[Preechr]

Originally Posted by ziggytrix

To my perception, your opinion regarding wartime standards seems to be more rooted in pragmatism than moral value. You think we aren't really using our claws, and that our overactive conscience is a liabilty. Is that a misunderstanding?

Yes. That was actually the last thing you said, but I moved to the top of my response because the explanation for my answer follows.

Originally Posted by ziggytrix

It's not really my claim to make.

Please note, I'm not gonna attack your source even though it would be easy in this case. Links just get you in trouble with nit-pickers. It says right there in your quote that there has only been one published study on the efficacy of torture, so read all the opinions of whomever you want and just post what YOU think.

If that's what you believe, make the claim and tell me why you think so. I used myself as an example. I know that's hardly scientific, especially in the larger context of me trying to explain to you how amazingly different Middle Eastern life is from our own... but I believe pain pretty much hurts most people.

Contrarily, I can see where many people might prove highly resistant to torture. If my goal as your abductor was to get you to kill a bunch of people you love in cold blood, I can imagine that you would likely take a lot of abuse before doing so if you ever did at all. You, in this example, would be the torture candidate equivalent to the rare guy that is as connected to terrorism as you are to your loved ones. Can you agree with me that most of the folks we are interrogating are not going to be connected on that level?

Most of these guys are revealed with airstrikes. We see the pictures of their corpses on the news if there's anything identifiable left. Can you infer from this that our military isn't really all that interested in seeing what the actual terrorist leaders have to say?

Again, please acknowledge that I am not just talking about torture. You really aren't addressing that at all. What about the information gained from just the fear of torture, Zig?

Originally Posted by ziggytrix

My concern is that run-of-the-mill combatants or abducted dentists would finger anyone to get the focus off of themselves. Even if that meant exaggerating the roles of fellow prisoners or making up stories about their neighbor being an Al Qaeda operative.

Ok, let's consider our alternatives. Let's say we ban torture. How many prisons do you want to build in the Middle East? Let's assume for argument's sake that the threat of prison for them is the same as it is for your average American citizen, Ok? If what you just said is true when torture is the threat, the same will be true when prison is the threat. Our cops here have pretty much figured out how to tell who is lying and who is not.

American criminals are just as likely to lie to interrogators... maybe moreso... and we've figured out how to sort it all out.

Using your preferred method, however, we'll have to stop building schools and start building a shitload of prisons. How's that gonna look? Until those prisons get built, we're still gonna have to threaten detainees with something, right? Prison camps? That's a pretty sweet target. Now we're going to have to re-allocate our soldiers to guard them, taking them off the search for terrorists.

The potential threat of torture streamlines all that. It keeps soldiers doing what they are supposed to be doing and interrogators doing what they're supposed to be doing, and it gets the dentist home to his kids a lot quicker while getting us the information we need. Sure, it sounds bad... But is it really worse than the alternative?

I asked Max why torturing someone is so much more barbaric than anything else that happens in a war. The most humane thing we can do in a war is get it over with as quickly as possible. The threat of possible torture at the hands of Americans is alive and well in the Middle East right now. We are believed to be capable of viscous savagery when information is witheld, yet we are also fixing up Iraq and Afghanistan real nice, too. We are doing less harm to the people for better reasons and making our improvements to the cities and towns faster than their previous rulers in both cases. We replaced what hey had with something better on all counts, though not totally alien, and we are also helping them to build a modern government to replace us quicker than anybody expected could be possible.

Originally Posted by ziggytrix

It would be great to know what interrogation methods work and what don't, and just use what works though. A great example could be Ziad Khalaf Raja al-Karbouly, without whose loose tongue we might not have got Zarqawi.

( http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/...ed_zarqaw.html )

Sure, that's a fine example. He was picked up by Jordanian Intelligence forces, not Americans. We used the information he provided, for whatever reason, to bomb the shit out of a major terrorist. We didn't try to capture Zarqawi in order to torture him. Whatever information that shitbird might have had died right there with him. Your example helps to prove the American Military policy on torture as it actually exists.

The people most resistant to torture, the terrorist leaders most connected to terrorism, are not considered to be candidates for torture. The threat of torture, however, is still alive and well, as evidenced by the fact that we haven't officially banned it. We are left to assume that the threat of torture is officially only open to those most likely to spill their guts at just the threat of it.

We have established here so far that our people have lots of experience sorting lies from facts, as we do it all the time and have been doing so for centuries here in the land of the free and the most prisons in the world per capita.

We have also established, even from way over here in our armchairs, that some people are more succeptible to the threat of torture than others, and we have loosely catagorized them into two groups: Terrorist leaders that we kill instead torture and generally everyone else suspected to have valuable information. Seems responsible enough, don't it?

I have also presented you with the reality of our alternative to the myth of torture: prisons. I say myth of torture because I think at this point I've sufficiently hammered out the logic behind the concept that MOST detainees, by far, are not terrorist leaders and are thus much more likely to tell our guys what they need to know long before somebody shows up in a hood to hook electrodes up to their nipples. Somewhere in the middle, I'm sure, are high-value detainees we've got that won't divuldge what they know that easy. We've culled them from the vast majority of detainees, and we ship them off to Gitmo or something. No new Iraqi jails. New schools instead. We get what we need the most efficient way possible and nobody actually gets tortured. Sweet, huh?

The official policy seems to be, at least by extrapolation of the evidence, that actual torture is something it's Ok to threaten detainees with, or maybe just let them believe it's being threatened. There is no evedence that anything else is going on, though I will get around to Abu Ghraib in a minute.

Originally Posted by ziggytrix

But despite the common assumption, we'll proably never know why he told what he did, since I'm sure that's a Jordanian state secret. I do see your point though, if was Jordanian torture that gave us Zarqawi's location, then hooray for Jordanian torture, right?

By now you've figured out that I don't really believe torture is all that common. Do you? You still seem to have a hard time parsing out everything that is possibly happening during detention before torture starts. That's where all the effective stuff is, Ziggy! I'm sure not even the Jordanian government has torture vans roaming the streets, randomly abducting people and torturing them right there for fun.

Originally Posted by ziggytrix

The entire point of terrorist activity is psychological damage to the enemy, since they can't achieve real damage. I'm not saying we're jsut as bad as them, but if the whole point is just to show them "we can put the fear in you, too" then we're adopting the value of terror as a tactic in the face of tactical disadvantage.

The entire point of war is to stop the enemy from doing bad things as quickly as possible and get back to leading peaceful, productive lives. People are getting shot in face, their arms and legs blown off, some of them innocent civilians and soldiers that are on our side, and you are worried about scaring people?

Originally Posted by ziggytrix

In my opinion, the worst thing we can do is justify the lies our enemies tell about us - that decreases our best advantage.

There is no proof of torture. It's a highly useful myth. Abu Ghraib was shocking, but what happened there was mostly psychological manipulation... extreme and embarrassing as it was that our people were doing it, some of them gleefully even. We have done SO much more over there to prove that we are not a nation of Lynndie Englands, haven't we?

While we are over there, and even after the war is over, our country will always be in the business of using fear and sometimes violence to keep things civil. All nations do that. All people do that, because some people use fear and violence to the opposite ends.

Originally Posted by ziggytrix

Treating everything with kid gloves decreases our firepower advantage, but I suspect our advantages leave us a large enough margin to allow room for finesse. Moral outrage is a recruiting tool for the enemy.

This is the crux of your argument, so the only way I could respond is by repeating everything I've said so far. In short, decreasing our advantages on any level extends the war, and we are morally obligated to NOT do that. We ARE morally obligated to do everything we can to make this war as short as possible, though while doing so as morally as possible. You have not made your case that scaring people has no moral place in a warzone.

Originally Posted by ziggytrix

Is the question, "do we want the quickest results or the longest lasting ones?" a legitimate one?

Did you see how I made this silly question central to my argument? The answer is no. We do this quickly and as morally as possible, because wars are no place for decent people.

Originally Posted by ziggytrix

Yeah, but whose team is he gonna play for? Whomever scares him the most or happens to be closest at the moment? That's not particularly assuring.

If he decides to go play for them, he will end up like them. Our goal here is to convince the bad guys to put down their guns and seek more modern means for getting what they want. Most terrorists only want to shoot guns and shout "Allahu Akbar!" They love the fight. They are far less connected to the reasons behind the fighting than they are the fight itself. We are finding and killing those guys. Decent people aren't joining up with those guys. Decent people seek reasons first and violence a distant second, at least they do when not in war or otherwise oppressed by a culture of violence and death. Decent people choose a peaceful, productive life when it is an available option. The myth that we are creating terrorists by fighting them is just stupid.

What would it take for you to join Al Quaeda, Ziggy?

Originally Posted by ziggytrix

That sounds great, but is it really what's happening? I rather think our War on Terror, as framed by the Pentagon, is about depleteing terrorist resources in an area that is as far the fuck away from our shores as is feasible, but it's taking a very real toll on our resources as well.

Really? How so? Do you realize just how actually unaffected the vast majority of Americans are by this war? We are not fighting and dying while writing our opinions about it. Most of us are sacrificing NOTHING. Compare that to Grandma and Grandpa's involvement in WWII. This war is more like a football game to us. We sit around thinking up smart sounding things to say about it, picking sides and analyzing the plays as if any of that really mattered somehow.

Originally Posted by ziggytrix

In the long run, I just don't see an end to it unless we have a moral highground to bring people to.

We do. It's called ending their state of persistent warfare and violence. We won't accomplish this with flowers and candy.

Originally Posted by ziggytrix

Do you think the sort of activities that the western world calls war crimes is material for "building a bridge between their way of life and ours"?

In your response to this, you tell me if that was valid in this discussion.