"If you had been confronted on 7 September 2001 with a captured Khalid Shaykh Muhammad or Abu Zubaydah," he says in response to Andrew Sullivan, "and you knew that a major, mass-casualty terrorist strike was about to go down in the United States, and you had plenipotentiary authority for the nation's security,....

And you, like, totally had a wicked awesome time machine....

I think if I had that wicked awesome time machine, i would tell that CIA briefer to leak his brief and Bush's response (Okay, you've covered your ass). I'm sure Richard Clarke and Colleen Rowley would appreciate my help from Back to the Future, too.

No need for torture, just a competent president and foreign policy team

Torture is a valuable tool, when the "pre-torture" probability is very high. If somebody REALLY knows something, then torture has a 100% chance of revealing it.

The problem is when you use torture against low level players who dont have any real intel about anything. They'll just give out false info to get the pain to stop. That ends up costing you valuable time as you chase false leads.

So really, torture should be used, but it should be used carefully only against enemies in which you are extremely confident that they hold real intel. Because otherwise you'll just end up chasing your tail as they keep changing their story over and over again trying to appease the torturer.

Intuitive thinking can also lead to such wrong insights as that eating the heart of a lion magically will make you brave & strong like a lion, or that blowing a country to smithereens would impress people worldwide who would then envy and respect your power.

So really, torture should be used, but it should be used carefully only against enemies in which you are extremely confident that they hold real intel.

Here's the thing, though: first, non-torture techniques also have about a 100% chance of revealing the info. Given that, why bother with torture.

However, hypothetically, let's say all you can do is torture, and you have almost a 100% chance that the target has the info. If you're right, and the target gives it up, and you avert a plot or ticking time bomb, thus saving thousands of lives, even if the case against you goes to trial, no jury will convict, and if it does convict, the president will pardon you. However, if you're wrong, and there is no info to be had, or the target doesn't give it up, the truth is that you deserve to be arrested and go to jail for a long time.

Thus, I find no reason to change the laws about torture. Don't use it... if you claim to be willing to die for our country, then you should at least be willing to risk the sacrifice of 20 years of your life in jail for your country, if you believe that using torture is so important and necessary.

Torture generates wild goose chases--if you divert scare resources to follow up on bad intel, you jeopardize rather than protect national security.
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Torture is about fear and impotence. People who use it are afraid of what might happen if they rule out the most extreme option. But what they fear isn't that people will die; they fear that if they fail, others will say, "why didn't you ...?" They fear that others will perceive them as impotent. If they torture or kill, they know they won't be asked that question.
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Torture is the easy way out.

"plenipotientary authority"

In other words, he is saying that he has no accountability for erroneously torturing an innocent person, but gets full credit for torturing the guilty.

Here is where Gerecht proudly displays his very small penis.

To those saying torture should be used: No, it shouldn't. It is against the law. The community of civilized nations has collectively decided that it is unacceptable, and the United States has joined that consensus. The U.S. has not only signed treaties and enacted laws forbidding torture, it has joined in actions prosecuting individuals and states that practice it. Torture is utterly outside the boundaries of civilized behavior, and arguments of exigency are explicitly ruled out by the treaties and statutes that are the law of the United States and the rest of the world. There is no room for discussion or disagreement. The case is closed.

What Herschel said. I just finished Matthew Alexander's book. he got results. he didn't torture. End of discussion.

Torture is a valuable tool, when the "pre-torture" probability is very high. If somebody REALLY knows something, then torture has a 100% chance of revealing it.

Don't be too sure about that. The thing about our enemies is they're not total morons. They know they'll be tortured, and they have a pretty good idea of how. So they prepare some of their people to be tortured, and simply refuse to tell the rest anything.

He can probably endure quite a bit of torture before he even starts pretending to co-operate.

Torture sucks, but these guys signed on for suicide bombing. They ain't gonna break down in terror after a single session with Mr. Water-board. It'll take days.

And if there really is an attack tomorrow all he has to do is endure for 24 hours. In this example all he has to do is endure 96 hours.

Who were the psychiatrists or doctors involved making them healthy for torture?

So, like, was the psychiatrists name Satinsky(yes, it's a joke, satan's sky is lucifer using time)? Did the psychiatrist work with the operations officer in the field and do the people the operations officer met in the field because he thought they were threats to the operations officer's mental health?

In 24 he usually just misses the nuke or terror.

If I were in charge of prosecuting someone who had tortured some terrorist with info, been successful, and gotten info that saved thousands of lives, I would try to send that person to jail to the full extent of my abilities within the bounds of honesty and the law. If you are confident that you can save thousands of lives by torturing someone and think that it's worth it, you should also think that saving thousands of lives, torturing someone, and spending a few decades in prison are worth it. Maybe no jury would convict a torturer who was retroactively justified, but perhaps they should -- if sacrificing someone else is worth it for the greater good, why not sacrificing yourself?

This is also accepting the "24" conceit, though. See the Medium Lobster's take

All these people who are arguing for torture based on the ticking time bomb hypothetical have two problems. First, as you point out, it doesn't actually work.

Second, though, let's say that it does. That doesn't mean we should make it LEGAL to do. If you are so sure it will save so many lives, do it anyway and accept the consequences. A civilian will be fine, no jury in the world would vote to convict. A military person, it could get tricky, but you'd be a freakin hero.

We should not make laws based on a one in a trillion shot that it might some day pay to be horribly immoral. We should make the laws based on the idea that we should encourage morality.

So really, torture should be used, but it should be used carefully only against enemies in which you are extremely confident that they hold real intel.

Also, you should only give a pot of gold to a real unicorn in order to make the entrance to the Magic Kingdom appear. What? You're talking abstracted nonsense, so let's go the whole fucking hog.

But, anyway, what everybody else said. If you're pro-execution, advocate the death penalty for torture, and hope that a jury will acquit (or the chief executive pardon) "good torturers".

I think Peter Dorman over at Econospeak had the best response to the ticking timebomb scenario:
You are being held captive by a foreign power. Although it is a mistake, your captors honestly believe that you are a terrorist and know where a bomb is scheduled to explode in a few hours. Is it OK for them to torture you? (Cap tip to John Rawls.)

he died...

Joe Blow said:

So really, torture should be used, but it should be used carefully only against enemies in which you are extremely confident that they hold real intel. Because otherwise you'll just end up chasing your tail as they keep changing their story over and over again trying to appease the torturer.

Let's be clear: Joe Blow is a terrible person. He's saying that we shouldn't torture because, in some cases, we'll end up "chasing our tails." That's not the reason we ought not to torture. Anybody who doesn't get that we shouldn't torture because it's torture is a terrible person.

Like many things related to counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency in general, it's counter-intuitive; like Ezra said, your first instinct is that if you simply punish someone enough, they'll tell you what you want. The problem is, though, is that they'll also make up stuff, and give you lots of nonsense (not intentionally - they just want the torture to stop). That's great if you want to get false confessions Soviet-style, but not so great for intel purposes.

Instead, you have to use trickery and subversion. Compare it to recruiting spies - you don't torture people until they become your spies. You get them on your side via a combination of subversion, rapport, and blackmail.

A spicy detail: Gerecht means "court of justice" in Dutch... Life is full of irony.

Torture is a valuable tool, when the "pre-torture" probability is very high. If somebody REALLY knows something, then torture has a 100% chance of revealing it.

False. There are plenty of examples in history of people who refused to give up valuable information even under torture. Forest Yeo-Thomas, for one.

Do it the way the ancient Chinese did it (Tang dynasty, probably others). The officials can order the torture, but if the victim turns out to be innocent, they face extreme penalties, up to the death penalty in one of its more extreme forms, for having done so. And... everything is public, including the torture, so there's no way to cover it up. No conversations with defendants behind closed doors are allowed - the public always has access.

The really striking difference between Matthew Alexander and the defenders of torture is the perspective. Both agree on something -- intelligence is vital to defeating terrorists or insurgents. But defenders of torture are thinking in narrowly tactical terms. Even granting their assumption that torture is the quickest, easiest way to gain intelligence, the information they are hoping to get is narrowly military. But in a war of ideas, military information wins only battles, not wars. Alexander got information at a deeper and more complex, he learned of detainee's motives, their background, their aspirations. This is just not the sort of information you can get from torture. But it is the information that will win the war.

For those playing, torture apologist, let's at least be correct in our statements.

If you know a particular person has a particular piece of testable information, you can probably get that information via torture.

(Note that you might get false leads first. This is why the "ticking time bomb" scenario is especially bad reasoning. All they have to do is send you on a couple wild goose chases before telling you the truth.)

It is *not* useful for gathering intel unless you're asking the right questions, and if you can determine if they're lying.

Every man has a breaking point. If somebody has real info and you arent successful in bringing it out via torture, it simply means you arent being aggressive enough.

If we do grab Bin Laden, we should ABSOLUTELY use torture against him, because there's an extremely high "pretest" probability that he has valuable intel. I'm talking real torture, not pansy ass waterboard bullshit. I'm talking about taking blowtorches and a pair of pliars to people. They'll talk, thats guaranteed. If they actually know something, they'll reveal it, if they dont, they'll make up bullshit. Either way, they're talking.

I'd break Bin Laden within 24 hours. Even the most die hard martyrs who are willing to die for the cause wont endure, because there are levels of pain that are far worse than death.

I'd break Bin Laden within 24 hours.

Sure you would, big guy. Meanwhile, remember to have those TPS reports with the new cover sheets on my desk by 8:30 am tomorrow morning.

If they actually know something, they'll reveal it, if they dont, they'll make up bullshit. Either way, they're talking.

Ah, but that's the rub, isn't it? Even with Bin Laden, you don't know what you're getting when you get him screaming - remember that he's supposedly more of a titular head of a decentralized movement nowadays.

Torture is the world's best all-natural penis enlargement supplement.

I found out about in an email.