Comments on: A Tortured Reading http://www.juliansanchez.com/2006/08/18/a-tortured-reading/ Just another geek in the geek kingdom Thu, 09 Feb 2012 05:38:37 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2 By: Christopher M http://www.juliansanchez.com/2006/08/18/a-tortured-reading/comment-page-1/#comment-1233 Christopher M Tue, 22 Aug 2006 01:35:02 +0000 http://juliansanchez.com/?p=1311#comment-1233 Well, okay, but this is a weak defense, pragmatically speaking. Because as Yglesias likes to <a href="http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=11876" rel="nofollow">point out</a>, we generally massively overreact to terrorist attacks and threats. So for a lot of people, the costs and benefits will be damned, and the only relevant question is: did torture lead to intelligence that prevented this particular scary-sounding terrorist attack? There are a lot of questions about the seriousness and plausibility of this particular attack. I think that either those (which I think of as sort of Nietzschean: let them blow up a few places every so often; who cares? we're still better), or a general non-utilitarian moral case against torture, are better prospects for the defense. Well, okay, but this is a weak defense, pragmatically speaking. Because as Yglesias likes to point out, we generally massively overreact to terrorist attacks and threats. So for a lot of people, the costs and benefits will be damned, and the only relevant question is: did torture lead to intelligence that prevented this particular scary-sounding terrorist attack? There are a lot of questions about the seriousness and plausibility of this particular attack. I think that either those (which I think of as sort of Nietzschean: let them blow up a few places every so often; who cares? we’re still better), or a general non-utilitarian moral case against torture, are better prospects for the defense.

]]> By: digamma http://www.juliansanchez.com/2006/08/18/a-tortured-reading/comment-page-1/#comment-1232 digamma Mon, 21 Aug 2006 16:31:19 +0000 http://juliansanchez.com/?p=1311#comment-1232 "Since the media don't tend to run a whole lot of stories on every wild goose intelligence analysts chase and every dead end they run into, though, this cost tends to be invisible if you're just following the papers."<p> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_al-Shaykh_al-Libi" rel="nofollow">Not totally invisible</a>: "After being captured and interrogated by American forces, the information he gave under interrogation was cited by the Bush Administration in the months preceding the 2003 invasion of Iraq as evidence of a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. That information was frequently repeated by members of the Bush Administration even though then-classified reports from both the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency strongly questioned its credibility...."</p> “Since the media don’t tend to run a whole lot of stories on every wild goose intelligence analysts chase and every dead end they run into, though, this cost tends to be invisible if you’re just following the papers.”

Not totally invisible: “After being captured and interrogated by American forces, the information he gave under interrogation was cited by the Bush Administration in the months preceding the 2003 invasion of Iraq as evidence of a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. That information was frequently repeated by members of the Bush Administration even though then-classified reports from both the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency strongly questioned its credibility….”

]]>