I’m amazed at how many commenters, shall we say from certain unnamed sites, don’t know how to disagree sharply, but civilly.

Thanks for the comment. Did you see the NYT article on EIT?

So, Bill, shall I take it that you consider torture to be a progressive trend ?

No, no, not at all. I simply like to make oblique historical comparisons with implied significant meaning.

See? Your interpretation is up to you. It’s like a picasso.

Now if I were to assume the role of a haughty art critic and try to interpret, I would say something like this: there is a difference in degree between torture and not torture. Ostensibly, one can consider “tough” interrogation techniques which are not strictly “reward-based” and not be “pro-torture.”

In our previous conversations, the Commissar has been rather extreme and lacking this nuance, in my opinion.

So specifically, in a case where someone like myself might disagree with waterboarding or humiliation yet see the value in throwing a HVT off-balance with extended questioning, negative role-play, hard-backed chairs and turning the thermostat down (not to be confused with inducing hypothermia), complemented by reward-based appeals …

… it’s essential to define what we consider “torture” beyond binary condemnations.

Without this common basis for defining and agreeing on what torture is, within reasonable bounds, folks railing against it, or for it, are merely Andrew Sullivan and Emperor Mischa clones.

(I consider both bad ways to be)

I’m amazed at how many commenters, shall we say from certain unnamed sites, don’t know how to disagree sharply, but civilly.

I’m not certain that I understand the meaning of this sentence. Inscrutable. Was my comment uncivil?

By such a relevant comparison in era, we’d be sending all wounding insurgents to the “Euphrates Hospital,” instead of giving them brain surgery, as one insurgent was in Fallujah.

This is not to say that humane treatment overall balances out unrelated dehumanizing policies, rather to point out that non-contextual nazi comparisons are … non-contextual. I mean the British weren’t nazis, right?

Extended questioning is generally what people contrast with torture. Good interrogation consists of,
a) Asking questions over and over and looking for changes in the response given,
b) Using available fragments of information to convince the suspect that the authorities already know the truth (”We know you’re Don Calabrese’s drug smuggler”),
c) Looking for corroboration with other evidence to throw the suspect off balance whenever he lies, and
d) Psychanalyzing the suspect in order to be able to glean information from body language, intonation, or choice of words.

Instead, the appropriate comparison is then to previous anti-insurgent campaigns, such as the Malayan Emergency, and Peru’s campaign against Shining Path. When the Peruvian government caught the leader of Shining Path, it threw him in prison for life. Only recently there was a story about his and his (also imprisoned) second-in-command’s plans to marry; when they do, they’ll even be entitled to conjugal visits.

Uncivil? Not at all. Indeed, it was a model of civil, but pointed disagreement.

Uncivil? Not at all. Indeed, it was a model of civil, but pointed disagreement.

Phew!

I would only like to say that doing a ‘bad’ thing for a ‘good’ reason does not make the ‘bad thing’ a ‘good thing.’

But it may be necessary or useful. Bad things are done for good reasons all the time, and are widely accepted. For example, the government forcibly extracts money from its citizens through taxation in order to fund government for the greater good of all. Numerous safety and other regulations restrict personal freedom, but for good reasons.

And if you do physical harm to a man who is unable to defend himself, you are a coward.

This is laughable. I guess in your world all armored vehicle crews who wipe out infantry with no anti-armor weapons must be cowards. Pilots who drop bombs on units who have no way to attack them back are cowards, etc. War is about capitalizing on advantages, not about fair fights. Catching the enemy in a situation where they are effectively helpless is a good thing.

Making sweeping statements such as yours merely devalues the meaning of the word coward, much like defining every unpleasant interrogation tactic as torture renders the word torture meaningless.

I’ll repeat my lack of expertise on interrogation techniques, and my earlier request.

Can you guys cite some actual experts who favor torture, EIT, ‘tough’ techniques, etc.? (And I’m open to non-binary answers, Bill.)

I’ve read Herrington. Bloodspite, in an earlier comment, cited professional recommendations against it. And then there is today’s NYT article.

Maybe it’s the old internet dodge of “appeal to authority,” but I’d like to read something by some experts that makes the pro-EIT case.

Alon Levy says (with contradictory intent):

As for the treatment of non-uniformed fighters, comparisons to conventional wars are inappropriate.

And I generally agree, which was the point of my mention of the British et al shooting non-uniformed officers. It diminished the original Nazi comparison of the post. Context is everything.

Which also makes RL Page’s comment …

Bill, be here now.

.. ironic, because that was my point as well. As for this …

And if you do physical harm to a man who is unable to defend himself, you are a coward.

… no disagreement, within established bounds of what constitutes physical harm to someone unable to defend himself.

A laser guided bomb dropping on an insurgent house meets these general qualifications.

As for this …

I would only like to say that doing a ‘bad’ thing for a ‘good’ reason does not make the ‘bad thing’ a ‘good thing.’

… so vague as to be lose meaning. We kill people with incendiary munitions for plenty of good reasons, for example. DavidC expands on this point.

As for the Commissar’s request for cites, etc., I’ll do some research. But I’ll stress that I’m not so much arguing in favor of waterboarding, etc, than I am against the assumption that many of the EIT constitute torture. The NYT article, while relevant, was frustrating in how vague it was.

Without an outlined, specific framework for what we define as acceptable and unacceptable, both this debate (on both sides) and the anti-torture legislation - are so darn lacking in detail, that I’ve seen.

Kill them all; God will know his own … (or so they say.)

Can you guys cite some actual experts who favor torture, EIT, ‘tough’ techniques, etc.?

Here’s a few excerpts from an interesting BBC article interviewing professional torturers link

torture has been a common tactic for interrogation, and its former practitioners say it was one of the most effective.

For example:

During Algeria’s fight for independence in the 1950s, French Resistance fighter Paul Aussaresses felt it was his duty to inflict electric shocks on Arab nationalists.

Like many former torturers, he still believes it is the most effective way to gather intelligence in a so called “ticking bomb” case. He claims to have stopped Algerian bomb makers from killing French civilians by extracting confessions though electric shocks and suffocation with a water saturated towel. They were methods he’d adapted from the Nazis.

And

many who’ve practised torture say … Torture, they say, is the fastest and most reliable means of forcing prisoners to divulge information.

And

Gideon Nieuwoudt, one of South Africa’s most notorious torturers, used a range of techniques on his ANC victims and retains a philosophical perspective.

“It’s like a piano: you make use of the black notes and the white notes to make a sweet melody,” he says.

He has no doubt the beatings he inflicted on detainees forced them to talk: “The people will never give you anything without torture, that I can assure you.”

And from another South African torturer:

“There are all these movies about Rambo and stuff where they put electricity on his bodies and he’s not talking. That’s bullshit. There is no-one in the world; I haven’t yet seen one guy that don’t talk. I can take anyone on and make them talk, that’s no problem.”

As usual, the main question is, what kind of information are they getting? How much is simply the terrified prisoner telling the torturer what he wants to hear to make the pain stop? But there is nothing to say they aren’t getting real information either. It depends on the individual circumstances and what they are looking for. Some information can be confirmed by other means.