Bill Maher Still Doesn't Get That Torture Doesn't EVER Work

[stopbush]

Bill had Bob Baer on Real Time last night. Baer has been tortured in the field during his time in the CIA. He wrote the book, Sleeping With The Enemy.

Bill asked Baer if torture ever works. Baer said no. Emphatically, no. Yet, Bill kept asking him whether we should reserve the right to torture in extreme cases, like the RW wet dream Jack Bauer ticking time bomb scenario (which Baer said never happens and has never happened as far as he knows). Baer continued to say, "It. Doesn't. Work.," Bill wouldn't let it go.

Bill needs to understand what the words "it never works" mean.

It's like flying from NYC to LA. Getting on a jet at an airport in NYC and flying to LA works. Taking a passenger to the top of the Empire State Building, pointing them west, putting a gun to their head and saying, "fly yourself to LA right now, or I'll blow your brains out" doesn't work. Doesn't work for a first-time flyer. Doesn't work for a frequent flyer. Doesn't work, EVER, no matter how "extreme" the need is to fly from NYC to LA. Doesn't work no matter how much the guy putting the gun to the person's head believes it will work.

I found Bill's inability to comprehend this simple truth a bit disturbing.

[undeterred]

1. Bill Maher doesn't understand anything at all about women.

Which I find even more disturbing than his lack of comprehension of torture. Maybe the enormous dumb area in his brain covers both.

[Boojatta]

26. You could just as easily say that Bill Maher understands...

only one thing about women, but that it is his understanding of a few women he knows personally and isn't a thing that is true of women in general.

The above consideration might lead one to suspect that Bill Maher understands only one thing about men, but that it's his understanding of himself and a few other men, and isn't a thing that is true of men in general.

[dem629]

33. He seems to have his share (and more) of women.

:shrug:

[undeterred]

35. He "has" women like normal people have pizza.

I don't see any of them sticking around permanently.

[rcrush]

2. Bill is overrated

If he doesnt agree with you he's like a stubborn donkey who wont let it go.

[AngryAmish]

3. Torture works.

It is silly to debate otherwise. Morals aside of course.

If you knew something that I wanted to know (say the PIN to your ATM card). I torture you. You give me the PIN. I keep you tied up. I go out and try the card. If I don't get money then I come back and torture you again. I will get your PIN - 90% or so of the time.

[NYC_SKP]

6. That it can be used to obtain doesn't mean it works best.

Outside of the TV show, the argument is not about whether or not torture works.

The argument is whether it's more effective than non-torture methods.

And it is not.

It is silly to debate otherwise.

[AngryAmish]

11. Oh I agree.

I just think that people arguing that it doesn't work ignore all of recorded human history. Torture has been used by all peoples throughout the history of earth. Why use torture? It works.

[stopbush]

14. Yes, and religion and belief in god has been around forever

so god MUST exist.

bushco believed Saddam had WsMD, so they MUST exist, somewhere. Correct?

[lunatica]

25. This is a silly premise

Who won't give you the pin if you put a gun to their head? Or do you call that torture. Any threat big enough will get you or anyone that pin they covet so much.

[Boojatta]

28. Have people been gambling through all of recorded history?

If you answer yes, then do you conclude that gambling works? Dostoyevsky thought that it was a way to earn a good income, provided that one pays enough attention to patterns. It didn't work for him in that respect. It got him into debt. I suppose it could be claimed that in some sense it worked for him by providing him with hope, entertainment, or excitement. The question arises: does torture work by providing what it allegedly provides (such as hope for finding and turning off a ticking time bomb) or does it work by providing something different from what its supporters claim to be seeking?

[Warren Stupidity]

9. Yes if you happen to have my atm card you can get my pin.

If on the other hand you do not know the dots connecting A to B (my pin to my atm card) but are instead attempting to get answers to 'unknowns', for example "KSM: did you mastermind the 9-11 attack?", the answer will be "yes", "no", or whatever else the victim thinks the torturer would like as a response.

To further illustrate, suppose you only think you have my atm card, and instead you have somebody else's. You can torture me and I will tell you the pin to that atm card to the best of my ability. There is some small probability that the pin (or pins) I give you is the right pin, but that probability is the same as any random choice from the set of atm pin digits. You have learned nothing from torturing me. Worse, by repeatedly punching in the wrong pins, you have alerted the bank that the account is under attack.

In summary, for trivial matters where most of the facts are known and the victim is known to be in possession of the remaining unknown facts and where the information obtained from the victim can be readily verified, torture will obtain that information.

All of which is irrelevant. Torture is illegal under the law, regardless of circumstances. There is no ticking bomb exemption.

[undeterred]

10. But if I don't actually know the PIN number

I can tell you numbers all day long to try to please you, and you still aren't going to have access to my account.

[Raine1967]

37. Excellent point... EOM.

[stopbush]

12. Your opinion is just that, an opinion. And it is wrong.

It is silly to aver otherwise when all the evidence proves you wrong.

The scenario you outline is a perfect case in point. Suppose I give you my PIN, my correct PIN, even before you tortured me. But unbeknownst to me, my wife went ahead and changed the PIN on our account without telling me. I would be giving you a number that I believed would work, but it wouldn't work. You would return and continue to torture me, but I would be unable to supply you with the correct PIN even if you waterboarded me 183 times in a month. It wouldn't matter how many times you tortured me, because not only could I not give you the correct PIN, I don't even know that the PIN has been changed. And even if I know it has been changed, I don't know what it has been changed to.

Your rationale is that it is my bank account, so I MUST know the correct PIN, and the fact that you're not getting the correct PIN MUST mean that I know it but I've been lying to you. YOUR assumptions are wrong, and you are torturing me for the crime of telling you what I have every right to believe is the absolute truth.

Does this cover 100% of the scenarios? No. It doesn't cover a scenario where I correctly told you my PIN was 8786, and you went to the bank and entered 8687. That didn't work, so you came back and started torturing me again. I start throwing out all kinds of made-up PIN numbers, just to get the pain to stop for a few hours at a time. Will you learn my correct PIN number this way? Nope.

It doesn't cover scenarios where I don't have a bank account but I'm in possession of my boss's ATM card because he asked me to drop it off at his home for his wife to use, but you picked me up before I got there. You now wonder why my ATM card has an alias on it...while assuming that the reason I won't give you the correct PIN is because I haven't been tortured enough. After all, anybody using an alias on their ATM card MUST be hiding something, right?

Like all ghouls who believe torture works, you start with the false assumption that you KNOW that I possess specific information that you want, when that isn't necessarily the case.

You need to think things through before you post.

[AngryAmish]

16. So a method must be 100% effective or it does not work?

Yes it is possible your wife could change the number. But most likely not.

Could I screw up the PIN? Sure.

But if it is your card most of the time you will give up the info.

About 90% of people break under torture. Ask Andy McNab - about as tough of a guy as there was. He broke. He gave up the intel after days of torture.

We have to get past the silly "It does not work" argument. Most of the time it does. But the act of torture is morally repugnant. That is the argument.

[stopbush]

19. Again, you're assuming a "most likely not" scenario to justify torture,

yet you reject the fact that torture - in your phraseology - most likely doesn't work.

The argument against torture is that in the large majority of cases, it produces false information. That begs the question: how does one decide when the info garnered is not false? More importantly, there are other interrogation methods that are much more effective and that do not involve torture, and which make a suspect more likely to provide good info as the interrogation proceeds. These methods work because the suspect forms a bond with the questioner. Torturing suspects actually reduces a suspect's value as a source of information because they steel themselves against their torturers as time goes on.

You keep asserting that torture works, yet all of the experts in the field of interrogation say that's not true. If torture works, why have countries like Israel who once employed torture stopped using it? Could it be that it was counterproductive? Or, are you going to assert that they still use it in secret, but only you and a handful of others are in on the truth?

You're entitled to your opinion, but it is an opinion without foundation.

[AngryAmish]

30. Where did I justify torture?

It is always unjustified. But pretending that there are no circumstances where it does not work shows a cowardice about the moral position to be against torture.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

20. The operative term is "unreliable" and therefore a waste of resources (both moral and actual).

Unless you are a fan of Cheney's "1% doctrine"

[stray cat]

15. I think it would work on me - but I must be more a wimp than everyone else

If someone could confirm whether I was lying or not and they would kill my family if I was caught lying - There is a good chance I would give legitimate information if I loved my family and my life more than I loved what I was trying to hide.

[Birthmark]

17. You refute yourself

You said: "I torture you. You give me the PIN. I keep you tied up. I go out and try the card. If I don't get money then I come back and torture you again."

That alone demonstrates why torture doesn't work. If the victim of torture gives you a fake number you *still* have to check on that information. Multiply that problem by some huge number and you'll begin to appreciate how and why torture doesn't work.

It might get you information, but the probability of that information being a lie is quite high.

[stopbush]

22. Exactly. It certainly shows the stupidity of the ticking time bomb scenario.

So, a bomb is hidden in an ATM machine. It will go off in an hour, unless you enter a correct pin to disarm the bomb. You spend 45 minutes torturing me, I give you a PIN, even tell you what ATM machine has the bomb planted in it. You go to the location, the PIN doesn't work, and the bomb isn't there. Or, worse, the bomb is there, and the PIN number detonates it. What good does it do you to keep me tied up and come back and torture me some more? You lost.

BTW - why does no one ever mention another obvious fallacy in the ticking time bomb scenario - ie: the fact that a person hellbent on destruction is going to be least likely to foil their own plot when that plot is just minutes away from being successful? Is it logical to believe that a terrorist who has already consigned himself to a martyr's death is going to turn into a blubbering mass of flesh simply because he's being tortured? Seems unlikely. Seems they'd view such torture as proof that their plot is directed against evil people, and is, therefore, justified.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

18. It works.....

.....if you boil it down to a stupid non-real world scenario like that. - I guess.

[NYC Liberal]

23. It has to do with how high the incentive is to protect the information

In the case of your PIN number, your money is insured. There's not much incentive to hold out for very long, and endure any kind of extreme pain, to protect money that's protected anyway, even if it's stolen.

In the case of a terrorist plot, planned for years and being carried out by someone who has dedicated potentially years in training and planning the attack, and who is committed on every level to the plan (you'd have to be to invest that kind of time and energy, and to take that kind of risk), the incentive to hold out is very, very high.

Not to mention, the "ticking bomb" scenario is stupid for this reason: it takes much more time to check out the location of a bomb than to check a PIN number. If you've got an hour 'til the nuke goes off (it's in New York, you don't know that), you torture some suspect who has info, why wouldn't they they tell you it's in Los Angeles? You go check it out, he's lying, and now you've only got 30 minutes maybe. Ok, ok, it's in D.C. ... and oops, time's run out.

[Boojatta]

24. "90% or so of the time"

How did you arrive at and confirm the correctness of the value 90% there?

[AngryAmish]

29. I read up on torture

That was the percentage in the Soviet Union.

[Warren Stupidity]

4. I thought Baer was about to get up and leave.

Between the attempts by Maher to make torture jokes, and his repeated 'but what if' scenario questions, Baer's irritation visibly increased.

Aside from 'it doesn't work' there is the simple fact that by us law and by us constitution and by us treaty obligation, torture of anyone is illegal and unconstitutional and we have an obligation to prosecute those who violate the law. It is illegal to commit torture, illegal to order somebody else to commit torture, and it is illegal to obey an order to commit torture, and under treaty there are no exceptions to this at all, none.

'Does it work' is irrelevant. We have committed war crimes, violated our treaty obligations, broken domestic and international law, and our executive branch conspired to deliberately not uphold the constitution.

For some reason I cannot put this behind me and move forward.

[CrawlingChaos]

39. I thought so too

Baer looked very much like he regretted the appearance, IMO. Maher kept pestering him to talk about getting his fingernails pulled out, which evidently happened to Baer, and he clearly did not want to talk about it, but Maher kept pressing him despite his obvious discomfort. It was painful to watch.

There was also a moment in that interview when Baer mentioned that the Israelis found out torture doesn't work, and Bill responds in this incredulous tone "the Israeli's torture?" as though it were a shocking revelation (they just dumped white phosporus on little kids, FFS). When Baer replied that they used to torture prisoners until they deemed it ineffective, Bill said "yes but Israel's idea of torture is sitting you too close to the air conditioner".

Let's ask the trapped population of Gaza about what the Israelis are capable of, shall we Bill? He is such a prick.

[MADem]

5. Well, he tortured the guy, and still couldn't get him to say torture works.

So plainly, it doesn't.

To be fair to him, though he's not always fair to others, I think he was just giving the subject a very vigorous "Devil's Advocate" workout, so the torture apologists wouldn't accuse him of "soft pedaling" the subject matter and failing to adequately confront Mister Baer on the matter.

I like to do that sometimes, too; argue the opposing view to get all the kinks out--it's a good way to resolve an issue to one's absolute satisfaction.

[NYC_SKP]

7. LOL!

Perfect!

:rofl:

[madmom]

8. Maybe he was just asking things like that because that's what all the

pro-torture people are saying and he wanted to see if there WAS any reason to use torture. Bob Baer never relented, that's the story.

[napi21]

13. That's what I thought too. All the pro folks have been promoting

the crap Bill was asking him about.

I also enjoyed his panel last night.

[sutz12]

21. Torture works....for what it is intended to do...

It is effective at breeding terror in populations.

It is effective at eliciting false confessions.

It is effective at causing injury or death.

It is very effective at breeding resentment, anger, and hatred among your enemies.

Getting at 'unknown' information? Not so good. The victim has to be made aware of what you want before he can agree with you.

[Hanse]

27. I think there are situations where it "works."

Zhukov mentions it numerous times in his memoirs.

But it really is irrelevant.

[TheKentuckian]

31. Never would be a reach

Carried out over enough tries, gum drops will work and in a variety of ways.

I don't even understand how we got into a discussion of the effectiveness of something that we have long declared as a nation is wrong and the antithesis of what our country is about.

It works sometimes but clearly information under that level of duress will tend to be unreliable. The point is that these actions are Un-American, inhumane, and lizard-brained. We aren't going to the next level as a species acting like that. It is anti-enlightenment. Our forefathers accepted this, at least at this kind of surface level. When we become torturers we lose the high ground and slip to the pack or worse.

Even if it worked 100% of the time the cost to our collective soul is way to high to save a few lives. People should accept and embrace the danger of living in a free society.

[dem629]

32. Maher made it clear he was playing devil's advocate for the purpose of discussion.

He even used the phrase "devil's advocate" after saying, "I'm with you on this."

Seriously. Comprehension is on the decline in this country.

[CrawlingChaos]

38. inexcusable

We're talking about torture here. TORTURE. Medieval dungeonmaster shit, for crying out loud. The very idea should be anathema to a free, democratic society (which we are merely in theory at this point, sad to say). For him to take a devil's advocate position is to suggest there is a counter-argument that deserves consideration. He makes me sick.

[dem629]

41. Uh, devil's advocate questions are exist for the purpose of

examining the logic of the other side. The fact that you have dismissed the other side doesn't mean there's no need to show others the weakness of the argument.

That's just how it works.

[CrawlingChaos]

44. obviously, but...

My point was that some things are so inherently vile and repugnant that it's absurd to even think "the logic of the other side" worthy of examination. Torture is such an obvious affront to the most minimal standards of human decency -- I mean, wouldn't you be offended if someone took up a devil's advocate position in favor of, say, racial discrimination or child abuse?

It's surreal to me how this is being bandied about in the media as a "two sided" issue, and that little prick Bill Maher is certainly doing his part.

[dem629]

45. It doesn't matter how easily you or I dismiss a particular view.

The whole idea of devil's advocate questions is to examine any and all views that people might cling to, in an effort to examine whether they have logical merit. That's it. It doesn't lend credence to an idea; quite the contrary, in many cases.

[stopbush]

42. You're right, Maher said he was playing devil's advocate.

It's just that he's not good at it.

A devil's advocate advances a theory or situation and challenges you to knock it down. Once you knock it down, he offers a different theory or situation - or comes at the same theory from a different perspective - and challenges you to knock it down, and on it goes until the point is made and the devils' advocate has had every facet of the counter argument addressed.

What Maher did was to ask a specific question. Baer then knocked down that question. Maher then asked the same question in the same way - as if Baer hadn't answered it - which was obviously frustrating to Baer. And on it went.

There's a difference between being a devil's advocate and being a Johnny One Note.

[Duer 157099]

34. No, that's not the point anyway!

We need to move away from this discussion about effectiveness, because it's truly a red herring. It's completely irrelevent, because once we agree that it's relevent, then we cross that line!

[BlooInBloo]

36. Yup.

[question everything]

40. I think that he was trying to be the devil's advocate

to really send the message for the few viewers who may swallow the "Jack Bauer" fiction.

[handmade34]

43. devil's advocate.

Bill Maher annoys me and delights me. He is ok in my book. Randy Cohen was awesome last night and Dana Gould was spot on about everything- "They said torture would make us safer, they didn't say it would make us better"