Welcome to European Tribune. It's gone a bit quiet around here these days, but it's still going.
Display:
it is clear that the ticking bomb scenario actually never happens.

The question is why should someone use torture to obtain some information that it is better obtaine with surveillance. I always thought that torture was easy and was the way to go for a certain type of insane people (like the present US administration).

I agree with you that the inforamtion is not interesting but the propaganda is really useful. The point of torture is to obtain a confession and make others believe that this confession shows we are making big progress agains terrorists....

So you can torture anybody you wish, just becasue he thinks differently adn then make him confess.. then it doe snot matter what the original reasons were..

Publicity...in a sense Bush is getting publicity.

Great diary.

A pleasure

I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude

by kcurie on Fri Dec 9th, 2005 at 02:41:41 PM EST
After 24-48 hours, any information an individual has is obsolete - one of the first rules of military intelligence.  Therefore, the torture is used for exploitation/propaganga purposes only.  Disgusting really but I won't go into the the issue of American exceptionalism as that is another can of worms.  Just suffice it to say that we've learned A LOT from our former communist adversaries.

"Schiller sprach zu Goethe, Steck in dem Arsch die Flöte! Goethe sagte zu Schiller, Mein Arsch ist kein Triller!"
by Jeffersonian Democrat (rzg6f@virginia.edu) on Fri Dec 9th, 2005 at 03:07:01 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Not to open the can of worms, but IMHO "American exceptionalism" is the only "ideology" with the potential  to underpin a totalitarian regime in the US. Every other single ideology appeals to too small a fraction of the population, and American exceptionalism permeates even civics classes in school.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Fri Dec 9th, 2005 at 03:37:48 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Wow, yes this can be a can of worms.  Nevertheless, I suscribe to Louis Althussar's definition of ideology in his essay "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" when a person goes against the stream of things then they are part of a "bad" ideology according to the state.  But everyone is subjected to an ideology since birth, since they recieced their first name.  But that is an argument in critical theory, not in my anecdoctal experience that can be taken apart by logic and reasoning.

"Schiller sprach zu Goethe, Steck in dem Arsch die Flöte! Goethe sagte zu Schiller, Mein Arsch ist kein Triller!"
by Jeffersonian Democrat (rzg6f@virginia.edu) on Fri Dec 9th, 2005 at 03:54:51 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Display:

Occasional Series