GROSS. Unprintably gross! Yeeech. I hope he's not a pedophile?
Why not print stuff like, "He licked her toes like a paintbrush strokes the canvas. The canvas sighs in ecstasy. The colors sing. Purple and quinacridone red.... perfect shades for a female Portal Of Venus.... burnt sienna for the hairs surrounding this Tunnel of Love". I'd rather read THAT than some sick mind's horror story of somebody's KID being tortured. Free speech doesn't mean icking people out to make a point. Like that poor cow being slaughtered on YouTube. Geez.

The questioning of the candidates in this way is just used to reinforce the notion that torture achieves something, ie, that in a dangerous situation torture can achieve information. In fact the point of torture is that it is utterly useless - you are trying to get someone to say something to stop the pain you are inflicting on them. Guess what? Inflict pain on someone and they will tell you they started the Chicago fire. If you think of all the people who were tortured in Abu Ghraib but were immediately released when the scandal broke - they had been tortured but had never done anything wrong to get into the jail in the first place. Ditto the Maher Arar case where Canada and the US conspired to have a Canadian citizen tortured. He never told any terrorist secrets because - hey - he wasn't a terrorist!

Bu thte media like that question for candidates because it implies that there is a purpose to it. Unfortunateley it is the same as asking, "If you had the power of X-ray vision would you, as president, look through someone's clothing?"

You see three quotes above from McCain, Clinton, and Obama. Isn't the real leader apparent?

Just another reason to vote Obama.

As has been pointed out before - waterboarding does not simulate drowning, it IS drowning. Why waste time with the whole ritual? Why not just hold the suspect's head under water until he confesses or dies? Blindfold optional.

Meanwhile, those who continue to condone torture only condone the "tough" Hollywood kind, which says more about their repressed desires to abuse another human than to extract info. Because there's lots of other "humane" ways to torture - the dreaded Tickle Torture, for instance. How about 18 hours a day of porn and loud Brittany Spears and maybe a constant flow of McDonald's smell? Has the CIA tried just getting the bastards drunk?

We got a ticking time bomb still occupying our White House - any suggestions on dealing with that situation before it's too late?

You see three quotes above from McCain, Clinton, and Obama. Isn't the real leader apparent?
______________________________________

Uh... none of the above?

That ticking time bomb argument is an argumentum ad absurdum. It is absurd and needs to be disregarded as such, not engaged. it is a manipultive rhetorical device intended to block the opponent.

It seems to be working, though: now everyone is discussing under what circumstances it would be aceptable.

Perfect.

It's really very easy - it is never acceptable. Preservation of human dignity should override all considerations, especially in difficult circumstances. It is not dignified to be tortured; it is not dignified to be the torturer.

Hillary says about torture, "we've got to have a check and balance on that." Check and balance - in other words, a bureaucracy for torture. Once we have a torture bureaucracy, Hillary, we will need manuals, equipment, manufacturers of torture devices...a whole goddamn industry. And once we have an industry for torture, we're going to have plenty of victims of torture too, so don't tell me that torture will be "very rare" when I know for a fact that torture under your plan will be common and profitable. And the more victims who are tortured, the higher the profits. IN the coming depression, small towns will compete for the privilege of hosting government torture centers.

That's how it worked out with the war on drugs and with the privatized prison industrial complex. Now we have zillions of convicts, all in jail so that someone can have more money.

Prediction: Within a few years, torture will be accepted in the U.S. You'll be able to earn a degree in torture from Harvard or Yale, and if you're planning on a career in torture you had better start making an asshole of yourself now because the jobs in torture will pay well and offer a very good government benefits package. The competition for positions in the torture industry will be very keen, and people will fear and obey you if you can get a good job tormenting people.

So long as religions teach that punishment is a facet of the DEITY, those institutions that purport to immidate the Deity will create their own bases for punitive action. The early church had all kinds of tortures to get people to confess alleged sins. I am 90% sure the residue of this dark imprint on our collective unconscious is why it's being practiced in the US again, just as a wave of inane religiosity rises like a dismal amoral tsunami.

Beautiful, ghawar. Unfortunately, too true.

I remember in the 70s, someone predicting that if the US was to start building concentration camps, people would be lined up for the jobs. At the time, we laughed, since that was clearly hyperbole.

And yet, it has happened.

See also "Clinton Backs off support for torture", Politico 9/27/07 http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0907/6050.html
and then two weeks later where Hillary backed off from her backing off on support for legal Presidential waterboarding: "Clinton Cites Lessons of Partisanship", Washington Post 10/10/07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/09/AR2007100902284.html

This is another substantive difference between Clinton and Obama. Here is Obama, and I hope to God Democrats don't shoot themselves in the foot by nominating the flawed Hillary (who is likely to lose to McCain) versus the dynamic (and more likely to mobilize not only all the Democratic base but independents and some grassroots Republicans as well and defeat McCain in November) Obama.

"I have been consistent in my strong belief that no Administration should allow the use of torture, including so-called 'enhanced interrogation techniques' like water-boarding, head-slapping, and extreme temperatures. It's time that we had a Department of Justice that upholds the rule of law and American values, instead of finding ways to enable the President to subvert them. No more political parsing or legal loopholes." — Barack Obama, 10/29/07

This "ticking time bomb" scenario, so often placed in loaded questions, itself ought to be re-defined. "But what if we know this guy has the secret information, and this thing's gonna go off and kill thousands of Americans....?

This kind of question is really "At what price, sir, will you be bribed into sacrificing the constitution?
At what price do you prostitute the values we claim to defend? At what point do you become a terrorist to (supposedly) thwart another terrorist?

Maybe someone else can say this better. But when the ticking time bomb scenario is used to make people of principle look weak, it's time to turn the question into something more revealing of its truth.

The real truth about torture can be summarized quite succinctly:

The only effective use of torture is to make someone say what you want them to say...it is worthless in determining the truth.

The torturers know this, and thus we know they have no interest in truth, only in manufacturing guilt to justify their monstrous plans.

The "ticking time bomb" is what is always invoked every time torture is being justified, including yesterday by the White House, and earlier by Stephen Hadley when justifying occasional Presidential approval of torture "hypothetically".

But it is a ploy. There are about 10-20 percent of Americans, probably physically and psychologically abused as children, who just get their jollies out of the idea of tormenting bad people who "deserve" it, or nuking whole Arab countries if America is hit (whether or not the country nuked did it or not, so long as they are in the general neighborhood). I have heard them at lunch counters and in bars. In an earlier time, they would be in lynch mobs cheering. The "ticking time bomb" is a pretext, a mental game, a "what-if" used to justify what they get a hard-on about for other reasons.

Here is the reality of US waterboarding in practice, according to one report:

[START EXCERPT]
My second question for Mr. Hayden concerns an allegation made by Murat Kurnaz, the German detainee who was released from Guantánamo in August 2006. In an article in the Washington Spectator last July, focusing on Kurnaz's story, as described in his book Fünf Jahre Meines Lebens: Ein Bericht Aus Guantánamo (Five Years Of My Life: A Report From Guantánamo), the following passage came after Kurnaz's recollections of being hung by his wrists for "hours and days," interrupted only by a doctor who came to "check his vital signs to determine if he could withstand more enhanced interrogation," and his recollections of seeing, in the neighboring cell, another detainee who had died as a result of this ordeal: "Kurnaz said he was also subjected to waterboarding and electric shock. And that beatings were routine and constant. He theorizes that much of the torture was a result of the failure of the American soldiers and agents to capture any real terrorists in the initial sweeps. (He was told that he was sold to the Americans for $3,000 by Pakistani police, who identified him as a terrorist.) 'They didn't have any big fish. And they thought that by torture they could get one of us to say something. "I know Osama" or something like that. Then they could say they had a big fish.'"
[END EXCERPT]

From Andy Worthington, "Waterboarding: Two Questions for Michael Hayden", at www.antiwar.com, Feb. 7, 2008

It is critical that Democratic primary voters in states yet to vote, e.g. Washington, Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and so on understand that Hillary Clinton will in all likelihood implement the past advocacy of her and Bill for legalizing waterboarding and other torture by US Presidents (citing the all-purpose ticking time bomb rationale), whereas Obama (who also happens to be more electable than Hillary) will end it. Which America is it that Democratic primary voters want?

Unfortunately, torture does work.

It works for the modern political purpose of manufacturing 'terrorists' with which to manipulate and control public opinion, just as it worked for the medieval political purpose of manufacturing 'witches' to justify the Church's hold on power in Europe.

Secondly, it is a pratical necessity if one is to maintain social orders of extreme injustice. I doubt that the instituion of slavery could have lasted more than a week without it.

Thirdly, it is an effective means of extracting information, provided that you have some independent means of verification. In other words, it will give you something to test against reality where you might otherwise have nothing.

So the argument that torture lacks utility is not an effective argument against torture, for the simple reason that it isn't true. After all, something that has been practised throughout the entire course of recorded human history must work at some level, or it would have disappeared.

Torture, whether to support the institution of slavery, or as part of some foreign adventure (Vietnam, Iraq etc), or through proxies (Iran, South and Central Amercia etc) has been a deep and integral part of US history for at least a century that I know of. That isn't new.

The new thing is the open advocacy. This says something about the global environment we are about to enter that I don't much care for.

Good luck to us all.

I was unaware that Barack Obama had repeatedly and categorically rejected torture in his public pronouncements, touching correctly upon the legal, moral, and practical reasons why resort to such techniques as waterboarding, strappado, electric shocks, etc. should be flatly prohibited. Thanks for pointing out the clarity of his positions. That's one more good reason to support his candidacy.

On a more bizarre note, however, reflect for just a moment upon the following passage from the major story on Bush's spymasters' latest briefing presentation to the Senate Intelligence Committee, as reported in the Washington Post, 2/6/08. This news snippet was easy to skip over unnoticed, since the bulk of the hard news reporting highlighted the CIA's admission that three, and only three "high value" Al Queada detainees had been interrogated using waterboarding.

"After the hearing, [CIA Director] Hayden told reporters that the information obtained from those detainees amounted to a quarter of all the human intelligence the CIA had gained about the terrorist organization between 2002 and 2004." WaPo, 2/6/08.

Feeling safer yet?

Bill from Saginaw

What happened to truth serum? Just a needle shot in the arm and the potential terrorist who knew a million people were about to be killed tells the truth. Was that type of shot outlawed?

Water boarding is outright torture, and torture is just as bad as anything a terrorist or a Saddam may do.

Ok, with two of the three candidates condoning torture the choice for moi is clear. I was not born as a citizen of a country that publicly condones torture as a tactic worthy of use for ANY reason, I have every hope I will not die in one either.

Veteran, '66-68 Two years where I learned that much of what I believed about my country was an outright lie.

The absurdity of the ticking bomb scenario is that if you knew for sure there was a ticking bomb, you would probably also know where it was.

bill
so now the liar from iran contrs is now a believable voice!

Two points that need emphasizing:
One important purpose of these interrogations is to terrorize people, not just to get information, but to let them know what happens to those who who don't bow down and obey their captors. Information about torture is leaked out (even with pictures!), and many people are let go to let everyone know what they can expect if they are even suspected of wrongdoing.
Many years ago, when I was in the Army, we learned that if you were captured, and you couldn't stand the torture and were going to talk, the best thing to do was to just make up all kinds of nonsense, (just believable enough so that your interrogators would take it seriously). A skilled professional terrorist is going to have stories made up ahead of time that, if they are believed , could cause more damage than a terrorist attack. Another reason why torture is useless to get truthful information out of people.

Why would anyone clever enough to hide a ticking time bomb get caught to be tortured? Why would he be stupid enough to tell you when it was going to go off? The questions are endless?

Plots for books and tv are exciting because you understand what is going on in a simplified world. It is porn without the sex.

Good posts everyone. We should send them all to the candidates so the next time they get that absurd question they will have some answers that make sense.

A couple of other points. I think one of the reasons Pelosi has been so reluctant to Impeach is that she and some of the other Dems knew about the torture going on in the prisons and did nothing about it. So their butts could be called on the carpet along with Bush and Chaney.

Also, as has been pointed out we have a long history of torture in this country. There was an absolutely horrendous interview on Democracy Now with Amy Goodman from a man who was a Black Panther in the 60s. He and several others were repeatly tortured by the police while police from other cities stood around doing nothing. They were trying to force him to confess to a crime he did not commit.

Sioux Rose make a good point about religiously sanctioned torture. We all know about the Inquisition but it was also very common for lynching victems to be tortured for the amusement of the crowd before they were lynched.
In Iran of the 19th century some mullas encouraged the people to torture Bahai's as a religious duty before killing them.
The sad fact that is even normally decent people can be pressured into doing horrendous things when they are pressured to do so by authority figures.

This is why there must be a clear and unequivocal stance against torture from the top of society on down.

One thing I do not understand is why there is so much talk about water boarding while the fact that we are holding people in prison year after year without release or trial is ignored in the debates. All of Gitmo is nothing more than an experiment in various forms of torture and yet it is hardly mentioned at all. Then, of course there is extrodinary rendition where the authorities are given even more leeway to experiment on their victems. Sadly, as someone pointed out many of them are guilty of nothing more than being at the wrong place at the wrong time.
There was an interesting interview on 60 minutes with an FBI agent who was assigned to try to get information out of Saddem Hussein while he was our captive. Instead of torture he used psychology and kindness. He even brought Saddem home baked cookies for his birthday. Guess what, he got a lot of good verifiable information out of him.

We are all ticking time bombs.

They are setting the stage for a terrible clampdown on America, and Im afraid that many of us will be on the recieving end of that cattleprd

If the president deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is where the bomb should be hidden.

Heisenberg couldn't save Schrodinger's cat with this flawed argument.

If I understand it correctly: Only the CIA is authorized to torture, and only with the express, formal consent of the president. To get the CIA involved in an interrogation and to get the president's approval would probably involve a 2-3 day process (given our government's level of competence.) This is going to prevent a ticking time bomb from going off?

So the argument that torture lacks utility is not an effective argument against torture, for the simple reason that it isn't true. After all, something that has been practised throughout the entire course of recorded human history must work at some level, or it would have disappeared.

I've heard a definition of "dysfuntion" which states that a functional system serves the needs of its members, whereas in a dysfunctional system the members serve the needs of the system. I believe torture survives as a psychological phenomenon, much like child abuse (the most common form of torture) passes down through generations in dysfunctional families. Torture is primarily a threat and a punishment, your first two functions, not a means to truthful information. Its purpose is to maintain itself, like a disease, to perpetuate cruelty and brutality as ends in themselves.

In short, sadism.

Mukasey's "Keep 'em guessing" strategy simply confirms my belief that torture is an act of intimidation, not interrogation.

A colonial empire uses torture to subjugate conquered populations. There is no place for it in the arsenal of a free nation. If George Washington ever ordered the torture of captured redcoats to find out where the British Army would attack next, I never heard of it.

We can thank Fox and the series "24" for brainwashing America with the "ticking bomb" scenario.

I don't watch it and I didn't see the episode where they nuked Valencia, California with a suitcase bomb. But I remember how excited one of my coworkers was the next day. It was like he saw it on the evening news rather than in a weekly drama! This guy listens to Rush, so it figures.

"24" provides its fans with everything the real "war on terror" has failed to deliver.

Hey rlaing

Torture does not work - at least not for the stated goal of uncovering truth. It is very good for some very specific things. Creating terrorists in todays world. Inspiring fear in the populace. fullfilling someone pervert's sick fantasys. In the old days (Inquisition days) torture was used to extract confessions. And in those days people who were subjected to torture didn't usually survive. It was a means to gain a confession and a painful execution at the same time.
Just because it's been around for as long as we've had governments doesn't mean its effective (for the current stated use). Capital punishment doesn't work either. Lot of shit don't work (for stated use) yet its been around forever.
Shit happens on the field of battle, if our guys took a bunker in a fire fight and roughed up someone to get a map of a mine field, well, that happens and we'll never hear of it. But to torture that same person back at Abu Graib - state sanctioned torture is just wrong. Let's go back to burning people because they dip while we claim the good book says we should dunk.

This article reminds me of the way the Catholic church, during the so-called 'enlightenment', decided whether or not a woman was a witch. They would throw her into a lake. If she bobbed up to the surface she was a witch (eligible for further torture) and if she drowned then she was not.

"WHAT IF JACK BAUER IS WRONG?"
Or, Applying Real Life Cost/benefit Analysis to the Torture Justification Scenarios

The Neocons' favorite justification for legalizing torture is the now infamous "we've captured a terrorist who won't tell us where the bomb is hidden." That rationalization is popular and persuasive to some probably because it contains an unstated false premise - that we actually have captured a genuine terrorist who has useful information. This "Jack Bauer Scenario" also presupposes guilt, a determination our founding fathers insisted should be determined in a more methodical process, notwithstanding the brilliance of "24" tv scriptwriters in instantly ferreting out all terrorists and nothing but terrorists.

However, given the Keystone Kops our Neocons tend to put in charge of things, the likelihood of them really catching a competent terrorist, let alone one who has smuggled in and hidden a bomb somewhere (rather than just setting it off immediately) is probably less than you being eaten by a shark in Kansas. Moreover, both studies and anecdotal information from professional interrogators indicate that physical torture seldom produces reliable information. It is not that the torturee won't talk, it's that he or she will say absolutely anything to stop the pain or drowning, true or not. In addition, other techniques, including drugs, have proven more productive even in the short run when circumstances frighten those who say all our rights must be violated in order to save us.

The Neocons' favorite justification for legalizing torture is the now infamous "we've captured a terrorist who won't tell us where the bomb is hidden." That rationalization is popular and persuasive to some probably because it contains an unstated false premise - that we actually have captured a genuine terrorist who has useful information. This "Jack Bauer Scenario" also presupposes guilt, a determination our founding fathers insisted should be determined in a more methodical process, notwithstanding the brilliance of "24" tv scriptwriters in instantly ferreting out all terrorists and nothing but terrorists.

However, given the Keystone Kops our Neocons tend to put in charge of things, the likelihood of them really catching a competent terrorist, let alone one who has smuggled in and hidden a bomb somewhere (rather than just setting it off immediately) is probably less than you being eaten by a shark in Kansas. Moreover, both studies and anecdotal information from professional interrogators indicate that physical torture seldom produces reliable information. It is not that the torturee won't talk, it's that he or she will say absolutely anything to stop the pain or drowning, true or not. In addition, other techniques, including drugs, have proven more productive even in the short run when circumstances frighten those who say all our rights must be violated in order to save us.

Nevertheless, for the sake of argument, let's grant the Neocons their fantasy scenario, but change one aspect of it. Let's suppose for the moment there is a genuine terrorist out there and he personally hid a bomb under the White House. Hmmm. On second thought, maybe we should say it's hidden elsewhere since many wouldn't mind it going off under the White House unless it was big enough to take out the Smithsonian and National Museum of Art as well. No, let's say instead the bomb is buried under an orphanage somewhere and we discover proof positive (as opposed to this Administration's usual mere suspicions, assumptions and ideology) as to its existence. Let's also assume for once we got lucky and traced the unknown evildoer who buried it to a high rise residential building with a thousand people in it, 666 of which are innocent women and children and 332 of which are innocent men. Remember, in this scenario we don't know who among them is the bomber, but let's suppose Jack Bauer has discovered a secret bomber has been residing on that particular street.

So Neocons, what do you want to do now? (Granted Neocons don't seem to care that much about orphans, but assume they do for the moment.) Should we torture everyone in the building to save the orphans from the bomb? The Neocons insist it is okay to abandon the Bill of Rights if it is just one foreigner we plan to torture. Is it okay to abandon it for a thousand people? Or, should we torture just the men? (Yeah right, no one under 21 ever was recruited to cause harm and no woman ever had a grievance against our society.) Do we torture just those who are of a darker skin tone or foreigners with an accent on the assumption that only they would bomb a building? (Oops, forgot about Timothy McVeigh, didn't you?) Do we torture only the non-Christians? (I don't think any of our abortion clinic bombers claimed they were Muslim.) Do we torture just those wearing turbans? (That's going to irritate pretty badly the entire country of India and all its Hindus and turban wearing Siekhs, not to mention everyone of that religion living in this country.) Do we torture only those who have guns in their homes? (Wow, that would be a tough one for the Neocons who also tend to be almost pathological when it comes to defending the portion of the Constitution regarding freedom to have guns. Their willingness to abandon almost all other Bill of Rights Amendments is almost amusing considering that Neocons insist even one regulation or hinderance of the right to own armor piercing 50 caliber rifles capable of bringing down passenger liners puts us on a "slippery slope." ) So, what about torturing only those who have a two days growth of beard and non-blond hair? In other words, Central Casting's concept of villains?

Remember, this torture scenario has a ticking clock and 1000 suspects. Do we leave 999 newly maimed and scarred on their bodies and/or their minds trying to find the one terrorist hidden among them? One way of looking at it is that it was only 999 destroyed and it was worth it to save those orphans.

Let's alter the Neocon torture justification scenario a little further. Suppose we know the bomber is somewhere in a city of a 100,000, but instead of just a chemical bomb, we learn the bomb is a nuclear one which might kill 100,001? Is the torture used still a good idea? Do we torture a 100,000? After all, the cost/benefit ratio is greater on the side of benefits by one person. (This is sort of like the old barb about the guy who offers a woman Five Hundred Thousand Dollars to sleep with him for a night. When she says yes, he asks if she would do it for Five Dollars. She haughtily replies, "What do you think I am?" To which he responds, "We now know what you are. We're just haggling on the price.")

Does it make a difference in justifying torture if the number "saved" is higher. Heck, let's say the bomber is hidden somewhere in Portland and we know the nuclear bomb is a hydrogen one shipped into the port of New York City or LA. Now the saving ratio is perhaps ten to one. As to Portland, should we say . . . too bad? That's the risk you take of living in a "war zone?" We had to torture everyone in Portland to save NYC. Collateral damage so to speak?

Ultimately, when backed against the wall by being confronted with all the fallacies of the Jack Bauer scenario, the Neocons stubbornly fall back to their usual assertion that if there is even a 1% chance that we can prevent a nuclear detonation, we must take it no matter what it costs. It's nonsense, but when have Neocons ever said anything that wasn't ultimately proven to be nonsense.

The next time you hear such nonsense about we must torture if there is even a 1% chance it works, combat it with something Scott Adams suggested tongue-in-cheek in his blog as a possible way to negotiate a settlement with Iran to prevent them from getting the bomb. He suggested we offer Iran the testicles of Bush and Cheney in exchange for a permanent inspection right to insure no bombs are being made. IF THERE IS EVEN A 1% CHANCE THAT IRAN WOULD ACCEPT, WE MUST TAKE IT!

[more irreverence at resistence-is-possible.blogspot.com]

Well, this points out one thing, and that's that Obama is a better choice than I thought he was.

If you torture someone, whether physically or psychologically, they will say almost anything, no matter how untrue it might be, to make the torture stop.

The true horror of this whole thing is who is doing the torture, which is our government, that which we've all been brought up to think as the body that is supposed to protect and care about us, and which we've been taught to love.

Torture is one thing, but being tortured by those you love is another. And, whether we realize it or not, we're all being tortured by our government. We're being tortured psychologically by having unnecessary fears being instilled in us. We're being tortured by having our global environment being seriously harmed. We're being tortured with the knowledge that the world isn't going to be a good place to raise our children. We're being tortured by having our jobs being taken away from us. We're being tortured by knowing that the rest of the world now perceives us as evil. We're being tortured by knowing that we've caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people and there's nothing we can do about it.

Basically, we're being tortured with the knowledge that we love our government, or at least what it used to be (or what we think it used to be), but our government doesn't love us. So we need to reshape our government into one that really does love us, because unrequited love is a tortuous thing.