On Tue, 21 Apr 2009 21:40:02 -0700, "David P. Henderson" <[email protected]> wrote: > On 21 Apr 2009, at 20:57, Chris Gehlker wrote: > >> On Apr 21, 2009, at 7:59 PM, Roger Howard wrote: >> >>> But the reality is that interrogation has its place; the question is >>> about the extent to which it can be useful. >> >> I think the question has been answered and the answer is that it is >> never useful. > > > Bull, you are both talking about interrogation and torture as if they > are one and the same.
No, I'm not, but I think Chris either is, or didn't catch that I used the term interrogation. There are not one and the same, I get that. Interrogation is the inquiry into what a captive might know; sometimes misguided, or ammoral/immoral interrogators may seek to use torture as a mechanism for interrogation. Sometimes torture is used simply for torture's sake. My comment was to that point - that not all use of torture was, as Chris asserted, purely to exact punishment - there seems to be a real belief by some that torture can be used, morally and efficaciously, as a mechanism of interrogation. Whether that belief is correct, founded on fact, or morally supportable is another question entirely... I'm not an expert on torture - logic would suggest that, like other forms of interrogation, you may get both right and wrong answers - if I knew something, I may *well* give it up while being tortured, but I may also lie, or may not know anything and just tell you what you want to hear. In other words, torture has just as many opportunities for gaining false information, and has the added downsides of being morally repugnant, illegal, and probably less likely to gain any cooperation on the part of the detainee. > They are not. Interrogation is necessary and > does produce positive results. Well, non-torture interrogation may nor may not result in truths being learned, but at least it's not torture. _______________________________________________ OSX-Nutters mailing list | [email protected] http://lists.tit-wank.com/mailman/listinfo/osx-nutters List hosted at http://cat5.org/
