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CIA Torture Report

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Dormin111

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"The Senate Intelligence Committee spent five years reading and analyzing more than 6.3 million pages of CIA documents to assess the CIA's use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" in the post-9/11 era."

http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/09/politics/top-takeaways-cia-torture-report/index.html

 

Has anyone read the CIA Torture Report or its summaries? What are your thoughts on the efficacy of torture given this new information?

 

 

 

 

 

EDIT - Link fixed, thanks Devil's Advocate.

Edited by Dormin111
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My position remains unchanged from what I expressed earlier in "torture (of detained terrorists)", started Dec. 14th 2007: opposed to torture. I'll have to read further into this report, but the summary of findings doesn't surprise me.

Edited by Devil's Advocate
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Did anybody else watch the movie, Zero Dark Thirty and conclude the same thing I concluded after I watched it, which is that, given the trade-off between killing Bin Laden and doing what they needed to do in order to do it, we would have been better off not doing it?

 

Sure, we got a bad guy, but at what cost to our principles?

 

If you can make the case that the occasional school shooting and slaughter of innocent American children doesn't justify a forced prohibition of guns, then you have to agree that the occasional 9/11 is not worth the principles of our democracy.

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Take a look (very briefly) into the mind of a Bin Laden or his present ilk to understand this: It is not simply the power and wealth of the USA that they oppose, it's what implicitly underscores them, a nation's moral and individualist principles. Every instance of fear, hatred and temporary insanity which creates a torturer - and every other 'security measure' - is a moral victory for the savage, (and not to forget, educated and sophisticated) terrorists who fear the independent mind and its integrity, more than explicit strength.

"See! We have forced those Americans into becoming ordinary, just like everyone else!"

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The first and most important question is whether torture is really effective and whether it has actually saved a significant number of lives. According to the reports I've heard, the Democrats who published this report say it has not been effective, while the CIA says it has. If the report is right, then obviously we should not torture. Why should we accept all the downside if there is nothing to be gained? However, if the CIA is right, then we need to know that too; then, one has to weigh the costs against the benefits. If the U.S. executive can kill people in order to prevent a terrorist attack in the U.S., that's far more serious than driving someone to the point of incoherence.

 

I find the CIA's lies to Congress and the CIA's spying on Congress to be the more important story in this episode.

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I find the CIA's lies to Congress and the CIA's spying on Congress to be the more important story in this episode.

 

And add, that the CIA has every reason to lie. As a witness, they just aren't credible. The Demos on the other hand have the Whitehouse to lock up and you can make the case that this might be part of a strategy therein, but I think McCain's support sucks the air out of those sails.

 

Many of the torture victims were later found to be innocent. This strikes at the heart of our standing as a nation. This "downside threat" is wholly existential and there's absolutely nothing that can possibly justify it short of imminent nuclear annihilation.

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How would you determine anything that you purportedly knew, you know?

 

I know by personal experience, or I know by the testimony of others who have such experience. Not being a torturer, or having been tortured, I tend to rely on the credibility of persons like McCain for experience and Feinstein for oversight.

 

The report makes claims about the efficacy of torture and calls to question the credibility and candidness of its practitioners. After the report was released, I watched interviews with experts on both sides from a variety of news sources and heard proponents admit to facts in the report, but claim that the presentation was misleading. One such account involved the reported death of a person who was tortured, but the proponent complained the person had died while in the custody of a foreign ally working with the CIA, not the CIA itself, implying the CIA does a better job keeping their torture subjects alive than was reported.

 

In general, I tend to discount proponents who appeal to their own authority, knowing their actual practices are classified and not available for objective review except by other authorities with security clearances, who then proceed to question the efficacy of those practices and the credibility of the practitioners. And I've yet to hear anyone claim that results from the practice of torture are more reliable than alternate, less odious, practices of information gathering. Have you?

 

And now that I've shown you mine, ya wanna take another shot at responding to how you would know if torture was effacicious or not?

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I just realized I misread the original question.

 

It was about the CIA credibility in general and how it applies to specifically to the credibility of their reporting if torture is effective or not. For some reason, I was under the impression that the issue of torture's effectiveness was being called into question because the CIA got caught lying about spying on congress. As such, it does put their credibility on the line in general.

 

After watching how congress handled Obama'scare do we want them determining the veracity of the CIA on the matter?

 

I can give you a few general thoughts I can come up with on the matter. I think the reason the jury's still out on the matter is because it seems to work on some, and not on others. As such, is it really the technique of torture that is effective here, or is there some essential difference between the individuals that crack, and the ones that stay together? I lean toward the latter at this time.

Edited by dream_weaver
word missing, and yes, Obama'scare was intentional.
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I just realized I misread the original question.

 

It was about the CIA credibility in general and how it applies to specifically to the credibility of their reporting if torture is effective or not. For some reason, I was under the impression that the issue of torture's effectiveness was being called into question because the CIA got caught lying about spying on congress. As such, it does put their credibility on the line in general.

 

After watching how congress handled Obama'scare do we want them determining the veracity of the CIA on the matter?

 

I can give you a few general thoughts I can come up with on the matter. I think the reason the jury's still out on the matter is because it seems to work on some, and not on others. As such, is it really the technique of torture that is effective here, or is there some essential difference between the individuals that crack, and the ones that stay together? I lean toward the latter at this time.

 

Fortunately this hair-splitting doesn't matter since torture is wrong on principle.

Edited by CrowEpistemologist
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"The efficacy" which Dormin asked opinions on, is of course always also the principled - and that is the long, long term. It's not about those dramatic images that come to mind, say of having 20 minutes to grill a suspect to find the bomb before the city blows up. It's the steady intelligence work that brings the real results, then hunting down any who pose a threat--which passes an uncompromising message on to our enemies.

That's the beauty of holding principles (well known here), that they avert such moral dilemmas as this.

Everything is simpler: We don't do that, regardless of what others do.

But pragmatically speaking, I saw an article on a report from Japanese High Command in WW2, which concluded that torturing POW's was an almost total waste of time: false leads and misdirection by prisoners -who largely knew very little to tell- in trying to please their captors and gain release from pain, wasted time and manpower to follow up.

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...

After watching how congress handled Obama'scare do we want them determining the veracity of the CIA on the matter?

 

I can give you a few general thoughts I can come up with on the matter. I think the reason the jury's still out on the matter is because it seems to work on some, and not on others. As such, is it really the technique of torture that is effective here, or is there some essential difference between the individuals that crack, and the ones that stay together? I lean toward the latter at this time.

 

To the first question, there's a difference in dismissing congressional political behavior in general and relying on congressional oversight in particular.  This is an important part of checks and balances and even if you allow that members of both parties in this committee have political motivations, the minority report also minimizes the efficacy torture by calling it a small part of the detention program.  I did some preliminary research and didn't find anything being touted as indispensable in its use. 

 

I think the jury's out primarily because of those who believe torture is somehow necessary to doing "whatever it takes" to gather information.  This notion can only be supported morally by claiming it's good to be bad.

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...those who believe torture is somehow necessary to doing "whatever it takes" to gather information.  This notion can only be supported morally by claiming it's good to be bad.

Objectivism does not hold specific, concrete things like killing, lying, etc. to be wrong or evil.
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So honesty is a virtue without any moral content?

In Objectivism, honesty is a virtue that is held by one's self with regard to reality. To draw a parallel you may be familiar with, consider Rahab taking in the Israelite spies and then sending them off in a safe direction while directing their pursuers in different direction. She lied to the pursuers, but is considered to have acted with integrity, yet another Objectivist virtue based on the fact that you cannot fake your consciousness just as honesty is the recognition that you cannot fake reality, even though she breached the ninth commandment. Add to this that "a 'moral commandment' is a contradiction in terms. The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed."

 

Was Rahab being honest with herself with regard to lying to the pursuers, or is the ninth commandment some supposed absolute with regard to dealing with others, including those who might intend harm?

 

And how might this all this tie in to the CIA Torture Report?

 

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softwareNerd, dream_weaver,

 

I understand that context is everything when evaluating the moral content of a particular instance of killing or lying.  As far as moral commandments go, free-will allows that exceptions sometimes prove the rule.  So in terms of how the CIA's detention program, which included some instances of torture and attempts to mislead the authority sanctioning their activities, moral content may be evaluated according to the efficacy of torture and deception to save lives (a greater good).  The CIA could argue that killing and lying are necessary exceptions to moral and legal rules in order to protect a moral and legal society from immoral and illegal ones.

 

However evaluations of efficacy then depend on torture and deceiving oversight saving more lives than not torturing and not deceiving.  Since oversight is now out of the loop regarding what actually happened, we are entirely reliant on the credibility of torturers and deceivers to assure us that their authority is sufficient in matters relating to the defense of our moral and legal society.  Add to that the fact that some members of the CIA don't agree with these methods and were marginalized, that cases promoting the necessity of torture/deception have been disputed by equally credible authorities, some who have actually been tortured, and the validation for claims of efficacy become dubious.

 

And so does our moral credibility, when the efficacy of immoral and illegal actions by others can apparently only be responded to kind.

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That's well said, DA. You touch on the salient point that these measures are taken on 'our' behalf by a government agency, therefore all 'we' citizens are complicit in their actions' dubious or pragmatic morality.

The slippery slope argument must have occurred to many; after all, where would torture stop? A terrorist today, an ordinary criminal tomorrow.

What comes to mind often is the simple brilliance of "A society that would give up a little freedom for a little security will deserve neither and lose both". (From memory - Thomas Jefferson I believe?).

It's the Progressive Left which usually desires a risk-free existence.

I'm finding it uncomfortable to be on their side, here!

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