Throughout history, people from many cultures used torture. If the info garnered from torture was always unreliable, then this is a millennia-old mass delusion. Armies, police, criminals, etc. kept getting bad info and yet kept doing it. Much more likely: it worked sometimes. 2/x
-
-
Show this thread
-
Modern torture--employing waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation techniques" that US used in the early War on Terror--is more sophisticated than causing pain and promising to stop in exchange for info. It's more psychological. Actual psychiatrists helped design it. 3/x
Show this thread -
The goal of modern torture is to create confusion: pain and sleep deprivation so the prisoner messes up. Interrogators aren't stupid. They don't naively believe whatever someone says under torture. They pay attention to what prisoners don't say, and look for contradictions. 4/x
Show this thread -
At the extremes, the goal of torture is to induce depression. Make someone give up. Then, when they're starved for the most basic human kindness, have someone new be kind to them. Sort of like a prolonged, incredibly messed up good cop/bad cop. 5/x
Show this thread -
Some professional interrogators say this psychological torture yields info better or more quickly than non-torture techniques. Others strongly disagree. Scientifically, it's impossible to answer. Can't run an experiment with a control group. 6/x
Show this thread -
The reason not to torture isn't because the technique always fails. It's because it's wrong. Deeply, morally, inhumanely wrong. 7/x
Show this thread -
"Torture never works" is the wrong argument to make. It's illogical, countered by many interrogators who have used torture, and, ultimately too easy. If the moral and the practical line up perfectly, there's no debate. But there is a debate, because they don't. 8/x
Show this thread -
Don't torture, even if it works. We're better than that. We have to be. We'll find another way. That accepts an element of risk: What if we don't torture and then there's a terrorist attack? We didn't do absolutely everything. Right. That's what makes it a moral argument. (END)
Show this thread
End of conversation
New conversation -
-
-
Waterboarding can end with dry drowning. How many died this way?
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.