To torture or not to torture ?

[Cazzo]

A known lead fanatic terrorist is caught and imprisoned.
It is known that this terrorist knows details of plots to kill thousands of innocent civilians in an unknown city(s).

A) Do you think it's O.K. to "torture" this terrorist with the method of waterboarding to get the details of the terrorist plot ?

B) Or, should the terrorist not be tortured, and merely kept a prisoner ?

C) Or should this terrorist be really tortured with methods that deform his body and injure his organs until he gives out the details ?


This is an interesting ethical dilemma. Torture an evil person to save thousands, or spare an evil person and allow thousands of innocents to die.....

 

[quadraphonics]

A known lead fanatic terrorist is caught and imprisoned.
It is known that this terrorist knows details of plots to kill thousands of innocent civilians in an unknown city(s).

A) Do you think it's O.K. to "torture" this terrorist with the method of waterboarding to get the details of the terrorist plot ?

B) Or, should the terrorist not be tortured, and merely kept a prisoner ?

C) Or should this terrorist be really tortured with methods that deform his body and injure his organs until he gives out the details ?


This is an interesting ethical dilemma. Torture an evil person to save thousands, or spare an evil person and allow thousands of innocents to die.....

Easy, he should be tortured into giving up the info (also, waterboarding IS real torture that will deform your body and injure your organs).

The ethical dilemma, and hence debate, is as to whether it should be LEGAL to torture someone in such a situation.

Previously, the practice was to keep torture illegal and then, should anyone actually be confronted by the extremely unlikely scenario you describe, they will go ahead and break the law, since inflicting torture on the prisoner (and imprisonment on oneself) is a lesser evil than allowing the numerous victims to die. Or, better yet, the court that tries him would see what the situation was and decline to convict the torturer. It does not really matter, because nothing like that has ever happened outside of a TV show, and it is a terrible idea to base policy on contrived cases like that.

You should base policy on situations that are actually going to occur, which are characterized by you not knowing who you have captured, what he might know, or what attacks might be in progress. In such a scenario, torture is actually counterproductive, because it lessens your confidence in the information you obtain. Torturing the prisoner will generally result in increased probability of attacks being successfully carried out, since you will not gain as much info from him as you might have if you employed accepted interrogation methods that have been proven to be effective.

 

[Enmos]

A known lead fanatic terrorist is caught and imprisoned.
It is known that this terrorist knows details of plots to kill thousands of innocent civilians in an unknown city(s).

A) Do you think it's O.K. to "torture" this terrorist with the method of waterboarding to get the details of the terrorist plot ?

B) Or, should the terrorist not be tortured, and merely kept a prisoner ?

C) Or should this terrorist be really tortured with methods that deform his body and injure his organs until he gives out the details ?


This is an interesting ethical dilemma. Torture an evil person to save thousands, or spare an evil person and allow thousands of innocents to die.....

Ask him nicely, then A), then C) (Options from OP btw, not the poll itself).
I assume it is really known that he knows this stuff, not like the WMD fiasco.

 

[cosmictraveler]

There are means in which information can be retrieved without hurting anyone with the use of chemicals. as we know there are certain "truth serum" type of drugs that can be administered and not hurt the person being interrogated. There are other drugs that can also be used today as well which could do an even better job if used properly. So I would think that this method of extracting information should be used by all means if there is valuable data needed to be had. The only thing is that the person being administered this drug could be giving false information because they were given false information to begin with from whoever they work for.

 

[James R]

A known lead fanatic terrorist is caught and imprisoned.
It is known that this terrorist knows details of plots to kill thousands of innocent civilians in an unknown city(s).

How is this known? And if that much is known, then most likely there are other ways to get the information about where and when the plot will be carried out.

Torture the guy and he'll just tell you whatever he thinks you want him to say.

 

[spidergoat]

How do you know about the plot? How do you know that he knows? How do you know that he has information that would help you stop the plot? Terrorist cells don't tell every member everything. This hypothetical situation is highly unlikely to every occur. I say let the guy go and tail him, better yet don't arrest him in the first place, just watch from a distance.

 

[copernicus66]

How is this known?

How do you know about the plot?

Unbelievable. This is a HYPOTHETICAL scenario we're talking about, guys. Part of the hypothetical scenario involves knowing about the plot.

Personally, I think that an interrogator should do whatever is required to extract the necessary details of the plot from the prisoner.

 

[James R]

Unbelievable. This is a HYPOTHETICAL scenario we're talking about, guys. Part of the hypothetical scenario involves knowing about the plot.

But isn't the point of a hypothetical like this supposed to be that it helps us decide what to do in a real situation?

Since this would never happen in a real situation, your hypothetical doesn't seem very useful.

 

[copernicus66]

But isn't the point of a hypothetical like this supposed to be that it helps us decide what to do in a real situation?

It depends on the proposer's motive. Cazzo's motive is apparently to assess whether posters feel that it is ethical to torture one 'evil' individual in order to protect a thousand innocents. All this bullshit about 'but how do we know whether X is occurring' is simply obfuscating the pertinent issue.

 

[CutsieMarie89]

Does torture really work? My father said that when he was in the military his team used to cut off people's fingers and what not to get them to disclose information about whatever drug circuit they were working for, but more often than not he said they didn't give useful information at all. I don't really have an opinion on this hypothetical.

 

[pjdude1219]

A known lead fanatic terrorist is caught and imprisoned.
It is known that this terrorist knows details of plots to kill thousands of innocent civilians in an unknown city(s).

A) Do you think it's O.K. to "torture" this terrorist with the method of waterboarding to get the details of the terrorist plot ?

B) Or, should the terrorist not be tortured, and merely kept a prisoner ?

C) Or should this terrorist be really tortured with methods that deform his body and injure his organs until he gives out the details ?


This is an interesting ethical dilemma. Torture an evil person to save thousands, or spare an evil person and allow thousands of innocents to die.....

you do know the US has executed people for waterboarding?

 

[Cazzo]

How do you know about the plot? How do you know that he knows? How do you know that he has information that would help you stop the plot? Terrorist cells don't tell every member everything. This hypothetical situation is highly unlikely to every occur.

During WW2, if we wanted to know the Nazi's plan in North Africa, who would be best to get the information from ? General Rommel or an officer immediately below him.
If you wanted to know what the CIA knows about Russian secrets, who would be best to get the information form ? One of the CIA agents involved with Russian espionage.
Those are simple examples, but it's not as difficult as you make it out to be to figure out who knows/makes the terrorist plots.

 

[spidergoat]

In the first case, from coded radio intercepts, from the second, from communications intercepted from the USSR's undersea cables, which we tapped.

 

[Cazzo]

In the first case, from coded radio intercepts, from the second, from communications intercepted from the USSR's undersea cables, which we tapped.

Not all secrets can be found from radiowaves, cables, phones, computers, etc....

 

[spidergoat]

True, some of them come from agents we turned by being friendly to them...

 

[Cazzo]

True, some of them come from agents we turned by being friendly to them...

Perhaps you've never heard of how some espionage agents carry cyanide capsules with them incase they're caught. They don't carry those capsules for "friendly" meetings .....

 

[swarm]

He should be released and given a lollipop for his trouble.

 

[draqon]

He should be released but be handcuffed to swarm for the rest of the life.

 

[one_raven]

Easy, he should be tortured into giving up the info (also, waterboarding IS real torture that will deform your body and injure your organs).

The ethical dilemma, and hence debate, is as to whether it should be LEGAL to torture someone in such a situation.

Previously, the practice was to keep torture illegal and then, should anyone actually be confronted by the extremely unlikely scenario you describe, they will go ahead and break the law, since inflicting torture on the prisoner (and imprisonment on oneself) is a lesser evil than allowing the numerous victims to die. Or, better yet, the court that tries him would see what the situation was and decline to convict the torturer. It does not really matter, because nothing like that has ever happened outside of a TV show, and it is a terrible idea to base policy on contrived cases like that.

You should base policy on situations that are actually going to occur, which are characterized by you not knowing who you have captured, what he might know, or what attacks might be in progress. In such a scenario, torture is actually counterproductive, because it lessens your confidence in the information you obtain. Torturing the prisoner will generally result in increased probability of attacks being successfully carried out, since you will not gain as much info from him as you might have if you employed accepted interrogation methods that have been proven to be effective.

How is this known? And if that much is known, then most likely there are other ways to get the information about where and when the plot will be carried out.

Torture the guy and he'll just tell you whatever he thinks you want him to say.

I agree completely.

 

[James R]

he should be released but be handcuffed to swarm for the rest of the life.

............. :bravo: