Torture

[Wha?]

I'm sure you've noticed I have certain words in quotation marks, that's because the words are very open to interpretation..
ie "human".. Any so-called human who (to go back to blues example) will kidnap a child and put their life in danger isn't human by my reckoning - therefore torture, or threats of torture, doesn't violate their human rights..

You're presuming guilt: All you would actually know is that somebody has been abducted, may still be alive, and this person is suspected of being the abductor. That's why it's wrong. But, even if you know they're guilty, what good does it do you if they lie, or don't know? The process is only as good as the reliability of the information it gathers, and you'll notice that a confession under duress isn't court admissible for the reason that people tend to know what's expected of them in such a situation, and if it's unpleasant enough, will admit to what they think will stop the duress.

Not to mention the subjective definition of "inhuman", but hey, as long as we get to torture gays and darkies because they're not human, who can argue? They must be child molesters and thieves/drug dealers, right? Those are people that should be mistreated, so it's ironclad.

"morals" again is pure interpretation, and leads to many questions.. is it "moral" NOT to torture someone if someone (or many people) will die if you don't?

Morality isn't that clear-cut. You can't say X people's lives are worth Y people being tortured for Z units of psychological harm. What about X-1? Y+2? Z²? What about the inhumanity of inflicting suffering on people, especially methodically? Shouldn't that mean all the professionals who are given legal immunity (or did you want to waive the right for 'normal' people to be protected from torture?) ought to be treated as inhuman, along with their employers? To answer the question, it is never moral to violate the rights of anyone, even if good comes of it. Such childish "ends justify means" folderol fits every crime and every injustice ever committed, unless you want to specify some statistical method for discerning disparity between effect and means, such that it may be compared to a standard. It's just a way to rationalize away the guilt, and these 'ticking time-bomb' scenarios are just desperate attempts to tack a deus ex machina onto an otherwise losing scenario.

Face it: If it's come down to a coercive questioning as a last resort, you've already lost. You require the cooperation of a single person and are completely at their mercy, which is why you have to convince them to help. If you have less than a month to find the bomb, you'll lose because you'll run out of time before getting the answer. If you have more time, what's the point? Since you can't tell if somebody has learned countermeasures (which is why polygraphs are useless), you can't tell who's a hardened veteran playing the part of a scared innocent and who's actually incapable of withholding--or for that matter, who's innocent. If the probability is good that they're guilty, how do you know they don't know it? They could easily concoct a fake story to reveal, piece by piece, over the course of weeks, and you'd be completely conned. How many wild goose chases will it take before you run out of money, or the bomb goes off? You have to pursue all of them, because each one might be true, and you're already saying that the person who might know something is going to be tortured, can't be a hypocrite now! What about when you come up empty handed? You won't know if you didn't look hard enough. What good is a system that can't even protect against that? How is it any different from what you'd get without torture? Hell, even if you have a 100% success rate, guess what? You'll just wind up capturing people who were set up to be caught and honestly believe the wild goose chase is real. Offense evolves along with defense, you know.

It seems that all proponents exist in cognitive dissonance, feeling things like waterboarding are just a little bit of water poured on the face--so it can't be that bad, and should be allowed--while simultaneously believing that harsh measures are the only effective means of getting people to talk. Which is it? It can't be The Comfy Chair and still capable of breaking a person. And if there actually is some magic method that gets results and isn't cruel, then the police should be allowed to use it on everybody for any reason a normal interrogation would be used. "Ma'am, we'd like to ask you a few questions, could you please strip to the buff and have a seat in that chair while we attach these clamps and electrodes?" "Sure thing, Officer! Hey, it kind of tickl--I'VE BEEN EMBEZZLING MONEY FROM THE COMPANY! YOU CAUGHT ME!"

All that said, the depressing truth of the matter is that public discourse is irrelevant, and even laws are irrelevant. Torture serves three purposes: First, it gathers information about the enemy, though no more effectively than a normal interrogation (it is, after all, a run-of-the-mill 'bad cop' questioning, just with the superfluity of methodical agony). Second, it inflicts lasting psychological trauma that will be perceived by those close to the victim if they're released, and inflicts fear upon them. Third, in conjunction with blanket arrests, no charges, indefinite detention, and other ignorance of rights--guaranteeing the torture of countless innocent people--with complete lack of punishment for supporters of the powers behind it, the message is clear: You do not cross us. That's the message the US is sending to the Muslim world: There's a new mob boss in town, and if you don't bend over, we'll cut your balls off. Why would a self-respecting despot diminish the power they have over people? You don't win the game of empire building by making concessions.

That's just at the administrative level, too. Military intelligence (that includes spy agencies) is paranoid to an almost delusional level, that's how you advance in your career (that and obedience to your empire). The fact that an enemy exists that can hide in plain sight--what they do with spies, ironically--drives them up the wall. Not knowing is something they aren't prepared to accept. That and spies are all profiled before getting their jobs, so you won't get nice people doing jobs that would bother a conscience.

Even if it was illegal, it would still happen. Black sites don't spring up overnight, and extraordinary rendition requires some level of diplomatic groundwork to be set, methodology requires research, and none of that spontaneously materialized because of the issuance of a couple memos.