The absurdity of the hypothetical scenarios proposed by sadists like Scalia becomes all too clear when one considers the actual scenarios in which torture is being used:
- The torture subject was not picked up by US personnel (like 90% of the people tortured at Bagram Air Base) so we have no evidence that they were legitimately picked up on "the battlefield."
- The torture subject receives no due process to ascertain their guilt or innocent (like 100% of the people who have been tortured).
- The torture subject is tortured MONTHS or YEARS after the would ostensibly have been active in combat, so it's virtually impossible that they have actionable intelligence to offer.
- The "enemy" we're facing has an organizational structure deliberately designed so that any one individual member has very limited knowledge of the entirety of the organization's operations - greatly diminishing the value of any intelligence you would hypothetically be able to extract from them through torture.
It's not surprising that those who back torture don't mention any of those caveats.
The absurdity of the hypothetical scenarios proposed by sadists like Scalia becomes all too clear when one considers the actual scenarios in which torture is being used:
- The torture subject was not picked up by US personnel (like 90% of the people tortured at Bagram Air Base) so we have no evidence that they were legitimately picked up on "the battlefield."
- The torture subject receives no due process to ascertain their guilt or innocent (like 100% of the people who have been tortured).
- The torture subject is tortured MONTHS or YEARS after the would ostensibly have been active in combat, so it's virtually impossible that they have actionable intelligence to offer.
- The "enemy" we're facing has an organizational structure deliberately designed so that any one individual member has very limited knowledge of the entirety of the organization's operations - greatly diminishing the value of any intelligence you would hypothetically be able to extract from them through torture.
It's not surprising that those who back torture don't mention any of those caveats.
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