Former FBI agent calls waterboarding counterproductive

[Kevin]

No one is talking about whether it was illegal, just whether it was effective, and even if it was effective, whether it was worth the consequence of lowered standing in the international community and a loss of moral authority to accomplish our global goals.

No one of consequence in the United States is or really seems to be particularly concerned about human rights violations or anything of that nature. We do not submit the jurisdiction of the ICC and our own courts and justice department don't seem to be interested in enforcing whatever legal obligations we have under those Conventions/treaties.

Personally, I'd like to see people prosecuted an made examples of. I think the U.S. should still aspire to be Reagan's "shining city on a hill." To that end, I'd love to see serious examples made out of these people, soldier and CIA agent alike. It's not going to happen and my wish here is probably 'out there' enough to qualify me as a raving moonbat on this subject. But there it is.

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by Kevin

No one is talking about whether it was illegal, just whether it was effective, and even if it was effective, whether it was worth the consequence of lowered standing in the international community and a loss of moral authority to accomplish our global goals.

No one of consequence in the United States is or really seems to be particularly concerned about human rights violations or anything of that nature. We do not submit the jurisdiction of the ICC and our own courts and justice department don't seem to be interested in enforcing whatever legal obligations we have under those Conventions/treaties.

Personally, I'd like to see people prosecuted an made examples of. I think the U.S. should still aspire to be Reagan's "shining city on a hill." To that end, I'd love to see serious examples made out of these people, soldier and CIA agent alike. It's not going to happen and my wish here is probably 'out there' enough to qualify me as a raving moonbat on this subject. But there it is.

I'm a little confused by the two parts I've put in bold. Do you mean no one is talking about the legality, but they should be in the first part?

I think the overall effectiveness is going to be impossible to actually evaluate. I think KSigRC is right about how arguments are made to the general population, and so I think the initial linked story is pretty meaningless because it's easy to refute using a similar standard of evidence: this guy says it doesn't work, but this guy says it does, etc.

I agree with Kevin that even if it "works," if it were solely up to me, the US wouldn't use it?*, but I find Pelosi's BS and the general political spin that only terrible Republicans like Cheney out of pure concentrated evilness would do such a thing sort of wearing me down on how much I really care about discussing this practice.

*It's not about what the person being interrogated deserves.

[KSig RC]

Originally Posted by UGAalum94

I think the overall effectiveness is going to be impossible to actually evaluate. I think KSigRC is right about how arguments are made to the general population, and so I think the initial linked story is pretty meaningless because it's easy to refute using a similar standard of evidence: this guy says it doesn't work, but this guy says it does, etc.

I think this is demonstrably false, which is exactly my point.

It's easy to demonstrate that torture "works" in very limited scenarios - of course, every once in a while it will produce sound information. It's also easy to "prove" that it is wholly ineffective - just show the intelligence garnered from waterboarding then compare it to the ill will (which is rampant) garnered from violating our Constitutional guarantees. There's nearly no chance torture was worth it - if it were, wouldn't we have heard about all the apocalyptic terrorism prevented by Bush? Come on.

The danger is that it's easy to say "TORTURE WORKS! IT DID HERE SPECIFICALLY!" and harder to say ". . . but we've fucked ourselves in the long-term, and acted on dozens of unactionable tips based on shitty intelligence." Which makes dumb people luuuuuurve torture, even though it's absolutely the most un-American thing possible.

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by KSig RC

I think this is demonstrably false, which is exactly my point.

It's easy to demonstrate that torture "works" in very limited scenarios - of course, every once in a while it will produce sound information. It's also easy to "prove" that it is wholly ineffective - just show the intelligence garnered from waterboarding then compare it to the ill will (which is rampant) garnered from violating our Constitutional guarantees. There's nearly no chance torture was worth it - if it were, wouldn't we have heard about all the apocalyptic terrorism prevented by Bush? Come on.

The danger is that it's easy to say "TORTURE WORKS! IT DID HERE SPECIFICALLY!" and harder to say ". . . but we've fucked ourselves in the long-term, and acted on dozens of unactionable tips based on shitty intelligence." Which makes dumb people luuuuuurve torture, even though it's absolutely the most un-American thing possible.

What's the "this" refer to in your first sentence? My whole previous post or something more specific?

Is it the idea that you'd use the same standard of evidence?

Personally, I think it's really hard to do what you claim is easy in terms of comparing intelligence gathered to ill will created, but whatever. I agree that using torture isn't likely to be worth it overall, meaning when you consider the negative effects that it has beyond whether it "works" in terms of intelligence gathering or not.

But I still think the effectiveness in terms of intelligence is hard to evaluate. How can you ever say what would have happened had we not gotten the intelligence using a particular means? Even when the intelligence is "good," what percentage of plans would have yielded actual attacks? What constitutes preventing an attack? What percentage of attacks fail simply because the people planning them think the plan has been compromised? I've got no idea, and I have no idea how you would measure it. In the whole intelligence game, how can you evaluate what contributed to something that didn't happen?

I can conceive of very few scenarios when I think torture could be acceptable, and I don't think the long term, systematic use we've been talking about lately would fall into any of them. I'm not 100% sure that waterboarding is torture, but I don't think it's a good idea to use it.

ETA: not that this post isn't long enough, but I realize I was reading and expressing myself poorly. I see that I suggested that it was too hard to measure and evaluate every possible bad outcome of torture, which is one pretty likely way to interpret "overall effectiveness," but wasn't what I meant. I don't really think that the negative effects of using torture are immeasurable or even hard to grasp, but, you're right that they're a more complicated sell than just "torturing this horrible person allowed us to keep America safe."

I simply think that it's almost impossible to evaluate the effectiveness of the intelligence we gather in its own right. I think we get truthful information sometimes, but I think it's hard to say what it's worth.