Wobbles/AJ Phillips/Grputland/ Sancho,

Most of the opponents of torture seems to be taking the salad approach to the debate i) restrictions on civil liberties ii) wrong govt foreign policy iii) witch hunts iv) Aztecs , all get served up in a mixed dish.

All of the above are no doubt important considerations - but for the sake clarity I’d like to hear two central questions answered – in isolation:
( forgetting for the moment whether it does on does not achieve valid results –or who/whom may misuse it)
1)If torture can save lives, would you countenance it?
Can the opposition side give a straight yes or no answer? And,

2) What constitutes torture? (is there a definition we all would agree on?)

Mirko's article would be a hilarious example of relativist reasoning that some always accuse the 'loony left' and those wicked 'secularists' of, if the subject were not so serious.

It is hilarious to read a condemnation of 'the slippery slope' argument generally so loved by the conservative right to dismiss arguments contrary to their black and white world view.

Thankfully the majority of posters, and I'm sure they would represent the entire political spectrum, agree that torture has no place. It is no less evil if done by a 'good' guy with supposedly 'good' intentions, then if done by a 'bad' guy.

Sancho, your first post made me laugh out loud. Indeed, lets start with torturing food manufacturers, car manufacturers, casino owners alcohol producers, cigarette manufacturers and especially their advertisers to get to the truth that it is all about making a buck regardless of the cost to any individual or any society.

There can not be any ground on which torture is condoned acceptable to the idea that all human beings are rational thinking beings as opposed to animals where survival of the fittest is the only criteria. Surely it is not loony left to think that humans have a capacity for morality or human civilization?

Fair enough.

1) Yes, I would countenance torture if it was done in near-certainty that it would yield information which prevented violence and death. Hell, I'd tolerate it if even half of the torture sessions carried out produced such information.

But what's happening is the reverse. The example I gave above actually happened. At other times, the spooks have rounded up every Mohammed, Muhummed, and Mahamed in a suburb and tortured them after an anonymous tip-off that someone with that name was building a bomb.

If you pull someone off the street, beat and waterboard them, then let them go without charge, all you've done is created another terrorist sympathiser. Aside from lightening the burden of investigation, rounding people up en masse for harsh interrogation makes the problem look larger than it is, which plays very well politically for those who profit from the war on terror.

The hawks complain that we appear weak for treating the evil bad guys with kid gloves, but the majority of people being tortured in our name are entirely innocent. In thirty years it might be China doing the extraordinary rendition. Would you back Mirko's argument if it was a member of your family being deported to a Syrian concentration camp for criticising the Communist Party?

2) I agree with the International Committee of the Red Cross, that torture is the "intentional infliction of severe suffering or pain" for a specific purpose. The manner and duration is irrelevant.

Waterboarding, in particular, is being touted as a form of torture with no lasting effects. But once you've broken someone's mind, you can't just release them and expect them to go back to being a balanced and healthy person.

Knowing that a foreign government can, at any time, kidnap and subject you to torture and imprisonment is far, far, more menacing and frightening than the slim possibility that a terrorist may detonate a homemade bomb somewhere in the country.

The pro-torture camp has two elephants in the living room:

(1) Where torture is unconditionally banned, investigators already use torture (or outsource it) in a much wider range of circumstances than the pro-torture camp would allow. Thus the pro-torture arguments, IF they were valid, would not call for exceptions to the ban on torture, but rather would call for tighter enforcement of the existing ban.

(2) In view of (1), IF a particular illegal act of torture had actually saved lives, the torturer would expect to benefit from an executive discretion not to prosecute -- and, if prosecuted, would expect to benefit from the jury's power to acquit in the teeth of both the law and the facts.

In short, the circumstances in which interrogators get away with torture are already too wide even by the standards of the pro-torture camp, and any new legal loopholes would make them even wider.

Horus asks me (among others): "If torture can save lives, would you countenance it? Can the opposition side give a straight yes or no answer?"

If in fact torture cannot save lives, then he might as well ask "If 2+2=5, would you condone torture?" Should I then answer "Yes, but 2+2 doesn't make 5," or "No, because 2+2 doesn't make 5"? The demand for a "yes or no" answer is an attempt to suppress the more important "but" or "because", so that Horus can then substitute his own "but" or "because" and attack me for holding a position that I do not hold.

"Londonistan" is a red herring because it's a function of immigration policy, not torture policy. "Londonistan" is also a consequence of colonizing an foreign country more populous than one's own. What goes around comes around.

I admit that there is inconsistency on both sides of this debate; but the inconsistency is wider and deeper than any single issue.

There are two competing approaches to ethics: the CONSEQUENCE-BASED approach, which I shall call CONSEQUENTIALISM (which is what Cowboy Joe calls Situational Ethics, and part of what Rhian calls utilitarianism), and the ACT-BASED approach, usually called DEONTOLOGY.

CONTINUED...

...CONTINUED

(The term "deontology" obfuscates because it is derived from the verb meaning "to be right" but fails to specify the distinguishing criterion of rightness. The term "situational ethics" is similarly unhelpful because deontologists preach their own ACT-BASED "situational ethics". The term "utilitarianism" is too specific because it considers only TOTAL utility, whereas some consequentialists also concern themselves with DISTRIBUTION of utility. But anyway...)

Hypocrisy reigns on both sides.

The self-appointed champion of deontology is the Church of Rome, which uses deontological arguments to "prove" that direct contraception is forbidden even when the only alternative is total abstinence, and that direct abortion is forbidden even if both the mother and the foetus will die otherwise. Meanwhile the same church takes consequentialist positions on war and organ transplants. And of course it now takes a deontological position against torture, but notoriously took a different position in earlier centuries.

Secularists and religious progressives, who reject the deontological approach to contraception and abortion (even if they happen to be pro-life in all circumstances and hence anti-abortion in ALMOST all circumstances), usually fall into deontological arguments on torture, and sometimes also on war. And right-wingers who defend torture on "consequentialist" grounds take a deontological position on numerous other issues (namely that the stick must be preferred to the carrot regardless of the consequences).

The Church of Rome accuses consequentialists of being unable to rule out any course of action, however terrible it may be. But that's a lie. One can be a consequentialist while maintaining on independent grounds that there are certain actions which, by their very nature, can never pass the consequentialist test.

In particular, you can be a consequentialist while maintaining that torture can never pass the test. But if that is your position, you need to have the courage to say so -- and not to have a one-night stand with deontology just because it happens to support your preferred conclusion on one issue.

And by the same logic you can say: If you crack under torture, do so by incriminating someone who is in some way responsible for the torture.

Sure,
Let's torture anyone and everyone who is suspected of having information on terrorism.

Then we can torture those suspected of capital crimes, such as murder - and get them to confess. Saves a lot of unneccessary court time and expense.

Once we have a precedent, why not move it down the line and use it more liberally for other potential offences.

It worked a treat back in the Spanish Inquisition days.

Above all, let's keep the decision where to use it out of the hands of that bleeding heart judiciary and give all the power to politicians and public servants, where it belongs.

Maybe a department like DOCS or DIMIA could be used to implement it. Remember that Vivian Salon and Cornelia Rau were mere abberations in an otherwise perfect system.

Of course, no innocents would ever get caught up in such matters and films like Gilliam's "Brazil" where "information retrieval" was part of everyday life would never ever happen in real life.