That crawl back up to morality for the US just took a small leap…
WASHINGTON — Pledging to run an independent Justice Department free of political taint, Eric H. Holder Jr. said on Thursday that he believes unequivocally that “waterboarding” is torture, and that it must not be practiced by the United States regardless of the circumstances.
Welcome to the obvious… finally.
He’s a PUSSY. Everybody in the world knows about waterboarding it won’t work anymore.The transparency of our new leaders is going to make it so much easier to kill the bad guys;-) good luck
We won’t torture unless it serves our national interest, then we will. It doesn’t matter who is President.
We will never see the end of torture but I think that making the public stand against cruel and unusual tactics is the right thing to do. Specifying what specific type of torture is unacceptable it a bit silly. What about electrodes to the private parts? But, it is making the general philosophy of the administration clear.
An excercise in hedonic calculus:
So if one terrorists has info that could be used to save the lives of X people, under what cicumstances would waterboarding and only waterboarding be OK.
Lives Saved by Waterboarding:
A. 1
B. 10
C. 100
D. 2,974 (9/11 death toll)
E. 1000
F. 10,000
G. 100,000
H. We should never use waterboarding, no matter how many lives could be saved.
What would be your choice?
I would go with A.
I would go with A.
As long as I am not the one being waterboarded.
You assume that you know said person has the information. How can you be sure you are right?
Here is your solution: waterboarding is illegal under all circumstances. If someone in the chain of authority feels compelled to use waterboarding under some scenario as you suggest, they should go ahead and authorize it, and face criminal charges. If said authority was right and lives are saved, then the President issues a pardon, and said authority is now a Real American Hero ™.
This ensures that the likelihood of using waterboarding is proportional to the certainty of its applicability in a given circumstance.
This is a thought excercise, so there are no grey areas. If you waterboard, the information you get will lead to X number of lives saved.
My argument for A is that the pleasure I would experience from saving a persons life would more than offset the pain I would get from committing an act that in isolation is viewed as immoral, in this case the *specific act of waterboarding *a terrorist. As such, the pleasure would obviously increase with the number of people I could save relative to the pain.
My argument for A is that the pleasure I would experience from saving a persons life would more than offset the pain I would get from committing an act that in isolation is viewed as immoral, in this case the specific act of waterboarding a terrorist
What about those of us that would derive *pleasure *from causing a terrorist pain? 
So if one terrorists has info that could be used to save the lives of X people, under what cicumstances would waterboarding and only waterboarding be OK.
Flawed argument. You never know if a specific person has the information you seek, and you also have no reason to believe that what they tell you is the truth.
Anyway… I choose H… never under any circumstances… even if you could get information that would be useful. We can either treat people with respect (even those who least deserve it) and be respected for it, or we can be ruthless, lawless, assholes and reap the rewards of that.
So if one terrorists has info that could be used to save the lives of X people, under what cicumstances would waterboarding and only waterboarding be OK.
Flawed argument. You never know if a specific person has the information you seek, and you also have no reason to believe that what they tell you is the truth.
Anyway… I choose H… never under any circumstances… even if you could get information that would be useful. We can either treat people with respect (even those who least deserve it) and be respected for it, or we can be ruthless, lawless, assholes and reap the rewards of that.
It’s, not a flawed argument because I’m not arguing a specific position–there is no argument being put forth. Re-read my post, and don’t make any assumptions.
This is a thought experiment with only 2 outcomes, either the people die, or they live. Don’t assume anything and answer the question as posed. Don’t inject any emotion into your answer.
So again: I don’t disagree with what you are saying, nor do I necessarily agree, but, if you could save 10,000 people from being killed by “torturing” one person with waterbording, are you saying you would choose to not to engage in said interrogation technique.
Again, there is no right or wrong answer here.
Are those net lives saved or just the number who would be saved from the information provided by the terrorist about the immediate threat? To calculate the net lives saved, if any, you’d also have to calculate all the downstream consequences from being perceived as a nation that tortures. Perhaps you are assuming one can torture in a vacuum, with no adverse consequences to anyone but the terrorist. Not realistic.
Are those net lives saved or just the number who would be saved from the information provided by the terrorist about the immediate threat? To calculate the net lives saved, if any, you’d also have to calculate all the downstream consequences from being perceived as a nation that tortures. Perhaps you are assuming one can torture in a vacuum, with no adverse consequences to anyone but the terrorist. Not realistic.
I’m not assuming anything other than what I wrote. Don’t read into it, simply answer the question as it is posed, that is the entire point of a thought experiment/exercise.
Keep it simple, you can either save the people or they die, nothing else should be inferred from the question.
THIS IS NOT REALITY IT IS A THOUGHT EXERCISE
So again: I don’t disagree with what you are saying, nor do I necessarily agree, but, if you could save 10,000 people from being killed by “torturing” one person with waterbording, are you saying you would choose to not to engage in said interrogation technique.
I would not torture them. There are worse things than dying… which is good… since we are all going to die anyway.
Answer A.
Causing someone pain or discomfort is less of a net negative than preventing someone else from losing their life altogether.
It’s a silly question, and has no real relevance…
It’s like how many people would you have die,to save your life.
1.1
2.5
3.10
4.100
5.10,000
Unless of course you have an answer for that one too, do you???
This thread has become a character study of the LR. So many people need to argue about the question being asked, instead of just reading and answering the question.
It’s a silly question, and has no real relevance…
It’s like how many people would you have die,to save your life.
1.1
2.5
3.10
4.100
5.10,000
Unless of course you have an answer for that one too, do you???
LR taking you out of your comfortable zone hey Monty??
This is not a silly question, it is a question that asks you to answer within a Hedonic calculus framework, that is, what decision gives you the most pleasure, nothing more nothing less.
That you have not/can not answer it on the first pass, is revealing in itself.
If this were a closed experiment – we have in our capture someone who is involved in a plot that, if not stopped, will kill XX persons, and by waterboarding that person we know that we will save XX persons with no other collateral consequences --then I suppose the answer is that it’s ok if we save one life.
That says nothing about what we should do in a world with different parameters.