The Heretik pointed in the direction of
this NY Times article on Zubaydah. I was going to post about this too:
But Mr. Zubaydah dismissed Mr. Padilla as a maladroit extremist whose hope to construct a dirty bomb, using conventional explosives to disperse radioactive materials, was far-fetched. He told his questioners that Mr. Padilla was ignorant on the subject of nuclear physics and believed he could separate plutonium from nuclear material by rapidly swinging over his head a bucket filled with fissionable material.
How evil can you get? But then I noticed this:
Several officials said the belief that Mr. Zubaydah might have possessed critical information about a coming terrorist operation figured significantly in the decision to employ tougher tactics, even though it later became apparent he had no such knowledge.
What's the significance here? It is that every justification for torture, AKA "alternative interrogation," relies upon the premise of a somehow justified belief that the torture victim has important information. Torture is the means by which that information is obtained. But if you don't have the information, you can't justify the torture (assuming there is ever any justification for torture).
3 comments:
Redefines vicious circle.
We know enough to know who knows what we need to do know and we know exactly how it is to get them to tell us what it is we need to know and we know enough to know whether or not what they have told us is accurate, but we do not know what it is they know.
I'm sure there's a phrase in Latin for this kind of thinking. Something along the lines of stupid.
Ditto for the ticking time bomb "scenario." Ignore the facts and play with your head and imagine, just imagine a situation in which you know everything there is to know (see above) PLUS you have all the power in the world to stop the evil but the only question is, are you willing to torture the _________ in order to stop it? Its a fantasized way of asking, Would you be willing to torture for good information? But it gets dressed up in abstract/deductive fancy clothes and somehow this makes everyone feel very sober and hard-headed when dediciding that, well, yes, in some situations I would torture.
I'm sure there's some Latin phrase for that too. Some sort of abstraction-geared gimmick replacing an actually factual analysis while appearing more important than actual facts. Maybe its whatever is latin for stupud AND pretentious.
Maybe if I hadn't gone to a land grant college, I'd know more latin. But I can spot stupid.
I think the Latin is assholinus majorus.
Schtickery, all of it.
But... I think we need to start coming up with our own euphemisms. I'll start: the Bush administration is misappropriated cerebral catatonia.
Bad one, but you get the idea.
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