Normally, I try to avoid political discussions on here, mainly because my beliefs are contradictory and weird, and also because I’m a wuss and I hate getting into arguments that always end up being very personal. Nevertheless, I wanted to get something out regarding the concept of torture.
Torture’s been in the news a lot lately, and I had a lengthy conversation about it with my boy Rick the other day, and I realized my opinion on the subject depends largely on one salient fact: Does torture work?
I had always been operating under the assumption that it does. After all, if you clamp my testicles into a vice, pour lighter fluid on them, and carefully hold a match about 4 feet above them, I’m going to talk. I’m going to tell you anything you want to know. But I’m not a highly motivated terrorist, willing to give up my life and my scrotum for my beliefs.
I don’t have any particular moral revulsion to torture, really. I don’t know if it makes me unfeeling or sociopathic, but I have a hard time conjuring up sympathy when a guy who fully supports flying jets into American buildings has to watch an American pee all over the Koran. Assuming, that is, that it’s being done with an eye towards getting information out of the prisoner, and not towards just being mean to him because he has dark skin and has a fondness for turbans. If torture works, then the only reason NOT to do it is that other countries might take to torturing Americans. But since Al Qaeda and others have shown no qualms about kidnapping civilians from any country and sawing off their heads on camera, I don’t think it’s a serious issue. I would prefer torture to be a method of last resort, but if a guy knows something we need to know, and he won’t give it up, I say, sure, put a cigarette or two out on his arm.
I was watching The Daily Show (now with More Jon Stewartness! and inexplicably less couch) the other day while Jon discussed torture with Sen. John McCain. Jon mentioned multiple times that torture doesn’t work, which is news to me. I haven’t seen any real documentary evidence either way, but I can tell you I’d been operating under the assumption that it was reasonably effective.
I guess this leads me to my question, which I pose to my readers and offer to have them respond in the comments: Does anyone know for certain, either way, what the true effectiveness of torture is?
My guess is that it’s like Nuclear – pronounced new-clee-arr – Weapons (remember the Cold War? Good times.). It’s the threat that works, but pushing the big red button (sponsored by Staples) just blows the whole world up. Or in the case of torture, if the person’s crazy enough to not be scared by the threat of a block of wood between his ankles and a crazy lady with a sledgehammer, then actually sledgehammering his foot won’t do much. Remember, those guys wear TNT T-shirts.
Banning torture increases actionable intelligence gathered by 25%.
http://www.harpers.org/Iraq.html#20050201-460967545603
Oh, Carl… I remember our conversation. I’m with you that I don’t have any real moral aversion to it, but when we’re doing it just because we can, that’s a little over the top. At least Zarqawi’s boys are putting our people out of their misery by sawing off their heads.
the point of not tourturing people is so our soldiers don’t get tourtured. it’s called “diplomacy”.