[lbo-talk] Scalia, Supreme Court Justice of Torture

Jordan Hayes jmhayes at j-o-r-d-a-n.com
Thu Mar 20 08:07:55 PDT 2008



> The effectiveness or lack thereof of torture is an
> emprical question. Is there data?

I don't believe this is a question than can be settled 'by looking at the data' ... it's likely that this is an unknowable. My earlier point was: given that you can sometimes get actionable intelligence from prisoners by torturing them, posturing that you can't is a silly exercise. I'll repeat myself: this is the essence of the 'one percent solution' ... it does not matter how much, how often, how accurate: it does, sometimes, produce the desired result. The only position to take, therefore, is that it does not matter what results it does or doesn't produce: it is unacceptable. This is exactly what General Petraeus has done.

When a guy like John McCain even says that he doesn't support binding the CIA to standards established by the Army, fuzzy math isn't going to cut it.

/jordan



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