A hypothetical made real.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Should we torture him to make him reveal the whereabouts of the girl?

Unless he has admitted kidnapping her, indicated that she is still alive, and made claims that she will not survive in her current location for more than a few hours - no - what would be the point?

If all of the above were the case, still no - torture is a great way of getting someone to say exactly what you want them to say - but it is a shit way of getting them to tell you the truth. If he is the psychopath that he would need to be in order to admit the facts above but to refuse to reveal the girl's location, he would be perfectly capable of lying in order to get the torture to stop, knowing that sending the cops on a wild-goose chase would render further torture pointless, as the girl would have died in the interim.

However, if it turned out that he had raped and murdered the girl, and I was alone with him in a room, damn right I would torture the fucker. I would certainly feel terrible about it afterwards - but not shortly afterwards!

[Audley Strange]

So the consensus is, yeah let's not try because he might tell fibs. I could see that w/r to terrorists, but child fuckers?

The whole reason those cowardly little demons hide their prey and burn their bodies and go to such eleaborations is because they are less likely to get charged with fucking children without evidence, just child murder, which means they are less likely to be tortured in prison as well as to hide, just exactly what carnal atrocities they commit on such children. I was told something once by a police officer which actually made me shudder at such selfish casual depravity. As horrid as it is, we see the sanitised 6 o'clock news version of this kind of thing.

Again, I don't know. I can certainly see it's utility in such cases, however the consequences may be to cause this strain of pathetic bastards to be more more cautious and more likely to hide the evidence of their wretched desires.

I still think we should mercy kill child rapists though.

[hadespussercats]

So the consensus is, yeah let's not try because he might tell fibs. I could see that w/r to terrorists, but child fuckers?

The whole reason those cowardly little demons hide their prey and burn their bodies and go to such eleaborations is because they are less likely to get charged with fucking children without evidence, just child murder, which means they are less likely to be tortured in prison as well as to hide, just exactly what carnal atrocities they commit on such children. I was told something once by a police officer which actually made me shudder at such selfish casual depravity. As horrid as it is, we see the sanitised 6 o'clock news version of this kind of thing.

Again, I don't know. I can certainly see it's utility in such cases, however the consequences may be to cause this strain of pathetic bastards to be more more cautious and more likely to hide the evidence of their wretched desires.

I still think we should mercy kill child rapists though.

Sounds like you're not really interested in this case with whether or not torture would be useful for gaining information-- you want to use it as punishment and a deterrent.

And in this case, punishment sans trial.

So... yeah, I'm going to say I don't support the use of torture in this instance. Though I understand the impulse.

[Audley Strange]

So the consensus is, yeah let's not try because he might tell fibs. I could see that w/r to terrorists, but child fuckers?

The whole reason those cowardly little demons hide their prey and burn their bodies and go to such eleaborations is because they are less likely to get charged with fucking children without evidence, just child murder, which means they are less likely to be tortured in prison as well as to hide, just exactly what carnal atrocities they commit on such children. I was told something once by a police officer which actually made me shudder at such selfish casual depravity. As horrid as it is, we see the sanitised 6 o'clock news version of this kind of thing.

Again, I don't know. I can certainly see it's utility in such cases, however the consequences may be to cause this strain of pathetic bastards to be more more cautious and more likely to hide the evidence of their wretched desires.

I still think we should mercy kill child rapists though.

Sounds like you're not really interested in this case with whether or not torture would be useful for gaining information-- you want to use it as punishment and a deterrent.

And in this case, punishment sans trial.

So... yeah, I'm going to say I don't support the use of torture in this instance. Though I understand the impulse.

Well that's unfair and erroneous. I was making the point that child abductors are not trained ideological terrorists who might have something to gain from lying. Considering the rationale of some child abductors is to destroy the evidence so they do not get tortured in prison it seemed like it might be an excellent motivator to get them to speak up.

AND. Continuing on that line of thought, using torture might make them take more pains in disposing of their victims and thus backfire.

I have also stated that I was uncertain, didn't know and was looking for others opinions. Thanks for saving me the time by telling me what mine is, that was good of you.

[Audley Strange]

So the consensus is, yeah let's not try because he might tell fibs. I could see that w/r to terrorists, but child fuckers?

The whole reason those cowardly little demons hide their prey and burn their bodies and go to such eleaborations is because they are less likely to get charged with fucking children without evidence, just child murder, which means they are less likely to be tortured in prison as well as to hide, just exactly what carnal atrocities they commit on such children. I was told something once by a police officer which actually made me shudder at such selfish casual depravity. As horrid as it is, we see the sanitised 6 o'clock news version of this kind of thing.

Again, I don't know. I can certainly see it's utility in such cases, however the consequences may be to cause this strain of pathetic bastards to be more more cautious and more likely to hide the evidence of their wretched desires.

I still think we should mercy kill child rapists though.

Sounds like you're not really interested in this case with whether or not torture would be useful for gaining information-- you want to use it as punishment and a deterrent.

And in this case, punishment sans trial.

So... yeah, I'm going to say I don't support the use of torture in this instance. Though I understand the impulse.

Well that's unfair and erroneous. I was making the point that child abductors are not trained ideological terrorists who might have something to gain from lying. Considering the rationale of some child abductors is to destroy the evidence so they do not get tortured in prison it seemed like it might be an excellent motivator to get them to speak up.

AND. Continuing on that line of thought, using torture might make them take more pains in disposing of their victims and thus backfire.

I have also stated that I was uncertain, didn't know and was looking for others opinions. Thanks for saving me the time by telling me what mine is, that was good of you.

[rasetsu]

"Any society, any nation, is judged on the basis of how it treats its weakest members — the last, the least, the littlest."
— Cardinal Roger Mahony

I'm not sure I can connect the dots tonight, but I'd say a person suspected of a horrendous crime, whether you think they are, might, or must be guilty, is a part of that standard.

Barbarity is at its least acceptable, when exercised upon those who are the most powerless. I don't want to see a little girl die. But I'm not willing to give on either justice or mercy, just for something like this.


(I hope I made sense. I'm not all here tonight.)

"I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice."
— Abraham Lincoln

[hadespussercats]

So the consensus is, yeah let's not try because he might tell fibs. I could see that w/r to terrorists, but child fuckers?

The whole reason those cowardly little demons hide their prey and burn their bodies and go to such eleaborations is because they are less likely to get charged with fucking children without evidence, just child murder, which means they are less likely to be tortured in prison as well as to hide, just exactly what carnal atrocities they commit on such children. I was told something once by a police officer which actually made me shudder at such selfish casual depravity. As horrid as it is, we see the sanitised 6 o'clock news version of this kind of thing.

Again, I don't know. I can certainly see it's utility in such cases, however the consequences may be to cause this strain of pathetic bastards to be more more cautious and more likely to hide the evidence of their wretched desires.

I still think we should mercy kill child rapists though.

Sounds like you're not really interested in this case with whether or not torture would be useful for gaining information-- you want to use it as punishment and a deterrent.

And in this case, punishment sans trial.

So... yeah, I'm going to say I don't support the use of torture in this instance. Though I understand the impulse.

Well that's unfair and erroneous. I was making the point that child abductors are not trained ideological terrorists who might have something to gain from lying. Considering the rationale of some child abductors is to destroy the evidence so they do not get tortured in prison it seemed like it might be an excellent motivator to get them to speak up.

AND. Continuing on that line of thought, using torture might make them take more pains in disposing of their victims and thus backfire.

I have also stated that I was uncertain, didn't know and was looking for others opinions. Thanks for saving me the time by telling me what mine is, that was good of you.

That was my understanding of what you wrote. My reading comprehension might be in question-- I wasn't employing mind-reading skills.

Sorry.

[Atheist-Lite]

Should apply truth serum to encourage him to talk. Obviously most will be garbage but when intoxicated the truth is more likely to slip out.

[Seth]

Is it ethical to torture this suspect to get him to reveal the location of the bomb before it goes off and kills hundreds of thousands of people?

It is not only unethical, but it is also stupid. Stupid in the extreme!

So, letting a hundred thousand people die by his actions is more ethical than extracting information from him?

One of the things that we know from studies of torture is that it takes time.

Really? And you know this how, exactly? The reason it took more than 200 waterboarding sessions to break the mastermind of the first WTC bombing was not because that was the only way, it's because we didn't want to use methods that would extract the information more quickly.

If you try to get information from someone quickly using torture, assuming the person being tortured is resistant (as an Al Qaeda person would be), then you can guarantee what you get will be lies.

Maybe, maybe not. Apply enough pain and almost everyone will break. The US military knows this, which is why they don't expect captured soldiers to withstand interrogation indefinitely. They formulate their strategy and tactics to minimize the detrimental effects of one person "spilling the beans" instead.

Relying on torture in that situation is an absolute guarantee that you will not get to the bomb in time.

Really? So if sufficient torture might be applied to elicit the desired correct information it's better not to make the attempt and instead do nothing to extract the information and allow hundreds of thousands to die?

Sorry, no sale. The terrorist should be tortured using whatever method is necessary to get him to sing like a bird as quickly as possible because he MIGHT reveal the necessary information in time to stop the attack and save many lives. If he doesn't, nothing is lost. But if he does, the attack can be stopped. Which is not, of course, to say that waiting for that information, correct or incorrect, is the ONLY thing Homeland Security would be doing to try to locate the bomb.

And, during the stress of torture, the terrorist might reveal bits of information that in and of themselves would not locate the bomb, but when COMBINED with other intelligence information may point in a particular direction for the search, or may merely confirm (all unwittingly to the terrorist) information that we already have.

The waterboarding of Khaled Sheikh Mohammed was not intended to elicit a confession from him, we knew he was guilty, it was to elicit dribs and drabs of information, times, places, dates, names and other intel that might slip from him during repeated stressful interrogations that were then assembled by intelligence analysts, combined with other intelligence information from other sources, which built, bit by bit, a much clearer picture of his organization, operations, plans and members.

People make the mistake of thinking that waterboarding is about getting some startling revelation or confession that will bust things wide open, like some stupid Perry Mason on-the-stand confession. That's not it at all. It's about laboriously extracting every bit of information from the suspect and then further investigating each scrap of information in relation to other information the interrogators have to build an accurate picture of the desired situation. The purpose of the stress is to break the terrorist's resistance down, to confuse them and stress them into UNWITTINGLY revealing information. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. But it might work, and that's good enough when the lives of hundreds of thousands of people are at stake.

In the case of dismantling an organization like the one run by Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, it's like a pointillist painting; each dot on the canvas is meaningless when looked at individually, just as each fact or item extracted from that fucker was obscure in isolation, but with enough information from enough sources, each either confirming or denying another, a clear picture is built up over time. This happens because under enough stress, over a long enough time, no one can avoid saying things that seem harmless but which add to the weight of evidence. What's said on day one and what's said on day 200 will be different, but if the interrogators and analysts record each bit, assemble them in the puzzle they are solving, and then focus on small, seeming inconsequential inconsistencies or intelligence that to the terrorist may seem to reveal nothing, they can direct future interrogations to confirm or flesh out what they already know.

That's why we do it, and why we should do it, and why it's necessary to do it when it comes to defending our nation and the world against terrorists. If they don't want to take the chance of being waterboarded, then they shouldn't perpetrate terror attacks. I have no sympathy whatsoever for them, they get what they deserve, and the innocent people they kill have a right to be protected from them, whatever the cost to the terrorists.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

So the consensus is, yeah let's not try because he might tell fibs. I could see that w/r to terrorists, but child fuckers?

The thing about lying under torture is the subject doesn't show much tendency to stay with a coherent set of lies. They seldom have the focus to say the same thing twice if they're lying. If they stay consistent, you know they're telling the truth.

This can work up to ten time before you have to take their shoes off to continue.

[Seth]

Should apply truth serum to encourage him to talk. Obviously most will be garbage but when intoxicated the truth is more likely to slip out.

Torture IS "truth serum." All "truth serum" does is to mentally confuse and break down inhibition barriers. It's a barbiturate that inhibits higher cortical brain functions and is used for both sedation and euthanasia. In smaller doses it is thought to work as a "truth serum" because, according to some, lying is a more complex brain function than telling the truth, and suppressing the higher cortical functions makes it harder to think up a lie and easier to tell a truth.

Torture does essentially the same thing using pain and stress to break down the subject's will to lie and by flooding the brain with endorphins and other brain chemicals that make it hard to think, which in turn makes it harder to lie. Combined with the promise of ending the pain by complying with the interrogator's demands, it's a powerful inducement to giving up information.

And yes, alcohol does much the same thing by lowering inhibitions and confusing higher mental processes.

[Seth]

Wouldn't he just lie?

Maybe, maybe not.

I don't think the information obtained through torture is necessarily sound. Someone might say anything to make it stop. And to ascertain the truth of what was said, investigators have to do the same legwork they would have had to do anyway, without plunging into ethical dark places.

But information elicited through torture can point the investigators in the right (or wrong) direction. But over time, because it's harder to maintain a lie under stress than it is to tell the truth, bits of information can be built up into a coherent picture that represents the truth. There is no way of knowing which bit of seemingly irrelevant information revealed unwittingly by the suspect will give investigators the lead they need to find the girl. This is why interrogations not involving torture go on for long periods and the same questions are asked, often in slightly different ways, to see if the answer is the same each and every time. If the answer is consistent, it is more likely to be the truth than if it varies.

Torture is an effective way of extracting information, but only in the rarest of circumstances do the ends justify the means in our system of ethics. Saving the life of one little girl? Not really justification for torture. Saving a million lives? Absolutely. But it's important to say that torture is ONLY effective in extracting information about past events that can be built up into an accurate picture of the suspect's activities, it is NOT effective at eliciting a confession to a crime, which is what it's most often used for.

That's why a coercive interrogation may be used to locate the child, but will be excluded from the trial, along with any evidence obtained as a "fruit of the poisonous tree" that comes from that coercive interrogation. Thus, the interrogator must choose between finding the child and saving her life and potentially seeing the suspect go free because all the evidence obtained is inadmissible and respecting the suspects right not to self-incriminate which may result in a conviction eventually, but will result in the death of the child. Tough call. Given an imminent danger to a person, like the classic "buried in a box and about to run out of oxygen" scenario, most investigators I know will do what they need to do short of permanently disfiguring or physically harming the suspect in order to elicit information that can save a life, and the trial be damned. The lives saved are more important. You can always get people like that on something merely by waiting and watching them long enough, because having "gotten away with it" they will almost inevitably do it again, and then you can nab them before any harm is done.

This is the difference between waterboarding Khaled Sheikh Mohammed 200+ times over years and applying electrical shocks to someone's genitals to get them to "confess" to committing a crime. No confession elicited by torture is EVER reliable. In fact no confession elicited by so much as extended interrogation is reliable. If a person is going to confess the truth, they will do so because THEY feel guilty and want to relieve that guilt, NOT because they have been pressured into confessing using threats (of extended prison sentences or other bad consequences of not confessing), intimidation or physical discomfort or torture. Under enough pressure, the vast majority of people will falsely confess to a crime they did not commit merely to put a stop to the stress being wielded against them.

So it's important to distinguish between coercive interrogation (or torture) intended to reveal information that can be aggregated and examined to reach some investigatory objective and coercive interrogation or torture intended to elicit a confession to a crime.

The former may, under extraordinary circumstances be necessary, appropriate, lawful and ethical. The latter NEVER is.

[Atheist-Lite]

I'd go for waterboarding in this instance. Seems he'd cough up information if they did a bit of waterboarding.

[Cormac]

Of course, you don't know the person is a terrorist, as the police cannot be certain that the fellow in custody was the kidnapper.

Can't make an omelette without breaking them eggs though, eh Seth?

[Seth]

Of course, you don't know the person is a terrorist, as the police cannot be certain that the fellow in custody was the kidnapper.

Can't make an omelette without breaking them eggs though, eh Seth?

Well, that's the predicate, that you have certain knowledge of the guilt of the suspect and that the information is needed in order to save a life or lives that are in imminent danger.

Of course if you just have a suspect and you do not have any certain knowledge that they are responsible for an imminent threat to someone and that information on the whereabouts of the victim is essential to saving that life or lives, then if you use coercive tactics or torture you are attempting to elicit a confession from someone who may or may not be guilty of the offense you are investigating. That would be immoral, unethical and illegal.

The predicate for both the missing child and the terrorist scenario presupposes that investigators have certain knowledge of the suspect's involvement in the crime and that the suspect has knowledge that will, if extracted, lead directly to saving lives. In the child scenario, it might be that the rapist, being caught, admits to the crime but refuses to give the necessary information to save the child, intending to use that information as a bargaining tool to obtain immunity. It might be better to grant immunity than to torture, but certainly there are scenarios where the criminal admits to the crime but for other reasons refuses to provide the lifesaving information where forcible extraction of life saving information may be justified.

You see, it's just not a "one size fits all" issue. It's complex and the ethics involved are absolutely situational. This is why one cannot make the blanket statement that torture is never justifiable. Sometimes it is. The difficulty is in identifying those circumstances where it is both absolutely necessary and therefore justifiable, as opposed to those circumstances where it just makes law enforcement's job easier or more certain, which unfortunately is the intent of most coercive interrogations. That's immoral.