"Ticking bomb" scenario is great hype, but is less likely than Abu Ghraib2

[Bucky]

It goes without saying that if you know you have an actual nuke sitting in some American city and you have someone you know has information to stop that kind of attack, the gloves come off. Some ends, like saving thousands of lives, justify all sorts of means. But this is such a freakishly rare billion-to-one unlikelihood that it's comical to set prison treatment policy around such a James Bond-style scenario. As usual, reporters just take down the White House's Chicken Little hy-sterics in one swallow and never examine the actual concrete costs we're paying by even letting Mr Bush suggest we get to torture under "proper guidelines." I'd enjoy reading a novel or comic book that has just such a scene in it and would love the suspense. Can Bond break Draco's minion before the bomb goes off?

"Give me the sheecret bomb codes before I shlopp you again, ponk"

Dude! That totally gives me shivvers! But, sadly, real world terror prevention doesn't work that way. Damn few compentant masterminds end up working as terrorists when they could be making some real money working for AirBus, MicroSoft, or DuPont instead. Some do exist, of course, but the track record of actual terrorists seems to suggest they're disgruntled misfits who are a lot less competent at sneaking into our cities than, say, millions of Mexican day laborers. A recent issue of Foriegn Affair asks specifically why, when our borders are still so open, there's not been a peep of an al-Qaeda threat to us in the past five years--and concludes that it mostly doesn't exist.

Of course real terrorists do exist. Since Bush started fighting the war on terror, terrorist incidents around the world have continued to steadily increase. But like most other criminals, terrorists prefer to kill closer to home. The guys who hit Madrid were from Spain; the London Underground bombers were British residents, as were the recent liquid explosives plotters who wanted to target outbound London flights.

The reality of preventing terrorist attacks involves activities like cops snooping around likely hang outs--which usually means not at the local mosque, since most of the western Islamic terrorists have been religiously lapsed. Security officials will monitor likely targets for suspicious activities or track purchases of preferred weapons materials. Interrogation, when it happens, mostly is in relation to possible plots in action or trying to get details on contacts and associates after a plot has been disrupted. At Guantanamo & Abu Ghraib, torture has seemingly been used on information "fishing expeditions." In all those circumstances torture is not only useless--it's counterproductive. As the experience in using torture techniques against Abu Zubaydah shows, it's going to produce bad information, prompt wild goose chases, and drain resources away from interdicting other plots. In a very concrete way, torture makes us more vulnerable to future attacks.

In response to the charges that torture (oh, let's give 'em this one and call it "extraordinary dialog") techniques waste time, destroy our credibility in the world, support the accusations of Islamic radicals against us, and produce useless information, the administration counters with a scary, zillion-to-one, testosterone-charged what-if scenario. There's a ticking suitcase nuke somewhere in Peoria!, they fantasize, and then claim that that's the standard operating environment against our terrorist enemies.

And to think Republicans say liberals are too close to Hollywood!

I'm so sorry, my little hot shots. Life is not like that particular movie. Compare the likelihood of that wild-assed what if fantasy with the real record in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and all the little "extraordinary rendition" centers the CIA is running in Eastern Europe. Interrogators (having been told the gloves are off as S.O.P.) are routinely crossing the lines with prisoners, leaving a few dead, a few raped, and America's principal weapon in the war against al-Qaeda--our nation's once proud reputation as the world's champion of freedom and human rights--shot in the back by our own troops. But has this process prevented any actual attacks? On this question the Axis of Stupid has remained suspiciously silent.

As usual, the Republicans' talking points include a lot of rhetoric and suppositions and damn little facts. Supporters of the White House's "extraordinary sharing-is-caring-time" approach to interviewing terror suspects call their side of the argument the "One-Percent Solution"--meaning that if that one time out of a hundred torture does produce good intel and can stop a real plot, then all those needless electrodes to the nuts of innocent detainees will have been worth it.

This is speculative nonsense. Since 9/11 we and our remaining allies may have tortured as many as ten thousand prisoners (and I'm spitball-extrapolating from the numbers of prisoners in Cuba, Iraq, and other detainment centers that the US alone commands, plus whatever our pro-torure allies have done, while recognizing that not all prisoners are worth torturing). While the detentions have broken up a good number of al-Qaeda cells in Pakistan, where certainly some torture is going on, our trumpet-happy bragadocious White House occupants have yet to claim that a single actual plot against America has been stopped for all the naked waterboarding we've done. So, judging by history, the ratio for the one percent solution is not 100-to-1 but 10,000-to-nothing that torture will stop an attack.

On the other hand, I think it's safe to assume that, barring the occasional Helsinki syndrome, just about every one of those tortured prisoners, and the thousands more who've been held prisoner without charges or torture, and the tens of thousands of family members who struggle to learn of any news of the prisoners' status, and the hundreds of thousands of radically-inclined angry Muslims on the Arab street who read the news about the sodomizing and the rapes and the dog attacks and the soiled Qurans, are all pretty much guaranteed to be our enemies for life. Among them certainly there will be future terrorists. And that my friends is not a 100-to-one shot. Besides wasting resources and destroying our credibility, torture creates future enemies.

In fact, it's already happened. The two London plots and the Madrid bombing were carried out by people not motivated like bin Laden against America for placing troops in Saudi Arabia, but motivated by the very horror stories that have been produced by the Bush administration's guns-ablazing torture policy and its shock-&-awe the collaterals foreign policy. Thus while their disregard for American standards of decency have not made us safer, they have made our enemies bigger, stronger, and more popular.

If America is hit by terrorists in the next few years, it won't be because Mr Bush failed to stop the terrorists. It will be because he created them.

[whistle]

1. How about Abu Ghraib-15 or all of the outsourcing the military

...has done to accomplish torture for information?

[Bucky]

2. Absolutely. There's a reason why Bush made Iraq grant clemency to mercs

There's a lot of more extreme off-budget torture and terror being carried out by the security contractors who have been exempted from prosecution under Iraqi law. The shit is waist deep and only a bare fraction of it is coming from the soldiers being prosecuted.

[Bucky]

3. darn. forced to self-kick

but I spent too much time writing this to let it disappear

[The Stranger]

4. The ticking bomb is absolute bullshit.

Somehow people think that if there is some fear that there is a bomb somewhere ticking and some person in custody (which is already presumed guilty) has some information about it, that torture is justifiable. Holy shit, I can't believe I am reading this.

Where does this kind of imbecile shit come from? Civil rights, human rights, civil liberties are located and exist in the person. They are not subject to majority vote. We cannot all get together and vote that you are guilty or a bad person, even if we have a majority and even if we are all very afraid of you. This isn't mob rule. The right one has not to be tortured are not outweighed by the fear that many others may have of some hypothetical danger. It does not work that way. One person's rights can only be taken away by due process.

God damn, what in the fuck is going on here?

[Raksha]

5. You are absolutely right! I won't buy into the ticking bomb scenario

either. I say torture is always wrong, PERIOD. No exceptions, NOT EVEN the hypothetical ticking bomb scenario! I won't make an exception even for the impossible situation where you KNOW you have a ticking bomb somewhere, and you have a suspect in custody you KNOW has some knowledge of it. First of all, the situation has never happened as far as we know, but most important it's the beginning of a slippery slope to hell. If torture is acceptable in that situation, it's not that big a step to say it's also acceptable in a situation where you think you MIGHT have a ticking bomb somewhere, and a suspect in custody you think MIGHT have some knowledge of it. And from there it's not that big a step to the situation where you think you MIGHT have a ticking bomb somewhere, and a person in custody who isn't even a suspect but who is related to somebody you think MIGHT have some knowledge of it. And from there to a bunch of sadists on a fishing expedition. Baby steps, all of them, but they lead straight to hell. And that's why I'm unwilling to start down that path AT ALL.

[me b zola]

6. The "ticking time bomb" is a red herring

Good post. Here's how I responded to another thread where someone brought up the question of a ticking bomb:

Such a set of events are highly unlikely. Since torture is counter productive under normal circumstances, why would it work even if there was a rip in time & space and the "ticking time bomb" scenerio was to occur?

Here's a few things to consider:

>That everything that it means to be an American is contained within the Constitution & the Bill of Rights. No matter what awful thing an outside enemy of the State were able to accomplish here, they could never destroy America. Are you following my line of thought? America can only be destroyed from within, by our own hands. As long as we uphold the rule of law and our sacred documents, we will survive.

>40,000 people die every year in auto accidents. Should we outlaw automobiles in the name of public safety? 40,000--wow, think about that.

>Imagine a nuke gets set off here in the US. Do you know what I think it would look like? I think that it would look like the Gulf Coast after Katrina hit. Of course there would be many survivors with radiation burns and poisening, but in terms of displaced people I believe it would be about the same. The point here is that we survived, of course if bush* hadn't completely ruined FEMA there would be many families that would be doing better than just surviving--and don't even get me started on those who didn't survive only because of bush*s criminal negligence.




So let me summerize my rambling post: The "ticking time bomb" excuse for torturing people, it is a red herring. Torture doesn't work. No amount of terrorism has the ability to destroy us, only we have that power. The odds of dying due terrorism don't even compare to the odds of dying doing the things that we do everyday. Even if the worst case scenerio occurs, we have survived a similar circumstance---but we despirately need Dems to be back in office so that we can deal with emergencies.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=2154055&mesg_id=2154352





Thanks for your post, people really need to get a grip and think about what it is that they fear...or want us to fear ;)

[TahitiNut]

7. Here's my rejoinder to that bizarre hypothetical.

Do you REALLY think we need to legally sanction torture generally in order to give someone "permission" to do so under the scenario described?? Under such a scenario, anyone who'd let some law get in his or her way just isn't fucking CERTAIN enough that they're right! That's an inherent contradiction. If they're so certain, why would anyone let a law stop them? What kind of insane mind thinks that a jury would convict a person, irrespective of the law, under such a scenario?

It's the most insane 'argument' in favor of legalizing torture that I can imagine.

[me b zola]

8. Your response is much more effective and to the point than mine

...but the entire thread focused on torture and I was just hoping to reach some part of the poster's brain with a bit of perspective. :D

Someone was saying this past week on cnn, IIRC he was a retired general, that if such an improbable situation were to occur he would do what it took to save lives and take the consequences for it. He was strongly opposed to changing our laws to accomidate torture which would put our service members at greater risk. I agree that no one would convict such a person for breaking the law if it saved lives. Jury nullification does happen--don't you love our system of government? :)

[CJCRANE]

9. The 9/11 commission,

flawed as it was, indicated that simple detective work - such as examining Moussaoui's laptop - could've gone some way to help prevent the attacks.


Routine torture is not the way forward, in fact it seems that innocent (or unknowledgeable) detainees simply invent bizarre made-up scenarios to give their interrogators what they want, just to stop the pain.

[magellan]

10. K&R (nt)

[tblue37]

11. What many people don't get is that such abuse of prisoners is

not done to try to extract information. Even if the torturers got info they needed--even if it was exactly what they were hoping to get--they would not stop the torture. People who commit torture do so because they like to. It is exciting to them. It also, eventually, if not immediately, becomes sexually exciting to them.

All you need to do is look at the grins, the absolute delight, on the faces of the Abu Ghraib guards to understand that they were not seeking information to save lives, nor were they trying to soften prisoners up so they would tell their later interrogators what they "needed" to know. They were just having fun--a lot of fun.

I remember the story of one of Stalin's loyal undercover operatives who was arrested during a purge in the 1950s. I no longer recall his name--just his story. He had participated in a number of torture sessions, so when the goons came to arrest him, though he had never been anything but loyal, he knew what was in store for him. He told them that they didn't need to work him over. He would admit to whatever they said, sign whatever confession they wanted him to sign.

But at his show trial, his appearance made it clear that they had spared him nothing. They had tortured him anyway, not to get what they wanted from him--he was going to give them that anyway--but just because they wanted to torture him and were not about to be deprived of their fun.

[davekriss]

12. The ticking time bomb scenario is long refuted...

...for exactly the reasons stated (about Abu Zubaydah). Torture to produce information yields uselss information, as the tortured says anything and everything possible to make the pain stop.

The thing is, we know this, the CIA knows this, and the Bush Regime knows this. The stated purpose -- "to get information" -- is propagandist cover, as information gathering has never been the purpose of the modern use of state-sanctioned torture, something well studied and taught by the world's best, the analysts and instructors at School of the Americas in Ft. Benning, Georgia, USA.

The Bush Regime uses torture for the same reasons GHWB and Reagan used torture during the American Holocaust in the Central America of the eighties -- i.e., to terrorize a target population for the purpose of breaking its will for freedom and self-determination. The idea is to create fear, apathy, and silence while the USG furthers its own self-serving agenda.

Torture is narrative. It is meant to be visible. It has little to do with the victim of torture (who is a means to an end). The intended audience of the narrative are those left behind in the population from which the victim is snatched, the colleagues, fellow soldiers (or terrorists), the leaders in the community and the general public. It is meant to say to that community that if you continue to pursue an agenda not consonant with the the aims and purposes of the torturing state, then something worse than death awaits you. The audience is supposed to retreat in fear, freeze into inaction, give up all hope. That's why we torture.

While I agree that the Bush Regime is something extra special -- for example, with Bush we for the most part drop the pretense of proxy (up till now we've generally just funded, equipped, trained, and coached) -- you have to acknowledge that torture of this kind has been part of the clandestine arsenal for some time. Torture "of this kind" is part of the modern state's arsenal (from Torture: State Terror vs. Democracy, by Orlando Tizon, 2002),

Modern torture is designed to destroy the personality of the individual and by extension the community. Ultimately, it is a strategy designed to defeat democratic aspirations at the root, which makes it a tool of choice for unpopular regimes around the world.

<snip>

Torture as practiced today is primarily for the purpose of maintaining unpopular governments in power. "We therefore refer to torture as an instrument of power. Our research has shown that the torturers who work for governments try to break down the victims' identity, and this affects the family and the society as well." Thus the main purpose of torture is not to extract a confession but to break the individual's humanity and make an example of the victim before the community and thereby suppress all political opposition. Torture is the ultimate weapon for terrorizing and controlling the individual human being and the community. When members of a community are made powerless and lose trust in themselves and in one another, building a democratic community is rendered extremely difficult and complex. Torture then is an instrument to destroy democratic aspirations and actions, as history has clearly shown.

I completely agree with this assessment. Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, too, are good sources for the history of how torture is used by the United States and other repressive states. You're aware, of course, about the School of the Americas, about the roles of John Negroponte and Elliot Abrams while U.S.-trained fiends tortured and disappeared labor leaders, students, peasants interested in better schools and hospitals in El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua. The fact that people like Negroponte, who denied that El Mozote ever occured, and Abrams who looked the other way while Batallion 3-16 was on the loose, the fact that they and others were invited back to positions of power in the Bush Regime told me where Bush stood with regards to use of torture before we ever heard of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. None of this surprises me (and the fact that Negroponte is now National Intelligence Director scares me). If we, the American public, are additionally meant to be hearers of this violent narrative of torture, it can only be the beginnings of intended serious repression here at home. Maybe we can understand a little why the Regime spends a third of a billion dollars just to keep Halliburton prepared to build detention camps on a moments notice.

Torture, in my opinion, is terrorism in microcosm. Both are public narrative, both intend to intimidate, both are despicably immoral.

I leave you with this (apologies, I often use),

...And so, you say, you've learned a little
about starvation: a child like a supper scrap
filling with worms, many children strung
together, as if they were cut from paper
and all in a delicate chain. And that people
who rescue physicists, lawyers and poets
lie in bed at night with reports
of mice introduced into women, of men
whose testicles are crushed like eggs.
That they cup their own parts
with their bedsheets and move themselves
slowly, imagining bracelets affixing
their wrists to the wall where the naked
are pinned, where the naked are tied open
and left to the hands of those who erase
what they touch. We are all erased
by them, and no longer resemble decent
men. We no longer have the hearts,
the strength, the lives of women.
Your problem is not your life as it is
in America, not that your hands, as you
tell me, are tied to do something. It is
that you were born to an island of greed
and grace where you have this sense
of yourself as apart from others. It is
not your right to feel powerless. Better
people than you were powerless.
You have not returned to your country,
but to a life you never left.

-- Carolyn Forche, Return, 1980 (about her experience in El Salvador)