Centerfield

That was basically the conclusion I came to as well, Brian. Thanks for posting it.

Yep. And a good analysis it is.

The torture victim faces incredible pain and perhaps death at the hands of his torturer.

Why doesn't the author also say that the many innocent victims of a terrorist face incredible pain and likely death? When compared against this, is the suffering of a terrorist really "incredible"? Should we really call a terrorist a "victim"?

What torture of terrorists would be "incredible", when compared to the suffering at Beslan of hundreds of slaughtered children and their surviving families? What torture of terrorists would be incredible if it prevented them killing just a few people -- say your family.

His perspective and argumentation are unbalanced, emphasizing the pain of atrocity loving terrorists far more than the real victims.

A very important right, is the right of innocent people not to be mass murdered. Any law which interferes with preventing terrorism, should be viewed with strict scrutiny against this right.

With this right firmly in mind, Americans support torturing terrorists to prevent terrorism by nearly two to one. An outright ban on the torture of terrorists is not a centrist positon.

Everyone agrees that torture is wrong! The problem that needs to be addressed is that not everyone agrees on the definition of torture. I do not think that threatening someone with a dog is torture, mean perhaps, scary, but not torture. Playing loud Rock and Roll music is not in my mind torture. Waterboarding I believe crosses the line and is indeed torture. These are my opinions on some of the tactics I have read were used on the enemy combatants. The debate that needs to happen is which things are acceptable and which are not. The McCain ammendment prohibits cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment. If degrading an enemy combatant or having a dog growl at him works (questionable) then I do not want to prohibit it. Framing the debate simply on should torture be legal misses the point.

Yeah, I remember seeing this argument before and being pretty unimpressed.

It's like this.

That argument is only right IF TORTURE BRINGS ACCURATE INFORMATION. But doesn't it just give the torturee an incentive to make up a really tall one?

Torture doesn't seem to have worked well with WMD, did it? Nor has it located bin Laden. It'd be interesting to see a study on this.

Here's my post on the subject:
http://www.centristcoalition.com/blog/archives/002281.html

I wrote a post favoring this position more than two years ago, at the time Khalid Shaikh Muhammed was arrested. I think this was before I started Centerfield I didn't have that economic analysis, however, and I like the analytical framework.

I felt KSM (the operational architect of 9/11)was a ticking time bomb, and should be tortured, even though torture was illegal. What they did to him is exactly what I wanted, but they dissemble and deny that it was torture.

I agree that torture should not be legal, but that in very exceptional cases, interrogators should torture a megaterrorist like KSM. If soldiers are willing to risk death in battle, they should be willing to risk prosecution, to save the lives of other Americans.

It's wishful thinking to say that torture is useless because it provides bad information. Any type of investigation or interrogation is likely to encounter bad information. It all has to be confirmed. If someone says there's a bomb in locker 11B, you send your bomb squad there to check it out.

Yeah, but IMHO you'll get more lies. And sometimes there are too many of them; we never did get the right WMD story.

There is a cost to sending the bomb squad to check it out or troops to get bin Laden. There's even more of a cost to using a factually wrong argument to justify a war.

With this right firmly in mind, Americans support torturing terrorists to prevent terrorism by nearly two to one.
Citation please.

An outright ban on the torture of terrorists is not a centrist position.
Restrictions to make torture extremely rare seems to be a pretty centrist position judging by the stated views of the centrists I know. Susan, you are the only visitor here I know who traffics the notion that a public opinion poll necessarily reveals what centrists think. (and that's assuming you have the data to back up the assertion made.)

The problem that needs to be addressed is that not everyone agrees on the definition of torture.

Exactly. Real torture (as defined in US Code) is indeed reprehensible and is already banned and has been for quite some time. I have no problem with that ban. I know some think that torture (real torture) is not effective at producing results. On the contrary it's highly effective. Someone being tortured WILL tell you everything they know. The problem is that it's not reliable. If they don't know anything, they'll make it up just to get you to stop. And if you were so positive they had a certain piece of information to begin with, that you indeed had a guilty party with specific information, you'd probably already have enough info to not need to torture them but to get the results in more reliable ways. So I have trouble visualizing too many scenarios where real torture would be called for even without any moral or legal considerations.

At the other end of the spectrum is the Geneva Conventions standard for treatment of POW's. Under that standard, about all you can do is ask them politely if they'd care to tell you anything, and only for a limited time each day. Our local police have a much wider range of techniques available to them, none of which remotely amount to torture.

And in between the two is a great big gray area of techniques that can be highly effective at producing results, that are not torture under the law, but that are clearly in excess of the GC "limited polite questions" standard. And the question is, where do you draw the line? Polite questions? Impolite questions? Vague threats? Inducing a sense of menace? Humiliation? Name-calling? Taking away their tobacco? Showing Muslims the soles of your feet (highly offensive)? Noisy environments? Sleep deprivation? Water-boarding? Where?

Ever discussion I see on torture is full of high-falutin' rhetoric on why WE should not torture. What's missing is that definition of torture. If you mean the USC standard, I agree. Beneath us. If the officer on the spot thinks it's that vital and tortures a suspect, then they SHOULD pay that legal price--and that price should be high enough to be a real deterrent.

What about waving cigarettes at a smoker, but not letting him have any? Is that torture? What about sleep deprivation? I've gone many long months without getting more than four hours sleep at a stretch with no ill effects. Voluntarily. Emergency personnel, medical residents, and doctors on call do it all the time.

Noise? I've visited prisons. If OZ had been filmed in a real working prison, you'd never have heard a single line of dialogue. Prisons are noisy, just about 24/7. VERY noisy. At what level does noise become torture?

Define torture. If you don't do that, all the arguing is just a bunch of wasted breath.

I agree with Tully. Unless you want to ban any kind of coercive interrogation, there has to be some definition of what torture is.

As usual, Susan has decided what a centrist position is, ie, anything that she espouses. Her argument simply relies on a lot of emotional rhetoric about innocent victims without really addressing two key ponits: first, how effective is torture (assuming we have defined it) in getting information anyway, and, second, how do you know you are torturing the right people. You are assuming that everyone that is dragged into Gitmo is a terrorists; that's not at all clear. It seems like your position is to drag in anyone off the street that we think might be connected with terrorists and start torturing them on principle.

And if you are going to follow your logic, then we should pretty much arrest everyone that has ever expressed any animosity toward the United States. Better safe than sorry after all.

This is just a wingnut argument masquerading as centrist. Most people, even those who accept the need for torture in particular situations, acknowledge the moral ambiguity and problems involved and recognize the need for some limits. But, not you Susan, if there's even a chance that the person might be involved in terrorism,let's torture first and ask questions later. Even if it's ineffective and even if it might not be the right person. Is there anything that you consider beyond the pale?