When is torture justified?

[ThomasJ]

So a terrorist bomb is to go off in a shppoing centre and you have the guy that planted it!
You believe nothing should be done?

Sorry Danny - I am with OnlyMe on this one - don't believe that torture can ever be justified -

[sharkskin]

It got me thinking, is it ever justified to use torture?

Before dealing with that question, you should ask, is it effective?

So, let's consider the imminent terror attack - you have the guy who knows where the bomb is. What happens if you torture him? Suppose that it is 10:00 and you know that the bomb will go off at some point in the next two hours and you know that it is in a shopping centre somewhere in Dublin.

You torture the guy. Do whatever you like and eventually - let's say after thirty minutes - he sobs to you - "all right, that's enough, there are three devices in three litter bins in the Northside centre timed to go off between 11:15 and 11:20." You spring into action, send all available manpower there along with every fire appliance and ambulance that you can spare. You manage to clear the area by 11:10 and then, just as the bomb disposal squad are about to send a recon bot in, you get a call. The bomb was in a van parked in the Ikea car park and it went off at 11:08.

You turn to your man and he gives you a big grin and the finger.

Now what do you do?

What about after the event? You arrested some suspects after an attack and you think that they did it but you are not sure. So you rough them up a little. Push them down the stairs. Get them to confess. You don't have any actual proof but they did confess so you concoct some dodgy scientific evidence and put them on trial. Result, six people get life sentences and everyone thinks that you did a fine job. Except that a few years later, you have to admit that they had nothing to do with it and you then let them go. Six lives trashed here, another four there, on and on.

I will admit that there can be some cases where torture will be effective but not in the face of an immediate threat and if the threat is not immediate, do you really have to resort to those measures when competent investigation might actually be effective?

[kryss]

There was a program on TV this week about moral dilemmas eg if you take 9-11 as an example, would it have been ok to destroy the planes that crashed into the Trade Centre,killing everyone on the planes but saving the lives of those in the Trade Centre. And similiar examples - the basic idea being its inhumane treatment when the State treats others as objects rather than people. Problem here is that there are scenario's where you can balance a few lives against many, like suicide bombings etc.

[dark-knight]

Don't agree with torture as if you torture someone enough they'll tell you what they think you want to hear not necessarily the truth. Pedos should be shot anyway they're no loss to society.

[mellors]

There is a famous psychological experiment (I'll have to google who did it) that took place. The set up was fake,just a person screaming in the next room,but the 'guinea pig' thought they were electricuting the person.With peer pressure the person was willing to administer electric shocks that would kill someone

[Lincoln]

I was watching Blue Blood the other evening and the cops arrested a pedophile for abducting a child! He would not say where he had put her so they stuck his head into a toilet until he did!

It got me thinking, is it ever justified to use torture?

If there was an imminent terrorist attack, and, you have the guy that planned it. How far should we as a society allow our security forces to go to save lives?

The coercion being depicted there is a plot device to portray a drama and dosent work too good to examine the issue of "Is torture ever justified".

The simple answer is, of course, TORTURE IS NEVER JUSTFIED.

The other posts relate to physical reprisals and not torture as we understand it: The application of physical and mental duress applied over time to completely dehumanize and brutalize a humand being for the purposes of control and to coerce information.

Now since we know that for the most part the veracity of the information produced is questionable at best this us brngs to the subect of control ie. the taking of every scrap of control from a person and wielding godlike power over them. This of course is the crux of the matter, the torture causes the practitioner to cross a threshold in themselves and crave more power and control, and so on and so on....

Read the last 100 odd pages of 1984 again or read The Gulag Archipelago or go and read some of the accounts of the suppression of Falun Gong practioners in China (being held face down in shit tickle anyones fancy??? Not even Scatfan???)

Preserving our humanity is of far greater importance than the short term gratification of torture

[Doozer]

There is a famous psychological experiment (I'll have to google who did it) that took place. The set up was fake,just a person screaming in the next room,but the 'guinea pig' thought they were electricuting the person.With peer pressure the person was willing to administer electric shocks that would kill someone

Milgrims obedience experiment

[mellors]

[QUOTE=Doozer;387950]Milgrims obedience experiment[/QUOTEd

Thats the one Dozzer,thanks, it shows that nearly everybody is capable carrying out normally abhorent behaviour given te right circumstances. It was highlighting how atrocities such as Nazism and ethnic cleansing could take place.

[El Gordo]

These cases where torture is used to get vital information against the clock, they happen only in films and on television. In the real world, torture isn't used to gain information. It might sometimes be used to get a confession, but that's usually by people who don't care much whether the confession is real. So why is torture still so widely used in so many places?
- Punishment and intimidation. It may not serve to get information, but it sure scares the hell of people. There are some countries where I would be very careful what I do or say, even if I don't have any information worth getting.
- Entertainment. Torture is fun for the torturer. Because the torturer is a sadist. Always. On the television you may sometimes see the angst-ridden cop who really doesn't want to torture the suspect, but feels he has to for the greater good. That's fiction. In the real world there are lots of sadists and few jobs available as a torturer, so those jobs go to sadists.

[Doozer]

[QUOTE=mellors;387957]

Milgrims obedience experiment[/QUOTEd

Thats the one Dozzer,thanks, it shows that nearly everybody is capable carrying out normally abhorent behaviour given te right circumstances. It was highlighting how atrocities such as Nazism and ethnic cleansing could take place.

It did, but now new research has shown that it may be different. Instead of obidence they think it had more to do with trusting the experiemente. People also nearly always react differently in an expeiriement so reality may not be the same

Incidently I think only 1 person out 50 actually refused to adminster the 'fatal' shock