Post by platinumblonde on Mar 19, 2014 10:04:31 GMT -5
Torture works. Torture works 100% absolutely, 100% of the time. The question only becomes whether a society is willing to see it's people turned into the monsters required to inflict that over the sustained period required for the results one would want to get.
We don't need to look to Iraq, Afghanistan or even anyone outside our own nation to know torture works, 100% of the time. We need only look at our own American servicemen and look to the last time a large number to go by had to endure torture and then come back out of it to debrief what happened.
Prior to Vietnam the attitude among the US military was ...No one breaks. Period. Cowards break. Don't be a coward!
AFTER the Vietnam war, all that changed. Now it's a given expectation to each man and woman that they will hold out for a given number of days/hours. Enough time to change the most critical of whatever they knew to give upon capture. That, being a clear nod to the lessons of Vietnam. Torture applied seriously and over time with *NO* psychological hope allowed to remain of the pain EVER stopping without truth time coming in stereo will produce the desired result. Again..our own people proved it under horrible circumstances to the extremes of human endurance.
Personally, if torture has any place, I believe it should be under the tools of old, like Torture Warrants (look that one up for who used them..it wasn't America). If done within the system and by order or a court for those rare cases, records would exist of who did what to whom and what came of it. Accountability later.....among other things. Critical details like that.
On the other hand...Maybe producing the monsters necessary is just a step beyond where we ever want to choose to go as a society in the first place. I tend to think so in all but the most extreme 'ticking time bomb' scenario. In that one? I wouldn't call it torture...but the systematic dis-assembly of the suspect terrorist until they squeal something other than pain.
We don't need to look to Iraq, Afghanistan or even anyone outside our own nation to know torture works, 100% of the time. We need only look at our own American servicemen and look to the last time a large number to go by had to endure torture and then come back out of it to debrief what happened.
Prior to Vietnam the attitude among the US military was ...No one breaks. Period. Cowards break. Don't be a coward!
AFTER the Vietnam war, all that changed. Now it's a given expectation to each man and woman that they will hold out for a given number of days/hours. Enough time to change the most critical of whatever they knew to give upon capture. That, being a clear nod to the lessons of Vietnam. Torture applied seriously and over time with *NO* psychological hope allowed to remain of the pain EVER stopping without truth time coming in stereo will produce the desired result. Again..our own people proved it under horrible circumstances to the extremes of human endurance.
Personally, if torture has any place, I believe it should be under the tools of old, like Torture Warrants (look that one up for who used them..it wasn't America). If done within the system and by order or a court for those rare cases, records would exist of who did what to whom and what came of it. Accountability later.....among other things. Critical details like that.
On the other hand...Maybe producing the monsters necessary is just a step beyond where we ever want to choose to go as a society in the first place. I tend to think so in all but the most extreme 'ticking time bomb' scenario. In that one? I wouldn't call it torture...but the systematic dis-assembly of the suspect terrorist until they squeal something other than pain.