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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (229687)	5/3/2007 8:05:57 PM
From: epicure	Respond to of 281500

Ok So you would say the cases are routine? Is that what "exist with regularity" means? I'm asking. I really don't know. You just don't claim to know what methods are used to get them to talk- meaning you don't know if torture is used? I told you that most people in the US see the ticking time bomb case as the case where a bomb is going to kill someone- this exigency allows the police (or whomever) to torture the "suspect" using the justification of the ticking bomb. I wasn't interested in your case because it didn't have this element in it- and thus did not fit the ticking time bomb cases which the original poster (the one to whom you were initially replying)- was talking about. I didn't realize until later that you were talking about something completely different from the "traditional" view of the ticking time bomb case. Why did you think I didn't realize torture wasn't illegal in Israel? I'm curious. I did know that. Nothing I wrote was meant to imply anything else. Since we both seem to be in the habit of totally misunderstanding each other, can you tell me how you got that idea? I'm curious what I said that led you to that.

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (229687)	5/3/2007 9:29:34 PM
From: Win Smith	Respond to of 281500

Ok, precise context for the bored and lonely. Message 23508180 :, in full because it's quite well put. Michael, is there a cute little kitty playing with a ball of yarn in the soon to be bombed school? And maybe a puppy? I'm trying to work up enough emotion to overcome my rejection of the cartoon character of the hypothetical and my revulsion of torture and agree with you. How about if we allow torture but if the torturer was wrong about his assumptions he has to undergo exactly the same torture for the same duration? Do you think we'd have a long line of "I'm absolutely sure that guy's a terrorist with a ticking bomb" hooded guys lined up and eager to "beat the truth out of them?" And would it really work? Men and women who fly their bodies into buildings at hundreds of miles an hour aren't likely to tell the truth, and obviously not in the first hour or so, even with torture. They will certainly talk, but what will they say and how reliable will it be? Having said all that, if you take everything in your hypothetical as totally factual and you can be absolutely certain that the choices are torturing a bomber into telling the location of the bomb or a bunch of dead kids...let the screaming begin. But the real world NEVER works that way. The other guy is just as tough, just as smart, and just as committed. Your response: "But the real world NEVER works that way. The other guy is just as tough, just as smart, and just as committed." There have been real world cases where the police or intelligence forces have captured a 'ticking bomb' - usually the driver or the handler of a suicide bomber, sometimes the bomber himself, and they have been made to talk. I know it has happened in Israel; I don't know what methods were used. It is hiding your head in the sand imo to say that such cases do not exist, or that if it does the other side is composed only of hardened fanatics so that all efforts are useless. If you are a policeman who catches a 'ticking bomb', then you must try something because hundreds of people will die if you don't. Ed was clearly talking about torture. You can claim, I guess, that your selective quotation changes the context from what he was talking about to "alternative interogation methods" or "moderate physical pressure" or some other neologistic euphemism, but I'd recommend you steer clear of the reality-based community with that line.