> I mean, we are surprised to find that threats are used?

We are, if not surprised, rightfully offended that our government does not obey its own laws, which define and punish torture -- acts "intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control", where "severe physical or mental pain or suffering" is defined as:

---[quote]---

(A) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering;

(B) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality;

(C) the threat of imminent death; or

(D) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality; and

---[end quote]--- (18 USC Sec. 2340)

(And its worth noting that this interpretation enshrined into law has often been criticized itself as an attempt to minimize the scope of US limitations on torture and for the government to shirk obligations under the Convention Against Torture, and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment by limiting the understanding of torture to something much narrower than the international understanding underlying the convention, so that can enhanced the degree to which it is disturbing that having narrowed the definition of torture, the government still isn't serious about combatting it, or even just not actively engaging in it, under the narrowed definition.)

> Lack of heat at the facility likely contributed to the death of a detainee.

Causing the death of a detainee is not a threat. Perhaps negligence which should have consequences for those who were responsible for this person while in their custody.

It is if you have more than one detainee.

I wouldn't say that any of these techniques are "basic/standard", and I used to work in the field.

You can get plenty of information out of someone without laying a finger on them.

In my opinion the question is the extent to which it's OK to play with people's psychology through isolation and misinformation, while still giving them 3 hots and a cot. The important thing to note here is that you can still damage people this way if you take it too far; solitary makes people go crazy especially when they're being fed false info about what's going on outside the walls.

Then again, these guys did not get rolled up for signing too loud in church. They have valuable intel in their heads. We're not going to beat it out of them, but how far are we willing to go? Should they get the same rights and protections as suspects in the US judicial system? This is the conversation we should be having in my opinion.

> Then again, these guys did not get rolled up for signing too loud in church. They have valuable intel in their heads.

According to the report, "Of the 119 known detainees, at least 26 were wrongfully held and did not meet the detention standard in the September 2001 Memorandum of Notification (MON). These included an "intellectually challenged" man whose CIA detention was used solely as leverage to get a family member to provide information, two individuals who were intelligence sources for foreign liaison services and were former CIA sources, and two individuals whom the CIA assessed to be connected to al-Qa'ida based solely on information fabricated by a CIA detainee subjected to the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques.

>Should they get the same rights and protections as suspects in the US judicial system?

Geneva Convention states clearly - either POW status or suspect in the judicial system. There is no 3rd option.

> This is the conversation we should be having in my opinion.

there is no conversation to have. Only charges (of crimes against humanity which torture is) to bring in.

> Geneva Convention states clearly - either POW status or suspect in the judicial system. There is no 3rd option.

None of the Geneva Conventions actually say this. OTOH, torture is subject to a universal prohibition under international law independently of the status of the tortured person, whether a protected person under the any of the Geneva Conventions, a regular criminal suspect in a domestic court system, or any other status that may or may not exist.

>> Geneva Convention states clearly - either POW status or suspect in the judicial system. There is no 3rd option.

>None of the Geneva Conventions actually say this.

One way or the other it is mentioned in various places through the Conventions. In particular http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Geneva_Convention :

for internal conflict

" The passing of sentences must also be pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognised as indispensable by civilised peoples. "

for international:

"It also specifies that when there is any doubt whether a combatant belongs to the categories in article 4, they should be treated as such until their status has been determined by a competent tribunal."

"Then again, these guys did not get rolled up for signing too loud in church. They have valuable intel in their heads."

Why does terrorism frighten people so much that they're willing to throw away basic principles like "innocent until proven guilty"? Honest question. I see comment after comment after comment in this thread that indicates the commenters are unbelievably frightened of terrorism, to the extent that they're willing to sanction anything, even acts that they admit are otherwise reprehensible, to prevent it. Why are apparently intelligent people so frightened of it?

> Why does terrorism frighten people so much that they're willing to throw away basic principles like "innocent until proven guilty"?

Great question, and one we should always keep in mind. The death toll from terrorism on US soil since 9/11 is indeed very low. That said, the people plotting against us are intelligent and adaptive and wish to do us harm. If they succeed, they might destroy the free society which we've built for ourselves.

Put another way, I'm scared of the physical consequences of a nuclear weapon going off in midtown Manhattan and even more scared of what would happen to our society in the wake of it. You think we'd be having these conversations about which techniques may or may not be torture if there were half a million dead in NYC and the entire tri-state region were irradiated?

They won. They won when the US gave itself the license to enter into a perpetual state of universal war, three days after 9/11.

Look at what the US has done. Really, look at all the things it has done -- the surveillance, the drone strikes, the infiltration of civil protests, the use of military equipment by the police force, the lies to justify the war in Iraq, the lies to justify the torture, the violations of international human rights, the targeted killings of "enemy" US citizens, the re-definition of every single one of these words -- and then tell me how the US has upheld its values against terrorism.

Then look at countries like Iceland where the nation apologizes over a single justified death at the hands of a police officer, or Norway where after a killing spree and bomb attacks the first consideration by government officials is not about how to punish the murderer, but how to guarantee due process for someone evidently guilty of such heinous crimes.

The United States are not the good guys. I'm sorry, but you're not. No matter how much you want it to be true.

You're cherry picking examples. Every country in the world has done horrible things. I'm certainly not excusing the torture the US has committed, but it's not alone in the world.

I feel like they've already done that far more effectively than they probably dreamed. Look at what's happened to the US after 9/11 and tell me we're still adhering to our principles and possess any moral high ground in the world. This report is a pretty obvious indication that the powers that be have given up on following the rules.

Remember the Cold War, when the threat wasn't that someone might figure out a way to smuggle a small weapon into NYC, but that we'd have fifteen minutes' warning before NYC was subject to multiple megaton-class detonations, along with every other major city in the country?

There isn't even any evidence that the threat of nuclear terrorism is credible. Nukes aren't something you pick up at the local Safeway on your way home from the daily jihad. Compare to 30 years ago, where the threat was absolutely, 100% credible. Literally hundreds of missiles ready to go at a moment's notice. One bad decision or bad hangover away from a billion deaths. And yet, we weren't having debates like this then.

That's not to say that the US was all innocent and pure. But at the very least, torture was secretive, hidden, not defended in public as being a worthwhile and justifiable act.

And then combine all that with the simple fact that torture doesn't even work. All it does is make their friends angry. Do you really think that torturing suspected terrorists reduces the chances of a future terrorist nuclear detonation in Manhattan? I don't see how.

Edit: Oh yeah, I forgot to point out that those hundreds of missiles and hundreds of nuclear warheads are still there and still ready to go at a moment's notice and we are still one person's bad decision or bad hangover away from total annihilation. We just manage to pretend it's not there.

What do you mean we weren't having debates like this then?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion

Planned and carried out in secrecy and universally decried afterwards. When it came to light, the President more or less wanted the CIA's head on a pike. Quite different from ongoing secret-but-not-secret torture with a ton of defenders in the public eye and two Presidents who either defend it or try their best to ignore it.

The intelligent people who support the government actions aren't afraid of specific terrorist acts. They're afraid of what a failure to stop terrorist movements could lead to. I imagine there were a lot of people sitting in the cafes of Rome who said: "I can't believe you think those germanic barbarians could possibly ever pose a threat to us!"

And of course, it doesn't help that the folks who are captured are mostly objectively bad people. There are some people who can muster a lot of moral outrage for the rights of bad people, and there are ones who can't. This isn't a new phenomenon.

Terrorist groups are nothing like the barbarians that eventually brought down Rome, and I think you know it.

You've spent this entire thread making poor excuses for completely irrational behaviors and trying to justifying sickening, ineffective actions on the part of US personnel.

Just stop.

> Terrorist groups are nothing like the barbarians that eventually brought down Rome, and I think you know it.

No, I don't know it. Care to explain it to me?

> Terrorist groups are nothing like the barbarians that eventually brought down Rome, and I think you know it.

I beg to differ.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2868419/Thrown-roof-...

That really doesn't answer my question at all. I asked why so many people are terrified of terrorism, and all you tell me is that they're afraid of some nebulous future. Well yes, obviously they're afraid of the potential future, as it would be pretty odd if they were afraid of the past. But why does terrorism get so much emphasis compared to other potential dangers?

Partly it's the immediacy. In the long term, China poses a threat to American hegemony, but they're not actively trying to blow things up at this very moment. The other part is the narrative. Environmental disaster should rank higher in peoples' minds, but people are intrinsically drawn to narratives that involve other people. Terrorists are like comic book villains as far as narrative goes. Not only do they behead people, but they brutally oppress women!

I'm just not seeing a lot of comments in this thread saying that the commenters sanction anything to prevent terrorism.

The condemnation of torture seems to be far more widespread here.

The "anti" side is far more prevalent, but the "pro" side is significantly more present than the "not at all" I'd expect/hope for.

> You can get plenty of information out of someone without laying a finger on them

Can you give examples? Do they work against hardened interogees? Do they involve threats of violence?

It's been shown that torture is among the least effective way of extracting information from unwilling informants.

http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/an_fbi_interrogator_on_the_...

I'm not talking about waterboarding or what have you. I guess I'm just puzzled that things like threats & slaps are being rolled in with waterboarding. Maybe threats & slaps are not the most effective method, sure- that doesn't really matter.

It just seems like people are shocked to find fundamentally abusive/manipulative behavior going on at all. Virtually any form of extracting information from an unwilling informant is going to be. Feeding them lies to make them lose hope ("We've captured your co-conspirators") is abusive. Cozying up to them with donuts and backrubs is manipulative. Practically by definition, interrogation on unwilling informants cannot be some friendly, respectful thing.

Hanns Scharf would disagree.

"Scharff was opposed to physically abusing prisoners to obtain information. Learning on the job, Scharff instead relied upon the Luftwaffe's approved list of techniques, which mostly involved making the interrogator seem as if he is his prisoner's greatest advocate while in captivity."

And this guy was successful as well.

"Scharff's approach has been admiringly cited by top US interrogators, such as Ali Soufan"

Those are still abusive relationships, that he established with his prisoners. Just not physically abusive.

What is the most effective?

Anyway, that's really counter-intuitive. I mean, I guess I could deal with pain, but losing body parts, skin or eyes? I would talk pretty fast.

Torture has been shown to be a reasonably good (though not always effective) means of getting people to tell torturers things that they think the torturers want to hear -- whatever the tortured person thinks is most likely to lead to the present cessation of the torture.

Its also been shown to be a fairly poor technique, compared to other alternatives, to get accurate, actionable information.

As the Senate report itself notes, this was the conclusion of the CIA's own work on interrogation techniques prior to 9/11, which was disregarded in the aftermath of 9/11.

The White House is apparently not taking a side in the debate over whether it works or not.

Which frankly makes me think they believe it does. The easy political win is to say it doesn't, and they aren't taking it.

https://twitter.com/peterbakernyt/status/542382617711370240

"Obama official: White House won’t take sides between CIA, which says interrogations worked, and Senate, which says they didn’t."

Sure wish Obama could just grow a pair already.

Basically, the most effective means is to create a rapport with the subject, and if treated with compassion and respect, eventually some will come around to their captor's side and reveal whatever information they have.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanns_Scharff

http://www.k-state.edu/actr/2010/12/20/suspect-interrogation...

People will say anything to get torture to stop. The interrogators will get the information they want, but they will get so much more bad information made up on the spot to stop the suffering, it's impossible to distinguish between actual intel and the subject telling the interrogator what they want to hear.

It gets even worse when the subject doesn't actually know anything useful. Waterboard most people and they will confess to anything they think will make it stop.

We know that people confess to crimes they didn't commit - even if they're not being tortured.

http://nymag.com/news/crimelaw/68715/

Sure, it worked great during the Inquisition. Evidently they killed a lot of Satanists, witches and wizards. It must've worked -- there don't seem to be any around.

It depends on what you define as a prisoner, too.