Here's the quote by President Clinton from Friday's show:
Like you take this interrogation deal, we might all say the same thing, if, let‘s say, Osama bin Laden‘s No. 3 guy were captured and we knew a big bomb was going off in America in three days. Turns out, right now, there‘s an exception for those kinds of circumstances in an immediate emergency that‘s proven in the military ranks. But that‘s not the same thing as saying, we want to abolish the Geneva Conventions and practice torture as a matter of course. All it does is make soldiers vulnerable to torture and make us more likely to get bad not good information.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14999415/ Unfortunately he doesn't go into detail so it's not all that informative but the emergency exception was news to me nonetheless.
The uselessness of info gained through torture is borne out not by comparing it to "non-tortured individuals" but rather on the basis of the actual info itself. A classic example would be the case of the Canadian that has been in the news recently. This individual was "renditioned" to Syria where he was tortured and "confessed" to having been in an Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. He was eventually released and, as it turns out, not only is he not a member of Al Qaeda, he has never even been to Afghanistan. Here's a quote:
His is but one in a case of many that have have "confessed" under torture to things they didn't do. Here's a quote from KO's interview with former CIA agent Jack Rice that further serves to demonstrate just how useless info gained under torture really is.
OLBERMANN: That—this is not that tough, is it? I mean, you torture somebody, and basically he will tell you whatever it is he thinks you want to know?
RICE: Absolutely. It‘s that simple. I mean, when you look at a story like this, any of these stories, you push hard enough, you hurt long enough, you‘re going to get what you want. I can use a waterboard on you, and I guarantee, you‘ll tell me you‘re Bill O‘Reilly. That‘s a scary thought.
OLBERMANN: Yes, indeed, and I‘ll do it within a minute and a half, by the way. But (INAUDIBLE), its value, then, torture, or if we want to use any of the euphemisms for it, torture‘s value as a means of gaining information, as opposed to just as a tool for sadism, is what, exactly?
RICE: Well, it‘s useless. I mean, when you think about this, let‘s pull back to something in the States, admissibility of evidence. When we look at that, we realize that we don‘t allow torture or abuse because we want reliability. That‘s the reason we have that standard.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14938435/ If torture could make KO say that he's O'Reilly, well, I think that more than proves the point. If you'll read through the entire interview as well as some of the other transcripts from KO's recent shows on the subject, I believe you'll find that the experts are in agreement that info gained through torture is notoriously unreliable.
LOL, I don't know that you could call my response "sympathetic" as I in no way support torture, even under the "emergency" clause. By "I see what you're saying", I meant that the issue that you brought up is a common argument that is used to justify torture but, as others have stated, it's also a false one. Perhaps I should have clarified that in my earlier post. Note that I am not "flaming" you for bringing it up but I just wanted to make it clear where I stand on the torture issue and also (hopefully) demonstrate that while the "emergency" clause is there, any info that may be garnered through it is actually rather useless. Thus the clause itself is rather useless and should in no way be used to justify torture. In my view, there is nothing that justifies treating another human being (or animal, for that matter) in an inhumane manner and I am absolutely appalled at what the current administration has been doing. I am also shocked that they can find so many people that are apparently willing to dole out torture at the drop of a hat. It is truly beyond me how anyone can treat another human being like that.
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