We Interrupt This Blog For Some Momentary Seriousness
(Government • Global)
Look, I’m just a simple guy with a hoe and a shovel and a web server minding my own business out back, but it appears it’s been left to me to straighten out this moronic argument over whether in fact tortue used by the CIA spooks has kept us all safe from the Dark Side.
Naturally, the front man pushing torture as an effective information-gathering method is Dick Cheney, who once believed that his hunting companion was a small bird and shot him in the face.
For some, that factoid alone will have decided this little debate, but for the rest of you, let me repeat something that I don’t think is said nearly enough:
If you own a dungeon, and capture someone who you think might know something you want to know, but he doesn’t want to tell you, then sure, you can certainly try to short-cut the usual methods of gaining this individual’s knowledge by utilizing what even our last president apparently admits really are torture techniques.
Yeah, you can do that. But think of two things before you do.
1. From time to time our soldiers and spooks are going to be captured by our enemies. That’s just the nature of hot or cold war. It happens. And when it does, it will be a whole lot better for our soldiers and spooks if the captors can’t say with conviction “These are the same guys who burned holes in my brother’s nut sack. Lets use the special socket wrench today.”
2. Consider this from your dungeon victim’s point of view. You are busy burning holes in his nut sack or otherwise causing him so much pain that he is focusing on nothing but what he can do to make it stop. Pretty soon he’s going to start telling you stuff. Which might make you as a dungeon owner swell with pride over your mastery of the black arts and all, but consider: How on earth do you know the guy’s telling the truth? Anything, even admitting false confessions about himself and his family and friends, is better than riding that damn water board another couple hundred times. Therefore, by definition, you cannot trust one word of your victim’s “confession.”
Now, back to your regularly scheduled program.
→ B.Dunn, Apr 23, 2009, 05 08 am
