Supreme Torture

Feb 23, 2008 11:44

A take on Justice Scalia's BBC interview in which he endorsed the constitutionality of the use of torture.

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saltyrose February 24 2008, 21:28:34 UTC
I am recommending two documentaries without blurbing them because I don't have time.

Taxie to the Dark Side and A Promise to the Dead

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unended01 February 24 2008, 21:59:10 UTC
Thanks! I haven't seen (or heard of) either. Whereas I used to follow films (including documentaries) closely, I've hardly seen anything at all the last couple of years, so it's no surprise IDBM shows both are recent. I'll be sure to check them out!

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unended01 February 24 2008, 22:10:14 UTC
Holy dyslexia. I meant IMDB. Sorry for the rash of email notifications.

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jaredchilders February 25 2008, 04:55:15 UTC
The writer goes too far. Not impossible, merely highly improbable. The writer is correct though in that torture is punishment for non-cooperation in interrogation. Not that this debate has any real relevance.

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jaredchilders February 25 2008, 04:59:38 UTC
Well I guess certainty is impossible, but that's too high a bar.

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unended01 February 25 2008, 06:15:25 UTC
Is it, though? Without any due process?

The objective of the exercise is to show that Scalia's hypothetical is impossible ever to occur and so we don't need to even answer it. (This is important because he takes an affirmative answer to his question as legitimizing the use of torture. He seeks to make us all supporters of torture, and we need not be.)

Scalia asks whether a government official could smack a person in the face if the person knew where a bomb was. This question is disingenuous. He does not ask whether a government official could smack the face of a person the official merely believes to know where a hidden bomb is. This hypothetical is the reality of the situation, but the reason Scalia doesn't ask that question is because it raises the due process issue, which he wants no part of. The question then is not whether a government official may torture a terrorist but whether a government official may torture a person he believes, rightly or wrongly, to have information he wants. In other words, to answer this ( ... )

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sethgecko13 March 6 2008, 02:38:53 UTC
x10 ( ... )

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