The dumbest editorial ever (pro-torture)

[Hydra009]

I'm not really a newspaper reader, but I was bored at work and couldn't help myself.  And I came across a real treat yesterday.  Jesus H Christ, there are some really screwed up people in this world.  I can barely stomach the idea of living in the same country with these people.  I couldn't keep the paper itself, so I'm forced to recite this garbage from memory.  Here goes:

"Newsflash:  All the detainees who have been tortured are still alive, while the terrorists execute their hostages"

(Note the condescending tone and not-so-subtle shift in the terms being used)  What a human rights accomplishment.  I'm sorry, but when you have to set the bar at ISIS level to make what you're doing seem good in comparison, you've already lost the argument.

But it goes on:

"Real torture is seeing your loved ones die on 9/11"

(It goes into graphic detail but I'll mercifully spare you guys all the gory details)  Not the most original argument in the world, but whatever.  So let me get this straight:  torture is fine, but only if you have a grievance to support it.  Lovely.  And what a great way to honor the victims of the attacks than to commit torture in their names.  And I'm sure that exploiting someone else's grief (the editorial writer had no personal connection to the attack) to push your political agenda is also something that sits well with people.


I could rant all day about this, but the whole newspaper page is this flurry of torture debates apparently with a roughly 50/50 split, which is a tad surprising even for a red state.  And maybe I don't know my compatriots as well as I thought, but damn, is this really a legitimate issue?  Like, when you guys watch world war 2 movies where Nazis are torturing allied prisoners do you think to yourself, "Hey, that looks like a good idea.  Yeah, let's do that!"

What do you guys think?  Am I being too "soft"?  Do we need to Jack Bauer the bad guys?  Is torture an issue whose pros more than its cons?

[AllPurposeAtheist]

They long for the good old days of the inquisition..

[Poison Tree]

Someone on my facebook feed shared a picture of someone jumping out of one of the WTC's with a caption something like "this is why I don't care that we torture terrorists". Now this is someone who has previously said that Obama has fired any military leader who refuses to sign off on shooting American citizens, faked school shooting to steal our guns and manufactured unrest in Ferguson as a front to declare marshal law and cancel elections. But she has no concerns about the government coercing confessions?
I've seen plenty of other Repubs who seem to have the same opinion: "We can't let the government have too much power, unless we call it 'law and order', then the government needs all the power--unless it involves our guns"

[Mermaid]

Someone on my facebook feed shared a picture of someone jumping out of one of the WTC's with a caption something like "this is why I don't care that we torture terrorists".

Me too. Amazing how stupid many of my high school friends turned out to be.

[dtq123]

Me too. Amazing how stupid many of my high school friends turned out to be.

You don't want my classmates to join society at all (*Idiots*)

[Berati]

What do you guys think?  Am I being too "soft"?  Do we need to Jack Bauer the bad guys?  Is torture an issue whose pros more than its cons?

I can understand the anger and hatred that cause people to want to torture. I can think of a few people I'd personally like to punch in the face. But you have to take a moment and think it through. We can't just cave in to a base instinct because it feels good at the time.

The thing about torture is that every time they have looked back, the results show they get no good Intel. So it doesn't even work. There is also the fact that you loose all moral authority. You can't claim to be better than "them" if you are a torturer.

[aitm]

The thing about torture is that every time they have looked back, the results show they get no good Intel.

I don't believe this to be true. There are reasons that people believe this, and I think the reason people believe this, is that the people who know better want people to believe this.
edit: the reason torture is still used over thousands of years is that it works. Otherwise…..really?

[Berati]

I don't believe this to be true. There are reasons that people believe this, and I think the reason people believe this, is that the people who know better want people to believe this.

I can only go by reports like this recent one that say it doesn't work.
I'd like to see any other studies or reports that show effectiveness. Do you have any source for this?

[aitm]

I can only go by reports like this recent one that say it doesn't work.
I'd like to see any other studies or reports that show effectiveness. Do you have any source for this?

You will never find a report that shows the effectiveness of torture. Think about that.

[Shiranu]

I don't believe this to be true. There are reasons that people believe this, and I think the reason people believe this, is that the people who know better want people to believe this.
edit: the reason torture is still used over thousands of years is that it works. Otherwise…..really?

I highly disagree with the edit. We also bound women's feet for thousands of years, cut off part's of men's penises for thousands of years, pray to a god to bring us good luck for thousands of years, pollute our environment knowing full well it will kill us one day for hundreds of years... yet none of those actually work. You are assuming that people who would support torture are thinking rationally; harming your fellow human being means you either have to see them as something different (i.e. not thinking rationally) or to be caught up in rage (i.e. not thinking rationally).

[aitm]

I highly disagree with the edit. We also bound women's feet for thousands of years, cut off part's of men's penises for thousands of years, pray to a god to bring us good luck for thousands of years, pollute our environment knowing full well it will kill us one day for hundreds of years... yet none of those actually work. You are assuming that people who would support torture are thinking rationally; harming your fellow human being means you either have to see them as something different (i.e. not thinking rationally) or to be caught up in rage (i.e. not thinking rationally).

I think we can safely say that using torture to get people to admit to imaginary shit is pretty much useless since they have no real answer to said imaginary shit. Torturing someone over shit that they actually know? I think that works better than those that know want us to know, because yeah,,,, it doesn't work so well that we waste time on it…really?

[Shiranu]

it doesn't work so well that we waste time on it…really?

Again... yes. There are some sick people out there. There are people who will torture people, who will hammer screws into someone's gut or beat them to death with a tire iron, just because they get their kicks out of it.

Now add ontop of that patriotism. Add ontop of that the feeling that this person killed your comrade. Add ontop of the thought that, "If it saves just ONE life, it is worth it!"... yeah, really, we would torture people even if it doesn't give us rational results because the type of person that would torture another man is not thinking rationally.

And this last one is the one that almost every commander I have seen who ordered torturing has said... if it saves just one life it was worth it. So what if 99.9% of the time it doesn't work, if it worked that .1 time it was worth it. That is not a rational thought, and that is straight from the mouth of the people doing the torturing, not the statistic makers.

[Berati]

You will never find a report that shows the effectiveness of torture. Think about that.

How can you claim that torture works and then claim that any report that it does would not be released. Surely you can see why this comes across as a closed loop argument and not a rational one. 

Anyway, there are plenty of very powerful people who would be willing to back torture so I can't say I give much credence to this hypothesis. If it worked, there would be evidence and those responsible for the torture would be shoving it in everyone else's faces.

Looking around, all I can find are statements from former torturers who say it doesn't work, and reports like the one just released that says no useful information was found out through torture.
I'm willing to reevaluate if any evidence is brought forth. That is how the scientific method works after all.

[Shiranu]

I would just like to add that if it works or doesn't really matter anyways if we want to pretend we are the "good" guys.

[Hydra009]

Found the original editorial in all its conservative nastiness:

Regarding the Dec. 10 news article “ Report: Torture by CIA wasn’t worth its cruelty”: Sen. Dianne Feinstein lectured us about our use of torture. I would like to lecture her for a moment.

The terrorists subjected to the “enhanced interrogations” are all still alive! We did not behead them or stone them or hang them. This is considerably more than they would do if roles were reversed.

Does Feinstein know what real torture is? Torture is seeing someone we don’t know jumping to his death from the World Trade Center rather than burn. It is knowing a family member died when Islamic terrorists flew planes into a building or died on the battlefield fighting these thugs and knowing they will never, ever come home.

So forgive me. I will not shed one single tear for those who might have been interrogated roughly; their behavior and the lives of those lost outweigh their temporary discomfort.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/12/11/4396213/tom-imler-no-sympathy-for-terrorists.html?sp=/99/108/165/#storylink=cpy