When has the "ticking time bomb" scenario happened in real life?

[ck4829]

I'm looking at it now, and so far I have yet to see one time when "enhanced interrogations" led people to a bomb seconds away from exploding and then defused it.

Can anyone help me with this one?

[Deep13]

1. **chirp**chirp**chirp**chirp** nt

[JHB]

2. 24? oh, wait...right, REAL life...

Dirty Harry? nawp, 'nuther movie...

[RandomThoughts]

3. Only in TV movies, not in real life.

So does reality make opinions, or the people that control what shows get put on TV?

Oh, and they are not liberal, or conservative.

[Ian David]

4. I was once stuck in an elevator when I had to shit. n/t

[sinkingfeeling]

5. Well, there was the case of the pizza delivery guy with a 'neck bomb' that was arrested and

sitting in front of the police car......
No. Nobody was tortured to get information and it did explode.

[Kcoll]

6. Even if we concede that it could happen

You can't base a policy on the rarest and most extreme of situations.

[QueenOfCalifornia]

7. Uh.... Let's see...

er, ummmmmm, la-dee-daa.....

I can't find one thing on the internets confirming a ticking time bomb scenario. Just a lot of b.s. ----

I think Jack Bauer runs into it a lot though...

[gratuitous]

8. It was that time God made a rock so big he himself couldn't lift it

"But how do you know that isn't happening right this moment with those guys we've held at Guantanamo for the last seven years? Can we afford to take the chance that there isn't some eight year time bomb ticking away beneath our very feet? What if your loved one was sitting over it right this second? Don't you love your wife/husband/daughter/son enough to save them from the ticking time bomb? If we waterboard this guy just one more time, maybe he'll give it up. Or if we have him in a stress position for just another couple of hours. Then we'd be heroes!"

This, sadly, is what passes for intelligent discourse on this subject.

[Deep13]

9. To paraphrase what John Stewart said last night...

...even if torture gets the guy to talk, it won't get him to talk English.

So, conspiracy to commit torture and then doing it, a Federal crime: okay

Being a gay soldier who can translate what a prisoner is saying: not okay.

[backscatter712]

10. Never.

You've got a scenario where the authorities 1. know that a ticking time bomb exists, 2. They capture a person who knows where and when the ticking time bomb goes off. 3. Even though they know the bomb exists, they don't know when and where it's going to go off. 4. They know the person they captured does know.

That's an insanely contrived scenario right there, which has only been seen in shows like 24.

On top of that, we're assuming that 5. Torture is the most effective means to extract accurate information from the prisoner quick enough to defuse the ticking time bomb, which is completely false - information acquired through torture is notoriously unreliable because the victim will say what he thinks you want to hear to make the pain stop. Skilled interrogation techniques that outwit the prisoner and rely on psychology are far more accurate and effective.

[Deep13]

14. Very true.

If cops want a suspect to confess, they act like they are his buddy. They totally understand and sympathize and that crime victim sure had it coming!

Of course, even if torture was effective, Federal criminal law specifically excludes it as a defense.

[Supersedeas]

11. the ticking bomb of NOT FINDING WMD -- the ticking bomb of needing a new justification for the

invasion and occupation of Iraq

[Deep13]

13. It was a witch hunt.

Church and state officials used to torture suspected witches to get names of other witches. As with the WMDs, witchcraft did not exist. The torture was just to justify the continuation of the witch hunt.

[Raineyb]

12. Never n/t

[Echo In Light]

15. It's a fabricated, propaganda construct in keeping with the phony "war on terror."