Is using a minotaur to gore detainees a form of torture?

[Cain]

We report, you decide!

[Cramulus]

Is using a minotaur to gore detainees of this forum
a form of torture?

[Kai]

That was perfect.


Use something out of the ordinary to reveal just how absurd an argument is.

[Cain]

Well, presumably you've heard about the measures used in interrogations by the CIA, right?

They include:

- Threats of execution (extra-judicial threats included, ie "I'll kill you in your cell and make it look like an accident", not "you may face the death sentence if you do not cooperate")

- Threats to kill children of detainees

- Applied pressure to the cartoid atery, to make the suspect pass out

- Threatened to rape detainees female relatives in front of them

- Battering the suspect using a rifle or knees

- Blowing smoke into their face for five minutes

- A different form of waterboarding, designed to inflict more pain and panic in a detainee

- Stripping a suspect and leaving them in an open cell, to develop hypothermia

- Smearing suspects in what is claimed to be menstrual blood

- Sleep and sensory deprivation

- Hanging suspects by the arms until they are dislocated

- Forcing suspects to mimic the actions of a dog in order to get fed

And several other methods I have likely left out.  And best of all, according to the IG Torture Report, these were carried out according to "assessments that were unsupported by credible intelligence" - in other words done to people who they knew were likely innocent.

[Cramulus]

I don't think the government should be held accountable for the actions of mythological creatures.

I mean now, the term "endless shifting labyrinth" will be synonymous with the actions of one loose cannon minotaur

[Kai]

Well, presumably you've heard about the measures used in interrogations by the CIA, right?

They include:

- Threats of execution (extra-judicial threats included, ie "I'll kill you in your cell and make it look like an accident", not "you may face the death sentence if you do not cooperate")

- Threats to kill children of detainees

- Applied pressure to the cartoid atery, to make the suspect pass out

- Threatened to rape detainees female relatives in front of them

- Battering the suspect using a rifle or knees

- Blowing smoke into their face for five minutes

- A different form of waterboarding, designed to inflict more pain and panic in a detainee

- Stripping a suspect and leaving them in an open cell, to develop hypothermia

- Smearing suspects in what is claimed to be menstrual blood

- Sleep and sensory deprivation

- Hanging suspects by the arms until they are dislocated

- Forcing suspects to mimic the actions of a dog in order to get fed

And several other methods I have likely left out.  And best of all, according to the IG Torture Report, these were carried out according to "assessments that were unsupported by credible intelligence" - in other words done to people who they knew were likely innocent.

You need something more absurd than the reality to show just how absurd the argument is.

It's like showing people how weird it is to talk to Jesus and God if you replace Jesus with Krishna and God with Brahma.

Its like the weird polar twin of the argumentum ad absurdum.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Well, presumably you've heard about the measures used in interrogations by the CIA, right?

They include:

- Threats of execution (extra-judicial threats included, ie "I'll kill you in your cell and make it look like an accident", not "you may face the death sentence if you do not cooperate")

- Threats to kill children of detainees

- Applied pressure to the cartoid atery, to make the suspect pass out

- Threatened to rape detainees female relatives in front of them

- Battering the suspect using a rifle or knees

- Blowing smoke into their face for five minutes

- A different form of waterboarding, designed to inflict more pain and panic in a detainee

- Stripping a suspect and leaving them in an open cell, to develop hypothermia

- Smearing suspects in what is claimed to be menstrual blood

- Sleep and sensory deprivation

- Hanging suspects by the arms until they are dislocated

- Forcing suspects to mimic the actions of a dog in order to get fed

And several other methods I have likely left out.  And best of all, according to the IG Torture Report, these were carried out according to "assessments that were unsupported by credible intelligence" - in other words done to people who they knew were likely innocent.

You forgot the worst cases...having Iraqi guards rape that 15 yr old boy in front of his father.

Doesn't that make you just want to eat stars and shit stripes?

[Mangrove]

 

It's not torture! It's enhanced interrogation.

If we didn't do it, then the terrurists would like, you know...build wings out of feathers and wax and then who knows what buildings they'd fly into!?

Do you want that on your conscience? Those AlKayda folks are building suicide bombers.....haven't you heard of the Icarus method??

If you ask me, King Minos is a true patriot.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

"We're NOT 'napalming villages', we're 'delivering ordnance to specified target settlements'".

- unnamed Air Force Colonel, as quoted by Robert Price, 1967.

[Cain]

You forgot the worst cases...having Iraqi guards rape that 15 yr old boy in front of his father.

Doesn't that make you just want to eat stars and shit stripes?

Ah, but that doesn't count.  Its like when MI6 tell a Morrocan intelligence guy to cut open someone's testicles with a scalpel.  Or they rendition someone to Bagram airbase and let Afghani spies break their ribs.  You see, our intelligence services do not "collude in, solicit, or directly participate in abuses of prisoners."  Sir John Scarlett, the foreign secretary and a certain high ranking MI5 official I spoke to personally all said the same thing.  Exact same words. 

Obviously it is "not possible to be certain about the behaviour of other governments" even though such an issue rarely troubles us at the time we are sending suspects off to them.  Because, um....OH HEY LOOK A TERROR PLOT.  TERROR TERROR TERROR!

[The Good Reverend Roger]

You forgot the worst cases...having Iraqi guards rape that 15 yr old boy in front of his father.

Doesn't that make you just want to eat stars and shit stripes?

Ah, but that doesn't count.  Its like when MI6 tell a Morrocan intelligence guy to cut open someone's testicles with a scalpel.  Or they rendition someone to Bagram airbase and let Afghani spies break their ribs.  You see, our intelligence services do not "collude in, solicit, or directly participate in abuses of prisoners."  Sir John Scarlett, the foreign secretary and a certain high ranking MI5 official I spoke to personally all said the same thing.  Exact same words. 

Obviously it is "not possible to be certain about the behaviour of other governments" even though such an issue rarely troubles us at the time we are sending suspects off to them.  Because, um....OH HEY LOOK A TERROR PLOT.  TERROR TERROR TERROR!

Yep.  But for added fun, the prison in which the 15 year old was raped was being run by Americans.

[Requia ☣]

That was "a few bad apples, acting alone" who never actual saw the training materials that encouraged 'enhanced interrogation'.

[Jenne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/02/world/asia/02embassy.html

These are the stories that should get top billing, exposing the underbelly of "anti-terra" operations as they are with the paramilitary assholes, the mercenary dickfucks and the security asswipes that are shitting up a storm over there.  Even if there was a REALLY tight agenda over in Afghanistan for American troops to adhere to, it's compromised to hinges of hell and back.

[Cain]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/31/AR2009083102911_pf.html

Now he is in American custody. What will happen? How do we get him to reveal his group's plans and the names of his colleagues? It will be hard. It will, in fact, be harder than it used to be. He can no longer be waterboarded. He knows this. He cannot be deprived of more than a set amount of sleep. He cannot be beaten or thrown up against even a soft wall. He cannot be threatened with shooting or even frightened by the prospect of an electric drill. Nothing really can be threatened against his relatives—that they will be killed or sexually abused.

He knows the new restrictions. He knows the new limits. He may even suggest to his interrogators that their jobs are on the line—that the Justice Department is looking over their shoulders. The tape is running. Everything is being recorded. He is willing to give up his life. Are his interrogators willing to give up their careers? He laughs.

This business of what constitutes torture is a complicated matter. It is further complicated by questions about its efficacy: Does it sometimes work? Does it never work? Is it always immoral? What about torture that saves lives? What if it saves many lives? What if one of those lives is your child's?

[AFK]

Then my country's national security obviously sucks balls and I was screwed to begin with.