Does torture work? As Bill Clinton might have said, it depends on what you mean by “work.” If your goal is to extract a confession for use at one of Stalin’s show trials, then torture works well enough. If, on the other hand, your goal is to get reliable intelligence out of a person, to get him for example, to tell you the details of a potential terror plot or name his confederates, then just as clearly torture does not work. A person being tortured is liable to say just about anything to get the pain to stop and isn’t apt to be much of a stickler for whether or not his statements are true. Since there is no way to separate the true from the false screams, answers given by a suspect under torture are worse than worthless and should never form a part of our interrogation policy.
It is true that torture could sometimes produce accurate information. So can a magic eight ball, but no one would think to build our counter-terrorism strategy around the answers it gives. If I ask the magic eight ball whether it will rain tomorrow the answer it gives might be accurate, but it won’t be reliable. Magic eight balls are sometimes right, but are very often wrong, and since there is no way to tell if an answer it gives is accurate or not its answers are never reliable and only a fool would rely on them. So also with torture. If one scours the Internet, one might find a few cases in which the use of torture produced accurate intelligence (though not nearly as many as you might think). But so what? Police sometimes employ psychics to help them solve crimes, and I’m sure there have been a few cases where information provided by the psychics have led police to a breakthrough in the case. This doesn’t mean that we ought to be employing psychics in the war on terror. You might as well argue that the lottery is a good financial investment because people do occasionally win it. We can only get the benefit of the information torture produces if we are willing to rely on it without knowing whether or not it is true. Since this is self-evidently a bad policy, the only logical choice is to forgo the use of torture altogether in favor of more reliable interrogation techniques.
People have sometimes tried to get around the reliability problem by demanding that any information gained via torture be checked out and corroborated before it is considered at all reliable. If a suspect says that the bomb is in a certain location, you go and look in that location and check to see if what he’s saying is right. If he says ‘the enemy will attack at dawn from the east’ and you have no way of checking whether what he’s said is right, then you disregard it completely. It’s a nice theory, but in practice things don’t seem to work that way. Invariably people are unwilling to ignore the intelligence gained under torture even when it is unverified, and this often leads them to do many stupid things. Part of the pre-war intelligence connecting Iraq and al-Qaeda came from information produced under torture, for example. Reason may tell us to ignore unverifiable information gleaned under torture, but experience shows that the temptation to act on that information is just too strong to resist.
Even where information produced under torture can be checked out, it often isn’t worth it to do so. The “trust-but-verify” approach also leaves itself open to manipulation. In Vietnam solders sent to check out information gained under torture often found themselves walking into ambushes, and in Algeria captured members of the FLN were told that if tortured they should give up the names of members of rival (and more moderate) political groups.
Non-torturous techniques are not only more in keeping with our ordinary notions of human decency, they are also more effective. The most effective interrogator at Guantanamo (according to the interrogators themselves) is “an older woman who adopts a nurturing attitude.” During World War II, the British were able to identify all but three of the hundreds of German spies operating in the country without the use of torture. Many of these spies became double agents, giving false information to the Germans and likely saving the lives of tens of thousands of civilians. Traditional interrogation methods can work even under extreme circumstances. The NYPD secured actionable intelligence from a suspect in the millennium-bombing plot in just six hours on December 30, 1999 – all using standard interrogation methods.
Not only is the use of harsh methods unnecessary, but it can be counter-productive. One of the things that upset the FBI about Guantanamo is that it seemed like whenever they were making headway with a particular detainee, developing a rapport and getting him to divulge information, the CIA would step in and start using more “forward leaning” methods, instantly eliminating whatever progress they had made.
Defenses of torture typically rely on highly improbable hypothetical situations. We are to assume that we know (somehow) that a plot involving massive loss of human life is about to occur and that we know (somehow) that a certain person has information that could stop the plot, and that we know (somehow) that nothing short of torture will get the information out of him. This is only a couple of steps away from asking us to suppose that we could know whether a particular statement made under torture is accurate. It is, in fact, a recipe for error, since the more extreme and unfamiliar a situation is, the more likely that we will fail to take key elements into account in our moral analysis.
But even if torture would be justifiable in such an unlikely scenario, this wouldn’t mean that we should carve out an exception to the law in such a case. Most of us would say that civil disobedience can sometimes be justified. This does not mean, however, that a formal exception should be written into every single law permitting people to break the law when (they believe) they are justified in doing so. Such an exception would have to be written in general enough terms that it would end up swallowing, if not the rule, then at least so many cases where it oughtn’t apply as to make the rule itself unworkable.
So also with torture. We may wish to restrict torture to cases where there is a ticking time bomb, but it will soon come to be used where there is no bomb at all. We may want to limit it to case where we know that the person has the information we need; we will end up using it in cases where we only suspect it – all will end up torturing the innocent and the guilty alike. (We have released hundreds of people from Guantanamo Bay, some of whom claim to have been tortured. Either we have put a lot of terrorists back on the streets, or we have mistreated a lot of innocent people). We may mean to use torture only as a last resort; we will find we are resorting to it at the first sign of frustration. This is not idle speculation. When Israel legalized torture in the 1990s this is exactly what happened. What was intended as an extraordinary method became widespread and routine, and all attempts to put real limits on it failed.
This is something I wrote a while back. I try to make the case against torture purely on practical grounds, without reference to any specifically Catholic principles regarding intrinsic evils, or even moral absolutes generally. There is also a second part, which I will post tomorrow. Constructive criticism is appreciated.
You are clearly correct that torture does not work. But I’ve aways been uneasy with that line of reasoning. As an intrinsically evil act, the circumstances and consequences have no bearing on the underlying morality. Thus, torture that works is just as evil as torture that does not work — and that includes ticking bomb scenarios that lead to millions of lives saved.
For when you become mired in the “does it work?” mindset, somebody will undoubtedly point out that there are some hypothetical situations where it does work, the old ticking bomb scenario being the usual suspect. And the typical answer is that this is so rare as to be meaningless, and anyway, we could make an exception in that most rare of circumstances. But we cannot make such an exception, ever.
Frequently people say the ticking bomb scenario is hypothetical. I guess as Bill Clinton might say “That depends on what a ticking bomb is.” Certainly on Sept. 10, 2001, March 10, 2004 and July 6 2005 there were ticking bombs even though not in a literal sense.
Phillip,
As I’m sure you’re aware, a ticking bomb scenario requires more than just that there is a bomb ticking somewhere.
Yes of course. Fundamental of course is that there is a real threat that is about to be carried out. To deny that such things exist is to deny reality.
Now if we had captured one of the terrorists on Sept. 10th with due reason to suspect that this terrorist had information about a “big” attack to occur on Sept. 11th, then we would have had a ticking bomb scenario.
“To deny that such things exist is to deny reality.”
Indeed. And to claim that anyone does in fact deny this is also to deny reality.
Then it seems the ticking bomb scenario is not hypothetical
Excellent post!
I think it also fair to say that some useful information can be gained from torture. This from John McCain on the effects of torture on him:
“Demands for military information were accompanied by threats to terminate my medical treatment if I did not cooperate,” he wrote.
“I thought they were bluffing and refused to provide any information beyond my name, rank and serial number, and date of birth. They knocked me around a little to force my cooperation.”
The punishment finally worked, McCain said. “Eventually, I gave them my ship’s name and squadron number, and confirmed that my target had been the power plant.”
Recalling how he gave up military information to his interrogators, McCain said: “I regret very much having done so. The information was of no real use to the Vietnamese, but the Code of Conduct for American Prisoners of War orders us to refrain from providing any information beyond our names, rank and serial number.” …
Eventually, I gave them my ship’s name and squadron number, and confirmed that my target had been the power plant. Pressed for more useful information, I gave the names of the Green Bay Packers’ offensive line, and said they were members of my squadron. When asked to identify future targets, I simply recited the names of a number of North Vietnamese cities that had already been bombed. (*)
Note he gave accurate information under torture that he would not have otherwise given. It is also true that he did not give accurate information that was “…more useful” But I think he knew as many military people do, that even small amounts of accurate information can provide a useful picture of enemy intentions. Yes some may also be very inaccurate also. But it would be hard for several people to make up similar lies whereas what is true will be consistent.
As you say, this is not to defend torture from a utilitarian perspective. Merely to make constructive criticism.
*http://campaignspot.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NDIyMjZiNWMxNmFiNjVmYzY1NzNlOWZmZDJlNTYxMmQ=
“Then it seems the ticking bomb scenario is not hypothetical.”
That doesn’t follow. But in any event, if you read my post, you’ll see I argue using torture would be a bad idea even in a ticking bomb scenario.
Good night all.
One last. We certainly turned away one probable terrorist who in restrospect was the 20th terrorist. We had in custody on Sept. 10th a man who claimed he was to be the 20th terrotist and pleaded guilty to such. In this case it does follow. Good night again.
That should read “…who in retrospect was to be the 20th terrorist.”
McCain did eventually give the North Vietnamese a tiny bit of accurate information as a result of being tortured (if you read my post, I concede that this can happen). But both before and after this, he gave out tons of inaccurate information. The question is: how could the North Vietnamese pick out the tiny bit of accurate information out of the large amount of false information McCain had been giving them? The answer is, they couldn’t.
Phillip,
*Sigh* Look, for a ticking bomb scenario to exist, it must be the case 1) that there is a ticking bomb, 2) that the government has in custody someone who has information that could stop the ticking bomb, and 3) that the government knows both of the above. The mere fact that there is a ticking bomb is not sufficient; neither is it sufficient that the government has in custody someone who could stop the bomb if the government isn’t aware of the plot, let alone that the guy they have in custody could stop it. All of this is fairly obvious. What isn’t obvious is why you would wish to be so obtuse on the subject.
[...] Blackadder answers this question in the negative. PermaLink | | Trackback/Pingback (0) [...]
MM – Wonder what response VN would get with a post entitled “Does Abortion Work?”
Actually, torture does indeed work — assuming anyone here finds that relevant to the matter of whether it should be permitted — though the incidence needed to make it effective might well be too high even for many in the pro-torture crowd. (In that sense, it seems a little like capital punishment.) Seymour Hersh provides an example of a successful torture operation in his latest.
Indeed, for a high enough torture rate, mere threats are often enough to get the job done, as happened in the case he mentions.
Very good question, Michael!
Mr. Iafrate,
Regrettably abortion works all too well, hence appealing to material efficacy wouldn’t be persuassive. Closer up your alley might be to question whether war works.
The notion that war “works” is one of the most idealistic things ever thunk. Defenders of war, keep dreamin’!
MM,
Though it’s true that the current piece doesn’t address the fact that torture is a grave moral evil, it strikes me as important to underline that a grave moral evil does not achieve the supposed good that it is advertised to provide.
After all, if we are to understand that the human nature and the nature of the universe are the creation of the same Divine Will that sets divine law, it would make sense that violating that law would not, in the end, usually “work”.
[...] on Torture Yesterday’s post on the subject hardly exhausted all the practical reasons against using torture on terror suspects (to cite but [...]
Torture works quite as well as abortion works.
The purpose of torture — far more often than not — is to inflict pain and to inflate the damaged ego of the torturer. Its purpose is to give the torturer a sense of being, by reminding him that he has the power to negate the being of another.
Certainly the torture in Abu Ghraib prison had/has little to do with any actual strategic military purpose. (Similarly, the Iraq War has little to do with “defending the U.S.”)
Yet both the war and the torture have succeeded in giving certain people the thrill of killing other people.
As George Orwell said, “The purpose of torture is torture.”
[...] on Torture Yesterday’s post on the subject hardly exhausted all the practical reasons against using torture on terror suspects (to cite but [...]
Torture does not “work” in the sense that it does not accomplish what the state says it accomplishes: extracting information.
Torture DOES work for the reasons G. Alkon says, reasons that the state does not admit.
I still insist that folks read Bill Cavanaugh’s brilliant and shocking book Torture and Eucharist. One of the best works of political theology I have read.
I actually share MM’s uneasiness about getting into the usefulness of an instrinically evil action. For example, with the death penalty (yes, I know it’s not the same, the Church has not prohibited it, etc, I am just using this as an example), I tend to ignore all the talking points about its usefulness, pro and con, and the unfairness etc. For those that attack the death penalty on utilitarian grounds, would it somehow become okay to utilize the death penalty if it were more equitable or if it clearly reduced the crime rate? If the answer is no, then why bring up those arguments?
That said, I suppose it doesn’t hurt to add utilitarian reasons to argue or simply persuade those not yet convinced of the moral problems with torture.
Sigh. Actually BA here are two cases. And then there is the case of the 20th hijacker.
Consider the following case reported in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz.
A suicide bombing was narrowly averted in Haifa (Israel) yesterday morning when the would-be perpetrator was arrested shortly before carrying it out. The drama … began when police, acting on specific intelligence information about a planned attack in Haifa, arrested a number of Palestinians who had been staying in the city illegally. One 18-year-old from Samaria was arrested … and when questioned, he admitted that he had hidden explosives for use in a suicide attack [and] directed [police] to an abandoned building where they found a belt containing several bombs that the Palestinian had planned to strap to his body and set off…. [23]
It is not clear from the newspaper report what techniques or form of questioning was used to elicit the information that prevented a suicide attack, but given the time scale and possible disastrous consequences of not obtaining this information, here we have a genuine actual example of a TBS.[24]
Footnote 24 reads as follows:
This claim will be rejected by those who insist that any genuine case of TBS requires that we must be certain that (a) the right person is tortured (i.e. the terrorist who knows of the bomb’s location), and that (b) this torture will provide the needed vital information to prevent the bomb’s detonation. However, Luban and others insist that these certainties can never exist in the real world of counter-terrorism, hence there can never be a realistic case of the TBS. These conditions are too strong. The Israeli example does cross the required threshold for a genuine TBS since what is needed in all such cases is a reasonable expectation rather than cast-iron certainties. (This principle rightly is adopted within the criminal justice system – where the guilt of those accused must be proved beyond reasonable doubt rather than with absolute certainty. If the latter was demanded then no one -or very few indeed – could be justly convicted of committing a crime.)
The first fact is this: on Sept. 27, Mr. Gäfgen kidnapped Jakob von Metzler, the 11-year-old son of a prominent banker, and murdered him by wrapping his mouth and nose in duct tape.
Four days later, Mr. Gäfgen was arrested after the police watched him picking up the ransom, but after hours of interrogation he was still refusing to disclose where Jakob was being kept.
That is what produced the second undisputed fact: imagining that Jakob’s life might be in imminent danger, the deputy police chief of Frankfurt, Wolfgang Daschner, ordered subordinates to extract the necessary information from Mr. Gäfgen by threatening to torture him.
Mr. Gäfgen was told, his lawyer later said, that ”a specialist” was being flown to Frankfurt by helicopter and that he would ”inflict pain on me of the sort I had never before experienced.”
A few minutes after being threatened, Mr. Gäfgen told the police where Jakob was — at a lake in a rural area near Frankfut — but when officers arrived there they discovered that Jakob, his body wrapped in plastic, was already dead.
Now if you want absolute certainty on these cases fulfilling the ticking bomb scenario that is fine. But then you run into the problem that you do not have absolute certainty that 1) Torture has never provided critical intelligence and 2) That a ticking bomb scenario has never met the criteria.
You are offering an opinion on these topics and giving probable reasons they are true. I am giving probable reasons you are wrong. Neither of us has absolute certainty that we are right. I won’t say that this assertion is too obtuse for you.
Now off to many other things. Work on your opinions BA. That is what they are.
Phillip,
I would direct your attention to the following bit of my post:
“If one scours the Internet, one might find a few cases in which the use of torture produced accurate intelligence (though not nearly as many as you might think). But so what? Police sometimes employ psychics to help them solve crimes, and I’m sure there have been a few cases where information provided by the psychics have led police to a breakthrough in the case. This doesn’t mean that we ought to be employing psychics in the war on terror. You might as well argue that the lottery is a good financial investment because people do occasionally win it.”
Phillip, try as he might, fails to poke holes in Blackadder’s piece. Sure, torture might sometimes work. For the few instances when it does, a society should not bend/change morals and laws to accommodate its use. This is what turns free nations into dictatorships. Even Israel, using Phillip’s example above, has found little success in using torture to stop the flow of suicide bombers and rocket attacks. The only thing that seems to have worked is a concrete wall separating the West Bank and Israel, as well as regular incursions into both the WB and Gaza to stop/kill the perpetrators of terrorist violence against Israel. Given the fact that so often Israeli incursions wind up killing so many civilians — simply just the wrong people — is partially attributable to faulty intelligence. If they’re using torture, no doubt one can assume such techniques produced false intelligence.
BA – You must be flattered with that last commenter’s online handle!
McCain ought to send the Vietnamese some of those cheese hats just as a joke.
[...] orthodox view. From the perspective of Catholic moral teaching, it seems to me that a government that allows [...]
I guess I have to agree with MM’s first comment above. The problem with making the “torture doesn’t work” argument is that there’s just no way you could possibly know that. In theory, there could be any number of cases where torture of some sort “worked,” in terms of producing actionable intelligence, but no one ever bragged about it and therefore you don’t know of it.
Bottom line, I’m wary of resting a moral issue on purporting to have shown a universal negative.
BA,
You ignore my point. In the cases I provide, I do not do so to prove that torture worked. Only that the ticking bomb scenario is not a hypothetical situation as you note. Two real and one probable situations were found after a five minute search on Google.
Also you note that torture may produce “tiny” amounts of information that will not be useful. I remember in my days in the Navy working at a base where a fair amount of new air systems were tested. During base indoc., security officers advised us to not give any information about our work to non-Navy personel even in casual conversations. They even advised not giving the base newspaper out. This being that in their experience, even “tiny” bits of information could be used by foreing intelligence to get a more thorough picture of what was going on. I offer their opinion only in contrast to yours.
You were searching for constructive criticism. This so
I’m, with BA,
Please note my comment to BA.
One last bit, your slippery slope argument typically tends to be considered fallacious. Thus it doesn’t help your argument.
The ticking time bomb is a hypothetical. The hypothetical was realized in the cases you listed, at least putatively for my purposes here, Phillip, but that doesn’t change that the original was a hypothetical. As for slippery slopes, you are correct that it isn’t enough to establish a slippery slope is present. It is however sufficient for establishing prudence. And not having a known contrari-example of a regime that has managed to confide torture to the extraordinary instances when attempting to do so makes it grossly imprudent to pursue such a policy without addressing the issue.
“You ignore my point. In the cases I provide, I do not do so to prove that torture worked. Only that the ticking bomb scenario is not a hypothetical situation as you note. Two real and one probable situations were found after a five minute search on Google.”
I didn’t deny that ticking bomb scenarios have ever occurred (in fact in you read my post you’ll see that I mention some cases, such as the Millennium bombing plot, where they have occurred). I only noted that you argument (there are ticking bombs, therefore there are ticking bomb scenarios) was lacking.
“I remember in my days in the Navy working at a base where a fair amount of new air systems were tested. During base indoc., security officers advised us to not give any information about our work to non-Navy personel even in casual conversations. They even advised not giving the base newspaper out. This being that in their experience, even ‘tiny’ bits of information could be used by foreing intelligence to get a more thorough picture of what was going on.”
Well, sure. But then most people don’t spend most of their time spreading false information about their work. If they did, and even there was no easy way to separate wheat from chaff, then it would be a somewhat different situation.
“One last bit, your slippery slope argument typically tends to be considered fallacious. Thus it doesn’t help your argument.”
What matters is not whether an argument is considered fallacious, but whether it actually is so. Some forms of slippery slope arguments are fallacious. Others are not. Mine is of the later type.
Stuart,
Your objection, as I understand it, is that if torture did produce reliable information, we wouldn’t know it, because people would keep quiet about it. The problem with this objection is that torture is not some new thing that has only ever been tried since 9/11. Torture has been around for thousands of years, has been utilized by a wide variety of regimes, and we therefore have quite a bit of information about its relative (in)effectiveness. If what you’re after is a confession, then torture works great. If, on the other hand, what you’re after is reliable intelligence, then the record of torture is pretty poor.
M.Z.
That which is hypothetical may or may not exist. That which exists, even if rare, exists and therefore is not hypothetical. As you admit, the cases I provide fulfill the criteria for the ticking bomb scenario set out by BA. Thus they exist and are not hypothetical. The wording BA uses is hypothetical. It would help his argument to change it as this is not so.
Slippery slope arguments invite prudence, but again don’t necessarily argue against doing something. As for the slippery slope being the case in America in the present, see below.
BA,
As I point out, a slippery slope argument may or may not be fallacious as you note. However I don’t think you’ve proven adequately that it will happen in the US. You point out the Israeli example but don’t show it as so in the US. The best example we have in the US of potential torture is waterboarding. But the govt. notes that only three people have been waterboarded and none since 2003. If your argument for a slippery slope were correct it would have been happening with routine. Not the case, therefore it is open to being fallacious.
And of course people may not (or may) lie about their work. But the point is that small amounts of accurate information may be helpful. I offer the opinion of experts from my days in the military. You offer your opinion under a different expertise.
Your objection, as I understand it, is that if torture did produce reliable information, we wouldn’t know it, because people would keep quiet about it.
To amplify on my point: I have the sense that torture is most likely to come to light when 1) an innocent guy is tortured and eventually let go, whereupon he himself tells the press; or 2) somebody is tortured but the information he gives is wrong, and someone within the intelligence apparatus feels guilty and spills the beans. I also have the sense that torture would be less likely to come to light if the CIA found a really bad guy, got some really useful information out of him, and then kept him locked up. (In other words, I bet that people wouldn’t be as likely to have guilty consciences and let it leak to the press.)
Let me put it this way: You don’t have a top security clearance, right? And neither do I. So in theory there could be all sorts of things going on behind the scenes that we just don’t know about. That’s why I’m hesitant about assertions about what methods do or don’t “work.”
Stuart,
Again, that might be true for recent events, but it’s not true for, say, the use of torture by the Spanish Inquisition, or in Elizabethan England, or in the old Soviet Union, etc. Not having a security clearance might keep one from knowing what has happened in the last few years, but it doesn’t make much difference when it comes to events that happened decades or even centuries ago (there are many things, for example, in the history of U.S. foreign policy, the CIA, etc., which were highly classified at the time but are common knowledge now).
[...] is interested, my previous posts critiquing the idea that ‘torture works’ can be found here and [...]