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hobbesmaster
Jan 28, 2008

District Selectman posted:

The more I read, the more I wonder if this is the next Watergate.

You're cute.

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hobbesmaster
Jan 28, 2008

He should just read it all out on the floor of the house. Pesky constitution.

hobbesmaster
Jan 28, 2008

They should ask how murder is an interrogation technique.

hobbesmaster
Jan 28, 2008

Mr Ice Cream Glove posted:

This was all over the internet this morning



Too bad the CIA is pretty terrible at identifying terrorists.

hobbesmaster
Jan 28, 2008

If the utility is zero then our values are negative.

hobbesmaster
Jan 28, 2008

euphronius posted:

It's also a moot point because the necessity defense is available in the US.

One definition:
There, to present the defense at trial, defendants must meet the burden of production on four elements: “(1) they were faced with a choice of evils and chose the lesser evil; (2) they acted to
prevent imminent harm; (3) they reasonably anticipated a direct caus
al relationship be- tween their conduct and the harm to be averted; and
(4) they had no legal alternatives to violating the law.”

So if someone is charged with torture TODAY, they can argue it was necessary and not be convicted.

So the whole "national debate" is dumb.

This would only work on the individual that was ordered to carry it out.

hobbesmaster
Jan 28, 2008

euphronius posted:

Well, ok but the Idea of someone ordering someone to torture someone is monstrous. Why would that ever be legal.

We hanged the officers that ordered war crimes after WWII, not the men that did them (they'd have been shot if they refused after all).

hobbesmaster
Jan 28, 2008

Vermain posted:

Do you believe that prison guards at Nazi concentration camps deserved to be prosecuted? Why or why not?

The majority were not prosecuted. Those that were prosecuted went "above and beyond"

hobbesmaster
Jan 28, 2008

Goatse Master posted:

http://www.thenation.com/article/tortures-dirty-secret-it-works


Not entirely sure how I feel about this article but it is interesting, and fits in with the fact that everybody already knew that torture is ineffective at producing real information. The public debate about torture is always being framed as a question of whether or not it helped save lives, etc, so looking at it as having another purpose is new to me.

CIA looks up to the stasi I guess.

hobbesmaster
Jan 28, 2008

While Canada facilitated torture its judicial system did rule it was wrong. More than the US can say.

hobbesmaster
Jan 28, 2008

TACD posted:

Is it safe to say at this point that the US has the most well-funded and expansive torture program that has ever existed?

No. As horrific as it is we "only" tortured about a hundred people. Ancient Romans would think we were cute.

I mean look at this poo poo: http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/the-worst-ways-to-die-torture-practices-of-the-ancient-world-a-625172.html

hobbesmaster fucked around with this message at 16:19 on Dec 12, 2014

hobbesmaster
Jan 28, 2008

Hollismason posted:

What I don't understand is why the CIA was paying these huge sums of money, like what could possibly justify it in their mind to spend that much money on someone who's job just seemed like middle management skills.

When you think there is one person in the world that can do a thing, you tend to pay a large sum of money for that thing.

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hobbesmaster
Jan 28, 2008

Feral Integral posted:

I thought it was spelled like: Khrushchev ?

Хрущёв actually. Kh is more common but there's other transliteration systems, wikipedia has a big table: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Russian

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