This argument indicates that Mr. Saletan is anxious to help al-Qaida detainees:

In other words, the CIA wants detainees to live in terror of what we might do to them. Physically, we may have policies that bar us from hurting or maiming them in this or that way. But psychologically, we mustn't let them know this. We want to build a landscape of possible horrors in their imagination that's worse than the real thing.

Torture is mental. That's why the CIA used psychologists—and why investigations of the Bush torture program must go beyond the violence we actually applied.

[End quote]

The purpose of an investigation is not to edify the investigators; it's to produce results which can be communicated to others. The investigation of torture has been intended for public disclosure, and it's difficult to consider Mr. Saletan's recommendation as anything other than to make US limits publicly available.

And if psychological approaches - as opposed to physical - are effective, then those must be published, too. Al-Qaeda detainees must have preknowledge of all techniques which might be used against them, presumably so that they will be less effective.

Perhaps Mr. Saletan wants interrogations limited to:

Q: Tell us what you know.

A: No.

Q: Darn.

Actually, I expect that what Mr. Saltan wrote does not say what he intended to communicate. Though I doubt he'll ever clarify.

I also doubt that rules - even, especially good rules - for interrogations will be applied when the situation is desperate enough. Perhaps that's enough to make guilty interrogatees afraid.

What qualifies as "desperate enough"? What if you torture someone who you eventually release because you deem them to be innocent?

Want to guess what would happen to suspects after a successful attack on the US, with poison gas or worst, an atomic bomb? Want to consider whether the apology to someone innocent would restrict the treatment of someone who may not be innocent in such circumstances?

The problem is, desperate people tend to make less than balanced choices. Even Ms. Lithwick wrote essays after 9/11 which were not as generous to captives as those she wrote later. Government officials in a situation of failure to prevent and obvious threat are likely to be determined to obtain what they want.

So I think the best we can do is to avert a situation in which one individual feels he can escape future criticism for inadequate effort by being as barbaric as possible. And that means a team to evaluate what's reasonably likely to be effective while offending moral standards as little as possible.

I don't think there is a situation desperate enough to merit torture, because the moment you open it up as an option is the moment that people will look for excuses to apply it when things aren't "desperate" enough. We need to get out of this mindset where we believe that capturing someone gives us a right to the contents of that person's mind. It doesn't, it never have, and it never will.

We already know what would happen to suspects after a successful attack on the U.S. and that's why we are debating it. One of the problems with codifying torture is that you build a system that is now open to misuse. I think we'd agree on that. If we want to use a scenario where there's a ticking timebomb then we've got to be realistic: if we know that person A has planted a bomb somewhere that is going to kill or destroy then my follow-up is to ask, how do we know? We have either tracked this person from point A (bomb) to point B (capture) or we already know where the bomb is - and that's it's activated - or we wouldn't have this scenario. Secondly, a person that hellbent on destructions, and at the point where his evil plot is mere moments or hours aways, isn't going to say boo about where it is - ever. That's why they are evil.

I don't buy at all into any argument that draws up a scenario as narrow as that and I don't think I ever will. I read justifications for torture and I've yet to come across on that is convincing in support - I'll keep reading, it's certainly a discussion and I'm willing to hear it out.

Evildoers are not superhuman.

A friend may come forward or another member of an organization may be persuaded to warn that an attack is imminent. That's how we can find out about a bomb without tracking anyone.

If a participant in the plot can be questioned, there is a chance to find out what that person knows, contrary to the assertion in your post. Obtaining the information is likely to be difficult, but it's not invariably impossible.

And no matter how difficult interrogation might be, anyone trying to prevent an attack is likely to consider niceties less important than saving lives. I'm not approving, but this recognition is "realistic".

Am I understanding you correctly?

When you wrote:

We need to get out of this mindset where we believe that capturing someone gives us a right to the contents of that person's mind. It doesn't, it never has, and it never will.

[End detypoed quote.]

... did you mean that no one has a right even to attempt to find out what that person knows, no matter how much good might be done by obtaining that information?

And that relatively benign forms of interrogation, such as asking politely, should be prevented to preserve an individual's privacy? Even though the individual being considered has been caught in the midst of a hostile act?

This seems to put an unusually high value on privacy, at least by comparison with the views of many.

Sevumar:

I don't think there is a situation desperate enough to merit torture,

If my child were in any kind of danger and I believed that you knew something helpful you'd be a goner.

I don't know anyone who, in that situation, would hesitate to do anything.

That's a part of the equation that never makes sense to me: "if I believe you know something." I think most of us have experienced plenty of times in our lives where we believed some that wasn't true. We learned after the fact, whether it was at home or work, that we were wrong. I know I always felt completely stupid for not taking the time to sort out what was what. The US has released about 500 prisoner from Guantanamo and I'm pretty sure that nearly every one of them was torture. Oops. Sorry. Like I said earlier, when you codity a system that provides for torture then torture is what you will get across the board in situations where people get to choose a method. We've seen it at Guantanamo, at Abu Ghariab, and at black sites around the globe.

You know, I agree wholeheartedly with shortcut on the idea the and scenario that involved my child but I'd change believe to "know". If I knew you'd done something to my child - some heinous - then you be a dead man walking. To me, that's the difference.

saintex:

You know, I agree wholeheartedly with shortcut on the idea the and scenario that involved my child but I'd change believe to "know".

We'd all love to know, but that's the problem.

The scenario I presented probably doesn't lend itself to rational thought. And quite often our instincts don't allow for that anyway.

But is torture an effective means of interrogation? I understand that Mr Zubaida's interrogators believed he knew more than he actually did. Consequently he was subjected to torture (or enhanced interrogation?) to get him to tell what he knew. To end it he started to make things up such as telling of a plot to set off a dirty bomb in a US city. As a result the CIA and other intelligence agencies wasted millions of dollars and thousand of valuable man-hours following up supposed threats that had no basis in reality. That was time that could have been spent getting real intelligence.

That's the thing to remember about using torture - to end it the victim will start to tell the interrogator what victim thinks the interrogator wants whether it is true or not. A lot more false information has been obtained from torture than true information.

John Kilcullen:

That's the thing to remember about using torture - to end it the victim will start to tell the interrogator what victim thinks the interrogator wants whether it is true or not. A lot more false information has been obtained from torture than true information.

What's your source?

Sleep deprivation along with drugs is very effective.

I didn't say that I thought you couldn't question a prisoner or suspect, simply that if he refused to answer your questions, you have no right to compel him to try to answer. Similarly, you have no right to mistreat the person in an attempt to extract information. Detaining a person does not give you a right to do whatever you want in the process of trying to get him to talk, it's really that simple.

Shortcut, you might want to hurt someone you thought might know something about your child, but if you did, you'd be just as much a criminal as the person responsible for hurting your child. A jury would have a harder time convicting you than a person who hurt a child, but you'd stand a good chance of being punished for your actions. You can't just go around hurting people whenever you feel justified. That's not how a society under the rule of law works, despite how much 24 you might have watched.

The effectiveness of techniques of obtaining information deserves discussion, with experts contributing from their experience. Though I think that if torture had been conclusively proven ineffective, then its use would not have been approved. Some people apparently believe in it.

But the subject of my post was Mr. Saletan's insistence that any method used to obtain information must be published. Even though not illegal. Even though he acknowledges - or states without disagreement - that letting organizations know about techniques in use is disadvantageous.

It seems Mr. Saletan's hostility to the Bush administration - and torture - has spilled into distaste for any method of obtaining cooperation.

Sevumar:

Shortcut, you might want to hurt someone you thought might know something about your child, but if you did, you'd be just as much a criminal as the person responsible for hurting your child. A jury would have a harder time convicting you than a person who hurt a child, but you'd stand a good chance of being punished for your actions. You can't just go around hurting people whenever you feel justified. That's not how a society under the rule of law works, despite how much 24 you might have watched.

It doesn't matter what we think might happen after the act. You could threaten to execute me the very next minute and it wouldn't stop me from doing what I believed was needed to protect my family.

It's a mindset that defies rationale.