The ticking bomb problem. In response to the exposure of widespread torture prisoners in Iraq (on all sides) and elsewhere, it’s inevitable that the “ticking bomb” problem should be raised.

‘You hold a terrorist who knows the location of a defusable bomb which, if exploded, will kill x million people. Do you have the right to torture him/her to find the bomb?’

Various answers to this question have been offered, none of which seem entirely satisfactory.

Instead of offering an answer to this question, I’m going to look at a question that follows immediately, but doesn’t seem to have been asked. Suppose that someone has used torture to extract information from a prisoner in the belief (factually correct or not and morally sustainable or not) that doing so was justified by a “ticking bomb” situation. What should they do next?

[Crooked Timber]

This question seves up a false dichotomy. As posed, the asnwer would most likely be yes. But, the better question, the one that is a more realistic question is, 'how many innocent people would you torture if you knew one had the location of a defusable bomb?' Very seldom is it like 24, where you have Jack in a room with THE guy. Many times the person being questioned is only there because a previous interrogation (tortured?) supject named them. Innocent people are as hard to get the 'right' answer from as the terrorist who is refusing to answer. SO, you end up with a lot of noise mixed in with little signal.

If we had a super effiecient organization with the wisdom of Solomon, they might be able to reduce the number of innocents in the mix, increasing the signal. But, what is the answer to MY question? Would it be okay to torture 100 innocent people, people whose only possible response would be incorrect? How about 10? How about 5? The Abu prison scandal indicates that we did not have an efficient organuzation and we tortured a large number of innocent people (the report estimates that 70-90% of the prisoners were innocent of any crime). It is the poorly run aspect of this, the total lack of a command structure, that makes this sort of torture absolutely useless, even in the most nutball of eyes. The info gained would be of such poor quality as to be useless.

Torture is like the death penalty. I can come up with all sorts of 'hypothetical' situations that I can agree to. Serial murderers being one of them. But we have sent to death innocent people. How many innocent people should be murdered by official edict to make sure we also get the bad guys? I believe that it is destrcutive to our system of government to send even 1 innocent to be killed in government-sponsored death chambers. Because we are not infallible, we will make mistakes. Even one is harmful. So I must be against the death penalty. Even though I recognize that there ARE people who deserve, who I want put to death. Because the chance of fallible humans sending an innocent to their death hurts us all.

That is why things like torture and the death penalty must be rigidly controlled. Because natural human urges are to expand their use, until we as a moral people have lost our way. I have read of Americans saying we should 'kill them all' after the Berg beheading. Kill ALL the Iraqis. Destroy ALL their homes. I'm made as hell about the people who did this but part of what makes our society different, or at least used to, was that we had the rule of law to hold those urges in check. It was better to send the guilty home instead of sending one innocent to jail. Torture degrades the rule of law, making us closer to our enemies and driving the rest of the world away from us.  comment []11:23:49 PM    

Bush The Anti-Christ?

comment []10:40:48 PM    

Harsh C.I.A. Methods Cited in Top Qaeda Interrogations

'Some people involved in this have been concerned for quite a while that eventually there would be a new president, or the mood in the country would change, and they would be held accountable,' one intelligence source said. "Now that's happening faster than anybody expected.'"QB"

What mood would that be. The mood that finds harsh torture treatments repugnant. Where simulating the drowning of someone is not regarded as standard interrogation fare. Where pointing a gun at someone and pretending to shoot is a bad thing.

Even the President does not know who, what or where. The locations are secret, the interrogators are secret, the FBI is concerned. These are similar things that got the CIA in trouble 20 years ago. It will most likely get them into trouble again. Taking off the gloves has consequences. If these guys did something that they are afraid might get them into trouble, odds are they did.

These guys could be tried and killed in complete secrecy. Star chamber proceedings. this is such a slippery slope that our fore fathers constructed restraints in the Constitution. We signed the Geneva Conventions for similar purposes. So this administration parses these laws so finely that they say that as long as 'other' coutrnies' do the torturing, we can benefit. So we set up these secret facilities in areas where we can do this. Let others do our dirty work. No blood on our hands! Somehow I find this much worse and more repugnant than some semen stains on a dress. Some people have no moral sense.  comment []9:59:40 PM    

War Management Follows the Wrong Corporate Model

So, we have a vicious cycle that will bring them down, and America with it, perhaps even much of the world. It is getting through this transition period, every bit as difficult and traumatic as the transition from agricultural to industrial, that we will live through. The Islamic world is in the throes of change and reacting as many conservative societies do. Yet, in many ways, the model of this Administration is also a reaction to the newer approaches. The ways that used to provide success no longer go. Creating a rigid hierarchy will not make a successful organization. Just the opposite.

This article ends with:

The Bush team likes to crow that it brought disciplined, private-sector management to government. But as Joshua Marshall wrote last year in the Washington Monthly, theirs turns out to be a largely discredited, old-economy management style -- one better suited for the cartel-like oil, drug and railroad industries they came from than the messy, fast-changing realities facing the government of the United States.

This network approach is not political in nature. It does not reside with just the liberals or is lacking in the conservatives. It is a model of human interaction dealing with torrents of information. But, just as the animals in Nature that succeed are those that can adapt to chaos, our human organizations that will succeed in the new Age will be adaptive. The best adaptive systems we know of are diverse social networks. I believe that these are why humans have been such a successful species. As soon as any problem had been overcome, it rapidly traverses the group. A rigid hierarchy, with a top down approach, is very inefficient when things change rapidly.

This administration is truly unable to improvise. And it does not care to. Instead of assembling a 'swat' squad to sit down and figure out what went wrong and how to fix it, this administration took the weekend off and states that they will simply let the bureaucracy move slowly forward. Well, what happens when events force you to move faster? They are completely unprepared.

I used to think this administration must be really smart to be so stupid, that they had some underlying plan. Now, I just think that it is sad they are following a doomed 'business' strategy, that we are watching them implode because of a failed approach. If this administration was a company, we all would have sold its stock a long time ago. It seems that the only people for it are those who bought in at a price much higher than it is today. Instead of cutting their losses, they vainly hope for a return to glory, or at least higher prices. They have too much emotionally invested in the stock to let it go now. I sold my Motorola years ago when I realized they could not sell anything. I sold my Disney when I realized that the only creative things coming from them were things that others created (i.e. Pixar). I sold my stock in this administration, not because they are Republicans or that I hate Bush. I sold my stock because they have, from day 1, continuing to today, followed a failed strategy for dealing with the grays in this world, for seeing the complexity and finding solutions.

In the business world, you can sell your stock and move on, never having to care about what the failed company ever does again. Unfortunately, in our Republic, after you have sold the stock, you are still stuck with the consequences. These guys are doing it all wrong. They will fail but we will be forced to deal with the pieces. And these pieces could take decades to fix. That is why I get so mad sometimes.  comment []3:01:48 PM