Riddle Me This, Blog-Man.
Atrios thinks he’s got it all figured out when it comes to torture…
We shouldn’t torture. There should be no procedures in place for torture. Everyone should understand this. But if the Joker does in fact have a nuclear bomb ready to go off underneath Gotham, and vigilante crime fighter Batman needs to employ a little force to learn the magic code needed to stop it before the timer counts down to zero, then I imagine that if Batman does in fact manage to stop the destruction of the city that no jury would convict or that a presidential pardon would likely take care of things if they did.
…but let’s not forget what happened the last time the Caped Crusader saved our fair city.
What those flat-foots in the Gotham P.D. don’t realize is that torture is perfectly fine when it’s done by the good guys.
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I really enjoy getting our guidelines on the morality of torture from a TV series (24). I write about torture some times and I can just hear the eyes of my 19 readers start to glaze over.
Nobody really want to hear all the stories about just how nasty it is and how deeply involved America’s involvement is.
I alway ask people. “How many people do you think American’s tortured to death in Abu Ghraib?”
How many people do you think were involved in the creating, planning and utilization of torture techniques?
The answers (from Mark Danner’s Torture and truth stunning.
But we don’t want to bring that back up.
I get really tired of the talk radio hosts dismissing it as underwear on the head. 28 people were tortured to death by Americans in Abu Ghraib. 5 confirmed by the Army. 23 were still under investigation in 2004.
50 -100 people were involved in the torture. 7 were given some sort of punishment. (This also is based on army reports and photos from the scene.)
Now how does this jibe with what the MSM and talk radio have to say? Do we need to see the images of a solider raping a captive? We we need to see video footage of the crushing that lead to the death before we believe it. Do we need the list of the 50-100 people involved and compare that to the tiny list of 7?
See what I mean? Total Buzz kill. I’ll bet you didn[’t even read this far. It makes sense to use more cartoon analogies. Make it more palatable. Atrios is brilliant when it comes to packaging stuff.
Comment by spocko — June 22, 2007 @ 11:41 pm
In the totally made-up scenario we’re address, and if the torture actually worked, and if you saved the day, then wouldn’t you be willing to go to jail for it? I mean, why wouldn’t saving the world be reward enough for your heroic ass?
Comment by Joe — June 23, 2007 @ 11:42 am
The problem with the whole ticking time bomb scenario is that it has a hypothesis contrary to both history and common sense, and if you start with a false hypothesis, you can prove lots of crazy things. Consider the setup: we capture someone not long before the bomb will go off, but just before the bomb will go off, and we are certain about that timing (else we would proceed with slower but more effective methods of interrogation), and we know, with certainty, that he knows where the bomb is — but we have no idea where the bomb is, at least not good enough that a massive search could probably locate it. How likely is it that we would have that particular combination of certain intelligence and timing, yet not know where the bomb is?
Comment by dr2chase — June 26, 2007 @ 2:08 pm