I would argue against torture being used in the ticking time-bomb scenario precisely because there’s too great a chance of picking a suspect who doesn’t actually possess any useful knowledge.

But the best is saved for last: I still wouldnt vote in favour of such a proposal, but I wouldnt strenuously object to it either, as long as the checks and balances were shown to be working.

So you wont dirty your hands by helping the little red hen make the loaf of bread, but you will help her eat it.

Exhibit A.

Let’s say that a method of torture whereby you bring the suspect’s family members into the room and kill them one by one until the suspect confesses proves to be 100% successful, and repeatedly saves thousands of lives.

Does that make it ethically defensible?

Having said that I might accept that some type of torture could be (barely) ethically justifiable, whereby:

a) the process was “humane” as possible – e.g. gradually increasing the dosage of a intravenously supplied drug that caused pain, with careful medical supervision to assure no risk of permanent damage or death, and no risk that the torturer stepped out of bounds

b) there was a requirement of thoroughly determined “possession of knowledge” beforehand (in the same way we now determine guilt “beyond reasonable doubt” before jailing criminals)

c) the method was determined to be a highly effective method of extracting life-saving information, when all other avenues had been exhausted

I still wouldn’t vote in favour of such a proposal, but I wouldn’t strenously object to it either, as long the checks and balances were shown to be working.

Significant in a way. Vietnam. Proof? The GOP nomination to the prez. He can’t straighten his arms as a result
You think the Allies didn’t practice torture in WW2? A friends father- an American- once told me that he would load Japanese prisoners on a plane to Oz from NG. they would load up say 10 and 3 would arrive at the other end. 7 were somehow lost in flight.

I also notice some of the responses ignored my qualifiers like “national interest” and “to protect their community, society or way or life”

NPOV I think brought it home with:

“but if you couldnt bring yourself to kill an animal because you think you have no ethical right to do so, then you really shouldnt be paying others to kill animals on your behalf.”

So therefore if you think torture is ethically justifiable under certain conditions, then you should be willing and able to personally make someone scream their guts out as you send an electric current through their testicles, shove a broken bottle up one of their orifices or just chain them in stress positions for days and days and days.

And speaking of “certain conditions” and “stress positions”…

“..the torture of those who, on the balance of probabilities, with the best judgement one can manage considering the urgency of time, and with the authorisation of someone quite high on the food chain, has been shown to have association with criminal elements/ activities and information which may lead to saving the life of one or more innocents.”

Talk about tying yourself in knots instead of them.

Look Lord Ed, given both your now heavily hedged definition of what is ethically justifiable torture and your previous comments like “It does give results…” and ..as the history of torture has shown, then perhaps you can provide us with some actually documented examples of what you’re talking about.

Until you do so, I’ll just content myself with the observation that every significant country over the past 100 years that practiced state-sanctioned torture either lost every war where this happened and/or no longer has the regime in question in power.

No doubt I’ll end up explaining in the tones of a kindergarten teacher to certain commentators what “significant” and “state-sanctioned” actually mean. Followed by providing a working definition of “pissant nitpickers”.

I support torture because I’m fkn hung, and you pansies ain’t.

But despite that snide comment, you are right in your main message NPOV: you should not profit from an action unless you are ethically prepared to support that action, even if not physically support the action at the coal face.

Thats why I support the torture of those who, on the balance of probabilities, with the best judgement one can manage considering the urgency of time, and with the authorisation of someone quite high on the food chain, has been shown to have association with criminal elements/ activities and information which may lead to saving the life of one or more innocents.
Of course Igor cant start until I have left the room and well out of earshot.

If you can’t bring yourself to kill an animal for its meat because you’re a) physically not strong enough or b) overcome with nausea by the sight of blood and entrails then that’s understandable, but if you couldn’t bring yourself to kill an animal because you think you have no ethical right to do so, then you really shouldn’t be paying others to kill animals on your behalf.

It has SFA to do with ethics. My dad is a good lefty in a million ways (well compared to me at least) but he grew up in a different time and so has no qualms about the deaths of animals. My mother, from a different family, never actually killed an animal and would probably have a strong resistance to the idea and might even describe herself as unable to do so beyond near-starvation, although she would undoubtedly have the physical capacity.

I’m sorry, I genuinely believe that an argument which seeks to define your ‘moral’ ‘right’ to eat meat largely in terms of how you happened to grow up is inane.

As it happens, I don’t think the argument gets much stronger in the case of torture. What is different in the case of torture is the risk to the torturer of psychological harm – which is something different to weigh up, but goes in a different basket, along with the risk of social harm from the practice of torture and necessary dehumanisation. Note that Gummow is arguing about a different basket altogether, being that of the risk of false or useless information.

I think any research on the subject would show that detainees dont like torture and do anything to have it stopped.

Indeed they will – they’ll even make obviously false confessions or tell obvious lies about their associates:

We have often learned from the confessions of those whom we have caused to be burned, that they have not been willing agents of witchcraft. And they have not said this in the hope of escaping damnation, for its truth is witnessed by the blows and stripes which they have received from devils when they have been unwilling to perform their orders, and we have often seen their swollen and livid faces. Similarly, after they have confessed their crimes under torture they always try to hang themselves; and this we know for a fact; for after the confession of their crimes, guards are deputed to watch them all the time, and even then, when the guards have been negligent, they have been found hanged with their shoe-laces or garments. For, as we have said, they devil causes this, lest they should obtain pardon through contrition or sacramental confession; and those whose hearts he cannot seduce from finding grace with God, he tries to lead into despair through worldly loss and a horrible death. However, through the great grace of God, as it is pious to believe, they can obtain forgiveness by true contrition and pure confession, when they have not been willing participators in those foul and filthy practices.

This is exemplified by certain events which took place hardly three years ago in the dioceses of Strasburg and Constance, and in the towns of Hagenau and Ratisbon. For in the first town one hanged herself with a trifling and flimsy garment. Another, named Walpurgis, was notorious for her power of preserving silence, and used to teach other women how to achieve a like quality of silence by cooking their first-born sons in an oven. Many such examples are to our hand, as they are also in the case of others burned in the second town, some of which will be related.

So, no it’s not a crap argument – it *is* wrong to get somebody to do a job that you couldn’t ethically bring yourself to do (assuming you were physically capable).

Would you be willing to be a brickie? Are you physically able to be? If not, do you deserve a house?

Ditto a trial lawyer – if you couldn’t really hack the 18 hour days and obsessive compulsive behaviour, do you deserve one to do it on your behalf?

What about truckie? Could you hack it? Do you deserve trucked goods?

Agricultural labourer?

What about policeman/soldier? Are you sure you could kill someone? Do you deserve to be defended?

Fireman? Absolutely certain your courage wouldn’t desert you? Positive that you deserve theirs?

Yes, I would certainly be asking someone else to adorn the black hood.

With pictures of bunny rabbits and lolcatz, no doubt.

Tell me, Mr Ed, if waterboarding persuades John McCain to confess to giggling like a little girl when he wears Lederhosen, has the torture been:

a) effective;
b) ineffective; or
c) hard to tell – were they proper leather or ersatz?

Really? I think it does.

(I am a meat-eater and experienced killer of things, before you ask.)

Perhaps I could have worded it better. torture is legal when supported by executive order and not prevented by any current legislation or, as shown, the constitution.

..as the history of torture has shown I think any research on the subject would show that detainees dont like torture and do anything to have it stopped. Even though some heroes die, the great majority eventually succumb. Even that well known American war hero Senator John McCain eventually broke and signed a confession.
Give the Nazis, Soviets, North Koreans and North Vietnamese their due; they do know how to get people to agree to their requests.

Also,
I dont know if that is generally a rational argument about not asking someone else to do what you cant do yourself. If everyone, before dinner, had to personally look in the eye and kill their own cute and cuddly lamb, chicken, piggy-wiggy or bunny rabbit then half the population would become vegetarians. That certainly doesnt prove that they should be vegetarians.
By nature homo sapiens arent always capable of committing anti-personal actions that they might have to, even if to preserve their own lives. Read research on the matter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Grossman_%28author%29
Yes, I would certainly be asking someone else to adorn the black hood.

I’m a firm believer that whenever someone starts talking about dirty and dangerous deeds in order to protect their community, society or way or life, they should be be prepared to walk the talk themselves.

I’m pretty confident that the overwhelming majority of folks, across the political spectrum, hanging around Club Troppo would cheerfully volunteer to do whatever they could to resist a genuine force of arms invasion of their homelands. Well yes the more comfortably built and aged here like Ken or I would probably be hived off into Intelligence, Pysops or the Office of Economic Warfare (Trust the seppos to think of that one – and a very good idea it was too).

But if you’re not personally willing or able to carefully and deliberately turn another human into a screaming, traumatised and bowel-voiding mess in controlled conditions while looking into their eyes, then I suggest you stop proposing other people to do it for you.

Where do I begin?

Perhaps with this deft Pythonic misunderstanding of the goals of torture?

“Whatever might actually happen down there in the dungeon no one can claim as a fact that prisoners are tortured as punishment for failing to answer the previous question.”

Of course not! It’s not a punishment, it’s an inducement.

W: ONLY STRING?! It’s everything! It’s…it’s waterproof!
S: No it isn’t!
W: All right, it’s water resistant then!
S: It isn’t!
W: All right, it’s water absorbent! It’s…Super Absorbent String!

Or with this deliberately unprovable hypothetical.

“Pretty soon he is going to appreciate that he is not enjoying all these near death experiences (as the history of torture has shown is the case) and he decides next time to actually give the correct address.”

The “…as the history of torture has shown is the case” is the punchline. A superb parody of pub bull session sophistry.

And just to show he knows how deliver a final payoff, Ed comes up with this wicked closing one liner.

“It does give results and is legal when supported by executive order.”

A beautifully falsely framed and carefully amateurish a priori assumption unsupported by any evidence that’s also used to justify the rule of the executive over the rule of law and over representively elected legislative bodies.

I dips me lid to you Ed. That was one wickedly satirical extrapolation on the standard Internet Tough Guy “I’ll make ‘em squeal to save the lives of you liberal pussies” riff.

And your choice of namesake is the icing on the cake. Imagine Lord Carson in the hands of Special Branch v. keen to find out about German arms shipments to the Ulster Voluntary Force on the eve of war between Great Britain and Germany.

“I must caution you Lord Privy Councillor that unless you answer all our questions with complete frankness and veracity, we may resort to serving you lukewarm tea with tinned milk.”

Torture can be a punishment for being bad generally. The Inquisitors felt justified in torturing apostates because they were evil and their souls deserved the punishment. You wouldn’t assert, surely, that the infamous torture meted out to the Iraqis in Abu Ghraib wasn’t “punishment”. But for what? They weren’t even being questioned, and Lynndie England wouldn’t have understood what they were saying anyway. They were just being punished for being … well, just for being there, for being Iraqis. If they were being “softened up” for later questioning, then it was punishment for being too tough and resilient. Similarly, in the case of the Guantánamo inmates, they are assumed to be evil-doers who require punishment without trial. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Guant

Prisoners are tortured not only to extract information or a confession (in fact its a notoriously unreliable method of doing so) but as a punishment for refusing to answer previous questions.
Whatever might actually happen down there in the dungeon no one can claim as a fact that prisoners are tortured as punishment for failing to answer the previous question. When the chap in the leather jerkin is about insert the hose pipe into the suspects mouth because there has been no answer to the last question, but at the last instant is suddenly informed that an observant policeman has discovered the ticking bomb, then he has no motive to continue with what he was about to do. Thus no punishment for the last question.
Suspects are only tortured as an inducement to answer the next question and an inducement, nasty as it may be, is not punishment. Inducement comes before and punishment always comes after.

a central concern of the drafters of the Bill of Rights 1689 was the danger of nefarious acts by Popish princes.
If that was really the case, why did they not add or torture to the eighth. Its only two extra words. Perhaps because back in 1789 they might not have had ticking bombs but they still would have had slow fuse bombs.

(in fact its [torture] a notoriously unreliable method of doing so)
I dont necessarily see why. You pour a gallon of water down the torturees throat and then ask where the arms cache is. He gives you an address and you stop torturing. Fifteen minutes later when you receive word that there is nothing at the address, you turn the tap back on. He gives another address and has another break. After another false lead you continue again with the torture. Pretty soon he is going to appreciate that he is not enjoying all these near death experiences (as the history of torture has shown is the case) and he decides next time to actually give the correct address.

The morality of such action is ancillary. It does give results and is legal when supported by executive order.

Justice Scalia is a clever and honourable judicial interpreter and defender of the constitution.

~ ~ ~

Ironic in light of your comments about the derivation the phrase ‘cruel and unusual’ that the SCOTUS bench is now majority Catholic! But since both Scalia and Brennan are(were) Catholics, it might be as much a statement about how far Catholicism has come rather than anything else.

I can’t imagine why Scalia was prognosticating – I assumed he was just responding the the questions posed by the interviewer. But reading it, it suggests that he was putting the comments out, albeit in the context of essentially a long-running wide-ranging discussion of his views (of the kind that probably only Kirby J here would ever contemplate).

It isn’t a bad read, in fact. I agree wholeheartedly, for example, with this comment:

A Constitution is not meant to facilitate change. It is meant to impede change, to make it difficult to change.

And even his comments on torture, well, the opening line is this:

I don’t like torture,” Scalia says. “Although defining it is going to be a nice trick. But who’s in favor of it? Nobody. And we have a law against torture. But if the – everything that is hateful and odious is not covered by some provision of the Constitution,” he says.

Not so unreasonably expressed! And note he actually raises your point about its actual illegality.

And I was intrigued by his final line – that he imagined, when he started at 50, knowing that he would retire on a full salary, that he would so so at 65. But he hasn’t, and doesn’t plan to – he claims because he can’t imagine anything so interesting and satisfying – I wonder how many other judges started out that way?