Why is torture so offensive to people?

Originally posted by '___'eviant
reply to post by tomfrusso
[more

You may be too old to join the military, but you're not too old to fly to the middle east, get a gun, and kill as many of 'them' as you can before they get you.

Seek help. You aren't of sound mind.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
beautiful, you took the words right
out of my mouth!
Go seek your revenge... this chickenhawk crap from older people drives me nuts.
O'Reilly, get your arse over there. Same with you lard arse Rush L.
Hannity, I'm sure someone can teach you which end of a rifle to hold.

Originally posted by Res_ipsa_loquitur
Numerous message boards here on ATS talk of how torturing terror suspects is so 'evil'; however, I would argue that now, more than any other period in history, its use is entirely justified.

I agree fully: all of those suspected of evil in the current administration should be tortured until they admit they staged the false flag operation on 9/11.

Just kididng, torture is never justified, I assumed everyone who wasn't a Kristol neo-con was on board with that basic premise...

But no, it is never justified - Ask McCain - he couldn't even be tortured before he started telling government secrets according to Jack McLamb;

Audio interview exposing McCain

Originally posted by Res_ipsa_loquitur

Another way of looking at the whole situation is to look at it subjectively, as opposed to objectively. Imagine, the situation: your loved one goes to work in a nearby city by means of a train commute. That train/subway is then attacked, as in London back in 2005, and your loved one dies as a result. However, the whole heartache and loss could have been prevented if the authorities were legally allowed to extract crucial information prior to the attack by means of torturing an associate of the terrorists. Would you still abhor the use of it as so many of you do?

While situations like this seem plausible on TV, very seldom has anything like this ever happened in real life.

Besides, the London bombings were a false flag attack organized by the same folks who organized the whole 9/11 event: Government.


Scare the people into giving up their rights to set up a police state enforcing global control for the people's "own good".


I'm sick of it. Government power, corporate power, and banking power is more threatening than any terrorist. Military and government power has killed hundreds of millions in the 20th century... terrorists only a few thousand.


There's no contest. Weapons under the exclusive control of government poses more risk to more people than anything any potential terrorist could hope to accomplish.

[edit on 16-5-2008 by ianr5741]

So, for all who think terrorists deserve to be tortured or killed as a punishment:

Give me an example from history which shows that this kind of revenge actually works. It doesn't. The country that is attacked on will eventually develop and get its revenge in one way or another, and there cannot really be an effective network of surveillance preventing such a thing wihthout Orwell's 1984 world.

Lets just calculate cost of all this crap that followed because of 9/11. I don't really know how much real total sum of money is, buts lets use 2000 billion. Divide that by number of 9/11 victims, and you will quickly realize how much money this insane revenge machine (which is the new name of unhonourful u.s. military system) costs.

Torture is always okay to an idiot until it's used on them and then they finally figure out why it is in-humane... To even post a thread like this shows a lack of intelligence, one normally accustomed to a wild animal and not a human being...

reply to post by Res_ipsa_loquitur


I wish there was a negative star and flag button.

Who needs logic when you can bellyfeel?

I think the key flaw in their whole argument is that torturing suspects who wish to threaten our freedom and liberty is indirectly preserving our rights granted by law by removing the threat which they desperately advocate.

The key flaw in your post is that by definition, suspects are innocents. 100%. The second flaw is that torture would be acceptable even if they were guilty.

Another way of looking at the whole situation is to look at it subjectively, as opposed to objectively. Would you still abhor the use of it as so many of you do?

Yes. Personal identification with a crime has no bearing on the law. I would still put a bullet through your head before I allowed you to rape a 3 year old even if it meant that all 5 billion + on the planet would die as a result. Its a false choice.

Of course there will be innocent people who are wrongly suspected of involvement in any attacks/plots and subsequently tortured but is the torture of one innocent that wrong in order to be able to torture ten guilty persons?

Yes. Even excusing the moral relativism of your premise, it is still wrong to torture anyone guilty or innocent in any situation.

People in the U.S. should be more proud of their government organisations, in particular the CIA, who allegedly participate in these practices.

They have admitted to it. How is it allegedly? This type of faux patriotism is exactly how we get into oral dilemmas like this. The CIA itself to be praise worthy ought to have rejected the notion of torture without having a legal gun to its head. I would be proud of that.

I have a premise for you. Would it be acceptable if you were that CIA agent to know that torture is a crime against humanity but to do it anyway to save innocents with the knowledge that as a result, you would be tortured exactly the same way and for the same duration? Or tried thereafter as a war criminal and accept the full penalty of law? Of course it wouldnt matter if the person was guilty or not, the crime is the torture itself and you accept the responsibility for breaking that law.

Your thoughts?

our technoogy is so sophisticated, i doubt we need such archaic methods to get the truth out of people. Its probably just s deterrent to scare them so we dont have many more terrorists to deal with.

supposedly 60ish years ago they used a mixture of heroine and scopoalamine as a truth serum on Tesla's death bed to locate and steal all his work.

Now in the public realm we can almost read peoples minds thru MRI or vocal chords- 2 separate technologies. Who knows what the black ops guys got. Especailly if we are working with aliens. lol.

Seems fishy to me.

Originally posted by Res_ipsa_loquitur
Numerous message boards here on ATS talk of how torturing terror suspects is so 'evil'; however, I would argue that now, more than any other period in history, its use is entirely justified.

Human rights/civil liberty promoters endlessly rant about how inhuman, unconstitutional, illegal, etc the practice is. I think the key flaw in their whole argument is that torturing suspects who wish to threaten our freedom and liberty is indirectly preserving our rights granted by law by removing the threat which they desperately advocate.

Another way of looking at the whole situation is to look at it subjectively, as opposed to objectively. Imagine, the situation: your loved one goes to work in a nearby city by means of a train commute. That train/subway is then attacked, as in London back in 2005, and your loved one dies as a result. However, the whole heartache and loss could have been prevented if the authorities were legally allowed to extract crucial information prior to the attack by means of torturing an associate of the terrorists. Would you still abhor the use of it as so many of you do?

Of course there will be innocent people who are wrongly suspected of involvement in any attacks/plots and subsequently tortured but is the torture of one innocent that wrong in order to be able to torture ten guilty persons?

People in the U.S. should be more proud of their government organisations, in particular the CIA, who allegedly participate in these practices.

There are several flaws in your argument. First, you said that "the key flaw in their whole argument is that torturing suspects who wish to threaten our freedom and liberty is indirectly preserving our rights granted by law by removing the threat which they desperately advocate"; however, how would you argue that torture is being used to these ends? How would you prove that torture is actually protecting us when there is no evidence of that, and all evidence that has been offered has been debunked? In addition, I have never seen any research on the use of torture that showed that torture leads to viable information. What actually happens is that the person being tortured says anything just to make the torture stop. The truth of that information does not actually mean anything.

Second, you gave the example of my loved one dying. First, you would have to have proof that the person you tortured actually had information. Since that cannot be guaranteed, the likelihood of such measures leading to something like the camps instituted in WWII is too real. You imply that only one person would be tortured unjustifiably, but I would argue that the ratio would probably go the other direction with many, many people being tortured unjustifiably for a possible crumb of information that wouldn't be that reliable to begin with. Would I be upset over my loved one dying? Of course! Would I want the people who caused it brought to justice? Absolutely! But would I want other innocent people to suffer because of it? Definitely not.

The fact is that we have been torturing people for years now, and we have nothing to show for it. The head of the DOJ has implied that we had information that could have prevented 9-11 (obtained without torture, I might add). Our government chose not to act on that intelligence and instead, fabricated intelligence to launch us into a war that now makes these arguments necessary.

If we are a nation of laws and not of men, then we must follow those laws as they have been set out, which includes adhering to the treaties that we have signed, such as the Geneva Convention. Otherwise, we cannot be any sort of light to the world in the press for democracy.

Originally posted by downtown436
Torture produces bad data. Think about it, if you didn't know something that your interrogators thought you knew, and they were torturing you, you would come up with something fast, to prevent further bodily harm, anyone would.

Not to mention the fact that Al-qiada is a load of BS invented by our own gov't, and the entire war on terror is a giant scam to make a few dirty people rich, and enslave the rest of the world at the same time.

If you are willing to trade liberty for security, you will have neither.

You are either a disinfo agent, or you just don't have a clue.

I started to read this thread, and came to this post. I read it twice.

Al-qiada is a load of BS invented by our own gov't

The entire war on terror is a giant scam to make a few dirty people rich and

enslave the rest of the world at the same time.

If that's not an example of mental torture, having to read that, I don't know what is.:shk:

Has any "terror" event been stopped because of someone being tortured and spilling the information?????? Please find proof that this technique has actually stopped people from blowing up buildings or trains or anything of that sort.

There is not point anyways, because all you can do is find something about the supposed terrorists in Seattle or Oregon or where ever it was who were supposedly planning a terror attack, when in fact there is more evidence to prove they were drug dealers, dealing with the CIA (unknowingly) and used as scapegoats to promote the absolutedly assinine notion that there are terror plots all over the place under our noses.

I'm not going to say there aren't people who would try to attack us somehow, but how in the hell would you find the right person with information, and why in the hell would they give correct information to someone torturing them????

ONE more thing: aren't these "Terrorists" Kamikaze Suicide Bombers? Hello? They don't give a #@$% about dying, so I highly doubt they care about being tortured; in their eyes, they will rewarded more for keeping their mouth shut or giving false information to throw us off the trail.
Of course that is assuming the terrorists that we need to worry about are in fact some crazy Muslim extremists, when we have no way to know that as fact. Except of course the one hijacker's passport that happened to survive the plane crash, the burning fuel and explosions, the collapse of the building, and the subsequent fires and cleanup, completely unscathed, just so we could know that it was in fact a Muslim extremist.

Wow I don't even know why I post here anymore.

If the original poster is right, then by the same logic experiments on humans, no matter how painful, should be allowed if it were to eradicate certain types of disease. All for the good of humanity.

[edit on 16-5-2008 by BlueEyes]

reply to post by Res_ipsa_loquitur


Dear Sir,

Would you like it if you were captured without a specific charge, sent to Guantanamo and got tortured without the right of a phone call or an attorney?

I really doubt that you would like it.

I read posts on ATS daily, yet only until reading this thread have I decided to make a comment. Besides being illegal, torture is cruel and immoral. The US government should stand for and reflect the principles and standards that they claim to be protecting and spreading. They say they want to liberate the Iraqi people, yet they have constantly inflicted pain and misery on the region for decades, fostering a hated for western civilization that has now spread throughout the globe. The world has seen the photos from Abu Ghraib, they have herd the reports from inside "Gitmo", and they know of the losses of civil liberties within "The land of the Free".
The US government should subjugate other countries armies without in engaging in battle but by winning their hearts and minds, then we would truly be spreading freedom. In reality though the US fights for profits and dominance, not for the cause of freedom. Until ALL the people understand this it will remain a country of blind nationalist supporting whatever their told to, whether it be torture is justifiable or that the "War on Terror" is needed.

It only shows someone's ignorance to ask such a stupid question, maybe you should be tortured to see how you really feel about it.

People in the U.S. should be more proud of their government organisations, in particular the CIA, who allegedly participate in these practices. ?????

WTF... are you kidding?

Welcome to OZ

reply to post by tomfrusso


And THIS is why doctors many times, are not allowed to operate on their own family members.

Because they are emotionally involved and fail to see things using reason.

Originally posted by jsobecky
If that's not an example of mental torture, having to read that, I don't know what is.

:shk:

The difference being; you didn't have to read it. You could have played golf, hugged your kids, made love to your wife, gone fishing, posted on ATS etc....

Jailed torture victims innocent or not are at the mercy of their captors.

[edit on 16-5-2008 by whaaa]

I think that the main problem that I have with torture is what happens when you have the wrong person?

Imagine, you're walking down the street and you get picked up by a group of people that you don't know and find yourself in a room with people that won't believe that you don't have the information that they want.

Next thing out come the implements of torture. Now, I would readily admit that I wouldn't last long even if i knew something but what do you do if you really don't have any knowledge that they want?

How long do you torture someone before you might suspect that they actually don't have the information that you want?

Originally posted by Wildbob77
How long do you torture someone before you might suspect that they actually don't have the information that you want?

I don't think getting the information is really what the torturers are after. Thats just the excuse.

It's the sexual pleasure that sadists get from inflicting pain on others.
A sane person would be incapable of torture in the first place.