this scenario:

In the above case, you torture someone who you suspect is a terrorist with a dirty bomb planted somewhere and in order to end the torture, he tells you that the bomb is in place A, although he doesn't have any idea where it is. Resources are expended to send people to place A, when in fact it is in place B, goes off and millions are killed.

The danger in your scenario is that you assume information given under torture is accurate. There is a great deal of research to indicate that is not the case.

Posted by: Randy Paul at May 4, 2004 09:07 AM

Or maybe you're suggesting that we simply never know who's guilty and who's innocent. But that's not so, and it would mean that we should never imprison anyone, a result you wouldn't accept, I imagine.

--interrogators are always sure they have the right guy. do you think the interrogators at Abu Grhraib thought they had the wrong person? Or a possibly innocent person? Wow, if we're dealing with that kind of morality, then we're really in trouble.

Posted by: calibar at May 4, 2004 09:14 AM

The danger in your scenario is that you assume information given under torture is accurate. There is a great deal of research to indicate that is not the case.

--that is exactly correct, no less than a Heritage Foundation guy said exactly that on CNN yesterday.

Posted by: calibar at May 4, 2004 09:15 AM

There is a difference between painful torture, which most experts agree is ineffective at extracting accurate information, and psychological torture, which works. What is occurring in Abu Ghraib (and probably other prisons and detention centres) is a violent "softening up" process that preceeds the actual interrogation, intended to disorient the victim. While the actual information-gathering phase does not use pain as a tool, it is also prohibited, but there are a lot of legal and ethical grey areas. Read the Atlantic Article I posted above. The article also covers a case in which a child molestor was threatened with painful torture in order to locate the child, and the ethics involved in that situation.

Posted by: double-plus-ungood at May 4, 2004 09:30 AM

What is occurring in Abu Ghraib (and probably other prisons and detention centres) is a violent "softening up" process that preceeds the actual interrogation, intended to disorient the victim.

--uhm, no, actually it is not a 'softening up process'. broomstick sodomy is not a painless interrogation procedure. nor is death from beatings. read the tuguba report again.

Posted by: calibar at May 4, 2004 09:42 AM

oh, i see your argument, i'm actually bolstering your point there.

Posted by: calibar at May 4, 2004 09:43 AM

Randy,

If you don't know where the bomb is unless the guy who planted you tells you, then his lie won't do you much harm. He sent you to the wrong place, but you wouldn't have found it anyway. The point is not that torture will always be sufficient for finding the bomb, but that it will sometimes be necessary. In the case you imagine, in which the guy throws us off, when we might have found the bomb if he hadn't, this is bad luck or stupidity on the part of the investigator of the crime. But those won't always be the case, when the investigator has no other leads, is certain the torture has yeilded an honest confession, or is prepared to take possible deception into account.

Calibar, what you're arguing - that there is always that doubt - would entail that it is wrong for a policeman to arrest someone since he might be innocent. A night in jail is no fun, after all, not to mention months of jailtime during trial. So, of course epistemic factors are important; one better damn well know that this is the right guy. But in that case, torture is permissible.

Posted by: Jim at May 4, 2004 09:50 AM

Calibar, what you're arguing - that there is always that doubt - would entail that it is wrong for a policeman to arrest someone since he might be innocent.

--no, actually it would be more like this, I believe: if you arrest people whom your superiors themselves believe is innocent or at least 60% likely to be innocent, possibly torture is not exactly the proper way to deal with such a person...
put it in a slightly different way, since your analogies are rather abstract. A police officer arrests you without telling you why, you are innocent of any crime, he proceeds to take you to jail and tortures you. Most psychologists would tell you anyone who approves of such treatment of oneself or one's relatives is dealing with some major issues in the self-respect area.

Posted by: calibar at May 4, 2004 10:09 AM

Anyone wanna argue that today's Dems, what with their complete and utter absence of a plan for the War or Terror, haven't returned to the politics of evasion...the politics of sticking one's head in the sand?

I could argue that point all day long.

Any real plan has to be several pages long, but the basics are in the short-term (i) identify, hunt down, and arrest or kill terrorists, (ii) disrupt terrorist communications, financing, and planning, (iii) pressure states like Saudi Arabia which are connected to terrorism, (iv) harden domestic targets and beef up homeland security. In the long-term, address violent Islamic fundamentalism and other root-cause of terrorism.

This is basic stuff that every serious Democrat agrees on. No Democrat leader I've heard advocates sticking our heads in the sand instead.

It's Bush who seems to suffer the complete absence of a plan for the War on Terror. He has a vision, sure, but I don't see any plan.

I am voting for Kerry because I believe Bush has had some successes but overall has badly screwed up the War on Terror.

Posted by: Oberon at May 4, 2004 10:21 AM

Calibar,

I already agreed that the torture in Iraq was wrong, so I don't know why you keep raising it and have now implied that I approve of it and have a psychological problem. Indeed, you've flung an insult at an innocent person. How ironic. Better be careful you have the right guy next time.

Posted by: Jim at May 4, 2004 10:33 AM

Jim,

I would suggest that you read some of the work of Darius Rejali, a professor of political science at Reed College in Michael's hometown of Portland, who has written extensively on the ineffectiveness and brutality of torture.

The USA is a signatory to and has ratified the Convention Against Torture. It is the law of the land. Torture under any circumstances is illegal. Sending people to other countries to be tortured is illegal. Using information obtained under torture in judicial proceedings is illegal.

Posted by: Randy Paul at May 4, 2004 10:37 AM

Oberon:

(i) identify, hunt down, and arrest or kill terrorists,

How do you do that without removing the "safe havens"? These folks are mobile, and they have friends willing to hide them. Rambo isn't real.

(ii) disrupt terrorist communications, financing, and planning,

How do you do that without significantly changing the political landscape of the major countries in the Middle East?

So far, all I've heard from Kerry is "get the U.N. to provide legitimacy" to what we're doing. What if the U.N. has a, shall we say, vested interest in allowing no such thing?

(iii) pressure states like Saudi Arabia which are connected to terrorism,

How do you do this without taking care of point (ii) first?

(iv) harden domestic targets and beef up homeland security.

Okay, then no more squawking about the way the Patriot Act tramples civil liberties.

What you advocate is no more than wishful thinking and morally-pure hand wringing. Which is why I'm voting Bush, even though I truly hate his domestic policies. (I'm not a fan of the Patriot Act either.)

Posted by: Mark Poling at May 4, 2004 10:46 AM

Randy Paul: The USA is a signatory to and has ratified the Convention Against Torture. It is the law of the land. Torture under any circumstances is illegal. Sending people to other countries to be tortured is illegal. Using information obtained under torture in judicial proceedings is illegal.

And that's exactly as it should be.

Posted by: Michael J. Totten at May 4, 2004 10:50 AM

And to toss out something a bit more "on-topic", am I remembering correctly that the perpetrators were reservists whose civilian jobs were as prison guards?

If so, we need to take a very close look at what's happening inside our own prisons.

Posted by: Mark Poling at May 4, 2004 10:54 AM

From the CNN interview:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/03/03/cnna.Dershowitz/

"My basic point, though, is we should never under any circumstances allow low-level people to administer torture. If torture is going to be administered as a last resort in the ticking-bomb case, to save enormous numbers of lives, it ought to be done openly, with accountability, with approval by the president of the United States or by a Supreme Court justice. I don't think we're in that situation in this case."

So Dershowitz favors torture in extreme cases when lots of lives are at stake. Perhaps that doesn't make him a blanket "torture advocate" but it certainly makes him an advocate of torture in certain circumstances. And if the use of torture can sometimes be justified then who, exactly, will be determining when? POTUS? Joint Chiefs of Staff? CIA Director?

Posted by: steve at May 4, 2004 11:01 AM

>If so, we need to take a very close look at >what's happening inside our own prisons.

Bingo.

That's what really going on here.

Posted by: David Warner at May 4, 2004 11:12 AM

Mark:

You think I'm guilty of wishful thinking and morally-pure handwringing? Yeesh, I thought I was being realistic and that every point I made was obvious. Okay:

(i) identify, hunt down, and arrest or kill terrorists,

How do you do that without removing the "safe havens"?

It ain's safe haven if we blow it up. Special forces, CIA, cruise missiles, armed Predator drones, illegal snatches, assassinations, etc. can all be effective. We were less aggressive with these tools pre-9/11, but I think there's a lot more willingness now.

(ii) disrupt terrorist communications, financing, and planning,

How do you do that without significantly changing the political landscape of the major countries in the Middle East?

Depends what you mean by "significantly changing the political landscape". Yes, sometimes you have to invade a whole country in order to stop them from sheltering or supporting terrorists -- as we did against the Taliban, and with near-universal world support.

Sometimes credible threats and covert action works, as against Iranian-sponsored terrorism in the 1990s.

Freezing terrorist assets, tapping communications, using spies and double agents, dropping bombs on bad guys, are just a few of the 100s of ways to disrupt terrorists without "signficantly changing" the landscape.

(iii) pressure states like Saudi Arabia which are connected to terrorism,

How do you do this without taking care of point (ii) first?

Again, it depends on what you mean by "significantly changing the political landscape." Are you prosing that we invade and occupy Saudi Arabia?

(iv) harden domestic targets and beef up homeland security.

Okay, then no more squawking about the way the Patriot Act tramples civil liberties.

I haven't squawked about the Patriot Act, but I reserve the right to do so. It's in the First Amendment.

Posted by: Oberon at May 4, 2004 11:19 AM

OK, here's one example, Michael.

Posted by: praktike at May 4, 2004 11:24 AM

Totten,

I don’t want to condone these acts, but I just want to point out something that should be obvious to everyone. There’s a BIG difference between the kind of “torture” these prisoners had to go through and the torture Saddam inflicted upon his own people. Now, those were truly heinous acts of evil, and it’s wrong to compare the two. What our troops did seems more like mischievous young soldiers who were acting dumb and didn’t know any better. It’s really only a few steps above your typical fraternity hazing. If these prisoners had to choose between our “torture” and very real torture at the hands of Saddam, I think they’d choose the former.

I’m not saying that what these soldiers did was right, but I think it’s unfair to compare what Saddam did and what we did in the same light. Let’s save the charge of evil for those truly deserving of it. Lets not blow this thing way out of proportion -- which in my opinion exactly what the media is doing here.

Posted by: P. Whitnety at May 4, 2004 11:52 AM

"It ain's safe haven if we blow it up. Special forces, CIA, cruise missiles, armed Predator drones, illegal snatches, assassinations, etc. can all be effective."

Okay, I'm not going to beat this to death, but:

Trading cruise missles for camels and aspirin factories didn't prove real useful in the past. Care to tell me why you think we could do a better job now, considering EVERYBODY thought Saddam had WMDs? Obviously our intelligence in the region was lousy. What makes you think we could have made it better?

Putting Special Forces into other countries is generally considered provacative and warlike. Ditto extralegal snatches/assassinations. (Aren't those prohibited by US Law? Or has that changed?) We're still talking about an invasion, only a teensy weensie one that puts our troops at extreme risk with much dicier odds of success. (Think about the Carter Administration's attempt to rescue hostages.) And just imagine the halleluja chorus in the UN!

Do you think if we'd asked nicely Saddaam would have let us put Special Forces on the ground to take care of various terrorist organizations holed up there? Hell, they're not supposed to be in Pakistan right now, and Pakistan is an ally.

As to invading Saudi Arabia, did you notice that we're now asking Americans to leave the Kingdom? I don't expect it to happen soon, or even at all, but I would leave the option on the table. (Now that's pressure for you.) But that option is only on the table because we've changed the regime in Iraq.

I'm an imaginative guy, and if I could imagine those tactics would work I'd be beating the drum for them. I can't, so I won't.

Posted by: Mark Poling at May 4, 2004 12:18 PM

Krugman has a great op-ed in today's NYTimes talking about the Administration's privatization fetish and it's apparently ghastly consequences in Iraq:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/04/opinion/04KRUG.html

"Much has been written about the damage done by foreign policy ideologues who ignored the realities of Iraq, imagining that they could use the country to prove the truth of their military and political doctrines. Less has been said about how dreams of making Iraq a showpiece for free trade, supply-side tax policy and privatization — dreams that were equally oblivious to the country's realities — undermined the chances for a successful transition to democracy.

A number of people, including Jay Garner, the first U.S. administrator of Iraq, think that the Bush administration shunned early elections, which might have given legitimacy to a transitional government, so it could impose economic policies that no elected Iraqi government would have approved. Indeed, over the past year the Coalition Provisional Authority has slashed tariffs, flattened taxes and thrown Iraqi industry wide open to foreign investors — reinforcing the sense of many Iraqis that we came as occupiers, not liberators.

But it's the reliance on private contractors to carry out tasks usually performed by government workers that has really come back to haunt us...What's truly shocking in Iraq...is the privatization of purely military functions.

According to reports in a number of newspapers, employees from two private contractors, CACI International and Titan, act as interrogators at the Abu Ghraib prison. According to Sewell Chan of The Washington Post, these contractors are "at the center of the probe" into the abuse of Iraqi prisoners...We don't yet know for sure that private contractors were at fault. But why put civilians, who cannot be court-martialed and hence aren't fully accountable, in that role? And why privatize key military functions?"

Good questions.

Posted by: Markus Rose at May 4, 2004 12:20 PM

Mark writes:

Putting Special Forces into other countries is generally considered provacative and warlike. Ditto extralegal snatches/assassinations

You think invading Iraq is fine but snatching a terrorist off the streets of Khartoum is not?

Trading cruise missles for camels and aspirin factories didn't prove real useful in the past. Care to tell me why you think we could do a better job now, considering EVERYBODY thought Saddam had WMDs?

First, not everybody thought Saddam had WMDs. Saddam let the inspectors back in under threat of invasion, and they found nothing of signficance. (I admit, I thought Bush's whole plan was to act so eager to invade that we wouldn't have to. Boy was I wrong.)

More importantly, just because lobbing cruise missiles isn't 100% perfect against Sudan or Al Qaeda, or because intelligence isn't 100% reliable, doesn't mean that the only solution is to invade and occupy every potential enemy.

Yes, black ops contain great risks. In the 1990s we weren't willing to take those risks. 9/11 proved that we need to. I'm not the one guilty of hand-wringing here.

Finally, since you don't like any of the ideas I described, how would you win the War on Terror?

Posted by: Oberon at May 4, 2004 01:00 PM

Okay, maybe I am beating it to death.

I think the problem with the WOT is that picking 20 terrorists a year off of various streets in various cities won't make a difference. (The terrorists calling the shots probably aren't the ones walking their own dogs.) And I still think you're minimizing the problem of bad intel. Not everyone believed Saddam had WMDs, only France, Russia, GB, etc. In other words, the people who we thought had a clue.

I don't believe in invading every potential enemy. I believe in taking our declared enemies at their word. Saddam and his Iraq made no bones about being the enemy of the United States, and considering what we learned on 9/11, not attacking would have been taking an unacceptable risk. It's that simple for me.

As to the larger War on Terror™, I'm cautiously optimistic that we're doing the right thing. I think the world will be safer with fewer despotic regimes following fascist policies. Iraq seems like a place in the Islamic world where something like a liberal representative government might be possible. If we don't invade, it doesn't happen. Now it might.

I also think we in the US will be safer if countries who might support our enemies are afraid to do so. Taking out individual actors, even if we could do so effectively and with impunity, wouldn't have that effect.

So yes, I support the overall war effort, because it seems both rational and to be based on humanistic principals. Because if all we'd wanted to do was make Iraq and Afghanistan examples, we could have done so with one B1 bomber.

Posted by: Mark Poling at May 4, 2004 01:22 PM

I live in an area where the support the President and the war is very high. I've not heard anyone say anything even mildly supportive of this crap. The comments are that it's wrong and there are no added buts.

Thoughtful people may disagree about the war, but it doesn't seem anyone with an ounce of sense condones torture.

Posted by: J.R. at May 4, 2004 01:56 PM

Great articles, civilized userbase, insightful comments!

My favorite blog!

Thumbs up!

Posted by: d. Vieess at May 4, 2004 01:59 PM

You wanna try and explain the CNN poll then, JR? Like I said before, I think it's kind of like racism: Alot more people in this country are racist than the few who are willing to shout it from the rooftops. There's a silent 45-47% of folks out there rationalizing the use of torture, JR. Odds are, a good 45-47% of folks in your community aren't being completely honest with you.

Posted by: Grant McEntire at May 4, 2004 02:04 PM

Hannity & Colmes Guest says "frat hazing is worse than this," refering to torture pics.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200405030010

sounds like apologizing for torture to me.

Posted by: GH at May 4, 2004 02:10 PM

Grant, I think Michael is right in his update: the poll was so vague and hypothetical that the 45% number doesn't correlate at all with what the pictures from Iraq show.

Bottom line, what's shown isn't torture, but sick and twisted perversion. (Thanks for the link, d. Vieess -- however you meant the humor, it reflects poorly on you.) It's hard to find anyone who's actually for that sort of thing.

Unfortunately, not hard enough....

Posted by: Mark Poling at May 4, 2004 02:21 PM

I already agreed that the torture in Iraq was wrong, so I don't know why you keep raising it

--because it's the issue at hand?

Posted by: calibar at May 4, 2004 02:25 PM

Randy,

Thanks for the reference. I don't think I need to be informed as to the brutality of torture. As for it's illegality, I'm not sure that matters morally when we're talking about a million lives vs. a killer's pain. Suppose you had to drive drunk in order to go alert the authorities of a hidden nuke in a city. It would be illegal, but not immoral. "I had to let the city be eliminated; one mustn't drive drunk, after all" doesn't hold water. Moreover, the signing on to the international law against torture surely had little to do with saving American cities from nukes and more to do with decency in warfare. There is the spirit and the letter of the law, after all. "I had to let St. Louis be eliminated; one mustn't break international law, after all" doesn't hold up.

As for the ineffectiveness, that's a red herring, and I doubt the jury is in on that point anyway. My point is that if you can save a million innocents by torturing their would-be killer, you not only may but ought to do so. You can clearly see this in the following case:

Imagine that a man is moving towards a remote detonator, so that he can eliminate a nearby city with a nuclear blast. You cannot physically impede him, since you are chained to a chair. However, you have a remote device of your own: a special taser that induces the most excruciating pain in its target from across the room. So, you fire the taser at him, and he fails to detonate the bomb, due to the torturous pain. Clearly, you've done the right thing. If you doubt this, then consider that it obviously would be okay to shoot the would-be killer dead with a regular gun, if that were the only way to stop him. But death is worse than torture. So, it would certainly be okay to use the taser.

It makes no difference that in the case in question, the man has been apprehended after setting the bomb with a timer. So, in that case, too, torturing him is justified if it will stop the bombing.

"Extreme hypotheticals"? But as Mark Poling and I have pointed out, al Qaeda is here in America, it doubtless hopes to eliminate an American city, and we are trying to find them. The best one can say is that the law against torture makes sense because the extreme hypotheticals are so unlikely, even though it would be morally permissible and even obligatory for an FBI agent, say, to go ahead and break the law by torturing the bomber to save an American city.

Posted by: Jim at May 4, 2004 02:25 PM

Rush Limbaugh:

RUSH: Now, as to my original point that these torture photos, that you can see this on stage at a Britney Spears or Madonna concert any day of the week, I stand by it.

Posted by: Oberon at May 4, 2004 02:28 PM

Not everyone believed Saddam had WMDs, only France, Russia, GB, etc. In other words, the people who we thought had a clue.

--there's little indication that the populations of these countries believed that saddam had so-called "WMDs", since their newspapers were reporting strong refutations everytime Blair, Bush, Powell, etc. came out with their WMD the sky is falling scare of the day. Their government leaders were more inclined to believe some of the scares, but mainly because they're motivated by interests in appeasing the US that their populations don't share.

Posted by: calibar at May 4, 2004 02:29 PM

jim,

It's still illegal, period.

Posted by: Randy Paul at May 4, 2004 02:32 PM

Randy, I've admitted that it is illegal. I've been arguing that it is morally permissible, and even morally obligatory.

Posted by: Jim at May 4, 2004 02:35 PM

I think that the important point here is that this matter is under investigation. I am confident that appropriate punishment will follow if warranted. That's our system, and that's part of what makes us successful. It is interesting that we are getting a lot of flack in parts of the world where this happens routinely and is never investigated.

As to whether torture is ever justified, I am sure that there are times when it may be the best of a set of bad alternatives. As a general rule, it is wrong (as well as ineffective) to torture prisoners.

Posted by: Ben at May 4, 2004 02:36 PM

Calibar, you took issue with what I was arguing, thereby establishing that what I was arguing was the issue at hand, only subsequently to deny this. Then you insinuated that I was mentally ill. You need to rethink your manner of debate.

Posted by: Jim at May 4, 2004 02:38 PM

calibar:

--there's little indication that the populations of these countries believed that saddam had so-called "WMDs", since their newspapers were reporting strong refutations everytime Blair, Bush, Powell, etc. came out with their WMD the sky is falling scare of the day. Their government leaders were more inclined to believe some of the scares, but mainly because they're motivated by interests in appeasing the US that their populations don't share.

So, we're supposed to believe a hypothetical Paris taxi driver's assessment of Iraq's capabilities and not what Jaques Chirac says, because obviously Chirac is intimidated by the US and will do anything we want...

Oh, never mind.

Posted by: Mark Poling at May 4, 2004 02:41 PM

Jim,

I ain't buying it. Consider the way torture is usually used. In Greece, Brazil, Argentina and Chile among countless other countries it has been used not to gather information, but to intimidate and break the will of people.

If you're comfortable with that moral equation, congratulations. It's still morally reprehensible which is why it is considered a crime against humanity.

Posted by: Randy Paul at May 4, 2004 02:44 PM

It sounds as though Rush Limbaugh is in support. As long as it is a way to soften them up for interogation. What a fat idiot. Heard lard of shit spouting off today about it.

Posted by: josh at May 4, 2004 02:50 PM

Ah, d. Vieess, proving once again that when intellect fails, you can always draw rude pictures.

Posted by: Mark Poling at May 4, 2004 03:01 PM

Torture is used because it works.

As I've pointed out a few times in comments to this post, torture isn't simply beating a confession out of someone, or breaking fingers until they supply a piece of information. That's what portrayed in movies and TV, but is notoriously unreliable. Actual interrogation is far more complex, psychological, and every bit as humiliating and damaging.

The courageous and ethical choice is to NOT use it, despite the fact that it works, because it's morally and legally wrong.

Those in the camp that believe it should be used under certain circumstances are standing beside the likes of the KGB, the Gestapo, Savak, and the Matawain, and they're welcome to their company.

Posted by: double-plus-ungood at May 4, 2004 03:23 PM

I think d. Vieess is a comment spammer so I deleted the "comments" and banned his IP address. I could be wrong. If so I don't really care because "he" brought nothing to the discussion.

Posted by: Michael J. Totten at May 4, 2004 03:26 PM

How do you do that without significantly changing the political landscape of the major countries in the Middle East?

Mark - it's now clear that what you mean by that phrase cannot be achieved ... worse, our attempts to achieve it so far have been positively counterproductive.

You are still in operating in a fantasyland where
if we only have enough resolve, we can do whatever we want.

It's not true. Some things are possible. Some things are impossible. And sometimes, we can do things for good reasons that turn out to make things worse.

And unless we are prepared to be objective and rational, we will continue to make things worse.

Posted by: Mork at May 4, 2004 03:29 PM

So, we're supposed to believe a hypothetical Paris taxi driver's assessment of Iraq's capabilities and not what Jaques Chirac says, because obviously Chirac is intimidated by the US and will do anything we want.

--gosh, no, you could have listened to what the CIA or DIA were saying at the time...or Blix or countless experts in the field who were refuting Bush/Blair....et al. I mean, all you had to do was to read the British media in the aftermath of Powell's failed speech at the UN, fake dossier borrowed from the Brits and all, to know the whole thing was farcical. And, definitely, we now know the average French or British taxi driver knew more than Bush on the topic of WMDs in Iraq...probably much more in fact.
In fact, all you had to do, before the official invasion began, was to go to a site like this:

http://traprockpeace.org/iraqweapons.html

You'd be way ahead of Bush or Kerry on the topic of WMDs...

Posted by: calibar at May 4, 2004 03:51 PM

Then you insinuated that I was mentally ill.

--I believe you are misreading what I wrote, i regret that.

Posted by: calibar at May 4, 2004 03:52 PM

Mork, I do believe resolve is necessary, but I don't see where that makes me delusional. You keep crowing about the catastrophe that is Iraq, but compared to the rosiest pre-war projections we're doing very well indeed. (The obvious exception being the cost. We got low-balled, and I'm not happy.) And compared to the worst-case scenarios, we're seeing a stunning success. Why does Falluja or Najaf invalidate that? It's early days, and we will certainly lose if we choose to do so. So why choose that?

Oh, by the way:
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040504/wl_nm/iraq_sadr_dc_4

It's the politics of the last five minutes, of course, but we are all following the same rules here, right?

Pardon me, the anti-war side's demonstrated predictive powers don't make jumping ship seem like a good bet right now.

Being "objective and rational" involves more than making statements and expecting people to smile and nod.

Posted by: Mark Poling at May 4, 2004 04:14 PM

Mark - if you believe that Iraq is on track to becoming a viable democracy, then obviously we are looking at different Iraqs.

Why don't you help me out here. Rational people are always looking for evidence that falsifies their assumptions. What do you think would constitute sufficient evidence to support a conclusion that failure is more likely than success?

As for "crowing", believe me, it gives me no pleasure to make these observations. I was a strong supporter of the invasion at the time, but I believe that subsequent events have comprehensively proved me wrong.

To the extent that anyone has had their pre-war views borne out, it was the Scowcroft/Eagleberger/Baker realists, who predicted more or less exactly what would happen and therefore counselled against the invasion.

Posted by: Mork at May 4, 2004 04:48 PM

Randy,

I don't know how you could think I would support torture "not to gather information, but to intimidate and break the will of people." I support torture of the villainous to save the innocent.

In any event, "you ain't buyin' it," but you haven't refuted my argument.

Posted by: Jim at May 4, 2004 05:22 PM

Mork, good point: falsifiable assumptions are important, but bear in mind before I begin that many of the things that have happened in the last year I count as discrete successes:

1. Saddam gone.
2. Libya coming clean about WMDs.
3. Pakistan fessing up to malfeasance.
4. Iraqi WMD threat removed. (I know, I know, "they were never there!" But we didn't know that, so Saddam could have continued bluffing.)
5. Global terrorism (outside Iraq) diminished. (See an earlier post here.)

You can argue that the Iraqi invasion had nothing to do with anything other than the first point, but I see them as linked. You may be right, but then again, you may not be. The thing is, they were effects that were predicted by the "pro-war" crowd (specifically the disincentive to continue state-sponsored WMD programs) so I get to put them in my "win" column.

The Iraq war will be a failure if (going from catastropic to banal, over a five year timeline):

1. Iran pre-emptively attacks Iraq (or the US directly) with nuclear weapons.
2. We are unable to maintain military bases in Iraq.
3. Iraq does not have a stable representative government or governments. (I leave open the possiblity of partition. Three different countries made from Iraq would be no terrible thing, in my opinion.)
4. US troop losses do not linearly diminish. (Please note this only applies if no "second front" against a new opponent occurs).
5. Terrorism within Iraq does not linearly diminish.

The thing is, all my criteria for failure take a while to see happen. And many of my criteria for success have already occured. Success or failure is not an either/or proposition, short-term or long-term. So while saying I'm pleased with how things are going has a certain bloodless quality to it, I will say that I think things could be a lot worse.

By the way, Michael, with your permission I would like to post this on my own site as a blog entry.

Posted by: Mark Poling at May 4, 2004 05:36 PM

While everybody here is debating whether or not conservatives are torture-loving fascists, we are losing sight of the bottom line. What effect will these acts have on the mission in Iraq?

IMO, between this "torture" revelation, the apparent wavering in Fallujah, and our failure to confront Iran and Syria, we are well on our way to losing this fight.

Posted by: HA at May 4, 2004 06:22 PM

IMO, between this "torture" revelation, the apparent wavering in Fallujah, and our failure to confront Iran and Syria, we are well on our way to losing this fight.

--it's lost already, the US can't influence the outcome of events in Iraq nearly as much as it hoped to before the war. already chalabi is out and he was by far and away the most favored client. now they are having to negotiate with all kinds of people they didn't want to negotiate with, make all kinds of deals, spend all kinds of $$,...nothing has gone the way the US hoped.

Posted by: calibar at May 4, 2004 07:05 PM

Iraqi WMD threat removed. (I know, I know, "they were never there!" But we didn't know that, so Saddam could have continued bluffing.)

You didn't know or you chose to not know?

Posted by: calibar at May 4, 2004 08:51 PM

Mark - I appreciate you taking my question seriously. Here are my quick thoughts on your list of successes and potential indications of failure.

Saddam gone.

Well, we can all be happy about that.

Libya coming clean about WMDs.

I can't rule out a causal connection, although the wider circumstances support a view that the impact of Iraq may not have extended far beyond the timing of Libya's actions. It's clear that Libya was making a concerted effort to rejoin the world community well before Iraq - before the Bush Administration, even. See, for example, the settlement of the outstanding issues connected with Lockerbie. At the least, Libya was not much of a threat by the time Bush took office. There's also evidence (in a Sy Hersh piece in the New Yorker) that the real effect of Iraq was that Libya timed its appeal when it did in order to get a better deal from the Bush Administration than it would otherwise have got. This was ecause the Libyans knew that Bush needed some ammunition to justify the invasion: in other words, Bush needed the deal more than Gaddafi did, and therefore was prepared to make more concessions.

Finally, you can't talk about Libya's reaction without also noting that the Iraq invasion has (according to them) strengthened the resolve of North Korea to keep nuclear weapons, because they believe that they need them as a deterrent. Hard to argue with their logic.

Pakistan fessing up to malfeasance.

I think this is a stretch. Yes, there was some information that came from Libya that pointed at AQ Khan. But there was also info from Iran, collected by the IAEA, and reportedly, the basic facts were already widely known already. In a wider sense, it's really difficult to see how the invasion assisted our leverage with Pakistan, where it was deeply unpopular.

Iraqi WMD threat removed. (I know, I know, "they were never there!" But we didn't know that, so Saddam could have continued bluffing.)

Well, the inspectors had a pretty good idea by the time they left, and if they'd stayed, they likely would have removed any doubt.

Global terrorism (outside Iraq) diminished. (See an earlier post here.)

I think Michael's post to that effect was nothing short of fanciful. The data simply weren't capable of sustaining the conclusion.

As for your indicia of failure:

Iran pre-emptively attacks Iraq (or the US directly) with nuclear weapons.

Yes, that would be bad!

We are unable to maintain military bases in Iraq.

Iraq does not have a stable representative government or governments.

I'll take these together, because I think they're mutually incompatible. I think it's now perfectly clear that if there is a genuinely representative government in Iraq, the tenure of American military forces there will be short. The only way America keeps bases is to sponsor some sort of authoritarian government.

(I leave open the possiblity of partition. Three different countries made from Iraq would be no terrible thing, in my opinion.)

I wonder if you've thought much about how this would come about. First: the Shiite and Sunni populations are intermixed - it's impossible to see how they could be separated without mass migration, and almost certain violence (think the partition of India and Pakistan, or the break-up of the former Yugoslavia). Second, Turkey will not accept an independent Kurdistan: that result would also lead to war.

There is just no way to get to the result without chaos, violence and slaughter.

US troop losses do not linearly diminish. (Please note this only applies if no "second front" against a new opponent occurs).

I would be interested to know your timeframe ...

Terrorism within Iraq does not linearly diminish.

Ditto.

Posted by: Mork at May 4, 2004 08:52 PM

Just as bean-counting for acts of terror is done differently by the State Department when it's Colombia's numbers versus when it's Iraq's under U.S. occupation, we're also seeing people in this forum saying that torture isn't torture when it's in Iraq. And that someone is a torture advocate just because they say torture might make sense in very extreme circumstances, as long as there is appropriate oversight and transparency. So does that make me a "war advocate" because I think, on balance, America's entry into WW II was the right thing?

Agreeing on the meanings of terms is fundamental to productive debate. Even when the debate is about meanings of terms, you have to ground the discussion somewhere. Saying that treatment of prisoners (some of whom may not be guilty, mind you) is no worse that what goes on in fraternity hazing rituals neglects an important point: fraternity hazing is a custom involving consent of the "victim." Torture is not. It isn't the degree of punishment, it's the principle involved.

Both torture and terrorism must be understood in terms of goals and motivations, not just the specifics of acts performed. The goal of terrorism is political destabilization, and for the still-further goal of some desired political outcome. The goal of state-sponsored torture is often the opposite: political stabilization. It probably didn't matter much to Saddam whether torture was producing reliable information about his enemies or not. It kept people too scared to rise against him in great numbers. To imagine that Americans would never employ it for such a purpose in Iraq may be to neglect that, in effect, it already has been used for that purpose. After all, Iraqis have been tortured, then released to their families and communities without compensation or redress of injustice. Do you think they didn't talk about it? Do you think the stories don't get around? Do you think the stories don't get exaggerated? Do you think that most Iraqis feel not only angrier because of this, but also more impotent, and thus less likely to rise up? They are not used to anyone defending their rights. The Iraqi minister of human rights took his complaints about all this quite a while ago all the way up to Paul Bremer. Bremer did nothing. (That minister has since resigned from the provisional government.) Don't you think this sends a message to Iraqi society?

"Meet the new boss. A little better than the old boss. Don't act up, or pretty soon you won't be able to tell the difference." Outrageous? I agree. Sounds pretty stupid if you're an American. But I bet it sounds pretty much like politics as usual if you're an Iraqi.

Posted by: Michael Turner at May 5, 2004 02:41 AM

HA -- why do you put "torture" in quotes?

Posted by: Markus Rose at May 5, 2004 07:18 AM

HA -- I do agree however that we are well on the way to losing this fight. Joe Wilson made the same point on Charlie Rose last night, when he said something to the effect of "if the US can't manage the invasion and occupation of an incredibly weak country like Iraq, imagine what message this sends to other members of the so-called 'axis of evil.'"

Posted by: Markus Rose at May 5, 2004 07:31 AM

Mork, last points because you posed them as questions:

Time frame: 5 years. It's admittedly arbitrary, but assuming nothing catastropic happens (i.e. going nuclear, etc.) I believe we need to give this effort time to work.

As to Turkey not accepting Kurdistan: I'm going to be a hard-ass on this one and say if it's necessary for a successful liberal democracy in the former Iraq, screw Turkey. They are not in a wonderful bargaining positioin. I respectfully disagree that Turkey would go to war with the United States over this.

Shiia and Sunni are tough, but I'd rather see a Sunni dominated region around Baghdad and a Shiia dominated south, assuming both governments were representative of the populations of the region. I disagree that this would necessarily involve civil war, but I'm at best a decently informed observer, so the margin for error here is, ahem, huge.

calibar: As to the WMD threat: I look at it as a case of analysing the consequences of a "false positive" versus a "false negative". If we're wrong about a false positive (the case in Iraq) we remove a viscious fascist dictator and accrue a large cost in soldier's lives and our economy's health. If we're wrong about a false negative, the (potential) consequence is losing a western city. Making those decisions is the President's job, and I agree with the choice he made.

Against the "Bush Lied" scenario: If the administration knew Iraq didn't have WMDs, don't you think our evil leadership would have been capable of planting a bunch out in the desert?

Posted by: Mark Poling at May 5, 2004 08:04 AM

Rose quoting Rose: ...if the US can't manage the invasion and occupation of an incredibly weak country like Iraq, imagine what message this sends to other members of the so-called 'axis of evil.

This subjunctive conditional is obviously true and widely used in the forum as a premise of argument at the moment.

The problem with the argument is that it is very far from having been proven to be true that the U.S. cannot manage the Iraq venture. The case can be made that things are going well enough. Mark Poling has made such a case in a post above. I'd say that the criteria of failure should be (1.) Iraq crosses over, for the most part, to the Islamist side in the WoT and (2.) the attempt to institute a reasonable facsimile of a republic within a year or so fails miserably. The criterion of failure is certainly not that many horrible things happen. Those are to be expected in a venture such as this.

Posted by: Jim at May 5, 2004 08:35 AM

Aplogies for the spelling and grammer errors above. Preview is my friend.

Posted by: Mark Poling at May 5, 2004 09:36 AM

Mark: By the way, Michael, with your permission I would like to post this on my own site as a blog entry.

If you're talking about your own commentary here, copy and paste all you want. You don't have to ask me.

Posted by: Michael J. Totten at May 5, 2004 09:40 AM

Against the "Bush Lied" scenario: If the administration knew Iraq didn't have WMDs, don't you think our evil leadership would have been capable of planting a bunch out in the desert?

--actually, no. i think it was almost impossible after the first dozen or so "finds" all came back as nothing but nothing. But really, ya didn't have to wonder if the administration was serious about its case that Iraq had so-called wmds, all ya had to do was

read devastating rebuttals of the Bush-Blair 'evidence' to know better

Posted by: calibar at May 5, 2004 10:08 AM

Thanks Michael. Since this is your site, I figure you own the content on it, including anything posted here. (With the caveat of course that you're not responsible for the opinions of those who post. You can't be responsible for us idiots.) Didn't think you'd mind, but my mom always told me to be polite.

Posted by: Mark Poling at May 5, 2004 10:13 AM

I don't know how you could think I would support torture "not to gather information, but to intimidate and break the will of people." I support torture of the villainous to save the innocent.

I didn't make the claim that you thought that.

In any event, "you ain't buyin' it," but you haven't refuted my argument.

When one makes a claim in an argument, one is responsible for defending that argument. You are asking me to prove a negative. It is up to you to prove your claims.

I will leave it to the experts, however. As I write this I am listening to the show "To the Point." They are discussing this issue and one of the experts is Peter Bauer, a retired US Military Intelligence Interrogator. He commented that the information gleaned through torture is "useless" because people being tortured will say anything to end the torture. You can probably listen to the program tomorrow at this link (they archive the program the following day).

Again, you're making the claim you have to prove it.

Posted by: Randy Paul at May 5, 2004 11:52 AM

Randy,

I didn't make the claim that you thought that.

Yes you did:

it has been used not to gather information, but to intimiate and break the will of people. If you're comfortable with that moral equation, congratulations. It's still morally reprehensible which is why it is considered a crime against humanity.

As for:

It is up to you to prove your claims.

On the contrary, I've given several arguments (upthread) to prove my claim that torture in the ticking bomb case is justified and even obligatory. I've fulfilled my burden of proof. You need to poke holes in my arguments before you can be justified in dismissing my claim.

As for testimony to the ineffectiveness of torture is a red herring. I'm sure there are experts who will testify to the contrary. The jury is not in yet on the question. In any event, if there is a chance that the information could be gleaned, the torture is justified.

Look, Randy, it comes down to this. He's smiling in your face. You have him in custody. He admits to having planted a large nuke in St. Louis. The only way to find it is by torturing him for the information. How can you justify the death of millions vs. the pain of a villain?

Posted by: Jim at May 5, 2004 02:06 PM

Because it's a crime. You haven't proven anything. You've merely set up a big set of hypothetical examples that underscore your thesis and claim that is proof. I'll stick to the word of experts like Mr. Bauer.

I didn't make the claim that you thought that. I merely stated the fact that all too often torture is used for purposes other than the hypothetical cases you mentioned. If you have no problem using a technique that is all too often used for horrific purposes that are morally indefensible to the extent that it is considered a crime against humanity because you believe (no matter how erroneously and without a shred of real proof to back up your claim) that it is "morally necessary", that is a moral equation you are prepared to make. I'm not.

I'm sure there are experts who will testify to the contrary.

So find them. Here's another book recommendation: Violence Workers: Police Torturers and Murderers Reconstruct Brazilian Atrocities
by Martha Knisely Huggins, Mika Haritos-Fatouros, Philip G. Zimbardo.

Are you familiar with the Stanley Milgram experiments at Yale? Are you familiar with Dr. Zimbardo's experiments at Stanford? If not, you should at least study them and read a little more rather than relying on your specious hypotheticals.

Posted by: Randy Paul at May 5, 2004 02:43 PM

You've merely set up a big set of hypothetical examples that underscore your thesis and claim that is proof.

No, I gave you several arguments that in some of the "big set of hypothetical examples" there are cases of justified torture. I don't know how we can debate if you refuse to acknowledge that I've made arguments for my case. If you won't acknowledge the arguments exist, you can't refute them, and we can't debate.

...that is a moral equation you are prepared to make...

Surgeons cut people with razors. So do knife-wielding killers. You doubtless approve of what surgeons do, but that does not mean that the two are "a moral equation you are prepared to make." On the contrary, you hold that one is good and the other evil. You would deny that there is an equation. So do I in the case of torture. It may be used for evil and it may be used for good.

I don't know how the Milgram experiments prove anything other than torture can be wrongfully used when people are duped into it. They certainly don't prove that it would be wrong to choose the elimination of St. Louis over a villain's pain.

And you haven't answered my question as to why you think it would be right to let St. Louis be annihilated, rather than subject a villain to pain.

Posted by: Jim at May 5, 2004 03:01 PM

Sheesh, Randy, a quick Google finds loads and loads of instances in which torture has worked to make the bad guys give valid, crucial information. But torture doesn't work? So much for your "experts".

Posted by: Jim at May 5, 2004 03:13 PM

Mark:

I respectfully disagree that Turkey would go to war with the United States over this.

Turkey would go to war with Kurdistan as soon the U.S. was not in a position to guarantee its security.

But the fact of the matter is that Turkey will flat out not permit this, and has enough leverage with the U.S. to ensure that it doesn't happen.

Shiia and Sunni are tough, but I'd rather see a Sunni dominated region around Baghdad and a Shiia dominated south, assuming both governments were representative of the populations of the region. I disagree that this would necessarily involve civil war ...

Well, I can think of plenty of examples where partitioning a country into two ethnic enclaves resulted in massive violence, but I can't think of any that occurred peacefully. (I'm excluding cases where the division took place along established political boundaries, such as the division of Czechoslovakia). So, the question
is: what's different about Iraq that suggests that human beings will act differently on this occasion than they did in all the comparable previous occasions?

Posted by: Mork at May 5, 2004 03:16 PM

Mork, I don't know. Maybe non-Kurdish Iraq can't be partitioned without a bloody civil war, in which case we shouldn't do it.

About my contention that Kurdistan could exist with or without Turkey's blessing: you don't honestly think we're not going to keep troops there, do you? Turkey isn't North Korea, but it won't move against a US-supported Kurdistan any more than North Korea would. As to it's leverage with the United States, I don't see it, but maybe I'm missing something. Seems to me they need us more than we need them, especially if we have a strong ally (the hypothetical Kurdistan) on their border.

Posted by: Mark Poling at May 5, 2004 03:26 PM

Mark - Turkey is the only modern, democratic and stable Islamic country in the world. It is a NATO member. The U.S. has bases there.

If it decided to break with the United States, it would be disastrous.

Seems to me they need us more than we need them, especially if we have a strong ally (the hypothetical Kurdistan) on their border.

I don't really see how they need us - they will eventually be an EU member, with all that goes along with that status. As for Kurdistan being "strong" - perhaps you mean "loyal", because if you mean "powerful", you'd be wrong.

And, frankly, I wouldn't even count on that: they have many historical grievances against the United States.

Posted by: Mork at May 5, 2004 05:09 PM

Sheesh, Randy, a quick Google finds loads and loads of instances in which torture has worked to make the bad guys give valid, crucial information. But torture doesn't work? So much for your "experts".

And yet you don't provide a single link. That speaks volumes.

Posted by: Randy Paul at May 5, 2004 06:19 PM

And you haven't answered my question as to why you think it would be right to let St. Louis be annihilated, rather than subject a villain to pain.

And for the record, who's accusing someone falsely here? You are.

Apparently Michael is wrong. Jim here is vigorously defending torture.

Posted by: Randy Paul at May 5, 2004 06:21 PM

No, I gave you several arguments that in some of the "big set of hypothetical examples" there are cases of justified torture. I don't know how we can debate if you refuse to acknowledge that I've made arguments for my case. If you won't acknowledge the arguments exist, you can't refute them, and we can't debate.

My last words to you on the subject, Jim. The arguments exist, but they don't exist in the real world. I'll stick to the real world, thank you.

Posted by: Randy Paul at May 5, 2004 06:35 PM

Me: And you haven't answered my question as to why you think it would be right to let St. Louis be annihilated, rather than subject a villain to pain.

Randy: And for the record, who's accusing someone falsely here? You are.

Goodness, I thought we were debating this very point, with you taking the let St. Louis go side and me taking the other.

And yet you don't provide a single link. That speaks volumes.

Ah, attacking my character, now are you? You don't address a single argument of mine, you deny that my arguments exist, you say that my position is false, you deny that you accept its denial, and now you my character? This is amazing. You have utterly wasted my time and now insulted me.

Posted by: Jim at May 5, 2004 06:38 PM

It only gets worse and worse and worse

Posted by: calibar at May 5, 2004 07:14 PM

Markus,

HA -- why do you put "torture" in quotes?

Because what I've seen so far doesn't rise to the level of torture. Abusive and illegal, yes, but not torture. I'm not saying that the investigation won't reveal that torture has been committed. It just hasn't been show yet.

Posted by: HA at May 6, 2004 03:26 AM

it seems to me that the argument here is breaking down over the details of hypothetical versus real cases. is torture legal? no, not ever in any case. can torture be morally justified? no, not ever. are there times in which a state must swallow any qualms it has about torture and do it? yes. in the scenario described by jim then there is very little choice; sometimes, as any star trek fan can tell you, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or of the one. the first purpose of the state is the protection of its citizens; the state which either will not or cannot defend its citizens from attack has no long term claim to the loyalty of its citizens. when faced with an overwhelming threat to the safety of its citizens, the state must act and the questions of legality and morality be left for another time. contd

Posted by: akaky at May 6, 2004 08:02 AM

Mork, in all seriousness thanks for dragging this out. Interesting discussion.

To continue picking over the Turkey carcass, France (i.e. Chirac) recently stated that Turkey wouldn't be ready for E.U. membership for at least ten years (if memory serves). Turkey can't wait that long. (Of course, if Turkey becomes reliably anti-US interests, France might speed up the process. Where would we be without allies?)

And speaking of allies, it was really great having those bases in Turkey, which couldn't be used against Iraq. Boy, gotta love those allies.

And yeah, by strong ally I do mean loyal. Kurdistan certainly wouldn't be a strong country for many years. (Sort of like Poland). But man, talk about tough....

Posted by: Mark Poling at May 6, 2004 08:08 AM

that being said, randy is right in pointing out that torture is a very slippery slope. if it can be used on terrorists, then why not on ordinary criminals? as richard nixon famously said (and famously forgot)the problem with the ends justifying the means is that too many times the means become the ends. machiavelli also points out that in dealing with other governments the prince must be willing to get his hands dirty but that he must then depart from the evil he has had to do. easier said than done, to be sure, but no one said life was easy. torture is something that will too easily get out of control if it is not limited absolutely to the most extreme cases and so to my mind it would be better if it was not done at all. but in the hypothetical given, that of a threat to thousands of innocents, i think the argument can be made that compelling an answer from a suspect is, if not the right thing to do, then it was the necessary thing to do

Posted by: akaky at May 6, 2004 08:13 AM

There was no excuse for what happened at Abu Ghraib. None whatsoever. Following orders--these are illegal orders; you don't have any obligation to obey them. Acting under pressure--I didn't see people who were pressured, I saw people abusing others for fun.
If MI ordered this, then they are incompetent and much worse. I am not certain who these men were--so