It's nothing compared to what the nazis did to their victims and oth knows it.

That's one hell of a justification.

I didn't justify it. I rejected Herrings equalization.

"It leads to PTSD and often times suicide."

Uhm... the problem? If a terrorist wants to X himself, I got no problem with it, providing he doesn't kill or harm anyone else in the process.

You make it sound like a dead terrorist is a bad thing.

If it turns out you have missed, will you be willing to execute yourself in recompense?

I don't have problems with End over Means, but on two conditions:
1) You can't complain when anyone else does it on similar computations, past present or future.
2) If you missed, then all you have is the Bad End from your Means, so you should be willing to pay the commensurate price. If you hit, you still better hit the jackpot or you should still be willing to pay for the remnant "blow back".

How is it incomparable? In both cases, the result is the same, a badly damaged person.

Our present world, IMO, overemphasizes the physical over the mental, the repairable hardware over the software. Scream at a person, insult them for all you are worth, but for some reason the moment he throws one punch at you he's the bad guy and is likely to defend himself, even though really the mental damage you have inflicted is arguably more than the damage from the punch, which would probably quickly heal to nothing...

If someone held you in the contempt that you rightly hold terrorists in, would
you be happy for them to use the same justification against you?


Of course it is a bad thing.
Why would it be a good thing?

The problem is that most of these people have been arrested and detained as "terrorists" on unreliable information, at best. If you've ever watched National Geographic's special on the CIA (which was on about two months ago), you'll see how they "find" these people: by running around to farmers and asking them for information on neighbors and strange things happening in their locality. That's it. Surprised? So was I.

IF they're a terrorist. You've definitely got a few in there- it's inevitable when you amass that many people. The question is, which ones are in ties with terrorism?

See - this is where it becomes impossible to discuss this topic, because some here look at a terrorist who would cut their throat, shoot their children and rape and kill their wife - as someone who deserves some level of "humane treatment".

It boils down to this for those who see things in a way similiar to the way I do:

#1 A terrorist is someone who is willing to commit murder on the innocent to achieve his goals.

#2 Willingness to be a terrorist therefore is a willful denial of the human rights of others.

#3 Such willful denial creates a humanoid animal - like a rabid dog. As such, just like a rabid dog, the animal is a threat to innocent life and thus should be put down.

And before you try to turn the argument around by claiming that denying a human being "humane treatment" would therefore make us terrorists, recall that it was their acts - carried out, attempted or simply planned, that removed them from the status of Homo Sapien, and thus there is no loss of humanity in putting down a rabid dog to save a child, a family, or a society. If they weren't out to kill the innocent, they wouldn't be terrorists, and thus would have rights to humane treatment. But they aren't. So, better to have them dead. Or would you rather they take out your family members next? *Yes - its rhetorical because some here can't seem to get it through their heads that you can't just "talk" to a rabid dog.

For better or for worse, Western civilization has raised the "humane treatment" part into something of a deontological principle rather than a utilitarian calculation. Probably it has to do with the history that making it a matter for utilitarian calculation doesn't seem to wind up real well in practice.

Mere self rationalization. If it is immoral acts that are "carried out, attempted or simply planned" that disqualify a person from the status of Homo Sapien, then it follows that whether you do it First or Second, you can disqualify yourself.

Now, let's look at the "planned" part. If you arrest a supposed terrorist that's supposedly planning, but you EXECUTED your "terror" part first, then who went First in the end?

As for "a terrorist is someone who is willing to commit murder on the innocent to achieve his goals" ... well, wow, the entire Strategic Air Command, RVSN, every SSBN crew ... etc are all terrorists.

There are two kinds of torture: one that aims at gaining information, and one that aims at intimidating a people by terorrising randomly chosen persons.

I once was involved with treatement of examples of the latter, which were Balkan victims. Currently the same kind of mass terror is used in Kongo and Somalia. It has been used in many military regimes, also regimes supported by the US. South Korea and Chile are two examples.

I found the experience of dealing with such individuals totally depressing and heartbreaking. They were living zombies who just wished they would not exist, sometimes had not spoken for months, and had completely retreated into themselves to a degree that it was impossible for anyone to follow them there and meet them there. It sometimes is said that the soul cannot be hurt and is eternal - but a soul can be shattered nevertheless.

Governments and leaders and commanders ordering random torture for mass terrorising a population, I want to see dead. That simple: I want them dead. Irrational or emotional or whatever, wishing them death still is a mercy and a very civilised retaliation, compared to what they have in mind.

Torture for gaining information sees the two major problems of

- how to guarantee that no innocents are made subject of it,
- and where to draw a line in the severity of crimes and situations that decides when to accept torture eventually, and when not.

And these are the only real problems I have with it, despite my experiences descriobed above. Because the excuse that torture makes the subject confess anything the interrogators want to hear in order to just make them stopping, ignores that torture depends on the kind of info it produces or hopes to produce: you could effectively use it only if the subject knows that what info it gives can and will be checked for validity within reasonable time - by that the subject knows that it cannot escape by giving false info. There is a difference between verifiable info, and general info. General info gained from torture is object to the argument that torture produces untrustworthy info eventually: you do not know if the subject told the truth, or not.

It also is often said that if using torture against a bad boy in order to gain info that helps to save innocents, this would make you like the bad boy is himself. That is pseudo-moral rubbish. Claiming that the wellbeing and interest of the bad boy has to be rated higher than the wellbeing and/or survival of the victims - that is what is immoral. A pattern we often see at cpurt, where legal hairsplitting and rules often make sure that the interests and rights of the perpetrator get better protected than the interest of his victims. Often that becomes very obvious that is in cases of rape putting to court.

Before anyone thinks that this writing is my excuse to accept in principal the use of turture, I need to calm that impressison a bit by reminding that statistics show that the death penalty is in very frequent use in some countries - although statistics also show a very troubling quota of misjudgements and innocents having been excecuted as well. The argument that death penalty also has no deterring effect that could be shown to be statistically significant, also is valid, but has no place in this debate here. It is true that in cases for which I have strict and rare definitions on my mind, I eventually accept the use of torture, like for accoridngly strictly defined cases I also accept the execution of criminals, not as a "death penalty" but a means of prevention ongoing serious crime to which that person is dominantly attached. But I also know that if you create such legal defintions and standards for either the one or the other, they can and will be intentionally abused, and they can and will accidentally see the occasional - or the regular! - number of innocents suffering from them as well. Also, political lying is a symptom for things already derailing. That now already three European countries have been confirmed to have hold secret CIA torture prisons, is such a symptom. Things happend without being under any better control than random arbitrariness of dubious individuals you do not know anything about, and whose standards of selection are mystery. Be careful before accepting a society where such things can happen and such persons can live in without being under any authority's surveilance that has any kind of legitimation by the most highest sovereign there is, and that is not a parliament or a president, but: the people. that bis the most basic idea all modern Western nations have been founded and based upon since the French revolution. Just leaving things to the rulers at the top: is embracing tyranny. they can AND WILL abuse the power you give them. Bush's government was a prime example of secrecy forming lies forming abuse of power. and that means: before implementing torture as a tool of anti-terror operation or law enforcement, you need to gain a public consensus about it. If the majority says Nay, don't use it. Even if it backfires against that society then, it's people's own fault then. I am opponent to the idea that people must be forced for their luck.

There is no legal system imaginable that is totally fail-safe and immune to mistaking. What it comes down to, pragmatically, is what ammount of overall justice is being acchieved as a general outcome, in the end, if you compare all the individual cases as a whole - and ignore the individual case. So the only realistic question we need to ask is:

How many mistakes being made do we find acceptable for using "death penalty" nevertheless - or torture? What is the quota in percent? Necessarily the answer you give not only says something on the issue, but says something about yourself, too.

Answering "zero" is an invalid answer here that ignores realities we live in, for this is an imperfect world and we are failing humans. That leaves moralists being strictly against these things in an uncomfortable position, but what value have morals that do not take the one reality we live in into account? That are unreal morals.

Skybird: On pain of contradiction you can not make a moral case for or against anything.

Good you understood that, have you!?

How do you know it's just that? Would the CIA or whatever US military/private military/ally admit if it was using physical torture? IMO this is like them saying "Ok we torture but not physically". Excuse me but I don't believe it stays there. The 'extraordinary renditions' etc. that they used talk of a much larger system at work with flights going around the world, even in Scandinavia with people ending up who knows where. Places where there are no journalists or lawyers. Yea you're right, it's not like the nazis. The nazis never had a global transportation system for torture and, who knows, probably killing as well.

I don't believe the Americans at all in this issue and they are supposed to be kinda like our military allies in the world right now, or something.

Edit. And to call mental torture "harmless"? Well, that kinda sums the mentality according to which torture is acceptable.

Then why are these 'problems' for you?


Why does it matter to you if innocents are tortured if you reject morality as having no value?

OTH, you don't need to look over the pond, if you want to blame someone for the use of torture. You make it look like the US invented it. In recent history, France was a worse offender (see Algeria) and they even trained Argentinians on how to use 'enhanced methods'. Russia has a history of torture use, so does China, Japan, Germany and so on. Hell you will have a hard time not to come up with a country that did not commit torture or atrocities at some point in the last 100 years. Even Finland did it.

Your blaming of the USA for everything becomes very tiresome, and is IMO far removed from reality.

Torture happens, and yes it sucks, but blaming torture solely on the US is very foolish and narrowminded.