Quote:
Originally Posted by Aramike
It's called "intelligence". It works.
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Well, your intelligence isn't working, because you're getting my position completely wrong and being very condescending at the same time.
I'm not saying that the CIA interrogators and those who approved their actions are idiots for thinking that torture works. Smart people can make mistakes. One thing that I've learned in the past few years is that intelligence is a very imperfect art. People in the intel community like to think that it's a science, but it's not anywhere close.
The smart people at the CIA and our other intelligence agencies were sure that Iraq had WMD in early 2003. I've talked to people who saw the intel, smart people who have no political stake in the decision whatsoever, and they said that they were stunned when we didn't find WMD after we went in. Unlike a lot of your stereotypical lefties, I don't think the WMD findings were politically motivated. It was a genuine mistake.
The smart people at the CIA also got it completely wrong during the Cold War. Robert Gates - somebody who I have tremendous respect for - was telling Reagan every chance he could that Gorbachev coudln't be trusted on arms control issues. Oops. Fortunately Gates is man enough to admit he was wrong.
Our intel also messed up badly when it came to the Soviets' nuclear stockpile. One of the most important questions of the Cold War was how many nuclear warheads the Soviets had. I'm sure our intel agencies put a lot of time and effort into finding out the number of warheads. They put the best people they had on that question. The result? Our estimate was about half of what the Soviets really had. For most of the Cold War the Soviets had twice as many nukes as we thought they had.
The point I'm trying to make is that intelligence is not perfect, in fact it's not even close. Intel people will tell you waht they think, and they'll be honest about it, but they can be very wrong.
So when the CIA comes forward and says that they're 100% sure that this detainee knows exactly where the next terrorist attack is coming, and that we just need to waterboard him to get the info, you have to take that with more than a grain of salt. You need an entire salt mine.
You never know anything for a fact in the intelligence world. I'm not trying to say that our intel people are idiots, that they're political hacks, or that they're sadists. It's just the nature of the field. All things considered our intel agencies do a damn good job, but they're up against an impossible challenge.
So getting back to torture, in a scenario with perfect information, I might be okay with torture in very limited circumstances. But based on everything I've learned about intel, I'm firmly convinced that perfect information never exists. Even if I'm the one who thinks that I have perfect information, I have to remember the nature of intel and the fact that I'm fallible. Therefore, I can't support torture ever. At best it simply means confusing yourself by doing awful things to an awful person. But it can also mean degrading yourself by doing awful things to a genuinely innocent person and inspiring others to do those same awful things to your people.