On torture: I Trust President Obama

[Savannahmann]

79. But here be the rub

Torture doesn't work. You get information, but it's inaccurate. In other words, the guy tends to lie to make the pain stop.

Let's take a look at Alan West shall we? It was decided that the suspect, an innocent Iraqi Cop, had information about the insurgents plan to attack the Americans. No matter how much the Iraqi denied any knowledge or involvement the interrogators were absolutely certain he was lying. Colonel Alan West pulled his pistol, placed it next to the suspects ear, and pulled the trigger. The resulting bang was loud enough to cause permanent hearing damage. The suspect began babbling, swearing that there were attacks coming from every direction he could think of, to make the pain end, to save his life, and limb.

The "nightmare" scenario on shows like 24 always work out in favor of torture. Yet in real life, they don't work out that way. Oh, you'll have the odd success, but most of the information you end up with is pure fantasy. Crap made up to get the pain to stop.

Let's say someone decided that you had such information. They begin to smack you around, or smack a loved one around. It will stop only when you confess. You confess to save yourself, your loved ones. Well, they know you're guilty, they have a confession. Sure, all the information is nonsense, but that doesn't matter, you confessed and an innocent person wouldn't have no matter what they did to you.

That's the truth about torture. IT doesn't work. It just doesn't work. For every truthful statement you get out of the actual baddies, you get dozens of lies to make the pain stop. One success out of dozens of efforts is not a reliable method of interrogation.

Here is a better idea. Brain scans to detect lies. Ask the guy if the attack is coming on Tuesday. He says no, the computer says he's lying. We have the tech now. But we want to return to the baser instincts and smack the guy around and make him talk.

I trust President Obama, like you. Unlike you that trust is not limitless. If President Obama were to propose or condone such actions, I would oppose him using every argument that I could muster. Especially since the torture you mention, probably wouldn't allow the authorities to stop the nuclear bomb nightmare scenario in Los Angeles that you mention. So a more accurate situation would be we tortured the guy until he talked, and then we found out he was lying. But we can't prosecute the ones who tortured because they're dead too.

We interviewed Nazi soldiers, and got lots of information. We interviewed Japanese Prisoners, when we could get them, and got lots of information without torture. Nazi's and Japanese used torture, and rarely got any useful information. You tell me what the advantage of the moral high ground. Because you can always toss out a justification for doing the wrong thing. The best of intentions is always a good excuse. If that is the case, why did we oppose Colonel West? Because he was a torturer and a Lunatic RW Douche in my case. In yours, I'm presuming it is only because he was a RW Douce, he did torture with the best of intentions right?