Faith and Torture

It s a THOUGHT EXPERIMENT: U don 't have to participate, against your will, if u don 't wanna.

However, I am reminded that when the Japs sent their envoys
what amounted to their declaration of war (which arrived late)
it was sent to them in multiple sections, the last of which
was withheld from transmission to them for quite a while,
resulting in late delivery so something like that actually HAPPENED
(meaning the attack on Pearl Harbor) so as to what u imply is unimaginable,
something similar to that has already happened, in living memory.

Yeah; I liked it. Sometimes, I like my work.





David

No problem, just wanted to redirect discussion to your thread.

U have my gratitude and my esteem.





David

It's a THOUGHT EXPERIMENT that has no basis in reality.

Reality is where torture does occur. Your THOUGHT EXPERIMENT can't be used to justify reality.

One small problem with your example David..
OK.. several problems
1. There is no captured person that has all the information.
2. The persons the US does have contact don't have all the information so even if we had tortured them they couldn't tell us what they don't know.
3. Your THOUGHT EXPERIMENT includes a known date and form of attack just not a location. In the Japanese example the US has no knowledge of the date or the form of the attack. They don't even have any hard evidence that there will be an attack at all. There is no reason to torture anyone in the Japanese example since there is no information about a ticking bomb.

The major problem with that bullshit is that it isn't true. The Japanese Ambassador in Washington on December 7th, 1941--Admiral Nomura--received the entire text of the declaration of war prior to the attack on Hawaii. They were late in delivering it because they had no competent code clerk attached to the embassy, and had only a single typewriter with Roman characters with which to put the text of the document into English in order to deliver it.

Finally, the ultimate bullshit here is that the Japanese diplomatic code had been broken by the United States. Code named "Purple" by the Americans, the code allowed the Americans, who were working with a room full of code breakers and translators, to obtain the full text of the message before Admiral Nomura and his associates had even finished decoding the message.

For anyone interested in a well-researched and well-written account of these events rather than the bullshit this member is attempting to peddle, i highly recommend At Dawn We Slept, by Gordon W. Prange, et al.

Finally, Parados has a very good point about the attack on Hawaii, although he is wrong about some things. American authorities (i.e., Roosevelt, Marshall and King) had good reason to believe that the Japanese would soon make war on the United States. On November 26, 1941, they sent a war warning message to both Admiral Kimmel and General Short in Hawaii. Short was a fool, and had paranoid fantasies about fifth columnists in Hawaii, so his response was to cluster all of the aircraft in the center of the airfields, away from the fences and therefore, presumably, safer from saboteurs, and to lock up all the explosives at the air fields (including the anti-aircraft ammunition) so that saboteurs could not use it against our facilities and aircraft. One can imagine the enraged frustration of Army Air Corps personnel on the morning of the attack as they tried to find the keys to get the ammunition to shoot back at the Japanese who were already shooting up the air fields. Short also looked to the Fleet to help his protect Hawaii.

Kimmel correctly saw it as the Army's duty to protect the Fleet, not the reverse (keeping in mind that there was no Air Force then, and that the non-naval air forces in Hawaii were part of the Army, and under the command of Lt. General Short). But all he did was pass along the war warning to his commanders at sea, and then do nothing extraordinary in the way of preparing for war. Admiral , who was at sea with a carrier division at the time he received the war warning message, immediately ordered all the ships in his division to go to a war footing, and to proceed as outlined in stardard operating procedures for a cruise in time of war.

So Parados is not correct to state that: "They don't even have any hard evidence that there will be an attack at all." The Japanese Naval codes were being routinely broken, and as was common practice in those days with large navies, this had to be done every quarter, because naval intelligence issued new codes every three months. The Japanese duly issued a new code at the beginning of October, and then issued yet another new code at the beginning of November. This raised flags at ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence) in Washington, as did the fact that they had been unable to locate the six largest Japanese carriers since late summer. It was as a result of these clues, and several other, smaller ones (such as the "bomb plot" message, which wasn't understood but was seen to be ominous--this was a telegraphic message from the Japanese consulate in Hawaii, which incredibly went out over a commercial line; the FBI was, very illegally, tapping Western Union's telegraph lines in Hawaii) that Roosevelt, in consultation with Marshall and King, decided to send a war warning message to Hawaii and the Philippines.

Parados is correct to state that American authorities did not know where, when or what form a Japanese attack might take. That doesn't absolve the fools in Hawaii, however--the litany of American stupidity in the months leading up to the attack, and on the day of the attack, is breathtaking.

By the way, the example of the attack on Hawaii is appropriate for another reason. There is no one who could have been scooped up and tortured to reveal the date and target of the Japanese attack. The failures to respond correctly were personal failures on the parts of Husband Kimmel and Walter Short. The government authorities in Washington made the best of the information available to them, drew the correct conclusion, and then sent their war warning message to the responsible parties--Kimmel, Short and MacArthur. It can hardly be laid at the door of the government that these three men stood around with the figurative thumbs up their figurative backsides.

Valuable intelligence comes from the careful review of what is known, and what is not known (such as where the Japanese carriers had disappeared to after the summer of 1941). Torture not only produces no useful information, but it is axiomatic with competent intelligence officers that people who are tortured will tell you whatever they believe it is that you want to hear, whether or not they know something of value. In the bad old days in European history, that is precisely what torture was intended to accomplish--to get the victim to say what his tormentors wanted him to say.

I understand what you are saying Set but my statement was directed at the ticking bomb threat


Yes, there were signs concerning a Japanese attack but they were not as concrete as the nuclear device that is going to be detonated on July 4th scenario that was presented.

It's clear that Al Qaeda will attempt to attack us again but that doesn't lead to a specific time and method of attack as was laid out in the example.

The threat from Al Qaeda is relative to the general threat of Japan attacking.
Increased chatter picked up from Al Qaeda is relative to the cables from Japan that were intercepted.
But there is no real world example that relates to knowing a nuclear device has been planted and will be detonated on July 4th.

I note with wry amusement that Pooch continues to nip at Finn's ankles.

The argument of the defeated.

Hard to defeat someone when you're arguing with yourself, Finn. Unless you can make a case that "conversion by the sword" and the fundamental conflict between "believers" and others has anything to do with the topic of this thread.

I tried, really, to answer your post point by point, but it became obvious rather quickly that you weren't actually talking to me.

I ignored the hypothetical, Parados, because it's so goddamned goofy . . .

Faith and Torture.

There cousins!

TORTURE ALL AROUND!! TORTURE FOR EVERYONE!!

well take turns.But faith helps. It helps you get around alot of things.

Lets look at some torture testomony shall we?