The 20th century, and now maybe the 21st, may be known as the age of semantics, as the twisting of and misuse of language is a hallmark of our times (cf. Orwell, “Arbeit macht frei,” “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques”, etc.)

But there’s nothing to debate. They tortured, they should be held accountable, period.

That sums up a very convincing argument. Thanks for your thoughtful analysis, Jeff.

We must oppose torture on humanitarian and moral grounds, not utilitarian grounds.

We truly don’t know the effectiveness of torture, and anyone who tells you otherwise is using second-hand and unscientific “knowledge”. Furthermore, any research on such a question would be totally unethical and wrong. It is the judgment, of course, of many interrogators that the information produced is highly questionable, and that certainly makes sense. But I don’t like the idea of leaving the question open to any possible verification of validity on utilitarian grounds. Does anyone here believe we should torture even if it meant we got valuable information? No. Torture would still be unacceptable, even if it had a 100% success rate.

Slavery, for instance, is one way to organize a society. There have been many slave societies in human history. Some of them lasted for centuries. That does not mean we should believe that slavery is ever an acceptable way to organize a society. It is wrong, period, and so is torture. It is wrong on a level that supercedes any question of its utility. And it is the utilitarian argument against which I am aiming my polemic. Arguing that all torture produces is false confessions is both empirically wrong, and is an embracing of the utilitarian argument, albeit in its negative form. As such, it is vulnerable to the kinds of debate Cheney wants to make. But there’s nothing to debate. They tortured, they should be held accountable, period.

The Korean War case is demonstrative of a totally different side of the whole question. I believe the Chinese used methods of psychological torture to produce true confessions about the use of biological weapons by the U.S. during the Korean War (most of the documents on this remain classified over 50 years after the end of that war). They did not rely solely on those confessions, but combined it with other information produced by spies, and by collecting field evidence. They also used torture to elicit the public renunciation of U.S. policy by airmen, something the latter were forced to do.

The effect of this upon the Pentagon was electric. Not only did it threaten to expose a deeply covert action, which could have led to war crimes charges at the time. It also led them to institute the survival schools, later known as SERE, in order to inoculate pilots, and later other vulnerable military personnel, against such torture. But a CIA psychiatrist, Joost Meerloo, at the time recognized the danger of instituting these schools. He wrote back in 1956:

An educational concept exists to the effect that conditioning to physical torture will help soldiers to be more immune to brainwashing. In one of the air force bases, airmen had to go through a “school of torture,” euphemistically called the School of Survival, in which some of the barbarous and cruel Communist methods of handling prisoners were initiated in order to harden the men against future brutality. [Meerloo here footnotes an article on the school in Time, Sept. 19, 1955, “Training in Torture”, which can be read online.] The trainees could stand the ghoulish exercises rather well. However, such a training can condition men to take over, unwittingly, the methods of totalitarianism. It may give a semiofficial green light to enemy tactics by implying that we can do the same.

It seems Meerloo’s prediction became all too true.

On a practical matter, there are much better methods for getting accurate info, so torture is passe. Here’s a link to a pop culture TV show that got it.

ironically, you can read all about the reasons for torture in the history of the spanish inquisition[THE ORIGINS OF THE INQUISITION in Fifteenth Century Spain, isbn #0679410651]. this is considered a definitive history and was written by benjamin netanyahu’s father.

the “official” conspiracy theories concerning the events of that day are “inventions”, that torture was employed to confirm.

nothing “confessed” by any of those tortured can be believed.

Whether or not one should rely on torture because it does or does not produce the requisite amount of actionable intelligence is a question for a government bureaucrat or policeman, not a society

.

Not sure I agree with this point.