Comment by chroma | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chroma | Hacker News Reader

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It's a shame the report is so partisan. The democrat and republican sides disagree on basic facts, such as whether torture worked in extracting information, and whether that information helped to save lives. Both sides accuse the other of cherry-picking to bolster their cause. Since the primary records are unavailable to us, there's no way to get a more trustworthy opinion on the program. The CIA's behavior is probably pretty horrible, but it's unwise to be very confident in that assessment.

Another interesting fact is that torture may work, or it may not, yet many people don't want torture to work. But think about it for a second: If torture worked, it would be an opportunity to save lives. Torturing one known criminal to extract information that could save dozens (or hundreds) of innocents is unsavory to say the least, but it's better than the alternative. (To reverse the situation, one wouldn't kill dozens of innocents to prevent the torture of a known criminal.) Simply ignoring the issue and saying, "Torture is always wrong," can lead to more death and suffering than thoughtfully considering the issue.

I'm not talking about some hypothetical ticking time bomb scenario. This can actually apply to real life. Consider collateral damage. In war, it is acceptable to accidentally kill innocent people. It is also acceptable to intentionally kill combatants. But torturing combatants to extract information that would reduce collateral damage is unacceptable. It's such a strange instance of moral blindness.

Note that this doesn't mean I would want torture to be legal even if it worked. It seems like there's a good case to be made for keeping torture illegal, since doing so would force a would-be torturer to be sure about the circumstances; so sure that they'd willingly to go to prison to save innocent people.

Edit: So far, both replies are attacking positions I do not endorse. I'm saying make torture illegal even if it works. I'm saying ticking time bomb scenarios are poor justifications for torture. But I'm also saying that torture may save lives in some circumstances. If we're willing to accept the horror of collateral damage, we should also be willing to reduce it using methods as horrific as torture.

  The democrat and republican sides disagree on basic facts, 
  such as whether torture worked in extracting information,

That is not a 'basic fact' that any of the people involved in the report is qualified to determine from the records.

Whether torture 'works' is highly subjective. Why was certain information given? How correct was the information? How relevant was the information to preventing (further) criminal activity? And even if you could assess the upside, there is still the downside to compare to it.

Do you want to live in a country where hundreds of people may be detained for years without trial, without recourse, while being tortured, because one of them may at some point give up some information that may prevent some future criminal activity?

You say

  Torturing one known criminal to extract information that could save dozens 
  (or hundreds) of innocents is unsavory to say the least, but it's better 
  than the alternative.

but that's a false dichotomy. In actual fact you would have to torture many criminals to extract information that saves lives. And the torturing, and having the ability to torture, has a cost. How do you quantify that cost and judge it less than the lives saved? Because if you allow torture, police will use it on every criminal. If you ever get arrested for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, you will get tortured, because you may know something about other people that were there. And they won't believe you if you say you don't know them. And it could take a while to sort that out.

>It's a shame the report is so partisan

Is it partisan? There's not much mention of Republicans and Democrats in the report. OK it happened under the Bush presidency but could potentially have happened otherwise.

Firstly, torture doesn't work, but it's not about that.

Violence simply isn't morally legitimate ever, whether it's aggression or as a response to violence (possibly even greater violence).

Whether it's torture, murder, whatever, it doesn't matter. Doing it in the name of war or national security doesn't make a moral difference.

The ticking time bomb thing is just an excuse for this behaviour.

I disagree about violence. The animal kingdom is inherently violent. Is it socially inappropriate to use violence in most parts of Western civilization? Yes. But in other places around the world (and in some cultures and groups in the West), violent behavior is the norm. It's brutal, it has lasting effects, it's demoralizing to the victim, however it is what we are all born with.

Does that mean violence is 100% unacceptable? If it wasn't, then we would not eat meat, many sports would not be popular, they wouldn't display fights in movies, etc. As an element of evolution, violence in some form will persist and thrive in our society.

So you want to skew the conversation from a discussion the legitimacy of torture, to "is violence bad in it's biological essence".

The reason people come to stark conclusions like "all violence is bad" is because they experienced real war, or real violence.

Read post war literature.

I would rather dismiss violence completely, even though it would be slightly intellectually dishonest, rather than indulge in quasi philosophical conversations on violence in it's biological essence (when the context is war or torture).

To me, it's obscene, a mockery of the millions that has lost their lives to war, and a self masturbatory intellectual privilege of the few wealthy enough to live far from the unimaginable horrors of real war.

> torture, murder, whatever, it doesn't matter. Doing it in the name of war or national security doesn't make a moral difference.

Well it seems that the narrative of your post veered toward violence. I don't agree with sadistic methods for extracting information. Violence would be the absolute last tool in my belt to resolve a conflict. War is brutal and unseemingly unnecessary these days. I do agree that not only the elite, but our society treats war as a game. Most of our society is (successfully) far removed from conflict, many of us don't know what it is like to lose our home, security, a loved one, a limb, etc. all to war.

I am fully aware of what our "enemy" is capable of, of what they have done to us, what they do to their own people. I can't say that I get a knee-jerk reaction to the thought that certain parts of our government employs methods of torture when in the back of my mind lies countless stories of reportedly worse violent methods by others. I can't condemn the methods used in the report until I fully read it. I do condemn the overreach of power, misleading our elected officials, and other politically subversive actions.

"Violence simply isn't morally legitimate ever, whether it's aggression or as a response to violence (possibly even greater violence)."

That requires some justification

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