The Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture - United States Congress Audiobook

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• 
  czvnvhnc
  November 30th, 2021
  

  “Torture doesn’t work.”
  “Where you tortured when you were a prisoner of war?”
  “Yes.”
  “Did you reveal information while being tortured?”
  “Yes.”
  -John McCain.

  The Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture - United States Congress
• 
  erouting
  December 1st, 2021
  

  When I was in a grad school program a former Mossad agent, and classmate, had us sign NDAs, got the IT department to disconnect the in-class cameras and gave a presentation on torture in the Israel v. extremist conflict. It was informative.

  Without going into anything identifying, torture has some issues that have nothing to do with morality. Basically you can make people talk under torture, but you have no idea whether the information they provide is accurate or not. They’ll say anything to make the pain stop. And that’s a problem because you don’t want them to say anything, you want them to give accurate and actionable information.

  If the things you need to know are verifiable, you can lock the person up and check the information, then resume torture if the information was bad. Unfortunately the way terror groups operate information goes stale fast and if you got bad information its often too late by the time you learn that fact (car bomb went off somewhere else for example.)

  For this reason Mossad generally doesn’t use torture. If you think they’re at all squeamish look up Operation Wraith of God in relation to the 1972 Munich Olympics and perhaps reconsider that view. They have the reputation they have for a very good reason and it is earned.

  When you combine the PR issues of torture with the relatively poor reliability of the information extracted from torture, its just not a great option. Are there times when it has its uses, where time pressures are such that getting some chance of good intel is better than no chance? Sure, but psychological tactics work much better overall, which is why Mossad uses them instead wherever possible.

  McCain is right on both counts, what I’ve shared may help resolve that seeming contradiction.

  Thanks to @Rossmacca85 for the share.

  The Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture - United States Congress
• 
  TigerMoth
  December 1st, 2021
  

  erouting: Thank you for sharing that.

  The Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture - United States Congress
• 
  caesar963
  December 1st, 2021
  

  

  Interesting as always, erouting. It’s hardly pleasant to contemplate, but another approach (regarding reliability of information) is that the torturers persist until the version of events achieves reasonable consistency, then they go with that assessment. There are clear problems with that approach as well, of course.

  Torture also has this dimension also - as evidenced by the practices of British authorities, for inst - the excruciating extraction of confessions from even innocent people. It has worked for these torturers. Indeed, they have had extraordinary “success” with it, one might observe.

  As an aside, I think that such practices always engage morality. Never let the pragmatists have the day.

  The Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture - United States Congress
• 
  caesar963
  December 1st, 2021
  

  Moreover - what the hell were you studying?! I studied human rights law, as part of the wider programme; but we just looked at cases/legislation/charters, we definitely never had any Mossad or SMERSH agents in, switching off the electrical grid.

  The Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture - United States Congress
• 
  erouting
  December 1st, 2021
  

  @TigerMoth - You’re welcome.

  @caesar963 - Thanks.

  As I recall he actually addressed that, he indicated that the way terrorist agencies operated they would anticipate their lower level people breaking under torture and feed them false information as to the activity of other cells, or leaders of individual cells would be given contingency targets in the event that a cell member was captured, or just couldn’t be accounted for, prior carrying out an attack. These policies weren’t always followed, so they’d still try to get information, but it was always uncertain whether the person even knew what the truth was. Certainly this could be verified long term, but if an attack was planned at 12:15pm that day, long term wasn’t very useful. This goes a long way to explaining how Mossad can be very good, but still fail to stop all attacks.

  Higher level people, if they were captured, were often true believers, people who saw their suffering as a direct service to Allah, they tended to not break in a way that was useful. Like they might weep and pray to Allah and just ignore what was done to them. Dissociation is the psych term. I won’t repeat the story he told because that’s identifiable and I don’t want him getting in trouble, but he said that the best means of extracting information from the high level people typically involved very in-depth psychological tactics, often centered around simple boredom and loneliness, rather than any normal form of torture, these methods took a great deal of time, patience and a deep understanding of the target and so weren’t useful to thwart an imminent attack, but were useful in the long term battle against the organization’s other higher ups.

  I am much less familiar with the tactics used by the British, from what I know of The Troubles, and from what you’re saying, wasn’t it mostly about inspiring fear and compliance in the populace with any information gathered being a pleasant, but entirely unexpected, happenstance for the torturers?

  In the US its fairly common for Jews to travel to Israel, some of them do terms of service with the military or, if they have the mindset for it, Mossad. Then they come back and go on with their lives, as opposed to the career nature that most intelligence services have. Service to Israel is often seen as a religious duty, personal quest or similar, a cause rather than a paycheck. Running into them is rare, but not impossible. I’ve met two, just happened to get lucky in that one was in my class and wanted to teach us.

  The program had little to do with him giving that presentation. I don’t want to name what it was because that, coupled with what I’ve said, would probably be enough to identify him if anyone wanted to. Former Mossad agents aren’t that rare in many parts of the US, but Mossad agents involved in modern interrogation who graduated from a certain course of study is getting too specific.

  On the topic of morality, I think he gave the presentation because he got sick of the rest of us going back and forth on torture strictly in a moral sense. His broader point, I think, is that it only becomes a direct moral issue if it does what it says on the tin: provide accurate and actionable information. If it doesn’t then its not just immoral, its a waste of resources that could be allocated more effectively elsewhere. Making it both immoral and non-pragmatic. Well, assuming the potential torturer isn’t just a sadist and actually cares about getting good information.

  I think there will always be people who confuse immorality with strength, for them the fact that conventional torture is ineffective will always be a better argument than any moral consideration. I do agree that performing torture, planning to perform torture, or otherwise seriously considering torture is a moral issue, I just don’t mention that in cases where the person I’m talking to isn’t likely to be swayed by morality. Belaboring their lack of empathy in the hope of suddenly endowing it upon them would be like trying to teach a goldfish how to fly: futile and upsetting for all involved.

  If I’m talking to someone I want to be learning, sharing information or somehow becoming better, preferably together with whomever I’m speaking with. I don’t always attain that, but that’s the goal. Your comments help with that, so thank you. Really I’m just too old for shouting matches, online or otherwise. So you’re right, but that’s why I didn’t mention the moral aspect earlier.

  The Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture - United States Congress
• 
  caesar963
  December 1st, 2021
  

  I think the shouty folks must be getting something out of it, but it’s hard to see what that is exactly. “Dope” hits, p’haps?
  I didn’t mean to pry, it was just intriguing.
  The effects on the one inflicting suffering is another aspect. By way of comparison, in our police service, the guards that investigate online child abuse have to be regularly rotated due to the detrimental psychological impact of such experiences. An experienced torturer is a disturbing concept to contemplate.

  On Northern Ireland, there was that dimension of private & state terror & intimidation, but the specific use of torture I referred to there related to coercing confessions. There have been very high profile cases (miscarriages of justice) where the British authorities knew the people they were torturing were innocent, or had no reason to believe they were not innocent. Obtaining the confessions was all that mattered - by any means.

  The Bush administration made use of the case, Kelly v UK (ECHR, 1987) to justify “enhanced interrogation techniques.” However, if the case was tried a decade or two later, it would likely have had a different ruling. A judgment that the British techniques did in fact clearly constitute torture, and were thereby unlawful. The human rights court has of late taken a very strict view on such practices. That’s why the courts caseload is primarily taken up with extreme abuses from Turkey & Russia (the state attacking minorities; prison conditions, etc.).

  The Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture - United States Congress
• 
  erouting
  December 3rd, 2021
  

  I’m not sure the shouty ones are wise enough to examine self-interest. Given the effects facebook has on mental health, and its continuing high membership, I tend to think what they’re getting out of it is largely not positive. In the same way that a fellow might get something out of PCP, just not anything good.

  Good point on the psychological effects on the torturer. I would assume the mindset of a gang member, in which fellow gang members are seen as human, and everyone else is seen as something between inferior and prey, might be adopted. I don’t think a study has ever been conducted on that specifically, but I see some similarity to the Standford Prison Experiment, except no one is able to pull the plug after watching things go off the rails after a mere five days.

  Huh. They were literally coercing confessions? Thought we’d advanced beyond that on a broad scale after the inquisition a few centuries back, guess I was wrong. I’m sure individual members of my own country’s armed forces and law enforcement do the same thing, but my understanding is that we don’t do it on a wide scale anymore. I might well be wrong. Given how terrible people are, both as individuals and as the aggregation we term ‘government’ I probably am.

  Of course Bush would do that. Another classmate of mine was a political strategist. I asked him how it was possible that every other president the US had learned and grew and became better at speech giving, but Bush actually seemed to get worse during his second term, his response: “St*pidity sells.” by which he meant that Bush knew the people who supported him were not smart and was therefore intentionally holding himself to their level of intellect. Which says a great deal about how his administration operated. If you compare speeches given by Bush post presidency to the ones he gave during his term of office, my classmate appears to be completely correct. Not saying much for my country when being a low brow window licker is a plus on the political scene, but it does go a long way toward explaining why half the country would support bad case law as a justification for hurting anyone who falls into the “other” grouping.

  The Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture - United States Congress
• 
  caesar963
  December 4th, 2021
  

  Human beings are intrinsically flawed, consequently their institutions express those flaws in a “writ large” fashion.
  Facebook targets its users with the most polarising content to get ‘em rightly roiled up. The antisocial algorithms amplify aggression & extremism. All tailored to specific tastes. A sophisticated cesspit.

  The British routinely tortured in order to “close” cases, yeah. They’re currently legislating to immunise their plucky murderers & torturers from prosecution, interestingly enough. There’ll always be an Ing-er-land. Weirdly, they’re constantly going on about their rule of law tradition - like a Monty Python sketch when it’s in its proper context. They go nuts on here when you point these things out.
  Culturally, they have of late returned to the Precambrian. We all wish them well of it, I suppose. And there was that dubious referendum to keep the “darkies” out.

  Just to be historically counterintuitive for a moment, the jurisprudence of the Inquisition was remarkably sophisticated for its time. Many of the persistent myths around it are merely (successful) Reformation-era propaganda efforts which are enthusiastically repeated in the Anglosphere. Prof. Thomas F. Madden’s Modern Scholar lectures, entitled “Heaven or Heresy” is a superb treatment of the subject.

  Prior to the Inquisition, the secular powers/courts would just torture & judicially murder their opponents. This served to intimidate & cow the populace. (They were doing this in the name of the Church, which the Church objected to.) When canon lawyers became involved, they introduced due process & rules of evidence. The accused would always opt for the Inquisition over the secular courts, because they were less brutal & murderous. Often, an accused person could just swear an oath & go home. So many of our historical myths are just that.

  The Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture - United States Congress

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