Why do people like the ACLU, "Human Rights First", Laura Rozen, and the rest of the anti-war crowd automatically assume that insurgents are telling the truth about abuse?

Why do wingnuts automatically assume the government is telling the truth?

apologies for the bold - it got autoformatted.

Not this wingnut.  But neither do I start going on about how the military is using Stalin's techniques when the entirety of the evidence so far is the allegation by the two detainees.

helpme asks:

Why do people like the ACLU, "Human Rights First", Laura Rozen, and the rest of the anti-war crowd automatically assume that insurgents are telling the truth about abuse?

helpme appears to use the word insurgents as the newspeak for ordinary people.

Regardless. This is how Amnesty International describes its working methods:

We search out the facts. We send experts to talk with victims, observe trials and interview local human rights activists and officials. We monitor thousands of media outlets and maintain contact with reliable sources of information all over the world. Our research is carried out by expert staff, supported by specialists in a range of fields such as international law, media and technology. We publish detailed reports. We inform the news media. We publicize our concerns in leaflets, posters, advertisements, newsletters and websites.

But this is precisely the opposite of what the Bush Administration did when it betrayed the American people in the runup to the disastrous misadventure in Iraq.  This folly has brought eternal shame on the American people and, in particular, on those who continue to defend the Bush Administration for the hideous crimes it has wrought against all the ordinary people whose lives it has destroyed.

Let's think through the "Ticking Time Bomb" Scenario. We assume that

a. The prisoner knows enough about a terrorist event to allow us to stop it.

b. The prisoner doesn't want us to stop it.

c. The even will happen in a short amount of time without any intervention by the prisoner. 

We threaten to torture the prisoner, because we know there is an impending event, though we don't know enough about the terrorist event to stop it.

The prisoner then has these options:

a. Tell us about the event. However, this conflicts with b. above. Also, it might not be certain to the prisoner that torture will in fact stop when we know about the event.

b. Tell us a lie that will keep us busy enough verifying it till the event happens.

c. Be tortured till the event happens, after which presumably torture will be useless and will stop.

Clearly, b. is the preferred choice. If it is not possible, then a is a possible viable choice only if it is reasonably certain that the prisoner will not be tortured if they tell us about the event. Otherwise, even c. is a preferred choice to a.

There might be other reasons to  condone torture, but the "ticking time bomb" defense isn't one of them. In fact, if we do encounter a situation like this, there is so little we can do with the prisoner we'd probably even be better off not capturing them but rather surveiling them in hope of countering some of the information asymmetry.

So if one US soldier does something bad, then every allegation against the US military should be assumed to be true.

Right, like there aren't another dozen pictures I could have linked to, plus eyewitness accounts of American soldiers, plus many more pictures that senators from both parties have stated that they've seen and that haven't been made public because they're even more gruesome than the ones that have already been released.

You can't possibly be that stupid, so you're clearly a liar. Your real purpose in defending torture is that you're a sadist who takes pleasure in making these detainees suffer, regardless of whether they're actually guilty or not.

Nobody here is claiming that "every allegation" is true. We are claiming that some of them are true, which constitutes more than enough evidence to show that people like you who support this administration are intentionally supporting disgusting and reprehensible practices.

A big part of the reason we know torture to be a depraved practice is precisely that it's not useful -- only depraved people become professional torturers and only depraved leaders order its systematic use as a policy tool.  If torture were a vital and useful investigative tool, you'd be able to point to big piles of non-depraved torturers, but you really can't.

Something about this is kind of fishy.  Let me see if I can say why.

First, there would seem to be plenty of evidence that not all torturers, per se, are depraved - a tyrant's torturers, for example, are often simply afraid to refuse, and justifiably so.  The same might be true, to a lesser degree of fear perhaps, of any soldier ordered to do something nasty to a prisoner under interrogation. 

Further, following your reasoning about the circumstances under which torture is useful, I think that we have to give our leaders the benefit of the doubt: presumably, they're not interested in getting forced confessions out of Gitmo detainees, because any halfwit can see that the result of such policies in the present context will result in more violence against us, not less.  It seems to me that they must think - pretty clearly in error - that torture, or to continue being exceedingly charitable, 'stress positions' - is useful in extracting intelligence.

In short, it seems to me that you open up an uncomfortable distinction.  If a big part of why we know torture is depraved is that it is useless, then it would seem that a sincere belief that torture is effective would get one off the hook as far as depravity is concerned.  The point is clearer in the other direction: if sincerely believing that torture works doesn't mean that you aren't a vicious bastard when you apply the electrodes, then lack of utility isn't connected to whether or not torture is depraved.

I think this is important because there is the distinction between the pragmatic and the moral case against torture needs to be maintained (and because I do believe that the architects of our efforts to skirt torture law are depraved, regardless of the reasons for their actions).  It is very important to make the pragmatic case, in these fucked up times, but if you really oppose torture, you'd best not invest too much in it.  For empirical claims can always turn against you, when new facts come to light.  What if we found that torture is highly effective, say, in a very particular context? What if, to make the point ugly, it works well with children, and we're facing a campaign that uses child terrorists?  That's not going to diminish the revulsion.  But when you conflate the moral and pragmatic arguments, you're opening up a potential beachhead for torture advocates in the future.

Somebody should say here: torture is a crime. You may think slavery or sex with children or torture are OK in certain circumstances, and argue the case for them, but don't think these are really open questions. As a matter of positive law the issue is settled. Torture of prisoners has for quite a while been a crime in international law and in US domestic and military law.  People who carry it out, or order it done, or permit it by negligence, are criminals. They lay themselves open to very serious charges and long terms of imprisonment. Since torture, like genocide, is genrally held to be so repulsive that it creates universal jurisdiction, those responsible for the torture policy in the Bulag would be well advised not to travel abroad after they leave office. Post equitem sedet atra cura.

1) We know torture and its practitioners are depraved (moral argument); 2) but this gives us further reason to believe it is ineffective (pragmatic argument)   I think, if I understand the original argument, this is backwards. I think it is this: We know that torture is ineffective, and anyone who tortures even though it is ineffective must be depraved, for there is no legitimate reason to do it.  So, if that's right, 1 is supposed to follow from 2.   The argument MY makes isn't formally flawed.  It is:  

If torture were useful, you'd find non-depraved interrogators doing it.   But you don't find non-depraved interrogators doing it.   Therefore, torture must not be useful.   

But I think that the problem is that you do find non-depraved torturers, in a lot of admittedly convoluted situations. In logical terms, the argument is valid but not sound - the conclusion would follow if the assumptions were true, but at least one assumption is false.     I'm belaboring the point because I think that what Matt is suggesting is a little bit starker and more worrisome (and more wrong) than what you suggest.   If part of what makes the pragmatic argument work is the moral argument, as you read it, then the moral argument isn't dependent on the factual truth of the claim that torture doesn't work.  If, however, the pragmatic argument contributes to the success of the moral argument, which is how I'm unpacking things, then if the pragmatic assumption is wrong, you've knocked a leg out from under the moral conclusion.     But it seems clear to me, at least, that the moral argument is independent of the pragmatic argument.  Common sense and some scientific data indicate that torture isn't effective at gathering reliable evidence.  We should say that loudly and often.  But if it turns out that torture is effective, I don't think that this will in any way diminish the moral repugnance of it.  At best, if it turns out to be effective, then it's another really awful thing that human beings sometimes feel compelled to resort to.
  A less absolutist reading of MY's argument is that, rather than saying torture is depraved in part because it doesn't work, the claim is that torture is even more wrong because it doesn't work.  That I wouldn't want to take issue with.