Siting in front of you in a cell is a guy you know 100% that he and his terrorist cell have planted a bomb in London it will go off in rush hour-- there will be no warning.--------------------------------------he isnt talking. You walk away and hope that your Secret Service collegues can find it.It goes bang ---100 dead 300 injured. Several years latter at their inquest you have to stand there and explain your actions to the hundreds of mums/dads/kids etc the relatives of the dead, telling them you couldnt force him ---it would be against his human rights, you carry on in the service.
OR
you pick up a hammer smash his toes in--tell him unless he speaks you will brealk every bone slowly and then start onhis nearest and dearest. He tells you where it is. Bomb defused. Years later its leaked to the press what you did and the Guardianistas scream from the roof tops. You are arrested and face 8 years inside for tourture/GBH, your sacked, loose your pension. The people you saved will never, know they lived and the bomb didnt go off. Your on your own.
Its your choice------------its your life---------------or their lives-----------------the "correct way"----------------or the "wrong way"------------------its your choice----could you do it? walk away because you would have to tourture him------------could you do it?walk away knowing hundreds may die.
i think id take my chance with the jury and God and smash the crap out of him hoping(because it would be hope) that we can save the people.
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If you do lose everything just sell you story to the papers and become a hero
You know he and his terrorist cell have planted a bomb
You know it's in London
You know it will go off in the rush hour
You know there will be no warning
What is the time scale here?
If you know those things, you can issue a warning yourself, clear the area, and if the bomb is planted wait for it to explode.
If you torture the suspect will you get the right information in time?
Will you film the torture and put it on the internet?
Jack Bauer: I have killed two people since midnight, I haven't slept in over 24 hours. So maybe… maybe you should be a little more afraid of me than you are right now.
I'd shit myself and bare my soul!
Sell my story to the Sun, you're bound to get a campaign 'Save the hero'
They've just been talking about unrealistic scenario 'what ifs' on Question Time. This isn't a realistic scenario, PLUS it's 99% probable that torture would not lead to the info you need anyway, plus you could use the time it would take to torture him much more wisely by helping clear the area etc (as Seth rightly mentions).
So with all that weighed up, not only would it would be sadistic and immoral, but it would be unhepful.
Then you'd have a serious problem at those pearly gates then, according to the bible.
BUT.....what if he's a season ticket holder at Charlton and hasn't missed a home game in the last five years?
Could you still do it?
Has he not had enough already?
There-in lies the problem.
You are also often talking about people will die for their cause a little pain along the way just justifies it in their heads.
However if your 100% certain then it seems unfair to let innocent people die. How is it different to a war? In the second world war we deliberately killed Germans to save the lives of innocent people.
The point about using the time in other ways is stupid because unlike on TV there can be lots more people involved and doing different things. I doubt the statistic that 99.9% of the time it doesn't get the information required is factual. But even if it was maybe that .1% chance is worth it!
Not all terrorists want their own families hurt.One ofthe scum 7/7 bombers delayed mass killing because he had to take his pregnant wife to hospital. Not all bombs go off the scum that tried to do a 7/7 repeat, theirs thank God didnt.
not the point---------------do you take the right way in Law and except the terrorist may not talk , and walk away on the "moral" high ground
or do you totaly go down the darkest of paths and hammer the guy till he tells you ? maybe even using the threat of pain and damage to his loved ones ?taking the "moral" path of attempting to save hundreds of lives?
But the point of it being wrong in law is presisley because it is an untrusted system. And when do you know it's the right time to start tourturing.
Taking it from a slightly different point of view. The old Hangman killed loads of peopel with immunity because they had comitted a crime. But why was he given the authority to take some elses life. What would happen if the Hangman got plesure out of the taking of life?
Although fictional, do you agree with Dexter? He is a kiler who enjoys inflicting pain and tourture before killing. But he tries to kill 'bad' people.
If he a killer who should have the full force of the law against him or is he soem sort of good guy because he has recognised a mental defect and is trying to deal with it by taking a few bad men out of the world.
Cut to 5 years later at the end of the inquest. A tiny, impossibly cute child tugs at the sleeve of my expensive Italian suit, while I sip a skinny latte in an enormous cup and smile at something a collegue's said.
"Why did my mummy and sister have to die?"
I stare at yourself in the mirror, tears well in my eyes as you think about how I missed your chance to smash somebody's bones with a hammer. I turn to the girl and pick her up. "Because daddy is weak and wasn't prepared to smash up toes for this great country."
SHE'S MY DAUGHTER. OMFG!!!
CUT BACK 5 YEARS YEARS
SO, I'D SMASH HIS BALLS IN WITH A CLAW HAMMER AND SMASH HIS CLAWS IN WITH A BALL HAMMER WHILE WATERBOARDING HIM AND ZAPPING HIM WITH A CATTLEPROD AND THEN WHEN HE TOLD ME WHERE THE BOMB WAS I'D RUN AND GET IT AND RUN REALLY REALLY FAST AND THROW IT THROUGH THE WINDOW OF AL QADA AND THEN WHEN THEY ALL CAME RUNNING OUT I'D SHOOT THEM IN THE LEGS AND SMASH THEM ALL UP WITH A MONKEY WRENCH WHILE SHOUTING OUT THE WORDS LAND OF HOPE OF GLORY.
If anyone who writes rubbish TV shows wants to use this, fire in.
maybe if gerry conlon hadn't been tortured himself into giving up so many innocent people,the police could have taken their blinkers off and persued the right ones.
The point I was going to make.
The Police were 100% sure the Birmingham Six were guilty so it was OK to torture them. So not only did innocent people go to jail for decades the guilty people were allowed to go free. The police were no longer looking for the real murderers as they were 100% sure they had the guilty parties.
And is the source that told you that this person is a 100% guilty and there is 100% a bomb the same as the one who told us about the WMD in Iraq?
Sorry, but in the real world not so easy. I'll give you another one and this one is true.
During WWII a close friend of my father was fighting in France. A small boy sat on a wall was waving to British troops as they passed and giving away their position to German Snipers who were then killing them. What does he do? He's too far away to shout and can't give his position away.
Tea >>>> Keyboard
Which is just what he did. Stayed with him for the rest of his life.
Thats the main point. The REST OF HIS LIFE.
If he didnt, he may not have had the rest of his life. Thats the only option. Little shit shouldnt have been helping them, he got what he deserved
The position of the boy, the line of sight of his waving hand together with the crack and thump of the effective incoming fire should pinpoint the enemy snipers.
Leave the kid alone, they probably have his family hostage
And that's me out. What a stupid comment.
Are you serious!?
Im on a wind up ffs. Obviously its one of the toughest decisions anyone would have to make. The outcome would also stay with that person for the rest of thier life, whether he shot the child and felt eternal guilt or didnt and one of his comrades got shot as a result of the childs actions. Until you are in that situation its hard to say. People can say oh i would do this and that but nobody can really know until they are faced with it in reality.
Like yesterday, i was on a wind up. Relax
If the information was written on a piece of paper in his head and you had to kill him to unravel the paper and find out the information, then I wouldn't have a particular problem with killing him and getting the information, as long as more peaceful means had been tried and failed. Much the same as how it's justified to shoot someone in the head if they're walking through a shopping centre wielding a gun and threatening people.
However, torture is a really scummy thing to do and incredibly inefficient at getting information from people at the best of times. If it was 100% effective, then I might be able to rationalise it, but it's not.
That's before you remember that no rank-and-file terrorist will have all the information, just a small subsection relevant to his role. Also, if you've captured one of them, the terrorists will immediately act as if the information has been compromised and work on new plans, making his information absolutely useless.
The Birmingham bombing is a shockingly bad example.
As for Birmingham 6 men went to prision for something they didnt do. Aman and woman walk about today knowing what they did to 22 people and 200 injurd others, they also know as did there masters thatdidnt give a shit adout the dead/injured on the wrongly inprisioned.The Guardianistas of course screamed about in justice "Free the Birmingham6" etc wonder why no scream of who did it and why they were never brought to justice.
As for moral code----for a given idea you could walk into 3 seperate pubs chat to people at the table your siting at and then walk out leaving nail bombs under the seat.
Given your outlook, those Birmingham six would have never been able to be released because they would've already been hung, drawn and quartered on Blackheath on the same day the sentence was passed down. You are constantly banging on about 1984, about having no trust in the way government, police or security in this country works, yet you're quite prepared to allow them to torture anyone they please.
The only injustice you care about is your own. And that's a sad thing.
Torture does not work against people who are willing to die for their cause. As soon as suicide bombing was invented, torture ceased to be a viable method of gaining intelligence. It was always pretty useless to begin with anyway - moral issues notwithstanding. Using a straw man argument is - as always - just a means to engender vicious debate on a topic.
Anyway, back our frightened man who is begging you, telling you he doesn't know anything about a bomb and has a family. Do you smash his teeth in with a hammer and threaten to murder his family on the off chance he's fibbing, thus neatly making him into a martyr and recruiting 1000s of people into the cause that someone suspects that he might have something to do with, After all thick people love a witch hunt - look at the number of people pissing their pants with delight after de Menez was murdered, of course they'll pipe down when the truth gets exposed but you can always rely on an enquiry for a friendly verdict and swinging a hammer about is fun: it's like playing Manhunt2 without the obscured graphics. Or, do you reflect that maybe we have conventions and rules - that allow for incredibly harsh action to be taken when necessary - because we're better than animals?
What do you do - millions of puppies may die! Or they might not if it's a mistake, obviously.
They were, you probably just weren't listening becaue you were angry about someone suggesting the OB might have got it wrong. They'd probably have caught the right people too, had they not pissed around torturing and framing innocent people to get a quick result and keep the lower orders happy.
This is actually called "the benefit of hindsight", and what it shows us is that wading in with torture instruments and punishing people on incomplete evidence allows murders to get away with it. I don't read the Gradunada I just think witchunts have stopped for a reason.
No idea what you're trying to say. However I often go into pubs and to the best of my knowledge have never left any nailbombs under the seat