C.I.A.- Torture and Lies?

[EquALLity]

Here's an article- http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/world ... eport.html

The Senate report found that the detention and interrogation of Mr. Zubaydah and dozens of other prisoners were ineffective in giving the government “unique” intelligence information that the C.I.A. or other intelligence agencies could not get from other means.

The report also said that the C.I.A.'s leadership for years gave false information about the total number of prisoners held by the C.I.A., saying there had been 98 prisoners when C.I.A. records showed that 119 men had been held. In late 2008, according to one internal email, a C.I.A. official giving a briefing expressed concern about the discrepancy and was told by Mr. Hayden, then the agency’s director, “to keep the number at 98” and not to count any additional detainees.

The committee’s report concluded that of the 119 detainees, “at least 26 were wrongfully held."

It said, “These included an ‘intellectually challenged’ man whose C.I.A. detention was used solely as leverage to get a family member to provide information, two individuals who were intelligence sources for foreign liaison services and were former C.I.A. sources, and two individuals whom the C.I.A. assessed to be connected to Al Qaeda based solely on information fabricated by a C.I.A. detainee subjected to the C.I.A.'s enhanced interrogation techniques.”

Many Republicans have said that the report is an attempt to smear both the C.I.A. and the Bush White House, and that the report cherry-picked information to support a claim that the C.I.A.'s detention program yielded no valuable information. Former C.I.A. officials have already begun a vigorous public campaign to dispute the report’s findings.

This is about 'The Senate Committee’s Report on the C.I.A.’s Use of Torture.' (linked in the article)
I don't know what I believe yet. I'm going to read the report later.
Has anyone looked into it more, or does anyone have anything to say about this?
What do you think about the situation?

[brimstoneSalad]

Torture is only useful when you can easily and relatively quickly confirm the information you are receiving, and even then, you can't always break people, and sometimes they just don't have the information; it's not always possible to tell which situation it is (ignorant, or just unbroken).
This is arguably a moral issue (endless torture), but also one of inefficiency, e.g wasting time, or chasing dead ends.

Unfortunately, the government isn't known for efficiency, and they've pursued more quacky things than that in the past (psychic nonsense).

[EquALLity]

Do you think the report is deceitful, though? Why or why not?

Apparently, according to the NY Times, the republicans are saying that the report cherry-picked events. But of course, they are the republicans...

The C.I.A. also created a response to it. I read the very beginning, and the writer, C.I.A. Director (I think), claims to be opposed to torture, so... What?

Also, according to the report (according to the NY Times), the C.I.A. lied about the number of prisoners they had, and in which prisons waterboarding was used.

I'm planning on reading the report later.

[brimstoneSalad]

Well, what is torture? It all depends on definitions.

Waterboarding, electric shock, burning, prying off fingernails -- these are not very effective forms of interrogation. They make people shut down.

Not letting people sleep? Keeping the room just a little bit too cold or too hot? Annoying noises? Very effective.

[Jebus]

I would support physical torture if there is a ticking timebomb and one is 100% sure that the person receiving the torture has information that could stop the bomb from going off. However, since one can never be 100% sure I am against physical torture. Psychological torture (abuse is probably a better word) takes a bit longer, but can be equally effective in extracting information.

[brimstoneSalad]

I would support physical torture if there is a ticking timebomb and one is 100% sure that the person receiving the torture has information that could stop the bomb from going off. However, since one can never be 100% sure I am against physical torture.

Demanding certainty in any empirical matter is not rational.


It usually goes something like this:

You have ten suspects; one of them knows where the bomb is. Let's say we know torture in these instances is 50% effective.

That is, for each of the ten people tortured (nine 'innocent') there's a 5% chance of finding and stopping the bomb.

Statistically, this kind of bomb in the city kills an average of 20 people.

On average, torture 20 people to save 20 people. Is torture preferable to death?


The issue is one of policy.

With X policy, are more people saved than harmed?
Does X policy have any unfortunate implications? Is it democratically acceptable?
-I'm willing to bet most people would accept being waterboarded a little to save another innocent person's life. I would. To save ten people's lives? Hell yes.

Ergo, if the numbers work out, physical torture is fine. However, it's just not very useful, and that is a bigger issue.

Putting somebody in a cold room with irritating noises for four days is not necessarily a more pleasant experience than being waterboarded for a couple hours.

[EquALLity]

Well, what is torture? It all depends on definitions.

Causing severe pain.
The definitions I have found all agree with that.

Waterboarding, electric shock, burning, prying off fingernails -- these are not very effective forms of interrogation. They make people shut down.

That makes me think of this, though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LPubUCJv58
Can you elaborate on this?

Not letting people sleep? Keeping the room just a little bit too cold or too hot? Annoying noises? Very effective.

Well,

Detainees were deprived of sleep for as long as a week, and were sometimes told that they would be killed while in American custody.

This one is from a different NY Times article- http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/31/us/ho ... wanted=all

Gul Rahman, suspected of being a militant, who died in 2002 after being shackled to a concrete wall in near-freezing temperatures at a secret C.I.A. prison in Afghanistan known as the Salt Pit;

And according to The Guardian- http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014 ... ard-rectal

The report mentions mock executions, Russian roulette. US agents threatened to slit the throat of a detainee’s mother, sexually abuse another and threatened prisoners’ children. One prisoner died of hypothermia brought on in part by being forced to sit on a bare concrete floor without pants.

Detainees were forced to stand on broken limbs for hours, kept in complete darkness, deprived of sleep for up to 180 hours, sometimes standing, sometimes with their arms shackled above their heads.

So, the C.I.A. used that abuse too.

More on the number of innocents the C.I.A. abused from The Guardian-

Among its findings, the report says that: “The CIA did not conduct a comprehensive or accurate accounting of the number of individuals it detained, and held individuals who did not meet its own legal standard for detention.”

The CIA acknowledged to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) in February 2006 that it had wrongly detained five individuals throughout the course of its detention programme. The report’s review of CIA records indicates that at least 21 additional individuals, or a total of 26 of the 119 (22%), of detainees identified did not meet the CIA’s standard for detention.

The report calls the number “a conservative calculation” and notes it does not include “individuals about whom there was internal disagreement within the CIA over whether the detainee met the standard or not, or the numerous detainees who, following their detention and interrogation, were found not to ‘pose a continuing threat of violence or death to US persons and interests’ or to be ‘planning terrorist activities’.

With one exception, the reports says there are no CIA records that indicate that anyone was held accountable for “the detention of individuals the CIA itself determined were wrongfully detained.”

Also, can someone tell me how to write the name of who you're quoting, so that it comes up as "so-and-so wrote?"

[brimstoneSalad]

Well, what is torture? It all depends on definitions.

Causing severe pain.
The definitions I have found all agree with that.

What is severe? What is pain? It was a rhetorical question, you can't actually answer it because the line when something crosses into torture is subjective.

Also, waterboarding isn't painful. It triggers a drowning reflex of panic. It is generally agreed to be a form of torture.

Likewise, being kept awake, cold, etc. are generally just very uncomfortable and stressful, and don't cause physical pain.

That makes me think of this, though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LPubUCJv58
Can you elaborate on this?

What is that? I can't click it now.

So, the C.I.A. used that abuse too.

Yes, it does.

Also, can someone tell me how to write the name of who you're quoting, so that it comes up as "so-and-so wrote?"

Push the quote button. The copy and paste the original quote tag which includes the name.

[EquALLity]

Also, waterboarding isn't painful. It triggers a drowning reflex of panic.

So, it makes you feel like you're drowning. How is that not painful? How is panic not painful, also?
Well, you'd just say it's subjective.

Likewise, being kept awake, cold, etc. are generally just very uncomfortable and stressful, and don't cause physical pain.

But what about mental pain?
It probably also depends on how long you are kept awake/in a cold room to go from being in discomfort to pain.

What is that? I can't click it now.

It's a video of Christopher Hitchens volunteering to be subjected to waterboarding, to report on what it's like (which he does).

Push the quote button. The copy and paste the original quote tag which includes the name.

Oh, thanks.

[brimstoneSalad]

So, it makes you feel like you're drowning. How is that not painful? How is panic not painful, also?
Well, you'd just say it's subjective.

It's not subjective, it's semantic.

The International Association for the Study of Pain's widely used definition states: "Pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage."[2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain

Waterboarding is not painful, in the proper sense. It's neither damaging, or potentially damaging to tissues. It's a state of panic induced by a drowning reflex.

It is, however, anguish, and it is very unpleasant.

It's pretty much the worst thing you'd ever feel in your life, although the memory may dull with time.
It's different from pain, because with pain you're really still there in the moment... there's you, and there's the pain, and it's unpleasant. With that kind of panic, it completely consumes you; there is no you, there is only terror.

But what about mental pain?
It probably also depends on how long you are kept awake/in a cold room to go from being in discomfort to pain.

Again, definition. It is suffering, and anguish. Talking about mental pain, that's not classically part of the definition of torture; or 'pain' proper in the clinical sense, although it is another kind of psychological torment, that's harder to define.

As to pain, no, it depends on the temperature and other conditions of the nerves. There's something called the pain threshold, where a sensory stimuli crosses from uncomfortable into painful; it's the point where your nerves tell your brain your tissue is being damaged (correctly or incorrectly). Temperatures that are low but not too low, or lowered gradually enough, may never lead to the pain threshold being crossed (although warming back up can be extremely painful even though it's not damaging).

The situations these people are put in are carefully designed to be as unpleasant as possible without causing pain and tissue damage.

Oh, thanks.

You have to paste it for every quote, individually.