So apparently, slamming a man’s head into the pavement, breaking his teeth, is a perfectly acceptable method of arresting him for running a red light on his bicycle. Good to keep in mind.
Study says torture may destroy the very memories interrogators are trying to elicit.
Cool pictures from the Sydney dust storm.
DOJ official tells Congress that in 2008, of 763 “sneak and peek” warrants issued–a variety of warrant the PATRIOT Act made easier to obtain–just three were related to terrorism investigations. Sixty-five percent were related to drug investigations.
Lawsuit claims Boston cops beat a man for filming them with his cell phone.
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TheAgitator.com
Anyone know what the bike rider was being arrested for? I missed any mention of it.
Also, I have been thinking the some good ‘ol fashion social ostracizing is in order when this sort of thing occurs. We got to make know that behavior is not socially acceptable even though your government buddies let you get away with it. When this guy goes anywhere he should never feel welcome, same goes for the jurors.
My english good!
Steve,
He was being arrested for assaulting the officer I believe. An article about the incident I think in the Denver Post stated the bike rider punched or attempted to punch the officer. I’ll see if I can find it and post a link here.
The problem, Steve, is that it IS socially acceptable. I have no statistics to link to but my sense is that a significant majority of Americans believe that people should not break the law regardless of how nonsensical the law might be and if one breaks the law they deserve whatever repercussions they face even if those repercussions exceed the initial offense in severity.
Greg Bittle was one of the jurors who unanimously found Cordova not guilty.
“Almost immediately we took an initial vote and I would say 99 percent it was ‘not guilty’ all around the room,” Bittle said.
Bittle told 9NEWS when he first saw the video of the scuffle, he was shocked.
Then Cordova’s defense team played the video in slow motion, and what Bittle saw there changed his mind about the incident.
“Frame by frame, aspect of the video and that was extremely telling because it appears to be just a one up and down motion, but when you see that snippet in slow motion, it is more of a rotating [motion] and with Mr. Heaney’s head probably hitting on the side, rather than directly face to asphalt,” Bittle said.
Bittle says beyond the tape itself was an incident not captured on camera in which Heaney provoked Cordova.
“Mr. Heaney struck Officer Cordova, and it’s debatable if it was an actual punch or if he just slapped him or knocked his hat off,” Bittle said. “But even Mr. Heaney acknowledges that he did initially assault or have his hand interact with the officer’s face.”
Here’s another one to keep an eye on. A sheriff deputy in Va enters a home at 1 AM without a warrant, with a non-cop in tow looking for the non-cops 16 yr old daughter. Homeowner wakes up to find a cop and stranger in his 10 yr old daughters room. Homeowner is suing for $10 million for 4th amendment violation. May be heading to supreme court.
http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/219939
From the first item:
The defense attorney also raised questions about the sports TV crew not providing the raw footage of the arrest immediately to the police department.
Of course. If they had turned over the evidence immediately, they could have avoided the need for charges and an annoying trial.
Here is the Denver Post article stating that the bike rider hit the officer. I’ve seen a couple different Denver Post article, not all of which mentioned this part. They jury stated that the video tape presented by the prosecution was what convinced them not to convict.
So you can mix in the link the other day about video taping affecting memories or the other links on this site about the unreliability of eye witness testimony. Could go either way.
http://www.denverpost.com/ci_13394745#
If charges are brought against a civilian, there is certainly ample reason to believe that the civilian might be innocent. If charges are brought against a cop, there is only reason to believe that there was no plausible (or implausible) way they could weasel out of it. It could, of course, mean that the DA was honest, but you know, what are the odds of that?
Why is my prev comment “awaiting moderation”?
Man Sues Boston Police Over Alleged Beating
The only good thing about stories like this is the fact that cops are clearly getting angry (and even panicky) that civilians now have a way to fight back. Every time they beat someone up for filming them, they just provide more incentive for people to do it secretly and then post it on the internet for the entire world to see. Eventually, the public will start to see them for the bullies they are and acquittals will no longer be a foregone conclusion. Unfortunately, being in my 50s, I probably won’t live to see it.
You shouldn’t be making perv comments to begin with.
j/k. I couldn’t resist.
Hats off to Feingold for continuing the fight against the Patriot act.
I bumped into a few Nat Park cops in the smokies. Only one was a total ass, the other 4 were great guys. I kept wondering if a 20% douchebag ratio was accurate for all cops, then I come back here and wish that was the case! The race riots in the 60s are looking more logical to me all the time…
I’m glad they’re having hearings in Congress to ferret out abuses of the Patriots Act. That way they will be sure to realize that it was a mistake and restrict its application to national security investigations.
Muahahahahahahaha! Just kidding! I know Congress doesn’t give a rats ass about abuses of little peoples’ rights. You gotta love the way they repeatedly act all surprised when it happens, though. It’s solid proof that the people in Congress have a complete vacuum where ordinary people normally have a conscience. It’s like a club for people with a debilitating genetic defect that turns them into psychopaths feeding off the naive good intentions of the population.
not only does Cordova deserve to have his ass beat for what he did to the guy on the bicycle, he should be beat for ‘…working with the vice-squad in an undercover scalping sting..’ outside the baseball stadium. assholes assholes assholes
That’s awful MassHole. The story doesn’t mention why the cop was in the house in the first place. The only possibility I could see is because of the “teens … drinking beer downstairs” but if that was the reason, why were they in a 10-year-old’s bedroom?
The problem, Steve, is that it IS socially acceptable. I have no statistics to link to but my sense is that a significant majority of Americans believe that people should not break the law regardless of how nonsensical the law might be and if one breaks the law they deserve whatever repercussions they face even if those repercussions exceed the initial offense in severity.
I think a lot of peoples’ perceptions of the police are really bound up in their own personal fantasies of violence and authority, such that rational consideration in these matters is pretty difficult. I guess I don’t really feel like getting into it now cus it’s just so depressing, but yes, I agree with you. There’s a frightening number of people out there who manage to justify the most horrible of outcomes on some rather flimsy pretexts (see, for instance, the Chasse case mentioned in the comments yesterday, where apparently a man being beaten to death by half a dozen cops is an acceptable outcome of his being homeless and looking vaguely like he was peeing against a wall).
Colin argued to jurors that the sound on the tape, and that witnesses say they heard, was not the sound of Heaney’s teeth breaking, but rather the sound of a baseball hitting a bat during batting practice outside of Coors Field.
That’s… lovely.
The defense also called expert witnesses who said it looked like Heaney was resisting arrest on videotape and as a result, Cordova and other police officers were legally authorized to use force to take Heaney into custody.
Expert witnesses?
#9 Dave W
Dave,
I have found, on this site, if you have more than one hyperlink in your post, it awaits moderation. I think this is an anti-spam issue.
I was also moderated once for using the name “Fake Barack Obama (Omar)” which I guess is a way to prevent strange flame-wars.
I guess am am just a little paranoid. One time on another blog, Mr. Balko deleted several years worth of my comments. People were happy about it, of course, because of my iconoclastic tendencies, but I was not happy about it.
Sometimes I still think about it and think, “Darn you, Mr. Radley Balko — you were mean to me.” Then I force myself to think about the good he has done and find reluctant, but real, forgiveness in my heart.
“Only three of the 763 “sneak-and-peek” requests in fiscal year 2008 involved terrorism cases…”
That is less than one percent. If 65% were related to drug investigations, what were the other 35% related to? I fear to even speculate.
“The only good thing about stories like this is the fact that cops are clearly getting angry (and even panicky) that civilians now have a way to fight back.”
What’s really cool about this is the video usually isn’t posted until
the police have conjured up some elaborate
lie about the incident. When it appears online they
are double-whammied.
I’d like to know more about the Roanoke case. I cannot see how this could be justified police entry: a cop and another man enters the house of a sleeping man and goes into the bedroom of his 10 yo daughter and pulls the covers off. Sounds like a search to me.
The fact that some teens were drinking downstairs is completely irrelevant: warrantless entry is only justified if (a) invited in (b) hot pursuit or emergency (e.g. fire, person shouting help) (c) the cops actually witness a crime through the windows. Was any of that plead?
“….woke to find a sheriff’s deputy and another man in their home pulling the covers off their daughter…”
Holy fucking shit. Sounds more like an attempted rape and/or kidnapping. Yeah, try that shit at my house.
Rule of thumb when filming police officers: Never film in plain sight unless you’ve brought a friend with a second camera (concealed) to film the inevitable beat down by police. You’ll need evidence to defend yourself against the inevitable false criminal charges and inevitable police lies about the incident.
Why is my prev comment “awaiting moderation”?
Because the spam filter is trying to figure out how corn syrup and trutherism fit into any of these police abuse stories.
That’s awful MassHole. The story doesn’t mention why the cop was in the house in the first place. The only possibility I could see is because of the “teens … drinking beer downstairs” but if that was the reason, why were they in a 10-year-old’s bedroom?
The whole story is weird. They cop went into the house with the father of a girl whose car was parked near it, after CALLING the owners of ALL the cars parked near a house where some kids were found drinking beer. I know police occasionally broke balls when I was kid drinking at high school parties, but when did it get to this level?
Radley posted the Denver incident here, last year (with the original footage):
http://www.theagitator.com/2008/08/12/the-new-professionalism-11/
You can access a .pdf of the courts decision in the Roanoke case here:
http://blogs.roanoke.com/rtblogs/dancasey/2009/09/24/thursdays-column-courts-ruling-on-search-is-unreasonable/#comment-8490
It’s pretty descriptive of what happened. The event took place in 2007, so the original article about the incident has been archived.
This show you what a moron the cop was. Blessard was the non-cop in the house.
“Blessard swore under oath that when he entered the home, his “sole purpose was to locate [his] step-daughter,” that “Sergeant Wood never invited or instructed [him] to enter the home,” and that Sgt. Wood never even spoke to him during the search. J.A. 403, 404, 406, 60708. Rather, Blessard explained, he “just mill[ed] around” the Hunsbergers’ home on his own. J.A. 408. Sgt. Wood similarly testified that at various points during the search, he did not know where Blessard was, J.A. 1331, 133233, 1335, 1337-38, and that at no point did he “give[] [Blessard] any instruction whatsoever.”
Sorry for the giant link.
Also, the cop thought it wise the call the owners of the cars, but he never tried calling the house he was about to enter.
The end of the torture story: “But it will be ‘difficult or impossible to determine during interrogation whether the information a suspect reveals is true,’ writes O’Mara — and the bomb will continue to tick.”
So this mick is a stress researcher and an intelligence agent? How does he know what the intelligence agencies know — about a hypothetical bomber no less?
I call bullshit. Torture works and everyone knows it. There has to be some grown-ups somewhere who can make a coherent arguement that the state is too irresponsible to wield that power. Instead we get this Air America bullshit about interrogators being absolute fucking morons and/or sadistic rapists.
“I call bullshit. Torture works and everyone knows it.”
It probably does in some cases, but the problem is, you
don’t know which. What if a guy picks a name out of a
telephone book, or from a short list of potential bomb-throwers,
in order to avoid a beating. How do you know if he’s
telling the truth? You don’t.
“…Air America bullshit about interrogators being absolute fucking morons and/or sadistic rapists.”
Let me guess, you were under the impression they were really nice guys.
Alex, torture doesn’t work. Trained, professional interrogators will tell you this over and over again. Information gained by torture is unreliable and of poor quality.
I know this clashes with the opinion of people who have seen every episode of ’24′, but it’s the truth.
Because you’re Dave W?
The civilian criminal justice system is broken with respect to official police misconduct.
The civilians who are dull and pliant enough to be seated on juries after voir dire simply do not have the mental capacity to critically assess the conduct of a police official. There are essentially blinded by the badge.
The only hope I see — and it is a pipe dream — is for state and local police to be “reconstituted” as a “militia” within the meaning of Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, and for congress to exercise its “organizing, arming, and disciplining” power thereunder, so that they could be subject to non-jury courts-martial-type prosecutions by their superiors. This would actually yield far better results than civilian juries. Even Daryl Gates is on record as being outraged by the Rodney King incident, and he wanted the offending officers to be busted.
#33
We’ve had this argument for years and it turns out it DOES work. Nothing works all the time, everything has its drawbacks, but the suggestion that “torture doesn’t work” has been beaten and buried. Move on…
@#31 Alex
Hypothetical situation:
1) You believe torture works.
2) I torture you until you explain to me why torture doesn’t work.
Q) Who’s robot-brain explodes? Alternate question: How long before the universe blinks out of existence?
A) Neither: You just said what I wanted to hear so I would stop hurting you.
but the suggestion that “torture doesn’t work” has been beaten and buried. Move on…
I don’t think “beaten and buried” is really the right way to put it. I would conjecture the exact opposite, and I know I can find a lot more sources to back up the statement “torture doesn’t work” than you could to make the opposite claim. That is, if we are just tipping scales here.
We’ve had this argument for years and it turns out it DOES work. The O’Reilly Factor school of argument: “I’m right, we already decided that, let’s stop talking about it.”
“Information gained by torture is unreliable and of poor quality. ”
This is the Air America they’re all fucking morons arguement. It’s all based on the premise that a random suspect is placed in a random room with a random torturer. When you add in context, the practice makes more sense. There’s all kinds of real-world methods to improve the quality of the intel — the most common (and obvious) is to mix in plenty of questions with known answers. Also, the torturers presumably have the option of, you know, investigating. Seriously, bad leads aren’t the end of the world. Good leads are better of course, but if they were offering those up willy nilly, they wouldn’t be getting tortured in the first place.
“I know this clashes with the opinion of people who have seen every episode of ‘24′, but it’s the truth.”
FWIW, I’m a former infantry soldier, and I’m more of a House guy.
“How do you know if he’s telling the truth?”
Does anyone really know anything? What is the nature of reality? I’m going to smoke some pot and attempt to answer these questions and more. Stay tuned.
Okay, feel free to mod me down. I don’t care.
Torture often works, and often works well. There are many different instances where it’s used, and for most of them it probably doesn’t.
What I always see is the old canard “people will say anything to make it stop.” This is true in some cases, such as forcing a confession from somebody, and police and government agencies have used this throughout the ages to lend some amount of credibility to illegitimate court proceedings (such as the Inquisition).
That’s really not relevant to the context that we’re using here, which is that of terrorists held at Gitmo. Yes, I know not all of them there are terrorists, but Khalid Sheik Mohammed and a few others were. And they were waterboarded for information, and apparently the torturers got what they were looking for.
The fact is that you cannot compare a case like that with the false confession. We already know that he’s a terrorist with some information. That information is *verifiable*. The interrogators are interested not in a “confession”, but in verifiable information. In a case like that, “saying anything to make it stop” doesn’t work, because if you lie, they’ll be back. KSH knew that. So he cooperated.
I’m against torture, period. It’s obvious that when you give the government any power, it’ll be abused. Look at the recent story about the new warrant powers from the PATRIOT act being used mainly for drug dealers instead of terrorists.
At the same time, I’m all for honest academic debate. This is what libertarians do, frankly, which is why we typically bore people with science when they’re arguing “for the children” emotions. If you’re going to argue that “torture never works”, well, there are cases where it does, so you’ve already lied and you’ll lose the argument every time. Note “torture never works” is an absolute statement – I only need to find a single counter-example to prove it false.
The way to argue is simply “America doesn’t do that. Torture is one of the reasons given to remove Saddam Hussein from power – we don’t need to be like him.”
@#37 omar
Hypothetical situation:
1) You believe cake and ponies work.
2) I give you cake and ponies until you explain to me why cake and ponies don’t work.
Q) Who’s robot-brain explodes? Alternate question: How long before the universe blinks out of existence?
A) Neither: You just said what I wanted to hear so I would give you cake and ponies.
I’m going to smoke some pot and attempt to answer these questions and more.
I totally disagree with your main thesis, but I think this is a something we can all get behind.
Thank you Michael Chaney. Apparently there are some grown-ups on this side.
Was reading the Roanoke decision and have to say it looks like the majority opinion writer was an idiot.
The officer saw three cars in front of the residence and called they owners. The owners speculated that their kids had been drinking and left them there. He sees a couple people run from the house and the lights go off. Yet the majority opinion writer says a reasonable officer would assume the stepdaughter was in a dire emergency? No, a reasonable officer would assume it was a teen party with underage drinking involved. Especially considering the prior calls that day. Further if you think there was a dire emergency you don’t invite in a civilian, especially the parent. You call for backup and then go in. Inviting in the civilian adds a random element and potential extreme emotional situation if they do find the step daughter in distress. From both opinions it sounds like the civilian was a bit of an emotional basket case already. If the officer did not invite them in the person commited a trespass.
Now there are situations where law enforcement can enter without a warrant. There is the in pursuit and exigtent circumstances. Neither is present here.
Sounds like the judge need to spend less time in the legal world and more time in the real world. Sounds like more of a CYA opinion than one based on reality.
@#40 | Michael Chaney
Torture often works
Often is a pretty broad word. You are right in pointing out the inexactness of the argument. Saying “torture works” or “torture doesn’t work” misses the nuance. I would like to see studies to further strengthen or weaken my argument, but my conjecture is if you took the ratio of (number of times good intelligence was gained):(number of people tortured), that number would be a lot less than “often”.
@#43 | Alex
You were the first person in this thread to talk about torture and your exact words were, “I call bullshit. Torture works and everyone knows it.” Please don’t call me a child for responding to your arguments on your own terms.
@Alex @omar @Tokin42 @Michael Chaney @Chuchundra @Yizmo Gizmo et al…
Guys, this is a pointless, profitless (not to mention asinine) debate – since (presumably) none of us has been tortured –or- been a torturer, there is no viable means of proving ones position, whichever position it happens to be…
During WWII, resistance organizations in occupied Europe took it for granted that, once one of their fighters was captured, they would eventually be broken by torture. For this reason, resistance organizations used the “cell” system, which limited the amount of information any one individual could give to the interrogators and would immediately abandon any compromised sites and moved compromised people out. They KNEW, from hard experience, that torture worked. There were a few valiant souls who never broke, but most who were captured eventually gave up the information they had. The object was mainly to hold on long enough so that your comrades could get away.
TBS, the occupation forces got far more information from traitors, moles and quislings than they ever did from interrogation.
To be fair, the Boston cops could have been randomly beating that guy and it just happened to coincide with his video recording.
Guys, this is a pointless, profitless (not to mention asinine) debate
I learned it from watching you, congress.
Michael:
The question isn’t “does torture ever work?” it’s “is torture a good way of getting information?” The fact that you can sometimes get someone to tell you what you want to know with torture doesn’t answer that question, because you need to also work out how often you get bad information. To use an analogy, sometimes, bite-mark analysis probably does successfully indicate who the killer was and lead to a correct conviction. But if most of the time, it leads to the wrong guy or fails to point to the right one, then it’s not too valuable.
My understanding is that, under torture, KSM gave up a huge number of plots, of which the great majority turned out to be pure vapor. (He also confessed to being the mastermind of all sorts of stuff, maybe because it got the beatings to stop, maybe because he’s a braggart.) This is the sort of thing that raises some real problems about the usefulness of torture in getting information. Padilla’s dirty bomb plot was uncovered by the use of torture on some other witness (also allegedly against Padilla, but nobody seems to have solid evidence there), and it apparently didn’t exist. (The authorities cycled through a number of alleged terrorist plots for Padilla. A cynic would suspect that this sequence came from Padilla racking his brain to find something new to confess to, in order to get those electrodes taken off his nuts for awhile.) We had terror alerts every month or two for awhile, most of which appear to have simply been vapor. Again, a natural guess is that various suspects who didn’t have useful information came up with stuff that got the CIA guys to stop drowning them for awhile.
Apparently a lot of people we picked up for Guantanamo (the worst of the worst, allegedly) turned out to be either innocent or low-level nobodies. (I say this because we have released a lot of them after deciding they weren’t much threat.) Torturing those guys must have produced a lot of bullshit answers spun out by people just trying to get the beatings to end.
All that’s outside of the moral issue, which IMO should have decided the matter for us up front.
#38,
Omar, I can name 3 people waterboarding worked on right off the bat. Are you seriously still trying to argue “torture” doesn’t work? Like I said, that argument is over. Ask Zubaydah, Nashiri, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed whether or not harsh tactics work. I’ve been pointing this out for years on this site with you guys, it’s more than past time to put this one to rest.
If you get a hundred guys to say “I am Spartacus”, then execute them all, including the actual Spartacus, is it effective?
If you have the morals, politics and lack of humanity of Marcus Licinius Crassus, yes.
I’m noticing a lot of down dings from people who are still afraid to admit the truth that “torture” works, even though the evidence is right there in front of them. I’m not arguing that it’s a good policy (even though I have zero problems with waterboarding terrorists) only pointing out the evidence is already in and you’ve been wrong for years now. Some of you gave great arguments, but you were wrong. I want to hear some of you deniers admit the reality. Let me hear it…”I was wrong, torture works” you can add in “but we shouldn’t do it” if it makes you feel better, either way the truth will make you feel better.
Omar,
I never called you a child. I mentioned that someone needs to make a grown-up anti-torture arguement in my first post, then Chaney made that arguement. That’s what I was referencing.
I know you’re not a child. If you were, you’d know that both carrots and sticks can be effective interrogation tools.
I should point out that I’m still for the US outlawing the most extreme interrogation techniques (“torture”). However, I’m also for honest arguements. And no, arguements that limit human behavior (response to interrogation) on arbitrarily drawn legal lines are not honest.
RE: Patriot Act & Drug warrants
So terrorism was listed as the crime on only 3 of the warrants, what really concerned me was these two categories in the linked report – Other (8) and Unspecified (23). So we handed out 31 warrants for something and 23 of those had the crime investigated listed as “unspecified”?
To say “torture works” or “torture doesn’t work” is simply wrong (and not a little childish, really). Obviously there are circumstances where it works and others where it doesn’t. The only question that matters is whether or not the government should be allowed to do it. And it seems to me that trusting the government to torture requires a leftist’s faith in the state to act competently and benevolently.
Just as saying “torture doesn’t work” is an absolute statement that can be proven false by 1 instance of it working, the converse statement “torture does work” is an absolute statement that can be proven false by 1 instance.
Saying “torture sometimes/often/lotsatimes/notmuch works” but failing to quantify it equates to accepting torture, no matter how effective or ineffective it is. Add in the factor of “in the hands of government, torturing people can’t be trusted” — the same argument as death penalty — and international law regarding torture — then you can’t be pro-torture. Unless you don’t care how ineffectual government is, how many people they harm compared to help, and being a hypocrite about “we’re part of the international community etc blah blah” yet not respect the laws.
When I say torture “doesn’t work”, I don’t mean that nobody ever got any useful information through torture. That would obviously be false.
What I’m saying is that torture produces less reliable, less useful, more noisy intelligence than intelligence gained using standard interrogation techniques and well-trained, professional interrogators. This is all well documented and born out by writings and testimony of experienced interrogation specialists as well as the results of actually torturing people over the last eight years.
That being said, arguing whether torture “works” or not is somewhat akin to arguing how much money we could save with mandatory euthanasia for everyone at age 75. Torture is a horror. It is despicable for a civilized people to debate whether the information gained by half-drowning someone over and over and over again is worth the moral stain on our souls.
“And it seems to me that trusting the government to torture requires a leftist’s faith in the state to act competently and benevolently.”
Or a rightist’s visceral pleasure in seeing agents of the state act tough.
“Saying “torture sometimes/often/lotsatimes/notmuch works” but failing to quantify it equates to accepting torture, no matter how effective or ineffective it is.”
Uh, isn’t that what you did in your first paragraph?
“What I’m saying is that torture produces less reliable, less useful, more noisy intelligence than intelligence gained using standard interrogation techniques and well-trained, professional interrogators. ”
I keep seeing variations of this arguement. What is it in response to? I haven’t heard anyone suggest that torture should be anything other than a last resort.
The only important thing about the whole torture debate for me is….are we or are we not the moral high ground? Obviously we aren’t. Yet we all collectively wring our hands at the thought of good old American GI’s being subjected to the same treatment at the hands of our enemies…and cry and whine about international law.
I believe that is pretty much the definition of hypocrisy…wait it’s the US government we are speaking of…hypocrisy has been the backbone of how we have worked for many decades now. It’s ok for us…but not for you…because we are on the side of right….and God…pbbbbt.
The debate about it works/it doesn’t work is pretty much a moot point. The real debate is do we follow the international laws regarding prisoners and torture that WE helped author and that we appear to expect others to follow or do we just ignore them and look the other way? I already know the answer to that…and that is why I no longer have any real respect for my country…it is really no different than any other despot country run by thugs with a heaping spoonfull of hypocrisy thrown in to wash it all down.
Les and justin
Should you have reversed the parties?
“And it seems to me that trusting the government to torture requires a leftist’s faith in the state to act competently and benevolently.”
“Or a rightist’s visceral pleasure in seeing agents of the state act tough.”
Correct me if I’m wrong but generally don’t liberals believe in a stronger government and that it can solve all problems while the right wants a smaller weaker government that stays out of peoples lives as much as possible? Or would you say the view depends on who’s party is in power at the time?
Evidence? What evidence?
The only speck of evidence I see in this thread on the efficacy of torture either way was in the initial post. Repeating over and over “torture works, and everybody knows it” isn’t evidence. Naming a few examples isn’t evidence. There were a few references to evidence people think exist, which also isn’t evidence, though it’s a good sight better than then rhetoric and anecdotes.
#61, you’re obviously playing troll. I pointed out 2 statements that are being thrown around (one of them by you) and how the logic applies on both sides. This points out that both statements are fallacious.
Correct me if I’m wrong but generally don’t liberals believe in a stronger government and that it can solve all problems while the right wants a smaller weaker government that stays out of peoples lives as much as possible? Or would you say the view depends on who’s party is in power at the time?
Well, “liberal” in its modern context implies a leftist, but I consider myself mostly a classical liberal. I think markets should be liberalized, which means there should be less interference from government.
The most popular representatives on “the right” claim to be for smaller government, but their policy choices indicate a similar desire for and trust in big government. Whichever party is in power at any given time is only interested in maintaining and expanding that power.
That’s how I see it, anyway.
How about if we don’t torture people becuase it’s sadistic as shit. Seriously, I grew up with this idealic image of America where we don’t stoop to the level of terrorists and other evil fucks. We’re supposed to be better than that. We can pull out example after example of people giving up information after being tortured. It doesn’t matter. Only evil people do that shit, like serial killers, Nazis, Dick Cheney, Massad, the PLO, etc.
If our intellegence agencies are supposed to be the best then I don’t think we should have to resort to this tactic. It’s something I associate with the middle ages, not contemporary America.
I want to second Matt D’s question way upthread: what was the witness in the Denver case an expert in?
FWIW, the research on torture wasn’t an original study, but a review of the evidence based on findings related to stress and cognition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences is making the PDF available for free, if anyone wants to read it themselves:
http://download.cell.com/images/EdImages/Trends/814.pdf
I haven’t gone through it carefully, but I’m in the same camp as many in this thread: torture is wrong regardless of whether it’s somewhat effective or not at all. And let’s just imagine that torture done right (so to speak) is very effective: there’s still not reason to be confident that most of the people in charge of administering it will do it “right”.
At the risk of repeating myself;
“Guys, this is a pointless, profitless (not to mention asinine) debate – since (presumably) none of us has been tortured –or- been a torturer, there is no viable means of proving ones position, whichever position it happens to be…”
much that I have read (from you gentlemen) since I initially made this assertion, has served to support this assertion – there is no clear winner in this debate – so, what’s up with the negative karma?
There is a clear “winner in this debate”. To quote Mattocracy, “Only evil people do that shit, like serial killers, Nazis, Dick Cheney, Massad, the PLO, etc.” Unless you believe torture is A-OK, in which case you also believe in being a hypocrite (international law, etc). and probably a plethora of other sadistic acts all in the name of empire, children, etc.
@BamBam 8:00 pm
The debate is about whether or not torture is an effective means of obtaining information, which has nothing whatever to do with Mattocracy’s comment (which I personally agree with, by the way), which is, in effect, that torture is a product of evil…
I understand there are 2 points being made. I believe Matt’s point is that debating its effectiveness is necessary only if you don’t believe torture is evil. There’s debating it for the purpose of academics, and then there’s debating it because one supports use of torture.
A relevant story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090925/ap_on_re_us/us_marine_guantanamo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akwjAjcQnqM&feature=sub
This is your police in action. One has to wonder if it truly is police the Pittsburgh/PA police at the G20 summit. The Police Chief declares an unlawful assembly, let’s kick ass, use acoustic weapons against innocent citizens.
@BamBam 8:13 pm
The opening salvo was;
#31 | Alex | September 25th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
“…I call bullshit. Torture works and everyone knows it…”
To be immediately followed by;
#32 | Yizmo Gizmo | September 25th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
“…It probably does in some cases, but the problem is, you
don’t know which…” “…How do you know if he’s
telling the truth? You don’t…”
To be further supported by;
#33 | Chuchundra | September 25th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
“Alex, torture doesn’t work. Trained, professional interrogators will tell you this over and over again. Information gained by torture is unreliable and of poor quality…”
Etc., etc., etc.
Mattocracy’s point has to do with the moral / amoral view of torture, which are relevant to the big picture, but not to this particular debate…
Again, without direct knowledge (torturing or being tortured) the participants in this debate can’t prove their respective points, i.e. effective or ineffective – no clear winner…
BamBam,
I don’t understand your point. In the first paragraph you say that both the absolute affirmative and negative are wrong, but you don’t define what is right. In the second paragraph, you say “failing to quantify it equates to accepting torture.” What am missing? It looks like you failed to quantify it in the first paragraph. I admit that was snarky and pointless, but I really have no clue what your point is.
Also, this whole thing started with my first comment expressing some distaste for “torture doesn’t work” arguements and my wishes that people would support the non-imaginary reasons to oppose torture. Or something like that. Then everybody started piling on my shit for having the nerve to reach the same conclusions as them while living on the planet Earth, in 2009. Only Tokin supports torture, and he didn’t want to argue about that, just the notion that it works. So there’s been one topic and a bunch of strawmen.
No matter how irrelevant to anything actually said, Agitator commenters never pass up an opportunity to show their absolute moral superiority.
John Wilburn,
If you’re scoring the debate/hissy fit. There’s a point that I thought was implicit but I’ve only stated it half-ass once in question form (that was never answered btw).
If torture is limited to a means of last resort for high-value non-uniformed targets, it only has to yield useful information once to “work.” There’s this ongoing strawman that other techniques are better, but that’s irrelevent if they’ve already been tried and they failed.
Also, you should denote points for arguements of the “if you even think about torture you’re a piece of shit.” That’s sidestepping the issue and revealing a weak constitution to boot.
@Alex 8:58 pm
The term you’re looking for is, “Ostentatious Erudition…”
@Alex 9:08 pm
I did point out that the moralistic view was a side issue, or at least not relevant to this particular debate…
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…
I had a group of nerdy friends who used to sit around, blow a little reefer, play D & D and engage in these asinine debates, which served no useful purpose beyond “brainiac amusement…”
This debate reminded me of that – forgive the critique – couldn’t resist…
First of all, those who say we should not torture because we want to conduct ourselves morally are absolutely correct. But there’s another question that enters into the “does torture work, or doesn’t it?” debate, which is whether it works better than less morally offensive methods, such as building rapport.
To use a ridiculous example, say I want to know what time it is. I see that you are wearing a watch, so when you turn your back, I strike you forcefully with a chair. Once you’re on the ground, I kick and beat you until you’ve suffered several broken ribs and lost a few teeth. Now that you’re unable to resist, I take your watch.
You might say that what I did was horrible, and that I might have just asked you for the time. But I know it’s 9:23. My way works.
John,
Actually, that sounds alot like high school “Alex,” except replace D&D with Mortal Kombat and Tekken.
This whole thing sure looks pointless but to me it’s representative of a larger problem with libertarian arguements. Whether or not torture works, nearly everyone who doesn’t subscribe to The Nation thinks it works, at least in some very rare circumstances. When people make transparently ridiculous arguements (I see Bill joined the party), they decrease our credibility in the demographics most amenable to libertarianism. Unless of course you’re buying tickets for the liberaltarianism failbus.
That was too many words to say this: it’s not good for libertarians to sound like shrill, naive, college protesters.
I’m going to drink beer now. That seems comparatively constructive.
Alex,
The group I refer to was past college/workin’ for a livin’/wishin’ they were back in high school…
In our group of Libertarians, we have a plastic bucket (used for contributions at the meetings) that looks like a cracked flower pot – the treasurer has a sense of humor…
This is the way that Libertarians are seen in this country – as “Crackpots…”
We aren’t taken seriously – because we believe that the government should not be permitted to control what we take into our own bodies, the Democrats & Republicans interpret this as Libertarians promote drug use…
The last president of this country who was neither a Democrat nor a Republican was Millard Fillmore, a Whig (soon to become Republican) who was elected in 1850…
Libertarians have much larger problems than the world’s views on torture…
Have a beer for me, and a safe night – Fosters or Dos Equis…
Here’s a police state video for you:
http://www.infowars.com/video-from-g20-the-corporate-media-will-never-show-you/
Cops trap and gas innocent college student in their own living quarters.
Perhaps we libertarians should be supporting this idea?
http://www.myamericaagain.org/Declaration.html
#77 Alex,
I never said I supported “torture” because there are a lot of people around here who think scaring some assmunch with the threat of putting bugs on him constitutes “torture”. That’s why I keep putting “scare quotes” around the word. I don’t believe the vast majority of the techniques approved by the last administration, including waterboarding, are “torture”.
Les, at #57, is right. I was being a bit childish, I was actually doing my “neener-neener, Told ya so” dance while I was posting. For years people here have been trying to convince me that both “torture NEVER works” and “torture doesn’t work” when anyone who is able to seperate themselves from the moral issue can tell you we have thousands of years of evidence to the contrary. If it didn’t work people would have figured it out a millennium ago.
Lastly, we now know for certain that waterboarding the three gentlemen I mentioned earlier provided the US with actionable intelligence that saved US lives after playing good cop failed. To me, that ends the argument. I’ve never argued we should waterboard everyone, just that it is effective and should be kept in our big book of techniques to extract information, something even Obama has come to admit under his breath. Hence the “we’ll never waterboard anyone ever, ever again…..unless we reaaaalllly need to”.
Remind me never to ask you if I can borrow five bucks.
:)
Tokin (hellloooo, anyone still here?),
I’ve understood your position to be “go as extreme as the situation demands.” I don’t agree with that position, but it’s a real position with real moral consequences, unlike the “torture doesn’t work” nonsense. If you’re saying that you draw a line in the sand, albeit further along than ANSWER, that’s where I’m at, except that I lean slightly to waterboarding being torture.
On the three gentlemen in question, yea of course it worked. The idea that making life real shitty for people doesn’t cause them to do things they otherwise wouldn’t do is just bullshit.
John,
The drug issue is probably the best case of what I was saying. I’m also orthodox in my opposition to state control of consumption.
However (put this on a plaque somewhere), THE BEST ARGUEMENT FOR LEGALIZATION IS THAT FEWER INNOCENTS WILL BE HARMED. Admit that there very well may be more addicts/abusers, but point out that they’re only harming themselves. Compare those to the amount of kids who won’t grow up fatherless, will stay out of gangs, etc.
Libertarians need to remember that we’re the only political theorists who reject all utilitarian ethics. We do so at our own peril.