I ought to have enough tickets for the really big prizes by now

[pecunium]

Because I spent much of today playing "whack-a-mole" at HuffPo.

Why?

Because George Bush admitted to more crimes.

Specifically he said he'd had Khalid Sheik Mohammad tortured, and would do it again.

He said he'd do it to, "save lives," but we know that's a myth; the myth of the honest answer.

The Washington Post had a recent article explaining that very thing (which anyone who has been reading me for the past six years... hence the growing collections of prize tickets from playing whack-a-mole with the torture mongers and apologists, has known for oh... six years, or so).

Dan Froomkin has a nice wrap up on the subject, but the money quotation is probably this:

Abu Zubaida was the alpha and omega of the Bush administration's argument for torture.

That's why Sunday's front-page Washington Post story by Peter Finn and Joby Warrick is such a blow to the last remaining torture apologists.

Finn and Warrick reported that "not a single significant plot was foiled" as a result of Zubaida's brutal treatment -- and that, quite to the contrary, his false confessions "triggered a series of alerts and sent hundreds of CIA and FBI investigators scurrying in pursuit of phantoms."

What a surprise. Beat on someone and he tells lies. Those lies can't be corroborated (or disproven) and limited assets to chase down plot and threats are diverted into blind alleys of wasted effort.

And George Bush, says he'd do it all over again, "to save lives."

Arrogant, ignorant, asshole.

Ok, so what does this mean? It ought to mean we try him, haul the evils he caused to happen into the harsh light of day, and (in a just world) sentence him to live the rest of his (I'd hope very long) life in prison.

If not, we can hope he is foolish enough to accept an invitation to Spain.

For really poetic justice someone might, while he's visiting Poppy in Kennebunkport, decide to invoke the "Noriega Doctrine" his father created, and swoop in and kidnap him to the Hague.

None of those, sadly, are going to happen. Therefore I shan't buy the champagne just yet, but a person can dream.

Comments

[karl-lembke.livejournal.com]

pecunium is, I'm pretty sure, using the US Army's definition of torture: he is a trained interrogator, and it's the definition he's trained to use.

Then it's a silly definition. When feeding a man feet-first through a shredder (a-la Saddam Hussein) is equated with sending a child to its room for a "time-out", the word "torture" becomes meaningless.
Terry is welcome to support his definition with a cite, or to admit that he was engaging in hyperbole.
Or, even to admit that in interrogator circles, "coercion" is synonymous with "torture", at which point his definition ceases to clarify.

You're just throwing up amoral legalistic quibbles. You seem disconnected from the reality. You're playing in the Tarentino sandbox.

Translation: "You're throwing up objections for which I have no substantial answer, so I'll throw dirt all around and hope people think it's meaningful."

No, you don't get to play that way.
I have serious moral objections to taking a loathsome practice like torture and watering it down by lumping it together with "time-outs". When people start having to ask "do you mean 'torture-torture' or 'just a little torture', the word loses is power to shock.

Whether Terry likes it or not, there is a line between real torture and a "time-out". Whether this line falls above, below, or somewhere in the middle of the list of "enhanced interrogation techniques" is something on which good people of good will can disagree. Terry loses his claim to a reasoned argument when his defense of his position is to call those who disagree with him stupid and evil.

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

The big problem with that argument is that you're the one saying that a "time-out" is torture. That's the example straight from your open letter. You're interpreting the definition to make the equivalence, and then using that equivalence to argue for allowing torture of other kinds.

God alone knows what you'd call a D.I. at Parris Island.

[karl-lembke.livejournal.com]

It's a straightforward interpretation of Terry's definition, linked from the "open letter".

"Any physical or mental coercion -- ANY" would certainly include the D.I. at Parris Island.

Your choices are to accept that under the definition Terry uses, both the "time-out" and the Parris Island D.I. are torture, or accept that Terry is engaging in argument by tendentious redefinition.

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

Your choices are ...

No, no, actual reading comprehension is also an option open to us.

[karl-lembke.livejournal.com]

Ok, enlighten me.

What am I missing in those six words?

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

I am not convinced that you are capable of or interested in enlightenment. But hey.

What am I missing in those six words?

... most of what pretty much everyone - not just Terry - who has done any amount of interrogation OR dealing with prisoners or war OR being one has had to say on the topic pretty much, well, ever?

You might as well argue that me going to aikido and getting dropped on my ass by an acquaintance is the exact equivalent of a stranger hauling off and hitting me for no reason at all on the street. And for pretty much the same reason: in one of those scenarios I have reason to believe both that this behaviour is intended to benefit me, by improving my technique, and that should it ever go one inch beyond what WILL benefit me, someone will step in and help me.

And that's before we consider the fact that in BOTH of your examples, you're not talking about behaviour that is intended to produce accurate information. You have in fact produced two examples in which the intended result is compliance - which torture will produce.

Compliance does NOT, however, produce reliably accurate information. It produces all the information your subject has and quite a lot s/he doesn't and a side order of 'shit s/he thinks you want to hear'.

You seem to want to argue that because it is possible to get accurate information via torture it works - talking of definitions pulled out of one's ass. Sure it's possible.

It is just not possible to figure out which bits those are, of all the stuff you'll get.

[karl-lembke.livejournal.com]

Well, I've read the text Terry cites as his source.

I find your reference to "actual reading comprehension" deeply ironic.

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

Yes, well, it WAS deeply ironic, so there you go.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

That's it.

You admit the lack of citation you refer isn't an actual lack, but rather a rhetorical trope (unless you decided at this remove, after year of citation that this time it was worth your time).

I'm not willing to continue allowing you to be a dishonest actor.

So, not because I am incapable of dealing with dissent (certainly years of forbearance here ought to prevent such a charge from having traction), but rather because you admit to dishonesty in your practice, I'm putting paid to your account and closing the book on you.

(frozen) Fytte the penultimate

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Karl: Have you noticed that the people who disagree with you are making reasoned arguments, that they are responding to what you say, even as you misrepresent the positions you argue against. e,g saying that I said a time out was torture.

It's a straightforward interpretation of Terry's definition, linked from the "open letter".

"Any physical or mental coercion -- ANY" would certainly include the D.I.
at Parris Island.

Nonsense. You ignore that I keep citing the source of my definition: The Geneva Conventions of 1948 [a ratified treaty, therefore in equal stature with the Constitution; supported by the International Convention Against Torture [signed by Reagan, ratified; and so also of equal standing} and the War Crimes Act of 1996 {passed by a Republican Congress} US Code TITLE 18 PART I CHAPTER 118 > § 2441)

Then you ignore that this definition is one which relates to prisoners. The Recruit (be it Parris Island or Ft. Leonard Wood) isn't a prisoner. He can, actually, get out of the situation (it's hard; because the gov't doesn't like it, but the option is there). The prime difference is the recruit knows what is going on. She is certain the Drill isn't actually going to kill her. She knows it will end. Remove those certainties; that sense of being in this place, as this time, suffering these things as an active participant, with agency, and it's a different game altogether.

And things, which in that context I have no practical, nor moral, quibbles with (which I might even favor), change nature; and become torture. But this is nothing knew. I've addressed this in the past.

Terry only addresses the context of extracting information, Um... No. I've written a lot of words on the subject; no small number of them about the practical problems, but I've also written a fair bit on the things torture is good for (extracting confessions, controlling a populace, etc.).

As to this the notion of an interrogation as a quest for truth, rather than obtaining the necessary pretense for some sort of justice theater, is a fairly recent invention, a few centuries old at most.

Are you seriously trying to argue that only those ideas which are older than a couple of centuries are worthy of being supported? Leaving aside the going on more than 1,000 year evidences that torture doesn't work; as exemplified in the practices of the Inquisition, that opens a huge can of worms. It, taken in the way you try to take make a "logical extension" of my position, means the US is a wasted effort. Freedom of religion is a wasted effort (we can go back to burning witches and heretics as the stake). The right against self-incrimination (to bring it back to the topic at hand) is a wasted effort.

It's not an actual argument; it's an appeal to authority; and a weak authority (time/tradition), because it fails to address the actual usefulness, or morality, of the subject.

(frozen) Fytte the last

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

You dislike the ways in which I perceive, and so portray, those who advocate for torture. Be they fools who ignore the evidence of those who have done interrogations (from the Inquisition, to the present), in favor of presidential speechwriter and politicians, or those whom I say favor evil (like Eugene Volokh who values it as a social control).

I only lose the claim to a reasoned defense if my accusations of stupidity, and evil, are being made ad hominem. If I said torture doesn't work because Pol Pot was an evil man. then yes, you are right, that's not reasoned argument.

If, however I said, Joseph Stalin liked to use torture, which (for reasons x,y,z, we know to not work, and for reasons a,b,c, which are evil in their ends), and therefore he was either ill-informed, stupid, or evil. I have made a reasoned argument that he is, at least one of those things.

Whether Terry likes it or not, there is a line between real torture and a "time-out".

Whether you like it, or not, I have never argued otherwise.

Whether this line falls above, below, or somewhere in the middle of the list of "enhanced interrogation techniques" is something on which good people of good will can disagree.

There is a caveat in there, which, I think, is telling. People of good will. We disagree. So the question is really, whether, or not, we are people of good will. I'd have to say, from more than a decade of watching you argue; on any number of subjects, in much the same way, I am not certain you are a person of good will.

Terry loses his claim to a reasoned argument when his defense of his position is to call those who disagree with him stupid and evil.

It may hurt your feelings to that your support for torture puts you in a camp with Pol Pot, Joseph Stalin, Saddam Hussein and any other number of stupid and evil people, but that's not my problem.

You're the one advocating torture.

(frozen) Re: Fytte the last

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

This is the last of this, because I am done with it.

I am not quite to the point of being done with you; but I am tired of repeating myself, as you repeat the same trope (Look, this person; who has an incentive to lie disagrees with you. Admit you are wrong, or admit you are blind to the evidence, etc., etc., etc..)

I've let you speak your piece, but I have only so many walls to bang my head against, and hitting the same one, the same way, shows either that I am unable to learn, or that I enjoy it.

So, my place, my choice. I'm tired of it.

I'm done.