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8.0

Torture, again

Asked by DanRollins in Philosophy & Religion, Politics

The use of torture to extract information keeps coming up.

Most people consider it a despicable practice, but there are two angles of attack:
* Some argue from a standpoint of morality; it is immoral, so don't do it.
* Others argue from logic; it doesn't work, so don't do it.

One poster here, Graphixer, repeatedly asks for examples of cases (actually, he wants just "a single case") where torture has been used effectively to save lives or prevent harm. After a few lengthy sessions googling, I found it surprisingly (to me) difficult to locate documented situations.

It seems to me that there must be some fact behind the fictional scenarios we see on TV and movies and books. Some examples:

* In TV show "24" Jack Bauer obtains a key piece of time-critical evidence by torturing somebody.
* In "NYPD Blues" a detective "tunes up" a perp to learn names of other criminals and hideouts.
* In "L&O SVU" a kidnapped child is freed only after torturing the pedophile.
* In countless movies and books, the *bad guys* use torture to gain access to bank vaults, etc.
* A loan shark breaks a guy's finger and the borrower "remembers" some hidden assets.
* Spies carry suicide pills for one reason: They know that they will reveal secrets if tortured.
* I know that if I, personally, were tortured, I'd tell every secret I knew.

All of that is fictional or subjective. But surely it is possible to locate "real life" situations where torture -- illegal or legal -- has been used to obtain information that was useful in wartime or in a criminal investigation.

I have found several such instances and will bring them up as the discussion progresses. But I think that some P&R posters might find it an interesting challenge to do their own research and report it here.

Note that I am not interested in your arguments that torture is immoral... let's consider that a given.

What I'm really interested in is an analysis of the effectiveness of torture as a means of obtaining useful information. Please cite specific cases and provide links to relevant web pages.
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Torture, again

Asked by DanRollins in Philosophy & Religion, Politics

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