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The headline over at CNN reads:
AG pick stays vague on waterboarding
President Bush’s pick for attorney general called the interrogation technique known as “waterboarding” a repugnant practice Tuesday, but again refused to say whether it violates U.S. laws banning torture.
Let me help him out: Yes, waterboarding is torture. Yes, it is illegal under both US and international law.
There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?
Now some macho idiot is going to swagger in to spew about how Tough Men Make Tough Decisions and Do What It Takes, and They’ll Protect the Soft Weak Liberals, and The Grownups Are In Charge.
First, that’s nonsense. We don’t get the moral high ground by saying we have it, we get it by actually occupying it. If you’re going to be a bad guy yourself, what’s the point of fighting bad guys? All you’ve guaranteed is that the bad guys will win.
Second, you don’t get good intel out of torture anyway. All you hear is what you wanted to hear. The person you’re torturing will tell any story at all to make the torture stop—any fantasy that pops into his mind. He’ll say that he flew to the Brocken on a broomstick to meet the devil as readily as he’ll say that he flew to Afghanistan to meet Osama bin Laden. It all depends on what the torturer is looking for. And after you’re done the torture victim won’t know the truth himself.
Centuries of practical experience back this up. The only place torture works is in books and movies.
The only place torture works is in books and movies.
This is why 24 is immoral.
Mostly on topic: The most disappointing thing about the Republican "moderates" is that so few of them are willing to make principled stands on the lawlessness of the reigning Republican ideology. McCain's campaign is not going anywhere, but he still has the attention of the press. Why isn't he speaking out? Why doesn't he completely own the torture issue?
Less on topic: Michael @ #1, every time I hear about 24, I end up thinking that the "ticking time-bomb, would you torture?" scenario is not an argument for legalizing torture so much as an argument for allowing the President/governor to pardon people who've committed wrongs under exceptional circumstances. (This strikes me as a good premise for a Law & Order episode...have they tried it yet?)
Anyways, now that I've said that, perhaps the thought will stop popping into my head.
There's one thing that you do get by broadcasting a position where torture is acceptable by judges: the population you're trying to control is thus informed of the stakes of resistance.
This point is main brilliantly and painfully in Naomi Klein's latest book, The Shock Doctrine. Again and again, torture is used by neo-conish regimes (Milton Friedmanesque economics plus shock-and-awe war tactics).
That book has got to be the scariest thing I have ever read (scarier than the Old Testament. Imagine!) because it provides an angle from which the Republican tactics make sense as part of a long-term strategy. A viable (for them) one.
Torture does not work (long term) when there is any kind of overseeing organization. The people who are employing torture routinely don't seem to think that there is any such organization. Hence, they needn't mind one. I am fairly certain that a similar attitude was prevalent among other torturing organizations and persons - and that, historically, most of them have been correct.
[I have to bite my lip about the historical corollary which leaps to mind. Discussion of Israel's torture practices tends to bring about loud cries of "Anti-Semite!" - or, lately, "Holocaust Denier!", which means the same thing. But Israel's Supreme Court has permitted torture. And the perpetrators get away with it.]
In similar vein, Glenn Greenwald has been reporting at Salon about his perplexing correspondence with Gen. Petraus's PR guy, one Col. Boylan. Like the torturers who feel they'll be backed up by the judiciary, Col. Boylan harasses the press and bloggers (writes insulting, incendiary emails, apparently) with the full knowledge that he can get away with it: he is not in service, he is above the laws and customs. It is similar because of the attitude - he knows he can get away with it.
I am terribly afraid they may be right.
A.J., "the ticking bomb" theory is bogus. Here's why: it implies an endurance test of short duration.
A smart organization that sends people out with a ticking bomb would make sure they have six or seven plausible alternatives to confess to, in order not to jeopardize their main target.
Moreover, if you know that catching an operative will lead to compromising the upcoming operation, you might as well employ humans as smart bombs (a.k.a. "suicide bombers") and guarantee your operatives a swift death. Thus, torture (and routine, well-advertised torture) actually encourages escalation from ticking bombs to suicide squads.
Excuse the double comment; I've lived with the conundrum of torture since 1970 or so, when I was four and heard about it first. The what-ifs of torture cut straight to my heart.
This is why any and all stories in which the protagonists talk solemnly about using evil's weapons to defeat it make me throw my hands up and utter weird, birdlike cries till the nice young men in their clean white coats come with my medication.
If good and evil matter to us at all, then we are obliged to be good above all. If that means we lose, then we lose. If that means we die, then we die. If we sacrifice our goodness even for one moment for the sake of winning, the victory is pointless, and we are damned. Especially if we continue then to talk about good and evil as if they mattered to us.
We cannot, we dare not, lay aside our goodness on the grounds that it is "necessary," because next time it will be "advisable" and the time after that it will be "expedient" and then "convenient" and by that time we are in pitch up to our necks. If we pretend to be on the side of the light, then we can do nothing in shadow, because even if God is not watching us, history is.
Something like that, anyway.
Dena,
Thanks for the thoughtful response. I know the ticking time bomb argument is bogus. My point (rather poorly expressed, I see) was that, even if we are foolish enough to grant the premise, the time bomb argument isn't an argument for legalizing torture.
The only place torture works is in books and movies.
That's only true if you assume that the purpose is to elicit useful true information. For some other purposes, it may in fact work very well: to elicit confessions without regard to truth, for instance; or to serve as examples to others of the risk of being declared an enemy of the people.
We're thus left with the task of deciding if the torturers are stupid or merely lying about their motives.
I've said it before, but it bears repeating:
The Lone Ranger doesn't tie the villain to the railroad tracks.
Ever.
Todd Larason @ 7
Dead on. The purpose of torture (to the government) is to provide "proof" for show trials. The purpose of torture (for the torturer) is to inflict pain on others. The purpose of torture is torture.
Just in case he looks at this.
Yes, it is torture.
Yes it is illegal (under both treaty, and US Statute).
Yes it is immoral.
Yes, it is counterproductive.
Yes it is that easy.
Yes, I will sign my name to it.
Terry Karney
SGT CA-ARNG
NCOIC OB, V Corps HumInt Cage OIF-1
OMT 10 OIF-1
Interrogator.
true sayings of patriots:
Patrick Henry: Give me life, life! Whatever it takes! Sweet Jesus, I just want to hang on a minute more.
Nathan Hale: I regret I have not tortured nearly often enough for my country.
Elmer Davis: This nation will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the tough,torturing, pissy-panted doughboys.
Robert G. Ingersoll: He loves his country best who strives to electrocute another man's genitalia.
bryan @ 11
The Tree of Liberty from time to time must be watered with the blood of the other guy.
Zander #5, I should like to see your comment written up in big flourescent letters on billboards everywhere. Because if people don't get that very simple truth, then I despair. In the meantime, would you object if it goes in my email signature?
I saw pointed out elsewhere in the last day or two: At the end of World War II, the US prosecuted Japanese Army officers for the war crime of torture by "waterboarding" civilians, using the same technique the US is using now. Our judges sentenced one such officer to 15 years imprisonment. When will our own be called to account?
Why can I not shake the hideous suspicion that part of the reason for this madness is because it has been found inconvenient to have persons with moral fibre worth speaking of in positions of authority, and making it necessary to endorse this sort of thing in order to get hold of any serious power keeps them out?
Not that we really need extra informed commentary on this point (though every bit helps), but here's a recent, detailed post by a former instructor at the Navy's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape school:
Waterboarding is torture... Period.
He includes a link to a painting at a former Khmer Rouge prison/death camp illustrating the waterboarding technique (this painting is located next to the actual waterboard).
Isn't it nice to know that we're now imitating the Khmer Rouge, in at least this one small way?
IF you want to shock somebody out of the "ticking bomb" scenario, ask them to picture a simular situation, in which the only way yto get the terrorist to talk is to rape your own child in front of him; he gets off on it, you see, and will be so grateful he will talk.
Why is it that this case is always rejected out of hand, but the torture isn't?
Torture is never about information, it's only about power. It sends a message: 'Challenge us and you will suffer!' Of course, the advocates of torture don't care about the concomitant message 'We are evil, get used to it.'
I don't think it can be repeated too often in this matter is that torture produces bad intel way way more often than it accidentally comes up with a good item, just like a broken clock is right twice a day.
One of the problems is that, if torture is illegal, and if waterboarding is torture, Mukasey is obligated to prosecute out own CIA, and the President for giving the order if he was involved, and a lot of other people in the chain of command.
Whereas I'm in favor of that prosecution, congress seems to have lost, then partially regained it's spine on the issue. I'm hoping more democrats do so. I have no expectations that Republicans will, because most of them are pro-torture beyond waterboarding.
Mukasey is probably repelledd by waterboarding, and would like it to be legal, but he's not going to prosecute the CIA. This is what congress should be pressing him on.
They could ask him this - Mr. Mukasey, if waterboarding is torture, and torture is illegal, does this mean you'd have to prosecute CIA interrogators? Is this what is keeping you from a definitive opinion on the matter? If not, what is, and how do you plan to deal with whatever is preventing you from forming an actual opinion? How long will it take?
If a senator could as something like that, instead of the ongoing kabuki theater, we might get somewhere.
Mukasey promised to review any "coercive interrogation techniques" used by U.S. intelligence operatives once confirmed.
If he determines them to be torture, "I will not hesitate to so advise the president and will rescind or correct any legal opinion of the Department of Justice that supports use of the technique," he told the senators
Not good enough.
I'd like to see 24 or some other show or movie depict the good guys torturing the wrong guy. It'd be a great set-up for an action film.
The guy looks like he's totally rotten, he starts out a smug a-hole, the tension wratchets up and up and the good guys do a little light electro-genital wire-up, possibly with angst on their parts. Eureka, Mr. Smug breaks down and begs and doesn't know anything, but soon he confesses. The coppers go get the guys he accused to get them to stop torturing them, and the real bomber dies in a fatal car wreck on his way to get the bomb. Meanwhile the cops publicize their vast success in protecting us by catching this terrorist and his friends, just before they were going to act. They release this news just when the opposition is scoring political points and it drives the left's good news off the front page.
Who's telling that story? Not Keifer.
Re torture working in books -- Note that the true nature of torture as portrayed in Nineteen Eighty-Four: it was to make you say what O'Brien wanted. I remember hearing a very good lecture on this by Richard Rorty (one of his Clark lectures in 1987, which were part of the basis for contingency, irony, and solidarity). He argued that the purpose of torture was to render it no longer possible for the victim to make a coherent narrative out of her or his life -- to induce some sort of epistameic rupture, I guess. It impressed me at the time.
Note that Sullivan recently pointed the same thing out -- that the purpose of the specific soviet techniques now being used was to impose power on speech not to seek after truth.
Martin @ 17: Jim Henley asked that same question. I remember his article because it contained an especially memorable bit of snark: "We are hard men for hard times, and we want hard make-believe conundrums."
Leaving aside such carefully constructed hypyotheticals ("But what if was an alien nova bomb, and it was going to destroy planet Earth?"), I do miss the days when the tough guys were people who said things like, "Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare þe ure maegen lytlað."
It takes more courage to die honorably than it takes to apply electrodes to a restrained prisoner. But somehow, our contemporary political discourse is based around the latter definition of "toughness." We live in a world of Serious Men of Washington, where people go around saying things like, "Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business."
I long for a time when our national heroes were people like Nathan Hale and Patrick Henry. Dirty Harry and Jack Bauer just aren't the same.
Eric Kidd wrote:
------------------
We live in a world of Serious Men of Washington, where people go around saying things like, "Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business."
------------------
And this line of thinking will pay off a few decades down the road. Pick one scenario, or several:
A) "Why should we small countries forfeit American debts to our banks, just to shore up America's reckless spending? Pay up or shut up."
B) "Now that Mexico's infrastructure has caught up with Canada's, we can stop sending our labor to the USA to be exploited and humiliated. Let's keep the non-Latinos out of our land."
C) "The Arctic oil belongs to Europe and Russia. Why should we share it with the USA? In exchange for what?"
D) "We're terribly sorry about the Yellowstone caldera blowing a crater in your continent... but we can't possibly accept American refugees. We don't want our countries infested with dangerous political-religious extremists."
E) "The Union of Lunar Colonies must refuse membership for the United States. Our members are worried that Americans are building secret prisons on the Moon."
(OK, E) was just a joke. Promise.)
Y'know, it's getting so theres so much damn news about this, it's distracting me from our regularly scheduled gay Republican sex scandal.
Hmph.
Martin #17: Yeah, this is always the counter-question I want to hear someone ask, when faced with the ticking time bomb:
"Okay, you've done your worst to the terrorist (who knows where the ticking nuke is hidden in Manhattan), but he still hasn't talked. You've only one hour left. But--good news, we've gotten a break here--we've just found his ten year old son. What do you do now?"
Hardly anyone wants to take that next step in public, but it has apparently happened several times that suspected terrorists had their families either tortured or threatened by US officials.
This ties back to a big, scary issue in US culture. We seem to *celebrate* the idea of the guy who becomes strong by discarding all the rules of civilized society--the vigilante, the government official who tortures or spies on people to keep us safe, the cop who imposes justice of his own, the bureaucrat or judge who ignores the written law to accomplish some noble goal of his own. There's a whole huge genre of movies and books in which the cop/CIA agent/FBI agent/whatever, after being framed for a crime, goes renegade, saves the day, and is welcomed back as a hero. Another genre involves tough cops who are good guys, but ignore laws and rules when they get in the way of catching the bad guys. This is poison, and it's being offered to us all as the medicine that will make us strong.
Helpful hint: Discarding the rules of civilized society, deciding you're above the law, disregarding the ugliness of the means used to achieve your noble ends, those things don't make you a superhero. They make you a monster.
We have been pushing this evil idea for my whole life, and we're reaping the rewards for it every day, now. We see it in claims by the president that he can do whatever it takes to protect the American people, regardless of the law--a claim that incredibly pretends to be based in the constitution. We see it in judges that ignore written law to accomplish some broader good. We see it constantly in politics and public advocacy, when people see law and the constitution as obstacles to be bypassed or ignored in getting some good works done.
The man who sold his soul for a job as attorney general.
(or maybe he had no soul)
Once upon a time in my previous professional life I helped a polisci professor research torture in Latin America. Towards the end I would make photocopies with my eyes closed -- and I still have nightmares. Worse was reading all the material from experienced interrogators making the case again and again that AS AN INFORMATION RETRIEVAL TECHNIQUE torture did not work. Ever. And then more of the horrors came...
The whole experience convinced me that if there's anything to the whole concept of heaven and hell, torturers are double-damned, once for evil and once for willful stupidity. Worse, so is the society that supports them. There is nothing to be salvaged, nothing, once torture becomes mainstreamed as a "tool" for "defense".
Josh #25:
This is getting to where it's not exactly news anymore.
Unrest in middle-east
Politicians caught lying
Uber-conservative Republican poltician caught in gay sex scandal
I'd like to see 24 or some other show or movie depict the good guys torturing the wrong guy.
I heard on NPR recently that The Shield got an award from a non-torture group for doing exactly that. Sorry I don't have links handy. I don't watch The Shield, but the gist of the story was that a dirty cop kills another cop and frames someguy, dead cop's partner illegally tortures innocent someguy brutally to death, while dirty cop, appalled but unwilling to come clean, tries to get him to stop.
"When we find somebody who may have information regarding a potential attack on America, you bet we're going to detain them and you bet we're going to question them, because the American people expect us to find out information, actionable intelligence, so we can help them -- help protect them," Bush said earlier this month.
Speaking of portrayals of torture in popular media (whee!, not really), one of my big problems with Rendition was that, even as it demolished torture from a whole bunch of angles, utilitarian and moral, it still assumed that those who torture do it with the best of motives. The torturers really wanted to get accurate information to protect Americans. And I simply cannot believe that this is the case.
Josh @ #25: today's helpful tip: when altruistically giving needy stranger money for gas, do not select a rendezvous point called the "Hollywood Erotic Boutique".
I wonder if Mukasey grew up trading Spanish Inquisition cards instead of baseball cards? "Look, I've got Torquemada's rookie card!"
As disturbing as the torture debate is — and, to make my position perfectly clear, those who assert that torture merely gets babble intended to stop the pain instead of timely, useful information are vastly understating the problem, even aside from its fundamental repugnance — it ignores something that is far more disturbing. In the cold, hard reality of gathering intelligence, one must have context, and the attention being paid to torture and tactics is masking our broken basic-intelligence-gathering system. Even assuming that torture worked quickly and reliably, it won't elicit the information one needs if one doesn't know enough to ask the right questions!
But, worst of all, it reminds me of the closing of a classic fable — and, contrary to the assertions of many, it's a fable about betrayal of revolutions in general, not just the one that was its immediate inspiration.
"Gentleman [sic]," concluded Napoleon, "I will give you the same toast as before, but in a different form. Fill your glasses to the brim. Gentlemen, here is my toast: To the prosperity of The Manor Farm!"George Orwell, Animal Farm: A Fairy Story (ms 1944; first UK 1945, first US 1946).
There was the same hearty cheering as before, and the mugs were emptied to the dregs. But as the animals outside gazed as the scene, it seemed to them that some strange thing was happening. What was it that had altered in the faces of the pigs? Clover's old dim eyes flitted from one face to another. Some of them had five chins, some had four, some had three. But what was it that seemed to be melting and changing? Then, the applause having come to an end, the company took up their cards and continued the game that had been interrupted, and the animals crept silently away.
But they had not gone [ten] yards when they stopped short. An uproar of voices was coming from the famrhouse [sic]. They rushed back and looked through the window again. Yes, a violent quarrel was in progress. There were shoutings, bangings on the table, sharp suspicious glances, furious denials. The source of the trouble appeared to be that Napoleon and Mr Pilkington had each played an ace of spades simultaneously.
Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Those who think this has nothing to do with the situations currently facing this nation should ponder three things:
(1) What is the status of the pig in Islam, and in particular in radical/fundamentalist Islamic doctrine (particularly Wahabbism)?
(2) Is the US government more like Mr Pilkington and the other farmers, or the pigs (not that either is a particularly attractive alternative)?
(3) What really happened to Snowball (hint: you won't find out in the published version)?
Or, I suppose, I could just slightly mangle Winston Smith's breakpoint:
"Do it to him! Do it to Giuliani!And any implicit comparison of "politicians" and "rats" is not coincidental.
Michael @ 21
Why have the real bomber killed in a car wreck? Do it correctly: the guy bombs whatever it was anyway. Otherwise, it still looks like you get something useful out of torture.
---
I'm still wondering if Mukasey ever heard of the trials of the Japanese waterboarders. Or the treaties that say it's illegal. If he hasn't, then he's not qualified to be AG.
Mukasey promised to review any "coercive interrogation techniques" used by U.S. intelligence operatives once confirmed.
In Malcolm Nance's article linked in #16, Nance says, "As a former Master Instructor and Chief of Training at the US Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, California I know the waterboard personally and intimately. SERE staff were required undergo the waterboard at its fullest. I was no exception."
If Mukasey were planning to "review" this interrogation technique by arranging to have SERE waterboard him under the controlled conditions they use when training their instructors, I might take his promise more seriously.
I have a flash memory of the first time I heard someone on TV seriously discussing whether we should torture. It was soon after 9/11. I was working out at the college gym, and the gym TV was carrying some cable news debate. I had to quit working out because I was so angry I couldn't even see straight.
As offensive as it was, I thought it was just some crazy cable news argument that would blow over. This is America, I thought. Surely people will dismiss this idea of torture out of hand.
I'm afraid of what this country has become.
Anthony Grafton has an article in the November 5 edition of the New Republic on the subject of torture in the Renaissance and its relevance to today.
Basically, the accounts of torture from that era make it clear that torturers could make prisoners confess to basically anything--even things that were not only false but actually impossible.
Most of the time, that is. Grafton notes an exception when torture did NOT produce a confession. Ironically, in that case the accusation was basically true.
Key quote near the end of the article:
"Torture does not obtain truth. Applied with leading questions, it can make most ordinary people--as it would certainly make me--say anything their examiners want, if they can only work out what that is. Applied to the extraordinarily defiant, it may not work at all. In either case, it is not an instrument that a decent society has any business applying."
If you already have good enough intel to know that there's a bomb in a certain city, that the bomb will go off at a certain time, and that a certain person has sure knowledge of the bomb's exact location, the intel you already have is so good that you don't need to torture anyone to get the rest.
All that torture will do is add bad information to the mix.
Suppose we were to snatch Alan Dershowitz off the street and torture him until he revealed exactly where a bomb is located (as well as how long he's been a member of Al Qaeda, and how many babies he's eaten as part of Passover rites). Suppose we then sent the bomb squad to that location. They'd find nothing, of course. But how much time, and how many resources, would be wasted in that effort?
How much additional effort would it take to get details of his plan to poison Chicago's water supply? Could we then announce that another terrorist plot had been foiled?
And if he named his accomplices, and we tortured them until they named their accomplices ... how long would it be before we had Paul Wolfowitz strapped to a waterboard?
Worse was reading all the material from experienced interrogators making the case again and again that AS AN INFORMATION RETRIEVAL TECHNIQUE torture did not work. Ever. And then more of the horrors came...
Me... I get to suffer people reading a couple of CIA hacks saying it's a good way to get info, and then tell me I am clueless, gormless, wrong and stupid for saying otherwise. That the evidence of centuries, the weight of experience and the testimony of dozens, nay hundreds who say those hacks are frauds and charlatans (never mind the vested interest they have in what they admit to doing being justified) is completely wiped away.
They usually close by saying I must be misrepresenting myself. Some, who are willing to admit my position just say I'm immoral for saying what I say.
As for Mukasey being subjected to the methods he is reviewing... no. Because he won't get the full-treatment. He will know it's going to end, and he might be able to bear up under it.
Torture is wrong, full stop. That should be enough. We are stronger, better, braver and more intelligent than that.
At least I hope so.
I am truly sick of talking about torture.
If I were on the Senate Judicial Committee I would vote against Mukasy for Attorney General for his response to this issue and for one other: when asked (not in these words, but this is what they wanted to know) whether the President could do something which Congress has forbidden i.e. break the law, he said (I paraphrase) "It depends on the circumstances."
No, it doesn't. Not in this country. If the President feels that to protect the country he or she must do something which Congress has forbidden, it's his/her job to go to Congress and Make. The. Case. Persuade them. They, too, are the government.
If you look, tonight, All Hallow's Eve, toward Washington DC, you will see the shades of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and quite a few more of the men who signed our Constitution hovering over the Capitol -- weeping.
The Spanish Inquisition stopped using torture on the grounds that it didn't work. C'mon, guys, if the friggin' Spanish Inquistion thought it's a waste of time and resources, how much of a no-brainer is it that we shouldn't be doing it either?
Just to get a sense for "The Other Side Of The Street" on torture, I went over to a Belmont Club link that linked to Peter Erwin's link at Smaller Wars Journal
Here are some excerpts:
You can light them up with napalm, but you can't put a towel over their face and pour water on them.
Makes sense to me.
[...]
First, the enemy against whom we are set doesn't stop at mere torture. They go straight on to torture for the ages, like cutting off heads with a dull knife then pouring boiling oil into the exposed neck to watch the body jerk and shake, or flaying all the skin from a victim then dismembering him and putting the remains into a sack to be delivered back to his fellows. The Huron and Aztecs could have even learned from these guys. No amount of niceness will deter this enemy from torturing our soldiers in the most barbaric ways imaginable when they capture them.
Second, this enemy by acting so barbarically, by using human shields, by refusing to follow any of the (Geneva) laws of war including the wearing of a uniform has placed itself outside the law of war. The laws of war simply do not apply to them. They have NO rights to life or fair treatment or anything and should be treated as one would treat rabid dogs.
Third, torture works. Unfortunate but true.
[...]
If waterboarding is torture, then I am prepared to countenance torture.
[...]
My problem with Malcom's basic argument is that he seems to feel it's alright to use this technique as a training exercise on our own troops but that we're bound to eschew applying it to an enemy that's willing to kill thousands of us at a time. That is an absurdity. In fact, I'd suggest that whatever one calls the practice if we have people willing to volunteer to undergo its use then it's fair to use it on an enemy. In fact, that is the only consistent standard I can think of.
[...]
Field interrogation techniques are no more worthy of a national referendum than office dating policy.
If this topic says anything at all about "us" it is that some segment of the population is sissified and afraid of confronting nasty people.
[...]
The word "torture" has lost its meaning. It is now applied to what would be considered bad fraternity initiations: seeing scary dogs, wearing panties on your head. If that is "torture", then we need a new word for the practices described in the recent AQ manual: the cleavers, the wire brush, the blowtorch, the eye scoops. What will the bien-pensants call such things?
[...]
This is why the West is in trouble. Most of us still have trouble understanding the political ideology of Islam, despite there being a fourteen hundred year history of jihad, inspired by and mandated by the very words of Allah and the example of the Prophet. The secular sophisticates of the West deign it a waste of time to become familiar with the Qur'an and ahadith, and so it filters down through and seeps into all aspects of our policy making culture and public debate about this conflict.
Refraining from all methods of aggressive interrogation (redefined as "torture" by the opponents of Bush and the sympathizers of jihadists)may help some to feel the supposed superiority of their moral rectitude. However, it will make no impression on the minds of the warriors of Allah, who see in it one more confirmation of how squeamish and weak we are and how ripe for the picking our civilization is.
[...]
Islam is a civilization destroyer and we have chosen not to defend our civilization.
The only way to stop this is to push back the spread if Islam. This will take a little more than just waterboarding.
The question of what to do with .00001% of the jihad is silly.
[...]
How many people in your family are you prepared to sacrifice so you may be morally superior?
What cities are you prepared to lose in order to have the moral high ground?
How many millions of dead Americans are alright with you to avoid charges of "torture?"
So that's who we're dealing with on the other side. The pro torture crowd.
In fact, I'd suggest that whatever one calls the practice if we have people willing to volunteer to undergo its use then it's fair to use it on an enemy.
You know, I'm willing to volunteer to have sex with (insert name of cute actor who I have sekrit crush on), so therefore it's fair to force an enemy to have sex with a guy. I'm also willing to eat ham and cheese sandwiches and participate in silly mock-Satanist rituals, therefore it's fair to force a religiously devout enemy to do the same thing.
Josh
They keep going for the '24' argument, as if that's the only one they recognize, never mind that it's absurd.
Their assumption - and it is an assumption, not a fact - that Islam as a whole is responsible for terrorism is also crap. By that standard, all Christians would be responsible for the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the pogroms, whether they approved or not, or even if they weren't part of the groups involved.
Cuy Fawkes night on Monday.
I'm going to dig out my copy of "V For Vendetta".
..._
"But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science."
mayakda @30 (initially quoting Michael @21):
"I'd like to see 24 or some other show or movie depict the good guys torturing the wrong guy."
I heard on NPR recently that The Shield got an award from a non-torture group for doing exactly that. Sorry I don't have links handy. I don't watch The Shield, but the gist of the story was that a dirty cop kills another cop and frames someguy, dead cop's partner illegally tortures innocent someguy brutally to death, while dirty cop, appalled but unwilling to come clean, tries to get him to stop.
Linkage is here; the soundfile appears to cover the entire ~25-minute interview, which includes an excerpt of the aforementioned portion of The Shield.
Nina 45: Hear, hear. This was my argument against Binding (in the magical sense), and also how I explained to a Mormon, recently, why the practice of posthumous proxy baptism is horrifically offensive to me: "If I dug up a Mormon grave," I said, "and made the person's long bones into flutes, that would be a monstrous thing for me to do. But in fact that's exactly what I hope will become of my long bones when I die.
"The idea of being posthumously baptized by a Mormon volunteer is as horrific to me as the idea of having your bones dug up and made into flutes probably is to you...or a little more."
I personally think the definition of 'torture' should be 'any deliberately inflicted suffering'. Nice and simple, and it covers all the things that are perfectly useless in interrogation.
OK, we have to put in some more subtleties, because of course mere imprisonment (even under conditions a business traveler would find acceptable in a hotel) inflicts suffering...and I guess there's the rub. But I think my basic concept is sound.
I have two comments (I have a lot to make, but I'll limit it)
1 - the stance that this IS, in fact, TORTURE, is not really the problem. We wouldn't want it done to ourselves, our loved ones, or anyone we "know." However, its not torture (in the minds of most Americans) when WE do it, after all, we're supposed to be the "good guys" despite our governments efforts and activities to TEACH and SPREAD these techniques across the globe to "friendly" regimes over the past 50 years: Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Argentina, Burma, Iran... the list is and sordid. AMERICA taught these techniques and funded the countries that performed the atrocities on their "unmentionables" when they were making them disappear during the countless dirty wars they waged (with our tax dollars) for profit and resources over the past 50 years. When it was done over there, we ignored it. Now that we're face to face with the "Dark Side" and we see ourselves in the mirror, we keep trying to finesse and nuance each argument in order to be viewed (if only through our own eyes) as the "Good Guys" still.
One problem: we can't.
By embracing this practice, this country sold its "good soul" and has decided to IRREVOCABLY and VISIBLY embrace those Evil tendencies with which we've danced over time.
As my mum told me: you can't get a little bit pregnant.
We've started this and, unless we, as a country, come clean on it, expose it, renounce it, and PUNISH those who've kidnapped, punched, electrocuted, froze, raped, bled, cut, drowned, whipped... those who's fingernails we've pulled, who's genitals we've shocked, who's skin we've scarred, who's minds we've broken...
We don't / can't hear their screams - and believe me, people to whom this country has tortured, have bled and screamed and cried for mercy all while OUR soldiers and agents ignored them and continued until they were thoroughly broken, unable to stand, unable to stop babbling about whatever they wanted them to confess to...
No, we can't hear their screams and so its just a story on the net, on the news, in the paper.
We hear neat explanations about how this is necessary (this people must bleed and scream and be in unbearable pain).
We hear how this "saves" lives (at the cost of others).
We hear how if you're not for this treatment you're gutless; you hate America; you want "them" to win.
Once you sell your soul, you can't get it back.
And EVERY day, this goes on in our name, we're part and party to it. We're like the Germans who read about The Final Solution, who refused to shop at Jewish stores, who kept quiet because they didn't want to similarly disappear.
EVERY DAY we allow this to go on, in our name, we're committing these heinous acts - as if it were us standing over a bleeding crying wet broken man or boy.
Why / how can I say that?
Because we're allowing these acts to be done by our proxy, all while we wash our hands and try to distance ourselves by saying "well, they say its not torture and who are we to decide otherwise."
2 - Where is the "Christian" outcry over these acts being committed, in the name of a "Christian" country, a "religious, faith-based" country?
Yesterday, the Catholic Church denounced Britney Spears over some photo shoot with her, quite scantily-clad, and a man dressed as a priest. They were all in an uproar about this fictitious, staged photo shoot.
For the past six years (going on seven and then some), this country had illegally kidnapped people, tortured them, made them disappear.
Where has been the "moral" outcry of such "faithful" "Christians" like the "Moral Majority" and the Catholic Church, and the Southern Baptist Convention, etc etc etc.
There is NO outcry - just like there was NO outcry by the Catholic Church, the Christians, and other faithful in Germany in the 1930s.
When we, as a country, are judged (and we will be judged - in this life or the next), what will we say to expunge these sins from our collective souls?
I'll leave with a very memorable quote:
A king may move a man, a father may claim a son. But remember that, even when those who move you be kings or men of power, your soul is in your keeping alone. When you stand before God you cannot say "but I was told by others to do thus" or that "virtue was not convinient at the time." This will not suffice. Remember that.
Tom Tomorrow has a fairly appropriate cartoon.
According to Andrew Sullivan, this from Hillary Clinton:
There is an easy way for Mukasey to get around the fact that he has not been briefed on what the CIA did: just define waterboarding, say whether waterboarding so defined is torture, and add that not having been briefed on what the CIA did, he doesn't know whether or not what they did meets his definition. That Mukasey has not taken this obvious route suggests that he is not motivated by his own uncertainty, but by the desire to keep people he believes have engaged in torture from being punished for their crimes.
Torture violates the basic dignity of the human person that all religions, in their highest ideals, hold dear. It degrades everyone involved-policy-makers, perpetrators and victims. It contradicts our nation's most cherished values. Any policies that permit torture and inhumane treatment are shocking and morally intolerable.
Nothing less is at stake in the torture abuse crisis than the soul of our nation. What does it signify if torture is condemned in word but allowed in deed? Let America abolish torture now-without exceptions.
thelonegunman at 50: the US Conference of Catholic Bishops has the above statement posted on its website.
Feel free to look.
#27: I realize I'm getting off the topic a bit, but is the AG a desirable job to have right now? Not that shredding one's credibility makes sense even for the most tempting of prizes, but for a job where you're likely to be combative with Congress for the next year, and unlikely to do anything constructive?
Also, why is he so eager to protect torturers?
#52: I like Hillary Clinton's solution. Of course, if Mukasey is a man of his word, this may oblige him to prosecute. I think he wants to be a man of his word, but without ever giving his word.
Wouldn't an operational definition of torture satisfy all the pragmatists out there? Torture consists of techniques which, when applied over a relatively short duration, will induce an average innocent person to confess to a serious crime in order to get them to stop.
Then heck, we can test these things out by taking things which people are maintaining not to be torture and subjecting those people to a choice: admit that it's torture or endure a relatively long duration of the technique.
For instance, if you claim that waterboarding is not torture, then in order to prove it you will have to submit to a eight hours of waterboarding a day for a week. If you can make it through, we concede it's not torture. But you can make it stop immediately by conceding it to be torture.
Frankly, this is a stupid idea. Torture is not a pragmatic issue -- it's not wrong because it doesn't work. It's not a political issue -- wrong unless applied to your enemies. It's not an issue of "closure" -- wrong unless done in retribution for a heinous crime.
It's wrong because it's wrong. Moral human beings do not do it to one another, and they do not advocate for it to be done to others.
Guantanimo, Abu Ghraib, and all the blather surrounding torture are part of the ongoing culture war in the U.S. Partly it is about the culture of toughness, one group of people showing how much they are not "bleeding heart liberals." Partly, it's to intimidate enemies. But that doesn't go far enough either. The mere fact that the U.S. sponsors torture causes pain to one side of the culture war (you know who you are). And The Other Side likes that it causes you pain. It's meant to hurt you, plain and simple. They hate you that much.
Because we're allowing these acts to be done by our proxy, all while we wash our hands and try to distance ourselves by saying "well, they say its not torture and who are we to decide otherwise."
I don't recall anybody in this discussion saying anything like "they say it's not torture and who are we to decide otherwise". All the comments I've read have been along the lines of "this IS torture; this IS wrong; how do we make our government stop doing this?"
Admittedly I don't have time right now to go back and reread every single comment, but based on my first reading and on what I know of the people participating in the discussion (based on their past comments in other threads), the quoted remark is nothing but a strawman. (Plus it comes from someone whose "view all by" shows zero other comments here, and who manages to invoke Godwin's law on the first comment.)
Moral human beings do not do it to one another, and they do not advocate for it to be done to others.
Not even in the case of "well, let them prove it's not torture!" I wasn't serious. Just in case that wasn't clear ...
#55: I agree except that it isn't the culture of toughness. It's the culture of "toughness."
The toughest people I know don't make a show of how tough they are. They don't posture. They don't pose. They don't act merely to intimidate. They tend to be the nicest people I know, and, yet, it's always perfectly clear that you don't want to mess with them.
#54: JoXn Costello: Torture is not a pragmatic issue -- it's not wrong because it doesn't work. It's not a political issue -- wrong unless applied to your enemies. It's not an issue of "closure" -- wrong unless done in retribution for a heinous crime.
It's wrong because it's wrong. Moral human beings do not do it to one another, and they do not advocate for it to be done to others.
Absolutely. Agreed.
But the sick little fantasies in the minds of the defenders of torture are proof against this obvious fact. In these fantasies, they become the gimlet-eyed Chief of Intelligence, grimly doing what has to be done, getting the information by any means necessary, barking orders to scurrying sycophants who desperately want to have his babies.
It is no use pointing out that their fantasy is vicious, obscene, cruel, inhuman, degrading and evil. It's not even much use pointing out that using torture transforms them into bin Laden or Heinrich Himmler or Lavrenti Beria, and we into the Taliban, or the Gestapo, or the NKVD. In their fantasies, torture works, and because they also fantasise that they are pragmatists and practical people, that's all they think matters to them. Of course none of that is true, and Satan is laughing fit to bust about the success of his lie.
But if you can't carry your point with one cogent, reasonable and fair argument because your opponents are deaf to it, there's no harm in stating another. They will quite possibly be deaf to that one too, but some who are deaf to the first might not be deaf to the second. Who knows?
It won't save them from damnation, of course. They are advocating the commission of hideously evil acts on the grounds that they think them expedient. If they can only be persuaded not to advocate torture because torture doesn't work, they are lost to the light anyway. Of course it would be a fine thing if they could be brought to realise how great is the peril to their souls. But if this is not achievable, it is still worthwhile to point out the truth: that torture doesn't work.
Of course it doesn't work. For it to work, you'd need to be certain that the victim knows what you want to know (and this is never the case in practice) and you'd also need to know when you've heard the truth, which is impossible. If you knew that, you wouldn't need to question the victim at all.
Everyone has a breaking point, and it's closer than most people think it is. Before that point is reached the victims will say nothing useful. After it, they'll say anything at all, and therefore nothing useful. The torturers can never know if anything they hear is true, before or after, unless they already know - in which case, forget about expediency. They're doing it for fun.
(Story: The Countess Andree de Jongh of Flanders, a petite, attractive young woman, ran one of the most successful Belgian resistance operations of WW2, smuggling shot-down Allied aircrew back to Britain. She was its linchpin, its organiser, its boss. In 1943, the Gestapo found her with three Allied airmen in her house (she had been betrayed by a paid informant), and they tortured her. Within hours, she had told them the whole truth. Who wouldn't?
They didn't believe her. Obviously the torture had broken her completely, just as you would expect of a young and vulnerable woman, and she was babbling anything that came into her head. This condition was well-known to the Gestapo. It was impossible that such an operation could be run by such a person. Therefore, nothing that she said was of any value. They sent her to a prison camp, but she survived the war, going on to work as a nurse in a leper colony in the (former) Belgian Congo and in Ethiopia. She died, aged ninety, on October 13 last, and all the trumpets sounded for her on the other side.
Her network survived. Over five hundred Allied aircrew were smuggled out after her capture, and they returned to bomb Germany again. The Gestapo had the entire operation in their hands, but they didn't know it. It was the very fact that they had tortured her that made them believe the converse.)
Torture doesn't work. Yes, of course it's so flagrantly evil that only a person blind to morality, a person ruled by fear and hatred, could defend it for a moment. But it also doesn't work, and there's no harm and some use in saying so.
Torture is tempting. I've come very close to performing mild tortures (in training, to volunteers). If I'd done so it wouldn't have been criminal, it might even have been approved.
I stopped it, because I saw what I was about to do.
I came that close at 14+ years in the Army, with 13+ years of training not to.
Those who have less of that (and whatever innate repugnance I might have against it) might cross the line. It's very tempting, and doing it gets postive feedback.
Add the concepts around it, that it's effective, that it's "needful" that without it the bad guys will be willing to hurt us, etc.. and you get people like Mukasey, who will give it a wink and a nod.
And torture isn't the worst of his failings. He makes John Yoo look as a checks and balances kind of guy who favors congressional oversight of the president.
Gonna play Devil's Advocate here. (surprise...)
I don't know about anyone else, but if my wife and child were in potential danger, or missing, or kidnapped, and I could secure information that would lead to their safe recovery, and this information could only be had by beating the shit out of somebody until they talk. Yeah, OK, I am gonna beat the shit out of that somebody.
If I am in Iraq or Afghanistan and my squad is in peril, or I've got a Private who's been kidnapped and might be dead very quickly if I don't find out where he is, and the key to my finding him or keeping my squad safe, is to bust out the teeth of somebody and break their fingers. Yeah, I think I am gonna bust out some teeth and break fingers to get the info I need.
My point?
It's easy for us who don't have to make these decisions to climb up on a moral high-horse and run one index finger across the other over the moral depravity of our nation for deigning to stoop to forced information extraction.
U.S. servicemembers who go through our routine E&E schools get treated worse than your average CIA or Guantanamo prisoner. And I have it from a Sergeant who worked Guantanamo that Guantanamo detainees are treated with remarkable care, given historical treatment of military prisoners in similar circumstances.
Can there be no spectrum on this? Or is all forced extraction absolutely and morally wrong, in all circumstances?
Again, if it means the life of a Soldier in my care, or a family member... I'll sleep at night being 'morally wrong' if it means I get my squad member or my child back in one piece.
CAVEAT: one can usually get what one wants in life via the carrot, and in most cases, the carrot should be your first, second, and third option, totaled. But that doesn't mean you don't also sometimes, if the circumstance warrants, reach for the fourth option: a stick.
The information you get by besting the shit out of someone will be bad info. That is to say, it won't be useful in finding your wife, or your kid, or your squadmate.
Or, if you want, you don't need to capture anyone. Just take one of your squad mates and beat the crap out of him until he tells you where your missing man is. You'll be just as likely to get the information you're after.
You've wasted time. You haven't saved anyone. So take your devil's advocate and shove it up your ass.
Regarding our prosecution of torture in Japan, mentioned upthread, the judgment of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East is online. If you go to
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/PTO/IMTFE/IMTFE-8.html
and search for "water treatment" and "mental torture", you should find some rather familiar-sounding techniques described, and clearly labeled as torture. In other parts of the judgment, you'll find the sentences for those who authorized the torture.
Or is all forced extraction absolutely and morally wrong, in all circumstances?
Yes, all forced extraction is absolutely and completely morally wrong, in any and all circumstances.
Plus, as an added benefit, it just flat doesn't work.
Jim, I hope you are never placed in a position that would force you to question your moral certainty on this issue.
CRV: My point, I have been in those situations.
Your hypotheticals are nonsense. They don't work. You are beating on a guy because you know he has the info.
HOW do you know? How is it that the means which proved, beyond all doubt, that this guy knows didn't tell you more?
How can you know he isn't lying?
What if he doesn't know? How will you know the difference between his initial protestations of ignorance and those of the guy who is keeping info from you?
The short answer to your question... there is not spectrum. Or if there is, it's black and white.
Is there a spectrum to child molestation? What if sodomising your child will get the guy to confess, but beating him won't? Will you let your kid be violated? It's for the common good?
If you cross that line (torturing someone as a means of, "informal" information extraction [whichis a red-herring, Mukasey isn't being asked about occasional abuse, but about organised practice]), and I have any say in the matter, you can live with that "moral stain" in prison; until you die, and be glad I'm against capital punishment, much less Old Testament justice.
That sums up my opinions on the "practical" justifications for torture.
CRV, don't assume that I haven't already been.
CRV #65: That situation does not exist and never will. Are you listening? TORTURE DOES NOT WORK. Regardless of how much you want to do it.
This isn't an opinion. It is a fact. Objects at rest tend to stay at rest unless acted upon by an outside force, matter can be neither created nor destroyed, and torture does not work.
CRV: This time, in comparison to previous interchanges, I am willing to say you are being rude, incivil, and; so far as any reasonable person can see, an asshole.
Your comment, Jim, I hope you are never placed in a position that would force you to question your moral certainty on this issue. is, in more polite words, a "fuck you."
Because it's imputing you are superior to Jim, because you've decided to torture, if the occaision warrants, and that he, in his moral certitude, is, at best, a simpleton, and at worst, actually immoral (see my comments above, and see the camp you have moved to).
You, sir, are a torture monger. You want to limit it to "exigent" circumstances (while papering over the present exisitence of it as a systemic practice. Where will you draw the line (and why)? Is the guy who knows where the guy who planted the bomb is hiding out worth torturing?
At what point is the "immediacy" so attenuated that torture stops being justified.
Now, I have run out of polite words.
I used to think forced extration was always wrong, too.
I advocate only because I know men whose job it has been to detain people on the field of battle and extract info. I am highly, highly uneasy with the quick moral judgment that is taking place in this thread, because the men I know who have been tasked with this kind of work in-theatre have not been immoral, amoral, sick, or sadistic people. They have also, as a rule, not inflicted psychological or bodily harm on detainees that would exceed that seen in an E&E school, like the kind Army pilots must attend.
Getting info is a tricky business.
9 times out of 10, they used the carrot.
Once in awhile, they used the stick.
And to hear these Soldiers tell it, the info wasn't always bad. It wasn't always good, but it wasn't 100% bad every time. And it saved American lives.
I just think we behind our keyboards are in no position to make glib moral evaluations, especially of the sweeping sort.
The higher our horse, the more it will hurt when we fall off.
CRV, you don't know what you're talking about. And you don't know the qualifications and experiences of the people you're spouting your nonsense to.
So follow your own advice. Get off your high horse, chum.
Terry, slow down with the psych couch session, please? You don't know anything about the motivation behind what I said to Jim.
I meant it. If Jim (and you) are dead certain of your belief, it is my hope that life does not find a way to take you into a position where the moral absolute becomes clouded or confused.
It's been my experience that life has a way of doing that. And those who busily declare moral absolutes, of any sort, eventually run into some scenario that isn't so easily detangled via black/white binary thinking.
It wasn't a "fuck you" to Jim. It was a genuine wish that Life, or Fate, or Murphy's Law, not ever place Jim in a spot he'd rather not be in.
Like I said, Jim, Devil's Advocating.
You don't have to like it, or agree.
But do we always have to like what other people write around here, or agree with it?
You, sir, are a torture monger. -- TK
And you, sir, are making yet another sweeping judgment.
Fine.
So, you're wrong. Call it "Devil's Advocate" or not as you please. The position you're taking is wrong.
Let's see ... suppose your wife was murdered.
The cops know that when a wife turns up dead usually it was the husband who did it. You're their number one suspect.
Is it okay with you if they waterboard you until you confess? I promise you, you will confess. Then they can put you in jail for the rest of your life, or, in some states, put you to death. You're cool with that?
Hey, they'll probably even be right and another killer will be off the streets. Because it usually is the husband who did it.
CRV: What part of I did this in the field isn't sinking in?
I am not speaking glibly from behind a keyboard (which, to be brutally frank, you are; it's just that you are glibly mocking those who think torture is wrong, on moral, practical and personal grounds).
On a simple level, how many guys do you think are going to say, "Yeah, we beat the shit out of this little shit, and when that didn't work we hooked his nuts to a TA-312 and it was all for nothing because he didn't know anything and lied to make us stop?"
Or might they have a reason to justify the things they did as "right, and just" because they worked?
A lot of it is post hoc nonesense too. There was a COL in Iraq who threatened to kill a guy if he didn't point to the house shots had come from. He actually pointed a loaded 9-mil at the poor sod, then twitched it to the side and pulled the trigger.
At which point the guy pointed to a building and the place got lit up.
No more shots.
But there's no way to know that it was te right house. It might just have been the guy moving on to another place to set up, because to keep shooting was to get made.
But hey, no one was, "really" hurt, and the shots stopped.
That COL was let off easy, allowed to retire.
Elsewhere, we've taken hostages; left notes on people's houses that if they didn't turn themselves in, their wife and kids would spend the rest of their lives in prison.
Justifiable, right? After all, Hussein would have done that; and beat the snot out of them; so we are better than he was, and that makes it OK?
Fuck that. Honestly, if it means my guys get shot; that's a price I was willing to pay. How do I know that, because I didn't torture people when I had the chance. I also didn't let any of my troops do it.
People I worked with had done it in the past. They were broken, not right. And some of them are in prison now. None of them got what I think they deserve, they will be let out.
CRV: No. I am making an accusation. A statement of what I think of you, based on what you are saying here.
You advocate torture. That makes you a torture monger.
Q.E.D.
I've said my piece, at too much length. CRV, you fail the test for either civilisation or Christianity. You are working for the other side in both cases.
What bugs me is that you guys seem to think I said all forced extraction or "torture" of any sort was OK in any and every circumstance.
Go back and read my caveat.
The carrot will work most of the time, and only in rare circumstances should anything more be appropriate. But that doesn't mean there have not been times when, sadly, the stick is called for.
I grieve for the Soldiers I have known, good men, who have been forced down the road they've been forced down. But duty and expediency do not always permit easy moral decisionmaking. I have no doubt a couple of guys in particular are quite hurt by what they ended up doing. But what they ended up doing amounted to child's play compared to what a captured Soldier in the grasp of the insurgency goes through, before he dies.
So maybe I just see degrees here, a graduation of steps. Kind of like in the criminal system, how not every crime is automatically equated to be as terrible as every other.
Is a Soldier who blares loud music 24/7 into a cell and sleep-deprives a detainee, guilty of the same "torture" as a man who shoves an ice pick into a detainee's body parts?
If you answer is, "Yes!", I guess this discussion is over.
"What bugs me is that you guys seem to think I said all forced extraction or "torture" of any sort was OK in any and every circumstance."
I haven't seen anyone make that claim in this thread. Can you point to a post that does, or is "in any and every circumstance" your own addition?
"Is a Soldier who blares loud music 24/7 into a cell and sleep-deprives a detainee, guilty of the same "torture" as a man who shoves an ice pick into a detainee's body parts?"
Obviously it's not the "same torture", since it's two different actions. And waterboarding is a third type of action, the specific one that's at issue in the Mukasey hearings, that somehow doesn't seem to figure in this example at all.
What's the point you're trying to make here? Are you saying we should overlook the evil that one person does because someone else is doing something arguably more evil? Or was there some other argument you were trying to make with this example?
So, what is the best way to get information from a prisoner? Torture is off the table, but the man has information that you need, and need quickly. So what's the best way?
Steve C, Terry and others will be along with more details, but part of the answer "Sometimes there isn't a good way." Successful interrogation takes time. Quick brutality generates bad information. It is possible to want, even need, something very badly and not get it - like, for instance, the people in the World Trade Center who tried jumping rather than burning, and died, or the firefighters who needed better radios and didn't have them, or all the people caring for those dying of cancer and other things that in some sense really ought to be fixable and yet in practice aren't.
Sometimes, we can't get what we need, and have to deal with the loss.
Now I yield the floor to the better-informed.
John @ #80,
This is what the moral thrust of this thread seemed to be: all forced extraction of information is equivalent to torture, and since we already know that torture is never forgiveable nor excusable in any circumstance, and never works anyway, anyone who advocates it or apologizes for it or commits it is a debased cretin.
My point has been that those who use forced extraction are not always cretins, not always guilty of the same "crime", and we behind our keyboards should not go out and pass sweeping judgments on these men.
If I seem to be taking it personally, I am. I've got friends who have been placed in these situations and while some might argue that their actions have been "immoral", to pass judgment on them as human beings, to breezily declare them [i]anything[/i], as if we have a right to judge...
The whole thing just seems too pat, too simple, too smug.
And as Steve C. pointed out, what do you do when you are holding a man who has info you need, and is not willing to share it, and you don't have all the time in the world to use the "carrot" as it were?
I think the line between torture and forced extraction gets crossed when men inflict bodily pain for the sake of seeing another man scream, cry, howel, wimper, or just plain bleed. And you won't see me apologizing for that kind of thing, nor will I go to bat for Soldiers or Marines who get a kick out of seeing an Iraqi moan in agony, just because they think it's funny.
I've met a couple of these kinds of Soldiers, yes, and I couldn't get away from them fast enough.
But not everyone engaged in the GWOT is using forced extraction because they like it, nor is everyone who uses forced extraction using methods I would call "routinely extreme" or otherwise brushing the edge of reasonable coercion.
Does this make my position more clear?
I'll say it again, for the Terry and Jim contingent:
I. Am. Not. Apoligizing. For. Sadists.
I am saying we need to look at this as a far more complex moral, ethical, and practical issue, than it might first seem.
If it was an easy moral call, we wouldn't be having this big national debate on it, now, would we?
If the attorney general has any doubts about whether a certain procedure is torture or not, there's one very simple way he can find out. Simply submit to the procedure for several minutes. He should be able to make a judgement forthwith. If he is unwilling to submit to the procedure, that by itself should be information enough to make a firm decision regarding the matter.
Steve C. (and CRV, since you seconded the question): The Army has some field manuals on interrogation that suggest various ways other than torture to get needed information.
The current interrogation manual, FM 2-22-3, is online at
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm2-22-3.pdf
This was a 2006 revision of an earlier 1992 manual FM 34-52, which is online at
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm34-52.pdf
I haven't done more than briefly glance at either one, but I would guess that the military interrogators who contributed to this volume have some good idea of what they're talking about.
I *did* find the following passage in FM 2-22-3 of interest:
"Use of torture is not only illegal but also it is a poor technique that yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say what he thinks the HUMINT collector wants to hear. Use of torture can also have many possible negative consequences at national and international levels."
Steve C, you may be interested to read how what the men who interrogated Nazis feel about torture.
As far as I know, watching police procedurals is a good way to watch effective interrogation. I like First 48. These techniques are the ones used by cops who actually want information - like the ones who refused to be involved in the (pointless, immoral, illegal) torture at Guantanamo. Grownups.
CRV, as much as he wants to think so, does not fall into the grownup category. And, although he frequently posts on things he knows nothing about, he has admitted he's never changed his opinions about something based on the replies his gets. Responding to him is a waste of time and electrons.
So what's the best way?
Careful interrogation, combined with other sources of information. Documents, physical objects, reconnaissance, that sort of thing.
For an example of a good interrogation, you might look at the chapters dealing with the interrogation of Jerry Brudos in Ann Rule's The Lust Killer.
Yo, CRV: You still haven't answered my question. Is it okay with you if the cops torture you until you confess to murdering your wife?
If it was an easy moral call, we wouldn't be having this big national debate on it, now, would we?
CRV...this is the stupidest thing I've ever seen you post. Ordinarily I think you're sincere but misguided; this is just too stupid to be anything but disingenuous, from someone who can figure out how to post to Making Light at all.
We're having a "big national debate" because the torture-mongers have succeeded in selling their lies to a large portion of the public, in TV shows like 24. In this case Hollywood is definitely on the side of the bad guys.
And so are you, in this case. You're talking and not listening. You still think we're talking about how you shouldn't beat information out of someone; we are talking about how you cannot beat information out of someone, and so if you beat them it's just to satisfy your own brutal impulses.
Impulses which, if your comments in this thread are anything to go by, you treasure and strive to protect.
I think it's beneath you, frankly.
#83, CRV:
This is what the moral thrust of this thread seemed to be: all forced extraction of information is equivalent to torture, and since we already know that torture is never forgiveable nor excusable in any circumstance, and never works anyway, anyone who advocates it or apologizes for it or commits it is a debased cretin.
I do believe you've got it.
If it was an easy moral call, we wouldn't be having this big national debate on it, now, would we?
What debate? That thing where people explain the concept of WRONG in small words to people with their fingers in their ears, ad infinitum and to the detriment of their sanity?
"Debate" is for topics where the possibility exists that either side might be right.
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