Do Americans Accept Torture?

I am not shocked by it, because I am not blindly trusting of the government.

 

Are we talking about torture or the budget bill just passed? Don't forget ALL bills passed by the Republican controlled House have to be passed by the Democrat controlled Senate AND signed by Obama, so don't thank republicans, thank the Democrats, RINOs and Obama.

fairness ≠ equality

 

Indie

How do you know they possess the information if they say they don’t have it?

How do you gauge how productive it is I mean is you torture someone until they confess to being a terrorist then I supposed you could claim the torture was productive.

In a lot of cases it going to be difficult to verify the information you can torture someone until they confess they were going to blow something up and since it wasn’t blown up that can seen as ‘proof’ but is it?

As I’ve said many studies have shown torture isn’t a very good way of gaining useful information, as the latest report points out.

How does someone lying to stop the pain because they don't have any real information doubly justify the pain being inflicted?

 

Mel

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This is what I’m saying - Is there the will to stop them, if so many Americans (see Indie) don’t seem to want it to end?

 

it did end. America voted for the slightly lesser of 2 evils who ended the torture program.

but if you think American citizens have the power to stop secret cia programs I'm not sure you fully understand how secretive and powerful the cia is

 

But the ‘secrets’ do come out – we know about the CIA torture, we know about the torture taught at the School of the Americas and we know about the brutality of the US prison system.

Yet nearly half of Americans in 2005 seemed to condone torture and people like Indie defend its use as effective and profitable.

 

Well there you have it... This MUST mean Americans accept torture.

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Well look at Indie, he doesn’t just seem to accept it but promotes it as an effect tool in gaining information.

As to US prisons

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Pz3syET3DY

http://documentaryaddict.com/torture+americas+brutal+prisons-1528-doc.html

 

...and there's nothing I can do to change that.

 

I've been reading a bit about the UK's complicity in the CIA's torture program. How could you allow this to happen balbus?!?!?

 

:yikes:
What!!!!!
OMG!!!
Please say it ain't so Balbus, so it ain't so! :bigcry:

 

Britain is just as guilty as America. And there's not a thing we can do other than protest or join Amnesty International. I suppose we could always join 'Russell's revolution'


If I can, I'd like to break this whole thing down a little bit, and look at the moral choices facing people when it comes to torture.

It seems to me there are 2 possible ethical views on it. One can be identified with the ethics of Emanual Kant, the other with utilitarianism.
According to Kant, there are what he calls 'categorical imperatives' - read that as 'moral imperatives'. There are absolute moral values which are always correct and which should not be deviated from. From this perspective, and this is where my own bias lies, torture is wrong and will always be wrong,and can never be justified.Those who engage in such actions have fallen from the basic ethical standard of humanity.

From a utilitarian perspective, all values are relative, and only what contributes to 'the greatest good of the greatest number' has utility - in this instance, moral value.
So if we envision a scenario where the security people hold a suspect who they know knows which plane the bomb is to be planted on later today, a utilitarian might say it's ok to torture the suspect to get the information, as that serves the general principle of utility. Better one man/woman suffers than hundreds loose their lives.

From a Kantian point of view, it would be better to let the passengers die rather than go against the moral imperative. Implicit in this view is the idea that if we descend to a level as low as those who threaten us, they have already won. We have lost some aspect of our humanity. We can't claim that our cause has morality or ethical rightness on its side.

So kids - I've tried to spell it out as best I can in terms of my own understanding of western philosophy of ethics. And I've indicated where I stand.

Join Amnesty - support human rights watch - if you want to do something - no matter how small.

 

I don't give a shit how they extract information needed for Americans safety or the locations of good spots to bomb. If the guy wants to take the 'ice bucket challenge' 174 times before he talks about the Americans he has killed or plans to, So be it! The CIA have to deal with and take out the trash, Somebody has to.

 

You volunteering? It is easy to think it's not dirty if you don't get dirty.

 

Usually in a room full of compatriots when someone claims he wants to torture and kill people the others would find his mental state in question.

 

Do Americans accept torture?

I guess that really depends on if that American is a Sub or a Dom, an S or an M.

I imagine the S's enjoy giving it while the M's accept it.

 

Just curious, but would you feel the same if your family, or other loved ones were on a plane containing a bomb and the authorities had the person who created and planted the bomb in custody?

While I would not promote the use of torture in every instance of acquiring needed/wanted information, there are times when it may be the only means by which critical information needed to prevent a catastrophic event might be extracted.

A utopian world does not and never will exist, and moral values are little more than definitions of how many, perhaps even most of us would like everyone to interact with each other resulting in our creating laws/regulations as a means of punishing those who do not.

 

Mel and Gas

I wish that people would read the posts….to repeat -

as I’ve explained to you more than once I’m not saying we haven’t got problems in the UK and I bring them up with people here but this is mainly a forum populated by Americans where US issues are mainly discussed and as pointed out by me and others [like Meagain] many Americans don’t seem to want to talk about issues in other counties if it hasn’t got a US angle.

If you want to talk about Britain’s involvement or complicity in torture over the years, I’m happy to do so, and I probably have a lot more knowledge of it than do you, but I don’t think you’d be that interested.
I’ve been a long time supporter of organisations and campaigns that fight against torture {Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch Liberty etc] and they have had their ups and downs, at the moment many are trying to reveal what involvement the UK had in the US programme of ‘extraordinary rendition’.

I mean there is also the resent revelations coming out of Brazil where the its been shown that the United States and the UK intelligence agencies helped trained Brazilian interrogators in torture techniques back in the 60’s 70’s.

But on the other side there are things like – “Britain is to pay out £19.9m in costs and compensation to more than 5,000 elderly Kenyans who suffered torture and abuse during the Mau Mau uprising in the 1950s”

I could go on and on.

 

I don’t think investigative torture is morally right but also [as is backed up by numerous studies] I don’t think it’s a very effective method for gaining useful information.

I mean we can all go through what ifs…or film script scenarios but in general terms it’s probably better to put the resources into other methods rather than torture.

As to systematic brutality such as happens in many US prisons I don’t think that is defensible in any terms.

PS: It interesting to me that many who seem to praise the US constitution seem happy with torture even though by its very nature that is the inflicting of cruel and unusual punishment.

 

why do you make assumptions about what we would or would not want to hear.
I for one think it would be breath of fresh air to see you tackle some issues at home, or anywhere in the world, others do, and those threads get activity.
It would also go a long way to help legitimize what you do have to say concerning America

Maybe you are misreading the cues.
Your threads often receive so much attention because of the trollish nature of them and the intentionally inflammatory thread titles and topics you consistently start.
plus in this sub-grouping of Americans on Hip forums, you know there is disproportionate number who are anti-America and it's policies, so its kinda like ringing the bells on an ice cream truck, you know the little kiddies will come a runnin'.

so please do include the UK and all the allied nations in this discussion. It really only seems the fair and accurate way to proceed, because otherwise it just appears that all you do is relentlessly bash on America.
I'm curious what the general consensus in the UK is regarding this particular issue, I'm willing to bet that it would be rather similar to American's.


and to stay on topic, NO, most Americans do not accept torture.
next question please.