How a modest contract morphed into the CIA’s brutal interrogation program
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
We train a dozen of our agents in the normal fashion, and give them seemingly important secrets. Send them off to a foreign country to carry out a mission. Then stage a kidnapping with people that appear to be working for an enemy (IS, whoever).
Then actually torture the agents. For real. We know what information they have, so we can see what information they'll actually give up. Then we can see which techniques are most efficient and effective. If they give up the name of the fellow operative, "capture" that operative, and show the agent the consequences.
That is science.
What? You say you have ethical concerns? How could we possibly do this to our own people?
What's the difference? We have willingly sacrificed the health and lives of tens of thousands of our own citizens already during the War on Terror. What's another couple dozen?
If the government isn't willing to torture our own people, and publish the results... then maybe the government shouldn't be torturing anyone at all.
On the 'nuclear codes' to launch an attack:
My suggestion was quite simple: Put that needed code number in a little capsule, and then implant that capsule right next to the heart of a volunteer. The volunteer would carry with him a big, heavy butcher knife as he accompanied the President. If ever the President wanted to fire nuclear weapons, the only way he could do so would be for him first, with his own hands, to kill one human being. The President says, “George, I’m sorry but tens of millions must die.” He has to look at someone and realize what death is—what an innocent death is. Blood on the White House carpet. It’s reality brought home.
When I suggested this to friends in the Pentagon they said, “My God, that’s terrible. Having to kill someone would distort the President’s judgment. He might never push the button.“
We may not like it, but The first part about effectiveness is a strawman. Since clearly in some situations it is possible to test truthfulness (by asking questions with answers you know, but they don't know you know), or get easily testable testimony (i.e. x is here), or simply get known information corroborated (which is of some value). It is simply very difficult to argue something should never be done given all the possible scenarios. Although I'm sympathetic to the idea that as a matter of policy governments shouldn't do something since they cannot be trusted and because there is clearly a slippery slope and concern about government overreach against its own citizens (then for an agent to break that policy they would themselves be facing consequences so would have to be pretty damn sure it was a good idea).
Also you fail to understand the moral disposition of people who might support torture - conservatives. They are not simple consequentalists and certainly not utilitarians. They generally consider it utterly wrong to torture or directly injure people on their side. Conservatives have a strong sense of group loyalty. I would argue it is all very well to suspend group loyalty (or confine it to sports matches) if you can have it reciprocated from other groups, but when it clearly isn't taking the high road leaves you at a loss (albeit with a moral gain).
Likewise to conservatives having a robust response to something is not a moral bad as such. Getting in the way of the (US) state can be likened to driving right to the edge of a cliff - it is your fault if you fall off, not the state's from being unyielding. Although the state could be soft on people after the fact, that would violate robustness. Instead it would prefer to push back the responsibility for any outcomes on to the individuals who have (presumably) clearly taken risks of getting caught up in this battle and then doubled down by refusing to give up information.
It is possible to extract information through torture. The question is how much, and how reliable is it? And most importantly, is it more effective than other non-torture methods?
The human mind is an incredible bullshit machine, and merely applying pain to it is no guarantee to get the truth out.
I suspect tortue isn't more effective than other methods, and I personally am not willing to run the experiment on my in-group to find out. I want to torturers in our government to fully come to grips with their own mortality (or lack thereof). And be prosecuted.
It would also prevent the sliding slope into the real nasty stuff as it is less likely someone would be willing to undergo the torture that permanently maim you.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/...
People never learn...
Like a hurricane projecting so many joules of energy into an ocean of assholes, that their obnoxious storm surge washes away more credible, but presumptive opponents right of center.
He'll never win, and that's the point.
One way or another, these conspiracy-theory explanations seem a bit counterproductive from the perspective of any of the actors who might reasonably have carried out the conspiracy. The simpler explanation – that Trump is an egomaniacal bully with little knowledge of world affairs, and that enough Republican voters tend to like that for him to honestly win the primary against a weak and crowded field – seems more plausible to me, but hey...
Sadly, everything creates its own reaction: the rise of a black person who contradicts all the negative stereotypes merely enrages those people for whom "white" is an important part of their identity. See also people getting angry about female Ghostbusters.
The republican party spent so long sending coded racist messages to their supporters that those supporters have forgotten that they were supposed to speak in code.
Oh come on. From the reviews leaking out it sounds like Ghostbusters is a legit shitty movie. A spoiler for the ending is out there; go read it and tell me this isn't something a 5th grader would write. No, I haven't seen it, and I probably won't, and it has nothing to do with the fact that it is a female cast, but because it doesn't sound like something, based on the trailers and previews, that I would willingly spend money on.
No one complained when the main protagonists of Star Wars VII were a woman and a black man. (Or did they? I don't know, I certainly don't remember hearing it if they did.)
To be fair, even without that control mechanism, the DNC arguably is less vulnerable than the GOP. While both parties have state-to-state variation in how delegates are selected, the DNC uses basically proportional allocation in every state, whereas the GOP uses heavily disproportional mechanisms in most states (to the extreme of winner-take-all in some), which allows an early plurality in a crowded field to turn into commanding delegate lead (this seems to be by intent; its expected that connected insiders will have an early advantage, and this setup is would then get the primary competition over quickly and give the party more time to focus on the general election -- but its also easy to see how, with widespread dissatisfaction with party elites and an outsider candidate with strong name recognition and the ability to score early free media, it can backfire.)
I mean, look at the 'wall' proposal: it's a nice simple authoritarian solution which people who are afraid of Mexicans taking their jobs can support. And he even promises to get foreigners to pay for it!
None of this is remotely feasible, but that doesn't matter, because the "reality-based community" is passé. (https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Karl_Rove passim)
None of the other Republican candidates could attack him for racism without alienating their voters, because for years they've been obliquely signalling their approval of racism. None of them could attack him for not being realistic without suffering the same problem themselves.
None of the political candidates are fundamentally disagreeing with Trump. They mostly believe that illegal immigration should be stopped and that legal immigration is perfectly fine.
The primary thing that separate Trump from either the Republicans or the Democrats in this discussion is his choice of words not his agenda.
Even Hillary was for building a wall at one point.
Rather, she said, “We do have to give law enforcement and intelligence professionals all the tools they need to do the job to keep America safe and they don’t need to resort to torture, but they are going to need more help.”
This is not a moral or even a principled stand against torture. It's a practical and tactical stand. So no, judging from that quote, all it would take is for someone "experienced and brave" to tell her it would be effective an a tool they need, and she's on board (as far as principles and morals go, at least).
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/clinton-brussels-respo...
There's a question here of whether the position was articulated because it is the main reason she opposes torture, or whether it is because it rebuts the main reason supporters of torture advocate that, morality aside, it must be accepted.
Politically, there is utility to highlighting arguments which demonstrate that, even accepting your opponent's decision criteria, your policy is the correct one. So even if you believe it is always morally wrong to torture regardless of utility, it is useful (if you can defend it) to argue that torture is known to not be useful if the main reason your opponents argue for it is its utility.
The opposition on that issue was not. Candidates in a primary campaign making statements designed to counter positions of potential (or known) general election opponents (or positions associated with the opposing major party, even if not actually embraced by any particular candidate of that party for the particular office in question) isn't an uncommon thing.
Politicians may, all too often, be shortsighted, but ones with even modest amounts of proficiency at campaigning aren't so much so that they can't think in terms of the broader campaign for an office (and even setting the ground for success in that office) when competing in a primary campaign.