Thread: Intelligence Gained From Torture?

Just read this on the BBC News website and a few other places.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8182404.stm

Wondering what everyone thinks of this kinda thing as im sure a lot of 'Intelligence Information' that has proven useful has come from 'morally questionable' methods.


And before anyone says...Im not a softy human rights person. Just curious of peoples opinions.

*Edited to remove a Hollywood type Phrase

I believe 'Intel' and indeed any other make of processor is best gained through rigorous quality control, utilising clean rooms to provide a dust-free, temperature-controlled environment.

So?

Ahem, yeah, edited now to remove said hollywood movie phrase

Originally Posted by Smiler_1985

Just read this on the BBC News website and a few other places.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8182404.stm

Wondering what everyone thinks of this kinda thing as im sure a lot of intel that has proven useful has come from 'morally questionable' methods.


And before anyone says...Im not a softy human rights person. Just curious of peoples opinions. Personally Id say that if the Info is good and leads to terrorists getting removed from the face of the earth then surely its right.....

The UK doesn't officially "do" torture. Perhaps the fault lies here with the "allies" inability to enter a prolonged mulit-location COIN operation without having an adequate domestic or organic intelligence structure. Hence the need to farm these guys out?

Ignore me, was being facetious

I'm against torture in all circumstances. It's reprehensible and diminishes us as human beings.

We're better than that.

I now expect the usual hypothetical "You'd feel differently if it was your family" and other straw-man arguments.

The problem is that the information is seldom good.

Basically torture is a very effective way of getting people to agree with you, but it is a bad way of getting them to tell you the truth.

The “information� obtained from torture thus ends up supporting your preconceptions and damages your understanding of the true situation.

Add in the fact that a significant number of you suspects will be innocent and torture is extremely counter productive.

Torture is both sordid and inefficient; hurt someone badly enough and they will tell you whatever they think will stop the pain. This may be what they think you want to hear, rather than the truth.

The only situation I can think of where torture is justified would be where someone had been taken hostage or kidnapped and one of the terrorists/kidnappers had been captured. If it saves the victim's life, by all means get Spanish Inquisition on the bad guy.

Of course, there is a grey area between interogation techniques, like food and sleep depravation, and torture. For example, I believe the CIA classify Water Boarding as "robust interrogation"...

Originally Posted by Sixty

Ignore me, was being facetious

I'm against torture in all circumstances. It's reprehensible and diminishes us as human beings.

We're better than that.

I now expect the usual hypothetical "You'd feel differently if it was your family" and other straw-man arguments.

Not from this quarter mon ami. It's a disgrace that we have to third party our intel operations.

Originally Posted by sanchauk

Originally Posted by Sixty

Ignore me, was being facetious

I'm against torture in all circumstances. It's reprehensible and diminishes us as human beings.

We're better than that.

I now expect the usual hypothetical "You'd feel differently if it was your family" and other straw-man arguments.

Not from this quarter mon ami. It's a disgrace that we have to third party our intel operations.

The Spooks are probably as underfunded and over-stretched as the Armed Forces...

Originally Posted by Werewolf

Originally Posted by sanchauk

Originally Posted by Sixty

Ignore me, was being facetious

I'm against torture in all circumstances. It's reprehensible and diminishes us as human beings.

We're better than that.

I now expect the usual hypothetical "You'd feel differently if it was your family" and other straw-man arguments.

Not from this quarter mon ami. It's a disgrace that we have to third party our intel operations.

The Spooks are probably as underfunded and over-stretched as the Armed Forces...

Couldn't agree more. What has happened is pure pragmatism. And who will pay the butchers bill? Not the b*ggers that created the need for this course of action in the first place!

As usual, our Gub'mint talks a good fight; Cyclops, back when he was Chancellor, promised enough funding for Box 500 to set up Regional Intelligence Centres in every major UK city.

This was not long after 9/11. Today, the Spooks have a grand total of two RIC's; one in Belfast and another in Manchester.

One of the major reasons 7/7 happend was because the Spooks simply did'nt have enough boots on the ground to keep every terrorist subject under surveillance. Fours years on and fcuk all has changed: 5 are still having to make judgement calls about which suspects to prioritise because they don't have enough manpower.

Ask the French paratroopers who served in Algeria....they broke the back of the FLN bomb making and planting networks in Algiers (bombs that had gone off in stadiums, bars etc killing dozens of civilians) by using intel gained from torture....and more than 50 years latter everybody has forgotten about their success in accomplishing the mission and in saving countless civilian lives but everybody still goes on about the fact that torture was used against the poor FLN bombers.

Originally Posted by Werewolf

For example, I believe the CIA classify Water Boarding as "robust interrogation"...

I believe that the initial guinea pigs were 3 field agents (proper covert operatives). When the technique was later tested on non-trained lawyers none lasted more than single-figure seconds and all declared it was torture. I believe that 2 of the lawyers concerned with the original US government policy are being investigated by the Justice Department with a view to criminal prosecution. There are several books on this subject but I thought that "The Dark Side" by Jane Mayer was quite good.

Torture is unacceptable, ask the Met!!

IMD

Originally Posted by fantassin

Ask the French paratroopers who served in Algeria....they broke the back of the FLN bomb making and planting networks in Algiers (bombs that had gone off in stadiums, bars etc killing dozens of civilians) by using intel gained from torture....and more than 50 years latter everybody has forgotten about their success in accomplishing the mission and in saving countless civilian lives but everybody still goes on about the fact that torture was used against the poor FLN bombers.

Did them f*ck all good in the end though. What does it say about the state of your mission when you feel you need to start torturing people?