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                                       January 30, 2010

  Richard A. Posner's
  "Not a sucide pact: the constitution in
  a time of national emergency" (2006)
  p. 83


  "The unreliability of evidence procured by
  torture (the problem of false positives) is
  a compelling practical reason for excluding
  such evidence form a criminal trial.  But
  reliability is not a critical issue when
  torture is used to obtain national security
  intelligence.

  "The idea that torture is not only a cruel
  and ugly practice but just about the worst
  thing that a government can do confuses
  torture as a routine practice of dictators,
  often intended to intimdate rather than
  elicit information, and as a method long
  used to extract false confessions to
  political crimes and (necessarily false)
  confessions to non-existent crimes such as
  sorcery, with torture as an exceptional
  method of coutnerterrorist interrogation."


When I read things like this, I have
fantasies of the author suddenly
stopping, looking up into the mirror         In the classic fictional
and saying to themselves "What is the        version of this fantasy,
matter with me?  What the hell have I        a critical, traumatic
been saying?"                                event would bring about
                                             the sudden realization.
   If this is what it sounds
   like when someone is                        Meeting an actual
   being reasonable and                        torture victum, perhaps...
   pragmatic, I don't want
   any part of it.                             Or maybe just seeing
                                               a few photos?
   Phrases come to mind, like "the
   banality of evil", or perhaps "the             In something really
   dull, droning, shilly-shalling,                heavy-handed, like
   hair-splitting spin-doctoring and              the old Charteris
   white-wash cycle of evil"                      Saint stories, the
                                                  hero would kidnap the
                                                  advocate of torture
                                                  and apply appropriate
                                                  treatment until they
                                                  finally grasp the issue.






If I remember correctly, Posner
has argued that the notion that
"torture is useless" is clearly        Right.
wrong, or otherwise people
wouldn't try to use it so often.
                                             And playing roulette must be a
   Is it remotely possible that              great way to get rich, or else
   this man could sincerely                  people would stop trying.
   have his head jammed so far
   up the rational actor                        Ah, but obviously our guys are
   hypothesis?                    MADNESS       highly trained professionals,
                                  RATACT        much smarter than the schmucks
         24_TEARS                               in Vegas.

                                                They never engage in useless
Posner himself, is of course,                   activity to keep some
the soul of civility, and he                    politician happy.  And they
insists that we must get beyond                 never (well hardly ever)
the notion that anyone who                      succumb to mere sadism.
rationally debates the utility
of torture is some sort of monster.             Or indulge in emotionally
                                                satisfying but ultimately
   Allow me to suggest that                     counter-productive acts of
   if you're going to pick                      retribution.
   something to get angry
   about, try getting angry
   at the spectacle of
   enlightened intellectuals
   calmly considering torture.

      They're only behind                    LONG_NOSED_BEAGLES
      the times by around
      a thousand years.

      Resolved: US Forces should
      not be acting like the bad
      guys in a cold war spy novel.
                                         Posner's great idea is that
                                         torture should always be in the
                                         back of everyone's minds even
                                         though there's no explicit
                                         legal sanction for it... that
                                         way the uncertainty will create
                                         some pressure against misusing
                                         it, see?

                                         Here's my idea: if it's better
                                         for torture to be unspeakable
                                         and unthinkable, let's stop
                                         speaking and thinking about it.

                                         (And doing it.)



   "Writing in The New Republic last
   fall, Richard Posner, a judge on
   the US Court of Appeals for the
   Seventh Circuit, expressed
   reservations about Dershowitz's
   proposal but argued that 'if the
   stakes are high enough, torture is
   permissible. No one who doubts
   that this is the case should be in
   a position of responsibility.' "

       [ref]
       "In Torture We Trust?" by Eyal Press, March 13, 2003



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