Hey michchamp

[deathroh]

It goes back to what Champ said right off the bat; nobody has even asserted 1 specific useful detail was learned through torture. Some claim it was useful in general terms, but when pressed for a specific example, nobody has offered a single case when torture produced new, useful information.

Right, and when I alluded to that by saying she is providing absolutely no evidence that it works outside of Dick Cheney saying it does, that did create a small dent.

 

[Michchamp]

You need to find the report from the former FBI officer who was at Gitmo (and I think he was also in Iraq) and went on the record to refute the pro-torture arguments. there are many others out there too.

Just point it out and say, "This seems to contradict the key assumption you are making: that torture is effective in producing actionable intelligence" and then let her figure it out.

if she just ignores all else to the contrary, and sticks to her guns... well... she should choose a career path such as the one I pointed out earlier.

 

[cheeno]

I would waterboard her until she admits she's wrong.

 

[Michchamp]

I would waterboard her until she admits she's wrong.

LOL, good call. that would be a valuable life lesson.

once in a debate, Socrates famously led his opponents along a slippery slope of logical inferences until he had them arguing for his own position. then he pointed this out, and completely ruined them.

but waterboarding would probably work too.

 

[TheVictors]

Sort of reminds me of a bit Jon Stewart did juxtaposing Megan Kelly's flip flop on maternity leave, only after she became a parent herself.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-august-11-2011/lactate-intolerance

What would your step-daughter think if she is dating a soldier who is captured and "interrogated" by these evil sand people?! Or, what if someone close to her is kidnapped while traveling abroad?

For an AP English paper, you could take a completely absurd position and get an A. I'd be more curious to hear her present the paper in a debate and see what the opposition view might do to "highlight" inconsistencies, etc.

 

[deathroh]

I would waterboard her until she admits she's wrong.

Ha! And then I'll ask her afterwards if she really meant it, to really drive home the point.

 

[deathroh]

For an AP English paper, you could take a completely absurd position and get an A. I'd be more curious to hear her present the paper in a debate and see what the opposition view might do to "highlight" inconsistencies, etc.

Oh man, it would be a slaughter...

 

[deathroh]

You need to find the report from the former FBI officer who was at Gitmo (and I think he was also in Iraq) and went on the record to refute the pro-torture arguments. there are many others out there too.

Just point it out and say, "This seems to contradict the key assumption you are making: that torture is effective in producing actionable intelligence" and then let her figure it out.

if she just ignores all else to the contrary, and sticks to her guns... well... she should choose a career path such as the one I pointed out earlier.

This should be a good starting point...

http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/...human-rights/quotes-on-guantanamo-and-torture

 

[cheeno]

LOL, good call. that would be a valuable life lesson.

once in a debate, Socrates famously led his opponents along a slippery slope of logical inferences until he had them arguing for his own position. then he pointed this out, and completely ruined them.

but waterboarding would probably work too.

I was totally thinking about Socrates when I posted this. If she cracks and admits she's wrong, you say, "see you'll admit to anything under torture". If she holds out despite the devil's facewash you say, "see if I needed quick intell we'd all be dead".

 

[Michchamp]

Here's one link.
Quote:

Ali Soufan, a former FBI special agent and perhaps the most successful U.S. interrogator of al-Qaeda operatives, says the use of those techniques was unnecessary and often counterproductive. Detainees, he says, provided vital intelligence under non-violent questioning, before they were put through "walling" and waterboarding.
​

more:

In an op-ed piece in the New York Times, Soufan says Abu Zubaydah gave up the information between March and June 2002, when he was being interrogated by Soufan, another FBI agent and some CIA officers. But that was not the result of harsh techniques, including waterboarding, which were not introduced until August. "We were getting a lot of useful material from [Abu Zubaydah], and we would have continued to get material from him," Soufan told TIME. "The rough tactics were not necessary."​

 

[Michchamp]

from the same link; makes you wonder who some of these fuckwads were, and why they were pushing the use of torture:

[Soufan] argues that techniques like waterboarding don't work. "When they are in pain, people will say anything to get the pain to stop. Most of the time, they will lie, make up anything to make you stop hurting them," he says. "That means the information you're getting is useless." But his main objection to the techniques, Soufan says, is moral. To use violence against detainees, he says, "is [al-Qaeda's] way, not the American way."


Soufan says that view was shared by the CIA officials who worked with him on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah and others. But then the harsh methods were introduced, he says, by CIA contractors and Soufan protested. He was backed by his bosses at the FBI and pulled out of the interrogations. This led to a rift between the Bureau and the CIA that has not fully healed. Yet Soufan says that if any CIA officials are prosecuted for the use of harsh techniques, he "will be the first person to defend them." The real blame, he says, lies with "those who told them it is legal to do such things."
​

 

[Michchamp]

More, this one on the number of detainee deaths that occured in US custody. Not really the sort of things done by a "shining beacon of democracy," or whatever. You read things like this - largely, almost entirely ignored by the mainstream media here - and it starts to make sense why people in other countries hate us... (link):

Gen. Barry McCafferty:

We should never, as a policy, maltreat people under our control, detainees. We tortured people unmercifully. We probably murdered dozens of them during the course of that, both the armed forces and the C.I.A.
​

 

[redandguilty]

I think we're all on the same page here. The aspect of the debate where I've fallen on the "bad guy" is how you create rules regarding what you can and cannot do. One way is to make a list of things you're not allowed to do (Thou shalt not...). I think there's an army document on interrogation out there that lists the only methods they approve (Thou shalt only...). A Thou shalt only system offers better protection for prisoners, but I've argued in the past that I thought a well constructed list of Thou shalt nots is more desirable because I think it can offer sufficient protection as long as it is subject to civilian courts and enemies can't prepare for it the way they can if you publish a list of Thou shalt only rules.

 

[Michchamp]

I think we're all on the same page here. The aspect of the debate where I've fallen on the "bad guy" is how you create rules regarding what you can and cannot do. One way is to make a list of things you're not allowed to do (Thou shalt not...). I think there's an army document on interrogation out there that lists the only methods they approve (Thou shalt only...). A Thou shalt only system offers better protection for prisoners, but I've argued in the past that I thought a well constructed list of Thou shalt nots is more desirable because I think it can offer sufficient protection as long as it is subject to civilian courts and enemies can't prepare for it the way they can if you publish a list of Thou shalt only rules.

there were a number of different rules in place, all of which prohibited torture & provided guidelines that were not to be cross; start with the Geneva Convention, and then look at the Army's own manuals on interrogations. This wasn't something that they were unprepared for; a decision was made *somewhere* to incorporate torture as an official US government policy, and then the administration found a particularly sleazy group of lawyers, particularly John Yoo and Jay Bybee, decided they could best advance their careers by giving a legal cover to the policy.

From the wikipedia article on John Yoo (hyperlinks & footnotes removed):

Yoo is best known for his work from 2001 to 2003 in the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) in the George W. Bush Administration. In the Justice Department, Yoo's expansive view of presidential power led to a close relationship with Vice President Dick Cheney's office. Yoo played an important role in developing a legal justification for the Bush administration's policy in the war on terrorism, arguing that prisoner of war status under the Geneva Conventions does not apply to "enemy combatants" captured during the war in Afghanistan and held at the Guant?namo Bay detention camp, asserting executive authority to undertake waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation techniques" regarded as torture by the current Justice Department. Yoo also argued that the president was not bound by the War Crimes Act and provided a legal opinion backing the Bush Administration's warrantless wiretapping program.
Yoo's legal opinions were not shared by some within the Bush Administration. Secretary of State Colin Powell strongly opposed what he saw as an invalidation of the Geneva Conventions, while U.S. Navy general counsel Alberto Mora campaigned internally against what he saw as the "catastrophically poor legal reasoning" and dangerous extremism of Yoo's opinions. In December 2003, Yoo's memo on permissible interrogation techniques, also known as the Bybee memo, was repudiated as legally unsound by the OLC, then under the direction of Jack Goldsmith. In June 2004, another of Yoo's memos on interrogation techniques was leaked to the press, after which it was repudiated by Goldsmith and the OLC

...

The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) began investigating Yoo's work in 2004 and in July 2009 completed a report that was sharply critical of his legal justification for waterboarding and other interrogation techniques The OPR report cites testimony Yoo gave to Justice Department investigators where he claims that the "president's war-making authority was so broad that he had the constitutional power to order a village to be 'massacred'" The OPR report concluded that Yoo had "committed 'intentional professional misconduct' when he advised the CIA it could proceed with waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques against Al Qaeda suspects," although the recommendation that he be referred to his state bar association for possible disciplinary proceedings was overruled by David Margolis, another senior Justice department lawyer
​

and once this one-man constitutional wrecking-ball was done in the White House, he went back to being a law professor at Berkeley, of all places. go figure, eh? Bybee is now a federal judge on the 9th circuit.

 

[deathroh]

You know what, I watched a Frontline episode about Ali Soufan. I love that show.

Maybe I'll dig that episode out for her. She's much more likely to watch something than invest the time to read about why she's wrong.

Thanks for the effort, MC.