The detentions are still going on. But you didn't call them gratuitous, you think that prosecuting those responsible for the torture and the detentions is gratuitous, even if many of the victims remain in indefinite detention. Disgusting.

Unlike continuing to detain someone who was an assistant cook for the Taliban seven years ago. That's highly relevant, and not at all backwards-looking.

windy, I made a pragmatic argument as opposed to an ideological one. Why do you then (sarcastically) suppose that I support any of the detentions or torture? We should have followed "innocent until proven guilty" and habeas corpus for all prisoners. Guantanamo should never have happened. We should never have authorized torture or violated the Geneva convention in any way.

Ideally we should follow all of our laws all of the time. But in practice, that's just not what happens. I'm making a practical calculation that it might be disadvantageous for the more important agendas of his presidency (like climate regulations and decarbonization) for Obama to aggressively prosecute the wrongdoings of his predecessor.

That does not mean I agree in any way with those wrongs. Why do I have to spell it out?

Unlike continuing to detain someone who was an assistant cook for the Taliban seven years ago. That's highly relevant, and not at all backwards-looking.

Your insistence that it is never legitimate or successful in saving lives ensures that when it does rear its head again in our society, and IT WILL, it will be hidden and not subject to societies judgment.

No, the way to prevent from occurring again is to consistently throw those who are caught torturing people behind bars so as to create the impression that if a person commits torture that they will be punished for it.

Recording all interrogations is also a very good safeguard against such behaviour.

I absolutely deny, however, that torture would be an appropriate punishment. Nothing I have said thus far can be fairly construed to extract such a meaning.

Really? You said this previously:

Wow, 183 times. That's a lot of waterboarding! Here's another number for you guys: 2974. That's the number of people KSM killed in the 911 attacks he helped plan (not including the 18 highjackers). Now add Daniel Pearl and thousands of other innocent muslim's he's helped kill and I'll feel bad for him when the number of times he's been waterboarded reaches that number.

Now, it's true that your next sentence was, "But punishment isn't the point," but I'm not buying it. It's plainly obvious that you're upset at the actions of these people (understandably) and you are looking to obtain your pound of flesh. Else, you would not be so quick to tie the number of waterboardings to the number of dead.

How on earth can you claim that KSM's right to not experience temporary, albeit excruciating, pain with no lasting effect outweighs the right to life of the thousands he had already murdered and the countless more victims whose fate he sealed before his capture. What if you could save those lives, unseal those fates?

You can't save the lives of the people he already had a hand in killing. Again, this is punitive and vengeful talk, not justice.

The witch trial produced the results they were intended to.

The author's point exactly (BTW, I didn't write that). People confessed to being witches, they confessed to doing all sorts of things, they even did so without answering yes/no questions. They would make up stories about the things they did, all to stop the torture.

I have no doubt that the Gestapo's wide array of horror produced mixed results, that is when they were actual torturing for information and not for fun or as part of a march from death.

If you have no doubt that the results were mixed, then what's there to talk about? Whether they switched to doing it for fun or not later is inconsequential.

In the case of the US, enhanced interrogation is as rough as it gets (unless we painlessly execute the inmate later, but it is only rough insofar as death is final), hence a much larger incentive to talk.

This is non-sensical. You're actually contending that because the person might not die that they will reveal more accurate information?

I find it interesting that when you get to the Human Rights Watch your "largely ineffective" language changes to "typically."

I find it interesting that you have an inability to read the plain English. There's nothing "interesting" in the wording used there, nor does it display any sort of inconsistency.

I shouldn't have to justify Abu Ghraib since even under the bush standards they were illegal.

What, you don't think "enhanced interrogation techniques" were being used there? The naked pyramids were not the only thing going on. This is an account of what was obtained through the methods you are defending.

I am glad you will acknowledge the domestic law enforcement situation though...

Are you trying to miss the point? The point was that when cops use heavy-handed tactics, we see the same results - namely people admitting to things they didn't do, etc.

Your insistence that it is never legitimate or successful in saving lives ensures that when it does rear its head again in our society, and IT WILL, it will be hidden and not subject to societies judgment.

Ah, I see. We have to tolerate torture, even though it is illegal, and make sure that it's out in the open and done so that we can avoid people doing it in secret? I think my head might explode.

Ebonmuse: I didn't know that about the CIA. I was mostly reacting to the other comments referring to them as soldiers--I don't see that it matters if they were. Even if they were CIA, I agree they are still responsible.

As to the witch trial thing, I don't see how the relative real or not real status of the threat matters. To the witch-hunters, witches were a very real threat to their society and their souls, lurking everywhere just like the terrorists, waiting to spring and bring down civilization at any given moment. Any means were justified to protect against this threat. Even the people being tortured as witches believed witches were real--they just knew they weren't witches themselves. Not only that, but it wasn't usually enough to admit to being a witch. You had to name other witches or else your confession was meaningless and they would keep going until you either transferred your misfortunes on some other innocent person or they got sick of it and killed you.

When CIA officials subjected their first high-value captive, Abu Zubaida, to waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods, they were convinced that they had in their custody an al-Qaeda leader who knew details of operations yet to be unleashed, and they were facing increasing pressure from the White House to get those secrets out of him.

The methods succeeded in breaking him, and the stories he told of al-Qaeda terrorism plots sent CIA officers around the globe chasing leads.

In the end, though, not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida's tortured confessions, according to former senior government officials who closely followed the interrogations. Nearly all of the leads attained through the harsh measures quickly evaporated, while most of the useful information from Abu Zubaida -- chiefly names of al-Qaeda members and associates -- was obtained before waterboarding was introduced, they said.

As others have mentioned, the primary effect of torture is to coerce the victim to say whatever he thinks his interrogators want to hear so that they will stop torturing him. The inevitable result is that U.S. intelligence agents are sent off on wild goose chases that not only accomplish nothing, but divert time and energy from genuinely effective investigative techniques that would truly contribute to keeping the country safe.

As Dershowitz explains, the eighth amendment only prohibits cruel and unusual PUNISHMENT. This leaves the door wide open to torture for information. However you feel about it, this doesn't change the fact that torture is not against the law.

I usually don't use language like this, but this is one of the most appallingly stupid arguments I have ever seen. Do you seriously contend that the Eighth Amendment can be completely evaded simply by what word you choose to describe the conduct at issue? Do you really expect us to believe that a judge would accept the assertion: "I wasn't punishing the defendant, your honor, I was just torturing him"?

You also seem to be ignorant of the fact that the Eighth Amendment is not the only relevant law here. Torture is specifically prohibited by multiple treaties and statues, as even Steven Bradbury knows. He says himself in one of his OLC memos:

Under 18 U.S.C. § 2340A, it is a crime to commit, attempt to commit, or conspire to commit torture outside the United States.

Here's a link to the U.S. Code so you can read it for yourself.

And furthermore, from the Washington University Law Review:

Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, which the Senate unanimously ratified in 1955, prohibits the parties to the treaty from acts upon prisoners including "violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture..."

Second, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the Senate ratified in 1992, states that "[n]o one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." Third, the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, which the Senate ratified in 1994, provides that "[e]ach State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction..."

...The four principal statutes which Congress has adopted to implement the provisions of the foregoing treaties are the Torture Act, the War Crimes Act, and the laws entitled "Prohibition on Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment of Persons Under Custody or Control of the United States Government" and "Additional Prohibition on Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment." The first two statutes are criminal laws while the latter two statutes extend civil rights to any person in the custody of the United States anywhere in the world.

Note that treaties which are ratified by the Senate are binding law in the United States, and as the article states, Congress has passed additional laws to support the treaties' language by making it a criminal offense to torture. We have also court-martialed American soldiers for waterboarding.

Wow, 183 times. That's a lot of waterboarding! Here's another number for you guys: 2974. That's the number of people KSM killed in the 911 attacks he helped plan (not including the 18 highjackers).

You appear to be operating under the assumption that if Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is a very bad man, then we're justified in doing anything we want to him. That may be standard operating procedure in a totalitarian state, but it's not how things work in a nation of law. Torture is illegal, period, no matter who the person being tortured is. The reason we outlaw it is precisely because we are better than those who would seek to destroy us, whereas you seem intent on dragging us down to their level.

And if waterboarding is so severe and is definately torture, then why have we been waterboarding our own troops for almost 20 years, INCLUDING THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION?

The use of waterboarding and other such techniques as training methods in the SERE program is (1) voluntary; (2) for very brief periods (soldiers are not shackled in stress positions for hours, nor waterboarded hundreds of times in a month); and (3), the point you still refuse to grasp, done so that soldiers will be better able to resist these tactics if ever captured and subjected to them. It is not meant to be a training manual to teach them how to torture others!

The point is not whether it is horrible, it is I grant you that. The point is, is it torture? Bad does not equal torture.

Since you mentioned Christopher Hitchens volunteering to undergo the process, let's reiterate his clearly stated conclusion:

...if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.

...KSM's right to not experience temporary, albeit excruciating, pain...

No one is arguing for this. The point that has been made to you (I count three times by OMGF alone now) is that no one has the right to deliberately inflict this upon him, regardless of what he has done.

Your insistence that it is never legitimate or successful in saving lives...

Again, no one is arguing that it is never successful. People have told you that it is unreliable. I think most people here would agree that we should make it against the law, and if some interrogator really thinks that torture is what will solve the problem, (s)he can choose to break the law. There will be consequences for doing so, but if it can be shown that the law and their duty were in conflict, then the justice system will take that into account.

From the article you linked:

In fact, what Abu Zubaydah disclosed to the CIA during this period [of torture] was that ... [KSM's] code name was “Muktar” — something Zubaydah thought we already knew, but in fact we did not. ... This information provided by Zubaydah was a critical piece of the puzzle that allowed them to pursue and eventually capture KSM.

If he thought the CIA knew this, it would not have required waterboarding to get him to reveal it. Torturing Zubaydah was not necessary to capture KSM.

In the case of Padilla, there is nothing to indicate that it was the "enhanced interrogation" techniques used on Zubaydah that gave the CIA critical information as opposed to regular interrogation. And there is plenty that indicates it delivered false leads, which required time and resources to track down.

So no. You have not made a good case for torture thus far, Chris.

And please start using blockquote tags and paragraph breaks.

I absolutely deny, however, that torture would be an appropriate punishment. Nothing I have said thus far can be fairly construed to extract such a meaning. I'm not saying the amount KSM was waterboarded should correlate to the number of people he killed, this would be inhumane, and you would be right. However, since the only reason enhanced interrogation methods or torture can be justified is to obtain information that saves lives, what I clearly mean is, the more that's at stake the further the people involved will be willing to push the envelope, whether you like it or not.

Yes, I get it. This doesn't resolve the normative debate, but it does weigh in it as it speaks to the moral intuitions of many (think Bush, first president since Reagan elected by the majority of American in 2004, well after we'd caught wind of what was going on). The normative debate revolves around rights. It shouldn't be hard to convince you that rights don't come from god so where your universal human rights come from? No where, that's where. Rights are political grants of immunity from the government or the people by agreement depending on what government you live under, nothing more. They are valuable insofar as they are respected and protected. A universal theory of rights is a necessity for most free societies in order to demonstrate their commitment to their own citizens rights, but generally don't go as far as to enforce them because of sovereignty, among other issues. Citizens view universal human rights differently. Citizens rightly recognize that, since there is no physiological difference between KSM and me, he should have the same basic rights. I agree. Fortunately for us, in no sense is this absolute. You would grant that I have the right to kill him if he came at me with the intent of harming me, or any of mine. You should also agree that he may be executed (setting the dp debate aside for the moment) for his crime or at least deprived of his liberty for quite some time if not for the rest of his life. How on earth can you claim that KSM's right to not experience temporary, albeit excruciating, pain with no lasting effect outweighs the right to life of the thousands he had already murdered and the countless more victims whose fate he sealed before his capture. What if you could save those lives, unseal those fates? Wouldn't that be the moral thing to do? A jewish saying goes, "to save a life, is to save the world entire. I'm not jewish, ethnically or religiously, but there is wisdom in that.

As to OMGF's lazy history.
1.) The witch trial produced the results they were intended to. Idiots believed in witches so they found them. OBL exists. He is not a figment of our imagination. There is a good and a bad way of doing any task. Thank you pirate.
2.) Your anonymous extensive studies are wrong for the purpose you offer them. I have no doubt that the Gestapo's wide array of horror produced mixed results, that is when they were actual torturing for information and not for fun or as part of a march from death. It's not hard to understand why, either. For the Nazis and many others, torture was the prelude to an even more painful death. When in the grasps of the people you compare our government to, pain is the only thing these people had left. In the case of the US, enhanced interrogation is as rough as it gets (unless we painlessly execute the inmate later, but it is only rough insofar as death is final), hence a much larger incentive to talk. See Dershowitz for a more specific history on the french experience in Algeria. French General Paul Aussaresses would disagree with you on that score. He wrote, "The best way to make a terrorist talk when he refused to say what he knew was to torture him."
I find it interesting that when you get to the Human Rights Watch your "largely ineffective" language changes to "typically."
3.)I shouldn't have to justify Abu Ghraib since even under the bush standards they were illegal. I am glad you will acknowledge the domestic law enforcement situation though; which is A.) A broad reading of torture can be extended to almost any circumstance (think being forced to watch ROck of Love), and B.)Our supreme court has upheld even the choking of a kidnapping suspect in or order to effect the safe return of a little girl. You're missing the point. Of course torturing an innocent person lends itself to nothing good. No one disagrees with this. The point is that if you HAVE INFO, torture WILL make you give it up.

More specifically, look to the link for specific examples in the Bush war (limited by what little has been classified so far). Again, look to the Dershowitz book for many other specific examples of torture which resulted in lives saved.

The only reason that justifies enhanced interrogations, or in the extreme, perhaps some methods of torture is the necessity of saving lives. Every government is under pressure to meet this most basic and fundamental duties, and it is this pressure which will ensure that torture will never be extinguished from this earth. Your insistence that it is never legitimate or successful in saving lives ensures that when it does rear its head again in our society, and IT WILL, it will be hidden and not subject to societies judgment.