Letters to the Editor
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@ Ondolette - You are over thinking this
On a previous thread, I had told someone (LWM) that the ticking time bomb theory succumbs to Bayesian analysis. I thought I'd prove that, just for s&g, by doing the analysis. It's taking a while, so I thought I'd put up a progress report.
There are two problems with the theory, as I see it:
1) it is way too simpleminded to reflect the unfolding of a real terrorist attack or plot, and 2) there is no distinction between the a priori data and the a posteriori data (what would be known before the plot unfolds, and what would look like it was known afterward). My progress report is already confirming (1). The fact that some of the situations are exact states already in the model is well on it's way to confirming
(2).
My goal is to show that you don't need to know much about torture to find a very small probability of occurrence or success. Once you add in how abhorrent the proposed technique is, it nails the coffin shut on this misbegotten "theory" -- it is an after the fact excuse from the one percent doctrine, not a theory on ethical dilemmas.
The "ticking time bomb scenario" (not theory) need not even involve a bomb. It is a hypothetical ethical dilemma that makes us think about and question certain assumptions about morality and law. You also overlook the obvious. It is patently ludicrous to be torturing every "jihadi" we scoop up on the battlefields of Iraq or elsewhere. Many of them aren't even jihadis.
A hypothetical situation that doesn't involve an actual ticking time bomb: A guy kidnaps an entire school bus full of children and buries them in the desert in another bus he had previously set up for that purpose and holds them for ransom. Although he tries to make it possible for them to breathe, he can't test the system under actual conditons, with a busload of kids and their adult driver and food and water supplies are limited. What do you do?
By the way. It's not a hypothetical. It actually happened in Chowchilla, CA.
http://www.crimelibrary.com/gangsters_outlaws/outlaws/chowchilla_kidnap/
It should be a no brainer that it is not lawful to torture. In the event some cop beat the hell out of a guy to save a busload of kids, he should be prosecuted and acquitted by a jury, or in the event of conviction, slapped on the wrist. Mitigating circumstances. But this isn't about that. This is about to the victors go the spoils, and the defeated get hung for commitiing atrocities and war crimes. In every conflict throughout history, some on both sides commit atrocities and what are called war crimes. Only the defeated ever really pays the price. This is about making sure that we don't have to go through the embarassing national spectacle of putting guys like Kissinger and Nixon, Reagan, Bush I and Bush II, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their top tier subordinates on trial and possibly end up having to hang them. It rarely ever happens that way. The Iraqis or al-Qaeda would have to be the victors. Or someone in France, The Hague, Germany would have to give it a shot. They are trying but I suspect it won't come to much. Even Pinochet got away with it and died of old age.
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@IngSoc
@WT
FWIW, I think your analysis satisfies Occam's Razor. Without knowing that much about Feinstein's voting record (something I should look into, eh?), it sounds reasonable enough. However, it definitely fits with her class position. Having recently read The Power Elite, I begin to understand the weaknesses of classical Marxian analyses when applied to present-day American capitalism. I was especially struck by "The Higher Immorality."
-- IngSoc
Have you read Adorno, Marcuse and Lukacs? Then look into Steven Lukes Power: A Radical View
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IANAL
Feinstink and Mukasey
I get it now. She voted for him because she doesn't want HIS Justice Dept. to go after her and investigate the corruption charges of conflict of interests and her husbands war profiteering. What better way to stave off such personal accountability than to have the Attorney General beholden to you?
-- Mergent
But I think it's safe to assume that if there had been any criminal wrongdoing (bribes), our hackified DoJ would have been on her case yesteryear, and ferociously. These are ethical matters and the AG has nothing to do with this. She was removed from her position on that subcommittee (MILCON) by the Dem Congress because of her conflicts of interest.
If you would all just clear your heads and think objectively, you might figure these things out on your own. Passion, fear, desperation and anger cloud the mind. The next thing you know you are wearing a tin foil hat.
That's the problem with all this emotionalism and drama. But it's the defeatism that kills you and that causes some of us to grab you and slap some sense into you and tell you to shut up.
Some things are never going to happen. Deal with it. There will be no impeachments. They will probably never be tried for their crimes, here or anywhere else. Unless they are the ones who got caught taking or giving bribes, lying to a GJ and were tossed under the bus for whatever reason, most of them will get away with it and die, quite rich, of old age. So you may as well focus on what you can achieve, and be grateful for the small victories. And when you lose one battle, you pick yourself up, dust yourself off and move on to the next. Pretty soon, (that's 10 or 20 years) you wake up one morning and you've made some real progress.
But guess what? The new boss becomes the "establishment" and is just as corrupt and comfortable and unresponsive as the old boss. So you pick up your guitar and play and hope you raised your kids and grandkids well because now it's their turn to chip away at the wall. And that's just the way it is.