Waterboarding Terrorists- Justified to Save Lives?

[markomalley]

I believe deterence and terrorism prevention are legitiimate acts of defense.

You have the right of freedom of belief. But you still haven’t answered my very simple question:
For example, there is no question that if somebody is trying to stab you, you have the right to defend yourself from the attacker and that this defense might result in the death of that attacker. But…would you be allowed to pop a cap in the same attacker before he started to attack you? Or would you morally be required to use some other means to prevent the attack from occurring in the first place?
Is there some problem with answering that question? It is a very simple yes or no answer. I don’t understand what the problem is with answering the above. Perhaps you could explain why you don’t want to answer it. Do I need to rephrase it?

 

[roelblomsma]

I say yes.

I would be waterboarded to save a life. Would you?
What do you think?

Well, I’m not sure if torture is a legitimate mean to get a confession or to get information. I mean, from a Catholic point of view: Would Jesus Christ approve of torture? I quite frankly don’t think those were His teachings. The Romans and the Pharasees certainly enjoyed those practices, but then again, they were the bad guys.

I saw a movie called ‘The Road to Guantanamo’ (or something like that) in which a couple of Arabian students traveled through Afganistan and were forced by the Taliban to let their beards grow and wear Taliban-like clothes. Then they got a lift on a truck or something like that, just to get from some place to another. But on this ride, they were intercepted by American forces and imprisoned and tortured…the moral of the story…injustice is commited by American forces…

 

[CHESTERTONRULES]

You have the right of freedom of belief. But you still haven’t answered my very simple question:
For example, there is no question that if somebody is trying to stab you, you have the right to defend yourself from the attacker and that this defense might result in the death of that attacker. But…would you be allowed to pop a cap in the same attacker before he started to attack you? Or would you morally be required to use some other means to prevent the attack from occurring in the first place?
Is there some problem with answering that question? It is a very simple yes or no answer. I don’t understand what the problem is with answering the above. Perhaps you could explain why you don’t want to answer it. Do I need to rephrase it?

We don’t have the right to kill someone we suspect of planning to attack us without overwhelming evidence. I don’t think we need to wait until we have been stabbed, however.

I think you are making my point here.

We didn’t kill KSM. We didn’t even injure him. We waterboarded him. We did this because we believed that he had information that could lead to saving the lives of innocent people.

I think we made the right choice.

 

[CHESTERTONRULES]

Well, I’m not sure if torture is a legitimate mean to get a confession or to get information. I mean, from a Catholic point of view: Would Jesus Christ approve of torture? I quite frankly don’t think those were His teachings. The Romans and the Pharasees certainly enjoyed those practices, but then again, they were the bad guys.

I saw a movie called ‘The Road to Guantanamo’ (or something like that) in which a couple of Arabian students traveled through Afganistan and were forced by the Taliban to let their beards grow and wear Taliban-like clothes. Then they got a lift on a truck or something like that, just to get from some place to another. But on this ride, they were intercepted by American forces and imprisoned and tortured…the moral of the story…injustice is commited by American forces…

You shouldn’t get your information from left wing movies, or right wing movies for that matter.

I believe protecting innocent life trumps the comfort of terrorists.

I find it hard to believe that anyone would think that the deaths of innocent people are necessary so that we don’t have to waterboard a terrorist.

 

[roelblomsma]

Also, I’d like to add, that not everyone agrees with American (USA) operations in the Middle East. You are talking about ‘terrorism’, but at the same time you are killing thousands of innocent people (elderly, women, children) that have nothing to do with Muslim extremists. The whole invasion in Irak was a hoax and is not justifiably by ‘liberating people from evil dictatorship’. That is something that has to come from those people themselves. They are now living in the ‘Middle Ages’ as we went through in Europe and in a couple of hundred years or so, they may go through the whole enlightenment period.

Why are you in Afganistan? Let them decide their own faith. In the Middle Ages, women in Europe kind of received the same treatment. 'Whitches would be burned alive on the stake after being tortured horribly. If the USA hadn’t meddled with the Middle East, there would be no terrorism and no motive for Muslim extremists to focuss on the USA, would there?

 

[CHESTERTONRULES]

Also, I’d like to add, that not everyone agrees with American (USA) operations in the Middle East. You are talking about ‘terrorism’, but at the same time you are killing thousands of innocent people (elderly, women, children) that have nothing to do with Muslim extremists. The whole invasion in Irak was a hoax and is not justifiably by ‘liberating people from evil dictatorship’.

You don’t know what you are talking about. You are just repeating left wing propaganda that has nothing to do with the Truth.

Do you deny that Saddam Hussein ruled by torture and oppression?

Do you deny that Saddam was responsible for the deaths of over 1 million people?

Do you deny that Saddam Hussein attacked three neighboring nations?

Do you deny that Saddam financially supported and harbored terrorists?

Do you deny that Saddam ignored UN sanctions for 12 years?

Do you deny that Saddam produced and used WMD?

 

[markomalley]

We don’t have the right to kill someone we suspect of planning to attack us without overwhelming evidence. I don’t think we need to wait until we have been stabbed, however.

OK. So you are saying that you have the right to kill somebody who is planning to kill you if you have overwhelming evidence that he is planning to do so.

I don’t think that you’re interpretation of the law would agree with most police or most DA’s, but at least I can understand where you are coming from.

Upthread you defended waterboarding as an acceptable technique on the basis of self-defense. And in this response you just gave, you indicate that self-defense can take place based upon overwhelming evidence that an attack is going to occur, even though it hasn’t occurred yet.

So then are you defending waterboarding somebody only after we have overwhelming evidence that an attack is going to occur?

If we already have that overwhelming evidence, what would we then hope to achieve by doing the waterboarding?

 

[CHESTERTONRULES]

OK. So you are saying that you have the right to kill somebody who is planning to kill you if you have overwhelming evidence that he is planning to do so.

I don’t think that you’re interpretation of the law would agree with most police or most DA’s, but at least I can understand where you are coming from.

Upthread you defended waterboarding as an acceptable technique on the basis of self-defense. And in this response you just gave, you indicate that self-defense can take place based upon overwhelming evidence that an attack is going to occur, even though it hasn’t occurred yet.

So then are you defending waterboarding somebody only after we have overwhelming evidence that an attack is going to occur?

If we already have that overwhelming evidence, what would we then hope to achieve by doing the waterboarding?

We have testimony from the CIA that waterboarding KSM prevented a terrorist attack in Los Angeles.

They gained information that enabled them to thwart this attack, thus saving innocent lives.

 

[markomalley]

You don’t know what you are talking about. You are just repeating left wing propaganda that has nothing to do with the Truth.

Do you deny that Saddam Hussein ruled by torture and oppression?

Do you deny that Saddam was responsible for the deaths of over 1 million people?

Do you deny that Saddam Hussein attacked three neighboring nations?

Do you deny that Saddam financially supported and harbored terrorists?

Do you deny that Saddam ignored UN sanctions for 12 years?

Do you deny that Saddam produced and used WMD?

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, in a 2003 interview with Vanity Fair magazine (DOD transcript is here), stated, *The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason. *

He also identified two other reasons that could have been used as their rationale: the second is support for terrorism, the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people

But he said: The third one by itself, as I think I said earlier, is a reason to help the Iraqis ** but it’s not a reason to put American kids’ lives at risk*, certainly not on the scale we did it. That second issue about links to terrorism is the one about which there’s the most disagreement within the bureaucracy*

So they decided to go in solely on the basis of WMDs.

The fact of the matter is that the WMDs were the sole reason they went in. WMDs were the sole reason that Congress authorized him to do so.

And I sincerely wish that our forces would have found a huge stockpile of WMDs when they invaded (I personally think they were shipped to Syria). But they didn’t. So the invasion was, for all we can see, based on an error. A mistake.

Sorry (and I mean that), but it was. Had they used the liberation of the Iraqis as their justification (which they could have but didn’t), that would be one thing. Had they used the Iraqi support for terrorism as a justification (which they could have but didn’t), that would be one thing. But they didn’t. They used WMDs as the justification. And they came up essentially empty handed.

I am not spouting any left wing propaganda either. I am spouting factual information (see the above source).

 

[Tsuwano]

Also, I’d like to add, that not everyone agrees with American (USA) operations in the Middle East. You are talking about ‘terrorism’, but at the same time you are killing thousands of innocent people (elderly, women, children) that have nothing to do with Muslim extremists. The whole invasion in Irak was a hoax and is not justifiably by ‘liberating people from evil dictatorship’. That is something that has to come from those people themselves. They are now living in the ‘Middle Ages’ as we went through in Europe and in a couple of hundred years or so, they may go through the whole enlightenment period.

Why are you in Afganistan? Let them decide their own faith. In the Middle Ages, women in Europe kind of received the same treatment. 'Whitches would be burned alive on the stake after being tortured horribly. If the USA hadn’t meddled with the Middle East, there would be no terrorism and no motive for Muslim extremists to focuss on the USA, would there?

I don’t think waterboarding is a legitimate act that the American Government should be engaged in, but neither do I agree with your view of “American operations” in the Middle East. I’m not convinced the invasion of Iraq was the best thing to do at that time, but neither do I think Iraq under Hussein was some sort of Garden of Eden. I also think that Iraq is presently better off than it was under Hussein’s thumb and, whether I like it or not, President George W. Bush and the American military and Allies are responsible for that. As for Afghanistan, the U.S. military is not in that country for the purpose of deciding anyone’s faith. This is pure Taliban and Al Qaeda propaganda. The U.S. is in Afghanistan because Al Qaeda terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11th, 2001. If that event had not occurred, America would not presently be in Afghanistan. It is false to assume that America is responsible for terrorism or for Muslim extremists in the Middle East. Muslim extremists focus on the U.S. because of the values of liberty and religious tolerance which the U.S. holds and which they see as a threat. I think these very same values are threatened, not only by the Muslim and other religious extremists in the Middle East, but also by our own blind and misguided use of torture against these extremists. This is another reason I think waterboarding is not only immoral, but on a political level, just a stupid thing to do.

 

[markomalley]

We have testimony from the CIA that waterboarding KSM prevented a terrorist attack in Los Angeles.

They gained information that enabled them to thwart this attack, thus saving innocent lives.

But, if this meets your standards, we must have already had “overwhelming evidence” that there was going to be an attack on Los Angeles. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be waterboarding in self-defense, would it?

And if we already had overwhelming evidence that there was going to be an attack on Los Angeles, then why did we need to waterboard KSM?

 

[wabrams]

But, if this meets your standards, we must have already had “overwhelming evidence” that there was going to be an attack on Los Angeles. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be waterboarding in self-defense, would it?

And if we already had overwhelming evidence that there was going to be an attack on Los Angeles, then why did we need to waterboard KSM?

No, there could have been overwhelming evidence there was going to be an attack in LA, in a certain time frame(intercepted phone calls, emails, etc.) but no details of how, when, and who exactly was the trigger man.

 

[Newbie2]

It was not used to extract confessions, it was used to gather information about future attacks.

It was used appropriately and it saved innnocent lives.

Do you think allowing another terrorist attack would have been more moral?

1. Is there a moral difference between extracting a confession and extracting other sorts of information? If so, then the end must justify the means, right?
2. As far as waterboarding being appropriate, I’m on the fence as to whether waterboarding should or should not be considered “torture”, so I may be in agreement. As far as saving lives, of course.
3. Ahhhh…there I have you, friend. “more moral” = relativism, does it not?

 

[markomalley]

No, there could have been overwhelming evidence there was going to be an attack in LA, in a certain time frame(intercepted phone calls, emails, etc.) but no details of how, when, and who exactly was the trigger man.

In that case, the evidence would not be overwhelming, would it?

The OP justified the use of waterboarding based upon an application of the doctrine of self-defense. In order to clarify what he was saying, I made an analogy of self-defense against somebody who was going to stab him. Would he need to wait until the person was actually attacking him with the knife or would he be able to shoot the person pre-emptively, before the knife was pulled. The OP responded that he believed it would be OK to shoot the attacker beforehand provided that there was overwhelming evidence that the attacker was, in fact, going to attack.

(I don’t agree and I don’t think that most police or most DAs would agree, but, that is the OP’s position)

I’m recounting that because it is important to understand, in context, what “overwhelming” means. Based upon what the OP has said (which I do not agree with), “overwhelming” indicates who, what, where, how and approximately when. And the person he said that he would shoot in self-defense would be the person who was going to do the attack, not somebody else (e.g., another member of the gang).

Me, personally, I would see that “enhanced interrogation” would be justified in only the rarest of circumstances (using the self-defense principle as a rationale). An example of such a rare circumstance is if a bomb has already been planted and you catch the bomber or the engineer who designed the bomb. There is no way to evacuate the area to render it useless. In this case, hours, minutes, and seconds count or a lot of people are going to die. The only way to get the details of how to defuse the bomb is through “enhanced interrogation.”

In MY opinion, anything short of that would not be self defense…it would be either deterrence or prevention…in neither case is the use of deadly force authorized per Aquinas, Pius XI, or any other Catholic source. If one is going to say “use of deadly force is OK, so, therefore, use of less than deadly force must be OK,” then you’ve got to use it under the same circumstances.

By the way, you all keep claiming that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s waterboarding. Well, there is something wrong with the timeline here.

On February 9th, 2006, President Bush made the following statement before the National Guard:

In the weeks after September the 11th, while Americans were still recovering from an unprecedented strike on our homeland, Al Qaida was already busy planning its next attack.
We now know that in October 2001, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the September the 11th attacks, had already set in motion a plan to have terrorist operatives hijack an airplane using shoe bombs to breach the cockpit door and fly the plane into the tallest building on the West Coast.
BUSH: We believe the intended target was Liberty Tower in Los Angeles, California.
Rather than use Arab hijackers as he had on September 11, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed sought out young men from Southeast Asia whom he believed would not arouse as much suspicion.
(snip)
Their plot was derailed** in early 2002**, when a Southeast Asian nation arrested a key Al Qaida operative.
One minor problem. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was not captured until March of 2003:

The man believed to be the key planner of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 – and several al Qaeda attacks in the past five years – was among three terrorism suspects arrested in a CIA-led operation early Saturday in a house outside the Pakistani capital.
The arrest of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is the single most important in the war on terror since September 11, said a law enforcement official close to the investigation.
So if the plan to blow up the Library Tower in Los Angeles was derailed in early 2002 and KSM was captured in March 2003 (which, to my figuring, was after early 2002), how did his being waterboarded stop that attack?

 

[CHESTERTONRULES]

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, in a 2003 interview with Vanity Fair magazine (DOD transcript is here), stated, *The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason. *

He also identified two other reasons that could have been used as their rationale: the second is support for terrorism, the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people

But he said: The third one by itself, as I think I said earlier, is a reason to help the Iraqis ** but it’s not a reason to put American kids’ lives at risk**, certainly not on the scale we did it. That second issue about links to terrorism is the one about which there’s the most disagreement within the bureaucracy

So they decided to go in solely on the basis of WMDs.

The fact of the matter is that the WMDs were the sole reason they went in. WMDs were the sole reason that Congress authorized him to do so.

And I sincerely wish that our forces would have found a huge stockpile of WMDs when they invaded (I personally think they were shipped to Syria). But they didn’t. So the invasion was, for all we can see, based on an error. A mistake.

Sorry (and I mean that), but it was. Had they used the liberation of the Iraqis as their justification (which they could have but didn’t), that would be one thing. Had they used the Iraqi support for terrorism as a justification (which they could have but didn’t), that would be one thing. But they didn’t. They used WMDs as the justification. And they came up essentially empty handed.

I am not spouting any left wing propaganda either. I am spouting factual information (see the above source).

Stopping Iraq’s production of WMD was one of many reasons why the invasion is a good idea.

The fact that the political choice was to focus on this one issue doesn’t negate the other legitimate reasons.

 

[CHESTERTONRULES]

1. Is there a moral difference between extracting a confession and extracting other sorts of information? If so, then the end must justify the means, right?
2. As far as waterboarding being appropriate, I’m on the fence as to whether waterboarding should or should not be considered “torture”, so I may be in agreement. As far as saving lives, of course.
3. Ahhhh…there I have you, friend. “more moral” = relativism, does it not?

Moral relativism is not the same as determining the best choice in a difficult situation.

Moral relativism is a denial of absolute morality.

 

[Newbie2]

Moral relativism is not the same as determining the best choice in a difficult situation.

Moral relativism is a denial of absolute morality.

And two popes have said torture is immoral, no matter what the intent. Absolute morality? Or can we ignore what they said?

 

[Rascalking]

And two popes have said torture is immoral, no matter what the intent. Absolute morality? Or can we ignore what they said?

No, we can’t ignore what they said. We need them to help us with our moral statements and actions.

However, something vital to remember is that popes don’t have to make decisions for countries that are world powers. No one is slamming planes into St. Peter’s Basicalla, althought I’m sure they’d like to.

Look at this way-if we had solid proof a bomb was going to off in the vatican-we don’t know where, but we have other proof-emails, phone calls, etc .Do we ask the suspect in custody really nicely? Do we take away his dessert? Slap him on the wrist?

 

[markomalley]

No, we can’t ignore what they said. We need them to help us with our moral statements and actions.

However, something vital to remember is that popes don’t have to make decisions for countries that are world powers. No one is slamming planes into St. Peter’s Basicalla, althought I’m sure they’d like to.

Look at this way-if we had solid proof a bomb was going to off in the vatican-we don’t know where, but we have other proof-emails, phone calls, etc .Do we ask the suspect in custody really nicely? Do we take away his dessert? Slap him on the wrist?

Vatican II also had a bit to say in the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudiem et Spes (text in red is mine):Furthermore, [Tier I] whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia or wilful self-destruction, [Tier II] whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; [Tier III] whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where men are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed. They poison human society, but they do more harm to those who practice them than those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are supreme dishonor to the Creator.Vatican II had bishops from all over the world, including a whole lot of places where they did have planes slamming into them and where they did have both physical and mental torture going on for real (remember that the KGB was in top fighting form back in the early 60s…and a lot of these people had very vivid memories of Stalin who died not that much earlier)

And they chose to use a very much broader term than “torture.” They used “torments.” That is something worth chewing on a bit.

(Also worth chewing on is that they placed torments in a completely different – and lower – tier of offenses than abortion)

 

[Rascalking]

Vatican II also had a bit to say in the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudiem et Spes (text in red is mine):Furthermore, [Tier I] whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia or wilful self-destruction, [Tier II] whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; [Tier III] whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where men are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed. They poison human society, but they do more harm to those who practice them than those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are supreme dishonor to the Creator.Vatican II had bishops from all over the world, including a whole lot of places where they did have planes slamming into them and where they did have both physical and mental torture going on for real (remember that the KGB was in top fighting form back in the early 60s…and a lot of these people had very vivid memories of Stalin who died not that much earlier)

And they chose to use a very much broader term than “torture.” They used “torments.” That is something worth chewing on a bit.

(Also worth chewing on is that they placed torments in a completely different – and lower – tier of offenses than abortion)

All interesting and worth chewing on, but the bishops don’t control the countries they are from. When your in control of an entire country and see top secret information on who wants to kill your fellow citizens, you might change your mind a bit as well.