[ziggytrix]

Originally Posted by Preechr

You, in this example, would be the torture candidate equivalent to the rare guy that is as connected to terrorism as you are to your loved ones. Can you agree with me that most of the folks we are interrogating are not going to be connected on that level?

Well, no, I really can't agree with that, as there is no basis for an answer other than wild guessing. We don't know how many people are interrogated, or what level their connection is, if any with terrorist organizations.

And I would like to make a semantic point that a person has connections to an organization, and not to the concept of "terrorism" unless that person is a psychopath who is just invovled because he gets to kill people.

Most of these guys are revealed with airstrikes. We see the pictures of their corpses on the news if there's anything identifiable left. Can you infer from this that our military isn't really all that interested in seeing what the actual terrorist leaders have to say?

Not at all. When we took out Zarqawi, we recovered fuckloads of intel in the form of records, laptops, etc. And it's a safe bet those materials weren't casually discarded, either. And it doesn't matter whether anyone thinks their fingernails are gonna get pulled out when you have more effective and reliable ways of gathering intelligence, such as eavesdropping, infiltration, and data raids.

Again, please acknowledge that I am not just talking about torture. You really aren't addressing that at all. What about the information gained from just the fear of torture, Zig?

I thought I had addressed that. At the risk of repeating myself, I'll try again. The fear of torture is not the sort of thing you want hanging over the head of every person who goes to a mosque or has an Arabic name. That gives weight to the our enemies' claims that America is the enemy of all Muslims. I do not want us to go that route. It is not a sane route.

Originally Posted by Preechr

Using your preferred method, however, we'll have to stop building schools and start building a shitload of prisons. How's that gonna look? Until those prisons get built, we're still gonna have to threaten detainees with something, right? Prison camps? That's a pretty sweet target. Now we're going to have to re-allocate our soldiers to guard them, taking them off the search for terrorists.

The potential threat of torture streamlines all that. It keeps soldiers doing what they are supposed to be doing and interrogators doing what they're supposed to be doing, and it gets the dentist home to his kids a lot quicker while getting us the information we need. Sure, it sounds bad... But is it really worse than the alternative?

You have not made the argument that removing torture as an interrogation method is going to increase Al Queada recruitment, increase terrorist activity, or increase the number of people we capture and interrogate.

What makes you think our detainment rate would increase with a declared ban on torture (and how many people over there even believe us when we say "we don't torture" anyway)?

Originally Posted by Preechr

I asked Max why torturing someone is so much more barbaric than anything else that happens in a war. The most humane thing we can do in a war is get it over with as quickly as possible. The threat of possible torture at the hands of Americans is alive and well in the Middle East right now. We are believed to be capable of viscous savagery when information is witheld, yet we are also fixing up Iraq and Afghanistan real nice, too. We are doing less harm to the people for better reasons and making our improvements to the cities and towns faster than their previous rulers in both cases. We replaced what hey had with something better on all counts, though not totally alien, and we are also helping them to build a modern government to replace us quicker than anybody expected could be possible.

And the threat of torture for anyone who gets picked up for whatever reason makes all that possible?

Originally Posted by Preechr

]We didn't try to capture Zarqawi in order to torture him. Whatever information that shitbird might have had died right there with him. Your example helps to prove the American Military policy on torture as it actually exists.

I think it's proof that our military found out where he was, faced the choice of stopping him with an airstrike or taking the time to organize a capture attempt and risk losing him as a target and perhaps losing their method of finding him again, and so they made the sound decision to take him out and see if they could find anything useful in the rubble.

We have established here so far that our people have lots of experience sorting lies from facts

So we can tell when someone is lying when they say they don't know anything. Even without the threat of torture. We learned how to do that over here where all interrogations happen with a lawyer present. Gotcha.

We have also established, even from way over here in our armchairs, that some people are more succeptible to the threat of torture than others, and we have loosely catagorized them into two groups: Terrorist leaders that we kill instead torture and generally everyone else suspected to have valuable information. Seems responsible enough, don't it?

I have also presented you with the reality of our alternative to the myth of torture: prisons. I say myth of torture because I think at this point I've sufficiently hammered out the logic behind the concept that MOST detainees, by far, are not terrorist leaders and are thus much more likely to tell our guys what they need to know long before somebody shows up in a hood to hook electrodes up to their nipples.

So a list that includes "people we're going to kill anyway" and "people we think are hiding something" is your criteria for "responsible torture"? I'm not sure I buy that at all, but I hardly want to even talk about the morality of actual torture if all you're really saying is OK is spreading the fear of the torture boogeyman, as it supposedly speeds up the interrogation process.

Somewhere in the middle, I'm sure, are high-value detainees we've got that won't divuldge what they know that easy. We've culled them from the vast majority of detainees, and we ship them off to Gitmo or something. No new Iraqi jails. New schools instead. We get what we need the most efficient way possible and nobody actually gets tortured. Sweet, huh?

Your'e sure? I rather got the impression that we really don't know who we've got in Gitmo, but a lot of them have names that sound quite like names we got from people that we didn't torture, so we're pretty sure they know something... We don't even keep the high-value detainees there!

I really like this idea of using foreign soil to replace prisons though. Too bad we can't do that in America, since no one ever wants a new jail built in their vicinity.

By now you've figured out that I don't really believe torture is all that common. Do you? You still seem to have a hard time parsing out everything that is possibly happening during detention before torture starts. That's where all the effective stuff is, Ziggy! I'm sure not even the Jordanian government has torture vans roaming the streets, randomly abducting people and torturing them right there for fun.

So let's be clear. When you said "I support cluster bombs. Torture, too... and not just the playing loud music variety, either." you meant, but only if it doesn't happen very often?

My main question (which I still haven't got a clear answer) is where you believe the lines should be drawn between acts of war and war crimes. I don't know where you're getting this "Jordanian torture van" shit, but you're entitled to your strange tangents too, I guess.

Originally Posted by ziggytrix

People are getting shot in face, their arms and legs blown off, some of them innocent civilians and soldiers that are on our side, and you are worried about scaring people?

No. I'm only concerned about taking a sincere look at the causes of terrorist recruitment, and then doing WHATEVER is neccessary to combat it. If the threat of torture by Americans helps us more than it harms, by all means, waterboarders start your near-asphyxiations!

Originally Posted by Preechr

There is no proof of torture. It's a highly useful myth.

It's an extremely useful myth for those who like to lie about how wicked America is.

Originally Posted by preechr

This is the crux of your argument, so the only way I could respond is by repeating everything I've said so far. In short, decreasing our advantages on any level extends the war, and we are morally obligated to NOT do that. We ARE morally obligated to do everything we can to make this war as short as possible, though while doing so as morally as possible. You have not made your case that scaring people has no moral place in a warzone.

The crux of my argument is that there are acts which are considered war crimes. Personally, I think we lose credibility if we constanly flirt with the line, and that what we gain needs to be demonstrably more valueable than building trust and alliance with people who believe in the rule of law.

Did you see how I made this silly question central to my argument? The answer is no. We do this quickly and as morally as possible, because wars are no place for decent people.

"As morally as possible" is really, REALLY vague. Certainly more vague than a ban on "outrages upon human dignity".

Most terrorists only want to shoot guns and shout "Allahu Akbar!" They love the fight. They are far less connected to the reasons behind the fighting than they are the fight itself.

I suspect this is untrue, but I doubt either of us could prove our belief.

What would it take for you to join Al Quaeda, Ziggy?

I would never voluntarily sign up for a religious war.

Originally Posted by Preechr

Really? How so?

Our military resources are stretched. Recruitment is not where it needs to be. Public support is not where it needs to be.

Do you realize just how actually unaffected the vast majority of Americans are by this war?

I'm very aware of that problem. See my previous remark.

Originally Posted by Preechr

We do. It's called ending their state of persistent warfare and violence. We won't accomplish this with flowers and candy.

Wow. I didn't expect such a disingenuous response from you. We have the false dichotomy of a war to end war, and flowers and candy. What a lovely waste of time this has been.

In your response to this, you tell me if that was valid in this discussion.

Ugh, no, it wasn't. When I first replied to this thread my intent was supposed to be more like a quick poll than a long debate, but our discussion has completely diverged from my original intended questions since I apparently have a masochistic love of playing Devil's advocate.

So really, the "crux of my argument" was supposed to be would you be so kind as to give your opinion on "what makes a specific war act a war crime" and "are war crimes sometimes unavoidable when fighting people with no compunctions against war crimes"? Or if you prefer, "when you stare into the abyss, does the abyss really stare back, or is that just Nietzsche trying to sound smart?"



Christ, I don't ever wanna make a post this long on i-mockery ever again.