[Slevin57]

Quote by: saltinespike The CIA is so set on getting "what they need to know" that I could tell them that my Muslim neighbor has some information on a terrorist hit and he would disappear witohut warning. If they torture him, to get the information they need to know, though he knows nothing, is that doing "whatever is necessary"? It wouldn't necessarily be my fault, either, if I truly believed he had information. I do not, in any aspect, condone torture, even if it as a known fact that the person knows something. That leads to people lying, in which they are held prisoner until the lie happens, which, inevitably, will not, in which they get tortured more.

First of all the CIA doesn't handle your "muslim neighbor", the FBI handles all domestic interrogation. I would assume from a short stent in Army Intelligence that the CIA does not capture anyone without good intelligence. Your suspicions are not evidence alone. Even if they did act it would be on a completely silent basis to observe your neighbor. Not drag him in and nail him to the wall to get information.

Wonderful reasoning. Since we have done it for centuries, why stop now? There are better, cleaner ways to win a war. And the fact that this war is becoming unnecessary, is even more against your position. We are still interrogating people for weapons of mass destruction, because we cannot accept innocense from them.

I am open to new ideas. However the best and brightest minds in our intelligence community can not and will not ignore the fact that the threat of aggressive coercion is a highly effective means.

They have a choice. They do not have to go through physical or mental torture. They can give the information freely. If they are not wiling to give the information to us, then they are consenting to having it forced out. Welcome to life.

It's like the trials of the crusades. If the woman drowns, she wasn't a witch, but if she managed to survive, she's a witch! So now we get to kill her. It's a lose-lose situation.

I am fairly certain that the CIA is capable of discerning fact from fallacy. The methods of torture are classified. We do not know how they go about it. I do know that the prisoner is kept in CIA detention until his information can be verified. I would think that would compel the prisoner to tell the truth.

This is a foolish statement. I am sure that if we respected insurgents when captured, then they would be sure to think worse of us. Actually, if we respected them, they would kill more of us. No, that is silly.

Hate is a powerful thing.

Seeing as we have not yet tried to "be the better man", I don't think that you are in a position to say this honestly. Give an example.

World War II Era: Our solution would have been to blanket bomb Iraq and split it among the coalition victors. To the victor go the spoils.

Korea Era: In order to quel the insurgents, we will simply kill anyone who looks at us funny.

Current Era: Spend Billions on "smart" technology that allows precision targets while maintaining deadly accuracy. This resulted in the lowest casualty rate both on the enemy and our side and least amount of collateral damage compared the time we have been in Iraq.

From a military point of view, the war was a resounding success. Clean-up is never a resounding success, until it is long over. Ask Japan.

You are right. If the CIA does let the victim free and he does return to his militant group, he will most likely be tortured there. And killed. A soiled man has nothing to live for, anyways. The whole situation is just adding salt to the wounds.

If you have a better suggestion that will ensure the security of the United States, please write to the pentagon.

Now, neither one of us are apart of the CIA. And if we were we would both know that neither is at liberty to disclose any details whatsoever about that CIA or it's operational procedures.

That being said, back to our hypothetical argument