It is something new, I believe, that so many Americans approve of torture by our government. Perhaps this is another result of the horrific mixture of hubris and paranoia (described in America’s Most Dangerous Enemy) that has come to dominate our culture. It so, I believe it a symptom of a serious illness afflicting our society. Incidents like this provide a mirror, benchmarks by which we can see how America has changed.
This raises questions about the American project.
- How will a failure to thoroughly investigate these crimes affect America?
- If not this, then what will crimes by government officials deserve prosecution?
For a brief discussion of the legal basis for torture, and the complexities of prosecuting officials, see these posts at the Volokh Conspiracy: here and here.
Contents
- Some applause for America’s torturers
- Excerpts
- Reports by our government, its officers and agents, and major NGO’s about torture
- Other articles about torture
- Update: the My Lai Massacre — evidence we sometimes approve of torture
- Afterword and for more information
Sections 3 and 4 provide links to a wide range of sources.
(1) Some applause for America’s torturers
Comments posted here and at Matthew Yglesias’ site about torture. Thousands more are scattered about Internet. Cry for America, for what we have become.
The difference is that you know Zubeydah or whoever is a bad man. (source)
Has M.Y. forgot about 9/11? These enhanced interrogation techniques are used only on the worst of the worst. Would you prefer that we Mirandize terrorists? If we stop using these techniques, then there will likely be another attack, but this time, the blood will on MY’s hands! Rudy/Palin 2012! (source)
I don’t think we need to apologize to the world for beating up knuckleheads who send even their children to blow us up. Rather it is our DUTY to do everything reasonable to save innocent lives. (source)
“Torture” and “Torturers” are loaded terms. I would hazard that most of these detainees were treated less harshly than most kids at the hands of bullies, every day in what pass for public schools. (source)
I still maintain that the idea that “waterboarding, slamming detainees against a wall, and stuffing a prisoner with a fear of insects into a small box with a bug” are torture is ludicrous. I’ve endured worse in resistance training. … should we just turn Gitmo into Club Med, provide Korans and chaplains, free massages, group therapy, and Prime Rib on Sunday in the hope that the Jihadist leaders we have busted our collective hump to capture will give up their info willingly? Get real. (source)
When it comes to how these people are being treated, you have to consider what you are dealing with. These terrorists don’t play the game by our rules, or by any rules of civilized conduct. To treat them as if they were just any John Doe in America who has been accused of a crime just plays into their hands, in my opinion. I really have no sympathy whatever for their complaints. Frankly I don’t understand all the sympathy these terrorists seem to be getting from some. Rather odd considering who these people are and what they are trying to do to innocent people.
To put it succinctly, these terrorists are the enemy. They should be treated as such. When they make up their minds that they want to play by the rules again and resume normal relations amongst the peoples of the world, then we can talk. Until then, we have to fight them until they are defeated. The methods described appear to me to be very mild. If anything, we are too damned nice to them. (source)
We’re using 21st Century, Western morality while fighting a 5th Century Islamic morality. Given the choice between losing half of Philly to a dirty bomb or being accused of having descended to the practices of our enemies then I’ll grant the latter. Turn on the AC. In our lifetimes some nitwit in Washington is going to feel too morally elevated to approve the waterboarding of an important captive. That decision will cost innocent Americans their lives and we’ll all be more vulnerable afterwards. I abhor the notion of torture. But, if my child were held by some demented masochist I’d be the first one pulling up the fingernails. (source)
(2) Excerpts
(A) Testimony of Dennis C. Blair (Director of National Intelligence) before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on 22 January 2009:
“Torture is not moral, not legal, not effective.”
(B) Statement of Dennis C. Blair (Director of National Intelligence) on 21 April 2009 — Excerpt:
I recommended to the president that the administration release these memos, and I made clear that the CIA should not be punished for carrying out legal orders. I also strongly supported the president when he declared that we would no longer use enhanced interrogation techniques. We do not need these techniques to keep America safe.
The information gained from these techniques was valuable in some instances, but there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means. The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security.
(C) Book review of The One Percent Doctrine – Deep Inside America’s Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11 by Ron Suskind, Washington Post, 20 June 2006 — Excerpt:
One example out of many comes in Ron Suskind’s gripping narrative of what the White House has celebrated as one of the war’s major victories: the capture of Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan in March 2002. Described as al-Qaeda’s chief of operations even after U.S. and Pakistani forces kicked down his door in Faisalabad, the Saudi-born jihadist was the first al-Qaeda detainee to be shipped to a secret prison abroad. Suskind shatters the official story line here.
Abu Zubaydah, his captors discovered, turned out to be mentally ill and nothing like the pivotal figure they supposed him to be. CIA and FBI analysts, poring over a diary he kept for more than a decade, found entries “in the voice of three people: Hani 1, Hani 2, and Hani 3” — a boy, a young man and a middle-aged alter ego. All three recorded in numbing detail “what people ate, or wore, or trifling things they said.” Dan Coleman, then the FBI’s top al-Qaeda analyst, told a senior bureau official, “This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality.”
Abu Zubaydah also appeared to know nothing about terrorist operations; rather, he was al-Qaeda’s go-to guy for minor logistics — travel for wives and children and the like. That judgment was “echoed at the top of CIA and was, of course, briefed to the President and Vice President,” Suskind writes. And yet somehow, in a speech delivered two weeks later, President Bush portrayed Abu Zubaydah as “one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States.” And over the months to come, under White House and Justice Department direction, the CIA would make him its first test subject for harsh interrogation techniques.
… In interviews with intelligence officers, Suskind often finds them baffled by White House statements. “Why the hell did the President have to put us in a box like this?” one top CIA official asked about the overblown public portrait of Abu Zubaydah. But Suskind sees a deliberate management choice: Bush ensnared his director of central intelligence at the time, George J. Tenet, and many others in a new kind of war in which action and evidence were consciously divorced.
(D) “My Tortured Decision“, Ali Soufan (the FBI supervisory special agent who oversaw the Zubaydah interrogations), op-ed in the New York Times, 22 April 2009 — Excerpt:
FOR seven years I have remained silent about the false claims magnifying the effectiveness of the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding. I have spoken only in closed government hearings, as these matters were classified. But the release last week of four Justice Department memos on interrogations allows me to shed light on the story, and on some of the lessons to be learned.
One of the most striking parts of the memos is the false premises on which they are based. The first, dated August 2002, grants authorization to use harsh interrogation techniques on a high-ranking terrorist, Abu Zubaydah, on the grounds that previous methods hadn’t been working. The next three memos cite the successes of those methods as a justification for their continued use.
It is inaccurate, however, to say that Abu Zubaydah had been uncooperative. Along with another F.B.I. agent, and with several C.I.A. officers present, I questioned him from March to June 2002, before the harsh techniques were introduced later in August. Under traditional interrogation methods, he provided us with important actionable intelligence.
… There was no actionable intelligence gained from using enhanced interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah that wasn’t, or couldn’t have been, gained from regular tactics. In addition, I saw that using these alternative methods on other terrorists backfired on more than a few occasions — all of which are still classified. The short sightedness behind the use of these techniques ignored the unreliability of the methods, the nature of the threat, the mentality and modus operandi of the terrorists, and due process.
(E) Preface By Antonio Taguba (Major General, US Army, retired), from “Broken Laws, Broken Lives”, Report by the Physicians for Human Rights, June 2008. Bold emphasis added.
This report tells the largely untold human story of what happened to detainees in our custody when the Commander-in-Chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture. This story is not only written in words: It is scrawled for the rest of these individuals’ lives on their bodies and minds. Our national honor is stained by the indignity and inhumane treatment these men received from their captors.
The profiles of these eleven former detainees, none of whom were ever charged with a crime or told why they were detained, are tragic and brutal rebuttals to those who claim that torture is ever justified. Through the experiences of these men in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, we can see the full scope of the damage this illegal and unsound policy has inflicted — both on America’s institutions and our nation’s founding values, which the military, intelligence services, and our justice system are duty-bound to defend.
In order for these individuals to suffer the wanton cruelty to which they were subjected, a government policy was promulgated to the field whereby the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice were disregarded. The UN Convention Against Torture was indiscriminately ignored. And the healing professions, including physicians and psychologists, became complicit in the willful infliction of harm against those the Hippocratic Oath demands they protect.
After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.
The former detainees in this report, each of whom is fighting a lonely and difficult battle to rebuild his life, require reparations for what they endured, comprehensive psycho-social and medical assistance, and even an official apology from our government.
But most of all, these men deserve justice as required under the tenets of international law and the United States Constitution.
And so do the American people.
About Antonio Taguba (Major General, US Army, retired):
Major General Antonio “Tony” M. Taguba (US Army, Retired) led the official US Army investigation into the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, testifying before Congress about his findings in 2004.
Major General Taguba served 34 years on active duty until his retirement on January 1, 2007. He has served in numerous leadership and staff positions, most recently as Deputy Commanding General, Combined Forces Land Component Command during Operations Iraqi Freedom in Kuwait and Iraq; as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs; and as Deputy Commanding General for Transformation, US Army Reserve Command.
(E) “Drop by Drop: Forgetting the History of Water Torture in U.S. Courts“, Evan Wallach, Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, May 2007 — Excerpt:
Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) American judges or commissioners heard American prosecutors roundly condemn the practice as it was applied to American servicemen, and voted to convict the perpetrators. The United States was not alone in prosecuting water torture before national tribunals, nor were the Japanese its sole practitioner. It is worth comparing those trials with Norway’s prosecution of German defendants for the same form of misconduct, and the United Kingdom’s trial and execution of Japanese interrogators who used the method. (p. 5)
… In all cases, whether the water cure was applied by Americans, to Americans, or simply reviewed by American courts, it has uniformly been rejected as illegal; often with severely punitive results for the perpetrators. (p. 10)
… The clearest exposition of the U.S. position on the use of the water treatment as torture is found in cases in which the Japanese armed forces applied it to Allied prisoners of war during WW2. Japan’s use of the technique was extremely common, and was part of the widespread use of torture as a tool of interrogation. An extensive discussion of the effectiveness of water questioning, and one with which some Americans might be expected to be familiar because of the fame of the victims, was found in the trial of Japanese officers responsible for the torture, trial, and in some cases execution, of crew members of the April, 1942 Doolittle raid on Tokyo. (p. 11)
… The United States tried a significant number of Class B and C war criminals before national tribunals. Among them were several conducted at Yokohama, Japan and one in the Philippines which elicited compelling descriptions of water torture from its victims, and which resulted in severe punishment for its perpetrators. {p. 16)
About the author: Evan Wallach, a judge at the U.S. Court of International Trade in New York, teaches the law of war as an adjunct professor at Brooklyn Law School and New York Law School.
(F) “A Dubious C.I.A. Shortcut“, Philip Zelikow, op-ed in the New York Times, 24 April 2009 — Excerpt:
The United States has plenty of its own experience to consider, in law enforcement (remember the frenzy a generation ago over the Supreme Court’s Miranda decision requiring suspects to be read their rights?) as well as in war. In World War II, the United States and Britain had special programs for “high value” captives. Thousands of lives were at stake. Yet, even in a horrifyingly brutal war, neither government found it necessary to use methods like the ones in this C.I.A. program. George Marshall would not have needed a lawyer to tell him whether such methods were O.K.
More recent history is also revealing. America inadvertently carried out an experiment in how best to question Qaeda captives. On the one side there was the C.I.A. effort, while on the other there was the military-run program against Al Qaeda in Iraq. The Iraq program, organized by the Joint Special Operations Command, was reformed after the Abu Ghraib scandals. It respected basic international standards. It used teams made up of experts from the military, the C.I.A. and law enforcement. The F.B.I. did not have to stay away, as it did from the C.I.A.’s “enhanced” interrogations.
Qaeda captives in Iraq were hard cases, often more seasoned in violence than captives taken elsewhere. Yet the program in Iraq was and remains highly successful. I was impressed when I observed it in 2005 as part of a wider look at our intelligence efforts. I know that Joint Special Operations Command leaders told the White House that they could interrogate captives effectively under the higher standards.
There is another variable in the intelligence equation: the help you lose because your friends start keeping their distance. When I worked at the State Department, some of America’s best European allies found it increasingly difficult to assist us in counterterrorism because they feared becoming complicit in a program their governments abhorred. This was not a hypothetical concern.
About the author: Philip Zelikow, a professor of history at the University of Virginia, was the counselor of the State Department from 2005 to 2006 and the executive director of the 9/11 commission.
(G) “Ice Water and Sweatboxes – The long and sadistic history behind the CIA’s torture techniques“, By Darius Rejali, Slate, 17 March 2009 — Excerpt:
In the 20thcentury, there were two main traditions of clean torture—the kind that doesn’t leave marks, as modern torturers prefer. The first is French modern, a combination of water- and electro-torture. The second is Anglo-Saxon modern, a classic list of sleep deprivation, positional and restraint tortures, extremes of temperature, noise, and beatings.
All the techniques in the accounts of torture by the International Committee of the Red Cross, as reported Monday, collected from 14 detainees held in CIA custody, fit a long historical pattern of Anglo-Saxon modern. The ICRC report apparently includes details of CIA practices unknown until now, details that point to practices with names, histories, and political influences. In torture, hell is always in the details.
The ice-water cure
“On a daily basis during the first two weeks I was made to lie on a plastic sheet placed on the floor which would then be lifted at the edges. Cold water was then poured onto my body with buckets. … I would be kept wrapped inside the sheet with the cold water for several minutes. I would then be taken for interrogation,” detainee Walid bin Attash told the Red Cross.
In the 1920s, the Chicago police used to extract confessions from prisoners by chilling them in freezing water baths. This was called the “ice-water cure.” That’s not its first use. During World War I, American military prisons subjected conscientious objectors to ice-water showers and baths until they fainted. The technique appeared in some British penal colonies as well; occasionally in Soviet interrogation in the 1930s; and more commonly in fascist Spain, Vichy France, and Gestapo-occupied Belgium. The Allies also used it against people they regarded as war criminals and terrorists. Between 1940 and 1948, British interrogators used “cold-water showers” as part of a brutal interrogation regimen in a clandestine London prison for German POWs accused of war crimes. French Paras also used cold showers occasionally in Algeria in the 1950s. In the 1970s, Greek, Chilean, Israeli, and Syrian interrogators made prisoners stand under cold showers or in cold pools for long periods. And American soldiers in Vietnam called it the “old cold-water-hot-water treatment” in the 1960s.
Cold cell
Abu Zubaydah, another detainee, says, “I woke up, naked, strapped to a bed, in a very white room. … [T]he cell and room were air-conditioned and were very cold.” There, he was shackled to a chair for two to three weeks. “Cold cell” is one of six known authorized CIA interrogation techniques.
Since the 1960s, torturers have adapted air vents to put “the air in a state of war with me,” in the words of one prisoner. In the first recorded case in 1961, guards at Parchman, Mississippi’s state penitentiary, blasted civil rights detainees with a fire hose and then turned “the air-conditioning system on full blast” for three days. In 1965, detainees in Aden reported that British guards kept them “undressed in very cold cells with air conditioners and fans running at full speed.” In other countries, interrogators have forced prisoners to stand or squat for long periods in front of blasting air-conditioning units or fans, as in South Vietnam (1970s), Singapore (1970s), the Philippines (1976), Taiwan (1980), South Africa (1980s), and Israel (1991 to present).
In a scene eerily similar to the CIA interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, South Vietnamese torturers held Vhuen Van Tai, the highest-ranking Viet Cong officer captured, in a windowless white room outfitted with heavy-duty air conditioners for four years. Frank Snepp, a CIA interrogator who interviewed him in 1972 in the room regularly, described Tai as “thoroughly chilled.”
Water-boarding
Abu Zubaydah says that after he was strapped to a bed, “[a] black cloth was then placed over my face and the interrogators used a mineral water bottle to pour water on the cloth so that I could not breathe.” If the contents of the mineral-water bottle were carbonated, this would be a well-known Mexican police technique (tehuancanzo), documented since the 1980s. The Mexican signature mark is to mix in a little chili pepper before forcing the water down the nasal passage.
Water-boardingis not a technical term in torture, and reports have described several different water tortures under this name. The ICRC report puts to rest which kind the CIA used. It turns out to be the traditional “water cure,” an antique Dutch technique invented in the East Indies in the 17th century. It migrated here after American troops returned from the Philippine insurgency in the early 20thcentury. By the 1930s, the water cure was favored by the Southern police. Interrogators tie or hold down a victim on his back. Then they pour water down his nostrils “so as to strangle him, thus causing pain and horror for the purpose of forcing a confession.” Sometimes torturers cover the face with a napkin, making it difficult for the prisoner to breathe, as the ICRC report describes.
Sweatboxes and coubarils
Abu Zubaydah says, “Two black wooden boxes were brought into the room outside my cell. One was tall, slightly higher than me and narrow. … The other was shorter, perhaps only [3 feet 6 inches] in height.” The large box, which Abu Zubaydah says he was held in for up to two hours, is a classic sweatbox. Sweatboxes are old, and they came into modern torture from traditional Asian penal practices. If you’ve seen Bridge on the River Kwai, you know the Japanese used them in POW camps in World War II. They are still common in East Asia. The Chinese used them during the Korean War, and Chinese prisoners today relate accounts of squeeze cells (xiaohao, literally “small number”), dark cells (heiwu), and extremely hot or cold cells. In Vietnam, they are dubbed variously “dark cells,” “tiger cages,” or “connex boxes,” which are metal and heat up rapidly in the tropical sun.
Abu Zubaydah was also placed into the smaller box, in which he was forced to crouch for hours, until “the stress on my legs held in this position meant my wounds both in the leg and stomach became very painful.” This smaller type of box was once called a coubaril. Coubarils often bent the body in an uncomfortable position. They were standard in French penal colonies in New Guinea in the 19th century, where some prisoners were held in them for 16 days at a stretch.
Both kinds of boxes entered American prison and military practice in the 19th century. They were a standard part of naval discipline, and the word sweatboxcomes from the Civil War era. In the 1970s, prisoners described sweatboxes in South Vietnam, Iran (tabout, or “coffin”), Israel, and Turkey (”tortoise cell”). In the last three decades, prisoners have reported the use of sweatboxes in Brazil (cofrinho), Honduras (cajones), and Paraguay (guardia). And after 2002, Iraqi prisoners held in U.S. detention centers describe “cells so small that they could neither stand nor lie down,” as well as a box known as “the coffin” at the U.S. detention center at Qaim near Syria.
Standing cells
WalidBin Attash says, “I was put in a cell measuring approximately [3 feet 6 inches-by-6 feet 6 inches]. I was kept in a standing position, feet flat on the floor, but with my arms above my head and fixed with handcuffs and a chain to a metal bar running across the width of the cell.” Over the last century, many prisons had built-in, tall, narrow, coffin-size cells, in which prisoners were forced to stand for hours, their hands chained to the ceiling. In the early 20thcentury, the women’s prison in Gainesville, Texas, had a standing cell in the dining room so that prisoners could smell the food.
High-cuffing
Detainees routinely describe having their hands cuffed high above their heads while they stand with their feet on the ground. This is less damaging than full suspension by the wrists, which causes permanent nerve damage in 15 minutes to an average-size man. High-cuffing increases the time prisoners may be suspended, elongates the pain, and delays permanent injury. It is a restraint torture, as opposed to a positional torture, which requires prisoners to assume a normal human position (standing or sitting), but for a prolonged period of time.
High-cuffing is an old slave punishment of the Americas, once called “hanging from the rafters.” John Brown, a free slave, said of it, “Some tie them up in a very uneasy posture, where they must stand all night, and they will then work them hard all day.” American military prisons adopted the practice in World War I. High-cuffing was the standard prescribed military punishment for desertion, insubordination, and conscientious objection. Prisoners were handcuffed to their cell door eight to nine hours a day, in one case for up to 50 days. They described high-cuffing as excruciatingly painful, and the American public, otherwise unsympathetic with these prisoners, found the practice appalling, sparking a newspaper debate over “manacling” in November 1918. A month later, the War Department rescinded high-cuffing as a mode of punishment.
Towels, collars, and plywood
Sometimes torturers come up with something entirely new. “Also,” says Abu Zubaydah, “on a daily basis during the first two weeks a collar was looped around my neck and then used to slam me against the walls of the interrogation room. It was also placed around my neck when being taken out of my cell for interrogation and was used to lead me along the corridor. It was also used to slam me against the walls of the corridor during such movements.”
This is a novel approach to beating someone in a way that leaves few marks. For 30 years, I’ve studied a long and remorseless two centuries of torture around the world, and I can find only one instance of an account resembling the collars and plywood technique described in the ICRC report. It’s American. During World War I, conscientious objectors in military prisons report that their guards dragged them like animals with a rope around the neck, across rough floors, slamming them into walls. This one, as far as I can tell, is entirely homegrown.
About the author
Darius Rejali is a professor of political science and the author of Torture and Democracy, the winner of the 2007 Human Rights Best Book Award of the American Political Science Association.
(3) Reports by our government, its officers and agents, and major NGO’s about torture
The best source of information about torture I’ve found is “EDUCING INFORMATION, Interrogation: Science and Art, Foundations for the Future“, Intelligence Science Board, National Defense Intelligence College, December 2006 — 372 pages. The authors are skeptical. Also, the Wikipedia entry on torture has valauble background information.
Remember, President Reagan sighed the United Nations Convention against Torture in 1988.
- “Treatment of Fourteen ‘High Value Detainees’ in CIA Custody“, International Committee of the Red Cross, February 2007 – except in the New York Review of Books, 9 April 2009 (aprox 24 pages)
- “Waterboarding is Torture, Period“, Malcome Nance (major heavy CI and Special Ops background, see his bio), Small Wars Journal, 31 October 2007
- “Broken Laws, Broken Lives”, Report by the Physicians for Human Rights, June 2008
- “Guantanamo and the SERE schools“, Pat Lang (Colonel, US Army, retired), Sic Semper Tyrannis, 2 July 2008 — Putting the above story in a larger context of good and evil, of America and its enemies.
- “Executive Summary of the Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in US Custody“, Senate Armed Services Committee, December 2008 (18 pages)
- Testimony of Dennis C. Blair (Director of National Intelligence) before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on 22 January 2009
- Statement of Dennis C. Blair (Director of National Intelligence) on 21 April 2009
- “My Tortured Decision“, Ali Soufan (the FBI supervisory special agent who oversaw the Zubaydah interrogations), op-ed in the New York Times, 22 April 2009
- Declassified Narrativeon DOJ Office of Legal Counsel’s Opinions on the CIA Detention and Interrogation Program, Senate Intelligence Committee, 17 April 2009
- Office of Legal Counsel memos about detention and questioning of prisoners: OLC site, Wikipedia links.
(4) Other articles about torture
- Book review of The One Percent Doctrine – Deep Inside America’s Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11By Ron Suskind, Washington Post, 20 June 2006
- Book review of The One Percent Doctrineby Ron Suskind, New York Times, 20 June 2006
- “Drop by Drop: Forgetting the History of Water Torture in U.S. Courts“, Evan Wallach, Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, May 2007
- “Verschärfte Vernehmung“, Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic online, 29 May 2007 — Comparing NAZI methods to ours.
- “Of Course It Was Torture“, Gene Healy, president of the Cato Institute, 20 April 2008
- “China Inspired Interrogations at Guantánamo“, New York Times, 2 July 2008 — Terrible news about our government.
- “The flawed thinking of the administration’s torture advocates“, Steven Kleinman, posted at Nieman Watchdog, 7 August 2008 — It doesn’t work.
- “Believe Me, It’s Torture“, Christopher Hitchens, Vanity Fair, August 2008
- “Cancel Water-Boarding 101“, David J. Morris, Slate, 29 January 2009 — “The military should close its torture school. I know because I graduated from it.”
- “Lincoln’s Laws of War“, John Fabian Witt, Slate, 11 February 2009 — “How he built the code that Bush attempted to destroy.”
- “Ice Water and Sweatboxes – The long and sadistic history behind the CIA’s torture techniques“, By Darius Rejali, Slate, 17 March 2009
- “Detainee’s Harsh Treatment Foiled No Plots“, Washington Post, 29 March 2009 — “Waterboarding, Rough Interrogation of Abu Zubaida Produced False Leads, Officials Say”
- “Bush’s Torture Rationale Debunked“, Dan Froomkin, blog of the Washington Post, 30 March 2009
- “Report Details Origins of Bush-Era Interrogation Policies“, Spencer Ackerman, Washington Independent, 21 April 2009 — “Senate Armed Services Document Outlines How Pentagon Used Torture Resistance Training in Interrogations”
- “Report: Abusive tactics used to seek Iraq-al Qaida link“, McClatchy Newspapers, 21 April 2009
- “A Dubious C.I.A. Shortcut“, Philip Zelikow, op-ed in the New York Times, 24 April 2009 – He was counselor of the State Dept from 2005 to 2006 and the executive director of the 9/11 Commission.
- “Disbar The Bush Lawyers And Get A Special Prosecutor For The Rest“, comments by Lawrence Wilkerson (Colonel, US Army, Retired; former Chief of Staff to Sec State Powell), Huffington Post, 27 April 2009
Attorneys discussing the law:
- “Congress Shouldn’t Impeach Bybee“, Frank Bowman (Prof of Law at Uof Missouri-Columbia), Slate, 24 April 2009 — “Much as he deserves it.”
- Analysis at the Volokh Conspiracy: here and here
The Brits are investigating their torturers:
- “Metropolitan police investigation fails to quell independent inquiry calls“, The Guardian, 27 March 2009
- “Torture victim Binyam Mohamed: don’t scapegoat MI5 officer“, The Guardian, 27 March 2009
(5) The My Lai Massacre — evidence we sometimes approve of torture
An email from a reader alerts me to a example of torture widely approved by the US public.
(A) From the Wikipedia entry about the My Lai Massacre
The My Lai Massacre was the mass murder of 347 to 504 unarmed citizens in South Vietnam, all of whom were civilians and some of whom were women and children, conducted by U.S. Army forces on March 16, 1968.
Many of the victims were sexually abused, beaten, tortured, or maimed, and some of the bodies were found mutilated.2 The massacre took place in the hamlets of Mỹ Lai and My Khe of Sơn Mỹ village during the Vietnam War. 3, 4 Of the 26 US soldiers initially charged with criminal offences for their actions at My Lai, only William Calley was convicted. He served three years of his life sentence. … Three U.S. servicemen who made an effort to halt the massacre and protect the wounded were denounced by U.S. Congressmen, received hate mail, death threats and mutilated animals on their doorsteps.5 Only 30 years after the event were their efforts honored.6
(B) From How We Got Here: The 70’s The Decade That Brought You Modern Life (for Better or Worse), by David Frum (2000), page 84:
My Lai is remembered as a turning point in the war, and indeed it was, but not in the way people usually think.
- In the twenty-four hours after the military court declared Calley’s guilt, the White House received more than 5,000 telegrams and 1,500 phone calls. The messages ran 100:1 in Calley’s favor.
- Congressional liberals like Senator Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut joined with conservatives like Georgia’s Herman Talmadge to condemn the verdict.
- Representative Don Fuqua, a Democrat from Calley’s home state of Florida, proposed inviting Calley to address a joint session. “We are his accusers. Let us invite this American serviceman here to tell his story.”
- The governor of Indiana ordered all state flags to be flown at half staff for Calley.
- The governor of Utah criticized the verdict as “inappropriate” and the sentence as “excessive.”
- Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia proclaimed “American Fighting Man’s Day,” and urged Georgia motorists to drive all week with headlights on.
- The Arkansas legislature approved a resolution asking for clemency.
- The lower house of the Kansas legislature demanded Calley’s release from prison. So did the Texas Senate and the state legislatures of New Jersey and South Carolina.
- The draft board in Quitman, Georgia, wired the White House that so long as the Calley verdict stood, it would not induct any more young men.
- Members of draft boards in Athens and Blairsville, Georgia, and in Elizabethtown, Tennessee, resigned.
- A Poughkeepsie, New York, radio station invited listeners to call in their opinions. It received more than 2,000 calls in just one hour. Only 36 defended the verdict.
- Governor George Wallace spoke at a rally in Calley’s defense at Columbus, Georgia, alongside Governor John Bell Williams of Mississippi.
- The Columbus rally was just one of a series of demonstrations across the nation; Jacksonville, Florida, Los Angeles, Kansas City, and Dallas quickly followed.
- By the end of the first week after Calley’s conviction and sentencing, 79% of Americans polled expressed disapproval of the verdict.
- Within the month, a Tennessee recording company announced that it had sold more than 200,000 copies of a song titled “The Battle Hymn of William Calley.”
(6) For more information from the FM site
To read other articles about these things, see the FM reference page on the right side menu bar. Of esp interest are:
Forecasts about the American spirit, the American soul:
- Diagnosing the eagle, chapter IV – Alienation, 13 January 2008
- Americans, now a subservient people (listen to the Founders sigh in disappointment), 20 July 2008
- de Tocqueville warns us not to become weak and servile, 21 July 2008
- The American spirit speaks: “Baa, Baa, Baa”, 5 August 2008
- We’re Americans, hear us yell: “baa, baa, baa”, 6 August 2008
- This crisis will prove that Americans are not sheep (unless we are), 8 January 2008
- About security theater, a daily demonstration that Americans are sheep, 25 January 2009
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FM note: A powerful comment, perhaps the “best of thread”. Very much worth reading.
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Fabius,
FM: “The internment of German and Japanese residents and evacuation from the West Coast of Nisei is IMO a long way from torture. First, there is no comparison of the harm done.”
No? As you say, these issues are inherently subjective, and so I would argue that there IS comparison to the harm done. Were the WWII internees tortured? Well, lets take a look at conditions in at least some of the camps (from Wikipedia):
Actually sounds VERY MUCH like the extreme temperature techniques mentioned in your post above, with two notable exceptions; woman and children were among those subjected and there was no reprieve from it in “tar paper-covered barracks of simple frame construction without plumbing or cooking facilities of any kind.”
Some internees were shot and killed. Many others “died or suffered for lack of medical care”. How many were kids? Wiki doesn’t say. How many people have died in Gitmo again?
Again, let’s keep in mind that during WWII a large group of people were rounded up, men, woman and children, based solely on race and/or national origin, and kept prisoner for years. Most were CITIZENS of this country, who had far more right to claim Constitutional protection than foreign terrorists do today. They lost years of their lives, most lost almost everything they owned, and they had to live with the galling realization that their fellow countrymen had singled them out because they looked different, not because of anything they had actually done.
I think one can make the case that grievous harm was done to them, and to the American character, BASED on the standard you are setting of the United States today. If anything, the United States seems to be alot more selective and careful in its brutality than it was. If you would like, I could go on about how the two situations DO compare, as while apples and oranges are indeed different, both actually have very much in common.
What’s strange here is that I would probably AGREE with you on much of what Malkin wrote in here book (I have not read it but understand her basic points), so I DON’T get your very ardent stance on recent events compared to then.
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Fabius Maximus replies: You have made a powerful case! I did not know about the “several killed”, for instance. Agreed, this is comparable in the degree of harm inflicted. Were there some calculus of human suffering to calculate these things, it might be greater. So here we have another counter-example. Personally I find the My Lai one more powerful, both nearer in time and without any justification.
The most overlooked resolution the to torture question: Take no prisoners. On a side note you folks are really full of yourselves.
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Fabius Maximus replies: Thank you for commenting, providing a valuable reminder where groups like the NAZI’s and Stalin’s police get their recruits. The existence of people like yourselves is a warning to us all about the need for vigilance.
What does this tell us about America? It tells us that she is becoming morally bankrupt. Moral sleep is like physical sleep: the closer you get to the state of being asleep, the less aware you become that you are falling asleep. One cannot contemplate sleeping while asleep but only while awake.
Let’s just continue to remove God (and the Judeo-Christian ethic) more and more from our culture and institutions–I’m sure that well help–right? The failure to appreciate the connection between religion and sound morality is itself a symptom of spiritual and moral degeneracy.
Fabius–Ever been shot at, ever pissed your pants in fear of death, war is torture, they start it we finish it and that allows your free speech and “America Hate” attitude. Don’t thank us its our job.
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Fabius Maximus replies: In my experience, most soldiers and Marines, including many with heavy special ops and intel backgrounds, disagree with you. Including most that I know and respect, either personally or from their writings. I’ll stick with their analysis, not yours.
Comment 82, while it repels Fabius, is the increasingly likely end result of the upcoming witchhunt. NCOs and Junior Officers will resolve this problem in the same way their grandfathers did in the Ardennes (post Malmedy). The risks to their men will be seen as too great compared to the limited intel that can be gathered from capturing the enemy. This won’t be an “official” policy change. Just as there is no “official” policy which says “Don’t ever get captured”. But in motor pools and messhalls the troops know the deal. If we get captured you suffer a grisly death with nary a complaint from the left or the “human rights” crew. But should we capture a suspect then you’re in for a neverending cycle of depositions, charges of torture, lawsuits, etc. The limited value of intel to be gleemed will seem simply not be worth the effort to take prisoners. And senior folks won’t press the issue because its a lose-lose proposition. Why take causalties and risks trying to capture prisoners? While Fabius can safely lump those who suggest this is where the road leads, it willnot be Fabius who has to order his young troopers to take the risks to capture an insurgent. Nor write the letter to the parents when a troop dies because he took a risk. Nor live with that.
The troops in the field, as with the CIA operatives in the field, increasingly see this as a beltway game. They will choose to not play by taking less risks. No sense in pushing the envelope when you’re left out to hang or be prosecuted. If the insurgent ends up dead well no intel but no friendly causalties. American frontline troops have tended to meet out a rough justice, over time, by how they were treated by the other side.
The risk-reward equation has changed and behaviors will adjust to deal with the new realities. Fabius, acknowledging that doesn’t seem cause for applying the “NAZI” label. But an absolute black or white comformance must be enforced. Mustn’t it?
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Fabius Maximus replies: You so easily throw over 400 years of hard-won progress in limiting the horrors of war, esp with regard to treatment of prisoners. We hanged Admiral Kōsō Abe of the Imperial Japanese Navy for killing American POWS (Marine Raiders captured on the Makin Island attack). See Wikipedia for details. Rightly so. But these laws apply to us as well.
As for NAZI’s, do you believe that they were evil clones? They result from dark forces present in every people, including us — as seen on this thread. I believe the must be fought; they are our enemies, foreign and domestic.
The pilot of a drone flying at 16,000 ft , claims to recognise Abdul’s face , fires a missile at him , and claims to watch the shock n awe on his face as he sees his fate .. The local media / grapevine claim Abdul’s home , wives , children and grandparents have been incinerated by the missile . Abdul was , it seems , not there .
Mistaken identity ? Oops , missed ? Application of collective punishment ?
One little-noticed but fascinating point: police are now universally allowed to use “pain compliance” to enforce obedience to their demands. Of course, “pain compliance,” as in “taser the perp until he convulses and vomits and dies,” is torture.
Anyone publicly demonstrating against torture is now tortured — by the police. Okay, subjected to repeated pain compliance in order to disperse the demonstration. Same difference.
I find it fascinating that groups of people who publicly demonstrate against torture are now subjected to public torture. Perhaps we should apply this to other types of non-violent social protest. Perhaps anyone who demonstrates against war crimes should be murdered by the U.S. army and dumped in an anonymous mass grave. Or perhaps anyone who demonstrates against abortion should be detained and have his pregnant wife forcibly aborted. Or perhaps anyone who demonstrates against social injustice should be held down by the police so that a billionaire can come and kick hi/r in the face with steel-toed boots.
Makes an interesting thought experiment.
Fabius,
Last post on this subject as I don’t want to become tedious and I realize time and posts march on.
Thank you for at least considering my point to be a fair one in my last post. Please consider one other thing as you go forward, as I think you are a very bright and insightful thinker, and we certainly need more of those.
I don’t think labeling anyone who believes water-boarding or in aggressive interrogations as Nazis or the equivalent of the Gestapo is helpful to the discussion. Okay, may you don’t label ANYONE as such, but it seems you bring it out too readily.
YES, there are those who are too strident in what they believe we are justified in doing, similar to people who declare “Nuke ’em all” when summing up their view of difficult foreign relations. I get that.
But calling someone a Nazi or Gestapo agent because they believe strong tactics, even what you consider torture, is false and does not help examine the issue with the objectivity required.
First, its false, and a bit galling, when one considers the record of Nazism and its adherents. As bad as you think the US is now with all that you link to above, are we REALLY the equivalent of the SS, Death Camp Guards and the Gestapo? Does overzealous, lets say even out of control, interrogation tactics against people we suspect are plotting more 9/11’s really the same as rounding up and murdering 6-12 million people for their ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or political opposition?
Obviously not. Making such comparisons clouds the issue, raises hackles, and I dare say reduces your legitimacy.
Look, the majority of people who believe water-boarding or some of the other techniques are either not torture or still fair game based on the circumstances are not freaky sadists looking for payback or neo-Nazis. They believe such tactics work, and according the threat presented and the evidence to back it up, warranted and justified. They believe that because they believe it is moral to strike a balance between our ideals and our security, just as you pointed out FDR did during WWII. The Constitution is a not a suicide pact and all that.
As I stated previously, I am one of those people who thinks that water-boarding and other techniques are justified under the appropriate level of evidence, threat, usefulness and limits.
WE MAY ALL BE WRONG.
I am certainly willing to be convinced of it. I am. I am not pro-torture or anti-torture. I am for what works to keep the country safe while not subverting everything we stand for. Its a damning balance to be struck made worse by heinous adversaries who have no limits to what they will do. They rely on that difference, and exploit it.
To convince you I can be turned, let me give you a hint for arguing the issue in the future. Forget everything else about the subject you link to above, and concentrate on the concept of whether these techniques WORK. Do they actually gain anything useful, and/or is what is gained worth what it costs us?
These alone are tough issues to prove conclusively because they can also be highly subjective, but if one can prove the answer is no to either, there is NO need for further argument, as any justification for its continued use falls flat on its face, does it not?
Fabius, apologies for the lengthy posts, in direct violation of policy. I will refrain from spouting off for a while to hopefully make up for it.
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Fabius Maximus replies: Thank you for this — and previous — thoughtful comments. In fact, your comment and the My Lai history (emailed to me) have increased my fears expressed in this post. However, the post was based on an incorrect viewpoint. This is still not clear to me, but what we have is (to use a popular metaphor) a drift to the dark side of our character.
I have long worried that Hitler might prove not to be so much “wrong as early”. That fascism was not bombed out of existance was moved back to an incubation stage. Germany was a center of western civilization, among the most advanced in the arts and sciences. That it so quickly fell into NAZI barbarism suggests a dark aspect to the heart of western civilization. It could re-awaken in America, with our current combination of weakness (esp economic, as described at length on this site and elsewhere), paranoia (seen in the extreme reaction to Islamic fundamentalism), and hubris (seen on this threat, a belief that we are exempt from the rules we imposed on others).
While calling people racists, fascists, and NAZI’s has become a substitute for thought in our society, that does not mean that these things are not real and to be feared. None of them appear ex nihilo. I believe that on this thread we see evidence of an dormant but endemic virus in our culture, one that is to be feared.
Fabius, like you I am deeply concerned about the apparently decaying moral fiber of our nation, as evidenced by tacit or overt approval of torture. You wrote, “How will a failure to thoroughly investigate these crimes affect America?” This is a fair question, but there are others.
1. Why are certain segments of American society (and the international community) so willing, even eager, to prosecute fellow Americans of human rights abuses, but utterly unwilling to confront equally (or more) cruel acts committed by others abroad? During the Iraq War, Senator Dick Durbin (Dem.-IL) condemned U.S. forces as being Nazi-like, but made no mention of the barbarity of Saddam Hussein and his vicious sons. Hussein was fond of feeding opponents, dissidents or others who displeased him feet-first into a shredder, the better to hear their screams as they died. Uday and Qusay routinely abducted, raped, and then murdered young women – sometimes in front of their relatives. Hussein even used chemical warfare, something not even Hitler stooped to. These evil men are now dead, but equally vicious examples survive. Why the double standard, condemning alleged American crimes, while remaining silent about the torture of others? A Spanish court is currently considering whether to bring human rights charges against Bush administration officials; where are the charges against other human rights violators (too numerous to list here) around the globe? The international community expresses outrage at Abu Ghraib, but remains silent on the snuff film beheadings of Daniel Pearl, Nick Berg, and others. The double-standard is breath-taking.
2. The definition of torture, like that of another emotionally-loaded term, terrorism, is not static, but has changed in the decades since WWII. The Geneva Conventions, originally written to codify rules of war between nation-states and their uniformed military services, have been amended several times since WWII, broadening the definition of “lawful combatants” to include guerillas, revolutionaries, and other asymmetrical warriors. During WWII, it was accepted that combatants caught out of uniform – engaged in clandestine operations, or as spies, for example – could be lawfully shot out of hand without a trial. Today, such would be defined as a war crime under the amended conventions and other international agreements.
The point here is that the legal instruments governing the conduct of war have not kept pace with the development of 4th generation conflict. Here, as elsewhere, 4th generation warriors have an asymmetric advantage; we are hamstrung by complex ROEs, which prove tougher and tougher to avoid breaking, while they are not. This asymmetry, in my view, applies tremendous pressure on state militaries to adopt the tactics of their enemies, in a “race to the bottom” one might call it. As Lind notes, what works in war is used, whether amoral, immoral or not. We should seek to hold the all-important moral high ground, but to deny these pressures exist and sometimes cannot/will not be resisted is naive.
2. Are there gradiations in suffering, in pain? If so, do they affect how torture is defined? Is the infliction of any pain upon a captive/detainee/POW (choose your definition) to be considered “torture”? We have reached a pass whereupon detainees at Guantanimo Bay are considered by the ACLU as “abused” if they are not given Korans, halal meals, and other amenities of civilization. By this standard, recruits at boot camp/basic training in the 1950s would have been considered as torture victims… given that they were verbally and physically abused, made to endure discomfort, deprived of sleep, and forced to go to war against their wills (in the case of draftees). Likewise, faternity pledge week would qualify also, as emotional and psychological abuse (as anyone who has been hazed can attest) due to embarassment, humiliation, etc. The word “torture” has been defined down, such that these things are now considered as such. The degradation of language is an indicator of degradation of thought, and perhaps values. Something is clearly amiss.
3. What are the costs and benefits of opening this Pandora’s Box? Is the USA willing to subject itself to a Nuremburg-style tribunal for the purpose of prosecuting Bush Administration officials, perhaps even the President himself? If such proceedings are to have any moral currency whatever, they cannot be partisan, nor can they stop with enlisted soldiers, junior officers or low-level CIA operatives. The hunch here is that the Democrats will close ranks with Republicans to protect their own, the political class, long before anyone truly significant is prosecuted. Moreover, once the legal precident of indicting past administrations for such conduct has been established, what is to stop political zealots from digging into the past for further targets? My Lai occurred during the Vietnam War; LBJ is dead-and-gone, but why not go after surviving administration officials who were alleged to have committed war crimes? What about Bill Clinton, who authorized bombing civlians in the Balkans during the 1990s? Is he to be prosecuted? Beware the law of unintended consequences.
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Fabius Maximus replies: All powerful questions. Esp #3, which I too have wondered about. “Opening pandora’s box” is a great metaphor. Who knows what we will find inside? And the process will be disruptive, consuming the government’s time and attention — both scarce with two wars and a finanical crisis to manage, plus their domestic and foreign agenda.
On the other hand, what might be the consequences of allowing the Bush Admin’s deeds to go uninvestigated? With just the fragmentary records so far released, they can defend themselves by referring to still-secret victories. What’s the next step down in this process? The darkness in our souls calls to us. Fear and hubris are bad masters.
“Pete” asks a series of shallow and grotesque questions,illustrating the degradation of American culture and the collapse of American morality.
Let’s deal with these questions in order:
1. Why are certain segments of American society (and the international community) so willing, even eager, to prosecute fellow Americans of human rights abuses, but utterly unwilling to confront equally (or more) cruel acts committed by others abroad? During the Iraq War, Senator Dick Durbin (Dem.-IL) condemned U.S. forces as being Nazi-like, but made no mention of the barbarity of Saddam Hussein and his vicious sons.
The answer is as obvious as it is straightforward: because the behavior of American troops abroad is under America’s direct and immediate and instant control, but the barbarities committed by foreign dictators are not, and because America is not God and does not have infinite power. In fact, America has very little power to affect other societies, and our direct control over the world is often limited to what we do at home rather than abroad.
A question this foolish superbly illustrates FM’s point that America is currently drunk with hubris. In short, this question presupposes that America is Superman, and we can fly overseas in our red cape and blue tights and alleviate torture and mass murder and poverty and so on anywhere in the world, merely by using our special American superpowers to [fill in the blank: “invade country X,” “send food aid to country X,” “lecture country X about their form of government,” “educate country X by sending teachers and teaching materials,” “improve the technology of country X with our wonderful new gadgets,” &c.].
In actual fact, invading another country to end the mass murders and/or tortures of its dictator often results in worse barbarities than the original crimes. Iraq offers a good example. The true civil war in Iraq has scarcely begun, and already a million Iraqis are dead, many sadistically tortured to death with power drills &c. by religious sectarian zealots. America’s invasion of Iraq destroyed the state and opened the door to an endless bloodbath of brutal religious civil war. In Iraq, there were no good options. If America stood by and refused to interfere, Saddam continued to torture and murder his own people; if we invaded, we got horrific civil war in which the Iraqis tortured and murdered one another with breathtaking sadism, including torturing children to death with power tools.
The delusion that there is some perfect solution, or even a viable practical alternative, to foreign dictators torturing and murdering their own people is the epitome of hubris. Sometimes this works but more often it doesn’t. Sometimes invading another country helps, sometimes it doesn’t. In actual fact, none of the so-called “foreign policy experts” has any idea of the true result of their recommendations, and America’s foreign policy interventions often wind up having effects exactly the opposite of those intended. This is why many Americans ignore the depravities committed by foreign dictators who torture and murder their own people — because when America intervenes, the results are often worse. America is not god, we have very little ability to change the world, and when we intervene, we often wind up changing the world for the worse. A modest and humble attitude proposes that America put its own house in order first, and stop torturing and murdering our own citizens first, before running around the planet trying to play globocop.
The same problems arise when America dumps our technology into other socities in the mistaken belief that this will automatically “improve” another society, or when America forces its first-world western values on another country’s population in the name of “educating them,” or when America lectures other countries about the unsuitability of their age-old customs and traditions. Sometimes this kind of arrogant American meddling helps, but more often it hurts other societies. The lesson is not “don’t do it,” but rather “let’s think carefully about this before we do it, and do it only as a last resort, when we ourselves are threatened by other countries’ misbehavior.” Interefering in Europe in WW I was arrogant and greatly worsened the world situation. Interfering in in Europe in WW II was humble because we were attacked and it wound up helping the world situation. Interfering in Korea turned out to be a mixed bag — hard to say whether it helped or hur tin the long run. It was good for South Korea, but very bad for the population of North Korea. And so on. America is no Superman, life is not a comic book.
2. Are there gradiations [sic] in suffering, in pain? If so, do they affect how torture is defined? Is the infliction of any pain upon a captive/detainee/POW (choose your definition) to be considered “torture”?
These are the kinds of infantile word games to which people resort when they can’t come up with a valid argument in defense of an indefensible outrage. To see how pathetic this kind of failed and faulty argument is, rephrase it: “Are there gradations in genocide? If so, they affect how genocide is defined? Is a Jew who gets run down by a truck in the road “genocide”? If not, how can we call what the Nazis did “genocide”?
This is grotesque. Everyone knows that when the Nazis systematically murdered millions of Jews it was genocide and we don’t have to play “internet lawyer” to parse the meaning of words to figure that out. Likewise, everyone knows that when a detainee is hung from the ceiling and his legs are beaten to a pulp to the point where they have to be amputated, that’s torture. Everyone knows that when you gradually drown someone strapped down on a table and stop just short of death, that’s torture. Everyone knows that when you throw a guy in a freezing room and keep dumping ice-cold water on him and wrap him in blankets covered with ice until they guy nearly dies, that’s torture.
The effort to redefine these barbarities as something other than torture is shameful and grotesque. It’s a sign of the degradation of the American soul that anyone would even try to play “internet lawyer” by indulging in verbal calisthenics about these kinds of tortures.
3. What are the costs and benefits of opening Pandora’s Box?
At this point, I have lost patience with this kind of depravity. Okay, fine. Fabius Maximus shamefully calls this degraded reasoning “a powerful question.” Great. If this question is so “powerful,” let’s expand it to the full range of human behaviors. What are the costs and benefits of prohibiting human slavery? Let’s have debates about bringing slavery back — who knows, it might be a wonderful benefit to everyone. What the costs and benefits of laws against rape? Maybe everyone should be able to rape 5-year-old girls in the streets. Perhaps we should televise the events, get an audience to give ratings, add alaugh track. Let’s reason together about this wonderful new set of possibilities. Who knows, society might benefit immeasurably. What are the costs and benefits of legalizing murder? Maybe I should be able to randomly shoot people on the street and be applauded for it. We can investigate with superb subtlety the marvellous new range of costs and benefits of these innovative social policies.
This is depraved. At the end, have you no shame, sir? At long last, have no sense of decency? Have you no soul? What is wrong with you? What is lacking in the center of your being that you could suggest something as depraved and degraded as “analysing the costs and benefits” of torture?
There exist moral absolutes, sir, and if you don’t realize it you’re not fit for civlized society and you need to be locked away. Torture is wrong. There are “costs and benefits.” Genocide is wrong. There are no “costs and benefits.” Rape is wrong. There are “costs and benefits.” Murdering infants is wrong. There are “costs and benefits.”
Moreover, every decent human being knows exactly what is meant by “murdering infants” and “rape.” A person who tries to weasel out of these atrocities by playing word games, a person who tries to indulge in verbal calisthenics to redefine these heinous grotesqueries out of existence, needs to be thrown in a deep dark cell and kept away from the rest of the humanity.
While there exist some moral absolutes including murdering infants and rape and torture, much of the rest of life is morally more cloudy. We can and should ask sensible questions about other kinds of social policies, such as drug prohibition. But ignoring the major problems facing America to play word games about acts so heinous that no civilized society accepts them is not just debased, it’s foolish beyond description. This kind of misapplication of intelligence really illustrates the profound degradation of the American soul and the degree to which American society has sunk into subhuman barbarism.
It should be obvious that the above sentences Genocide is wrong. There are no “costs and benefits.” Rape is wrong. There are “costs and benefits.” Murdering infants is wrong. There are “costs and benefits.” should read:
Genocide is wrong. There are no “costs and benefits.” Rape is wrong. There are no “costs and benefits.” Murdering infants is wrong. There are no “costs and benefits.”
More: applying “cost and benefit” analysis to the basic fundaments of civilized society represents a twisted and deeply sick view of the world. How can anyone live in a society with a constitution and a bill of rights and discuss “costs and benefit” analysis for abominations like torture?
The people who wrote the Magna Carta did not apply cost and benefit analysis to the ability of the king to arbitrarily murder people — it was prohibited absolutely. Moses did not apply cost and benefit analysis to the Ten Commandments. The founders of America did not apply cost and benefit analysis to the statement that some rights are inalienable, including the right to life and liberty. The language of the bill of rights does not apply cost and benefit analysis to the need for due process. It doesn’t say “Accused people must be charged with a crime and brought to trial, provided it isn’t too difficult and too expensive.” It say EVERYONE ACCUSED MUST BE CHARGED WITH A CRIME AND GIVEN A TRIAL BEFORE A JURY OF THEIR PEERS. This is absolute. There are no exceptions.
Civilized society is founded upon the requirement that some behaviors are completely off limits. These kinds of behaviors are not negotiable. We cannot apply cost-benefit analysis to them.
The fact that an intelligent knowledgeable person like “pete” doesn’t realize this…well, it speaks volumes about the degeneration of the contemporary American conscience and the impoverishment of the American soul in the 21st century.
So who plays the cop, who the investigator, and who prosecutes? That is always the rub isn’t it. Are things always so black and white? Take rape. Is it automatically rape when a woman makes the charge? Have there not been cases (say down in Duke) where charges of rape fall apart? Your genocide is my war of liberation. Do we prosecute the Palestinians for the attrocities they committed or the Israelies for the abuses under their occupation?
Now we in the west embrace a trial by jury. In other parts of the world that is not the norm. Will we be okay if we allow the clergy to run the trials and determine the punishment (ala Sharia law)? Who will enforce the judgements?
One of the major complaints against the US and the west is we are trying to impose our morality on others. Do you believe that the “international community” can and would intervene to stop a genocide without US involvement? If yes where?
Electrphoresis – the Nazis conducted a systematic, organized, and multi-year extermination of Jews and other lesser mortals. They built special facilities to kill and then dispose of the bodies. Not exactly analogous to running them down with a truck.
Pete – your comment #89 was outstanding.
Comment #89 by Pete:
1. … Why the double standard, condemning alleged American crimes, while remaining silent about the torture of others? …
I think you avoid the key question which is expectations or standards of conduct. If a drug lord sends his men to kill the local police chief, his wife and children. Are anyone really surprised? Evil men do evil deeds.
If the reverse was to happen and the police chief was to send his men to kill the drug lord and his family. What then? Are we now unpleasantly surprised? The protector of the community killing a villain AND a innocent woman & her children? A supposedly “good” man ordering an evil deed. Is he still a good man?
In my book it’s a clear no. The question now becomes if society is willing to bring to justice the “good” man for his evil deed. If not; then the standards of society have been reduced towards the standards of drug lords.
So as I see it you are basically auguring for the standards of the USA to be lowered towards the level of Saddam Hussein and ilk. And you’re surprised of the negative reactions.
Bob, you’re moving the goalposts. The original argument by “pete” was that we should apply cost-benefit analysis to prosecuting known crimes, including hanging people from the ceiling by their wrists from the ceiling and beating their legs to a pulp until their legs had to be amputated. There is ample evidence that this happened, there is ample evidence that the victim was innocent of charges of terrorism and the prosecutors and interrogators knew it, there is ample evidence for every part of this atrocity. “Pete” wants us to avoid prosecuting U.S. officials for ordering this atrocity and U.S. soldiers for committing this atrocity (“I was only following orders…”) if the costs outweigh the benefits.
Your argument involves questions about whether a criminal act ever happened.
A false accusation is entirely different from an American war crime which we have proof was committed but which we choose not to prosecute because [insert cowardly rationalization here].
Oh, and bob: Nazis did run down Jews with trucks. It took too long, so they changed to gassing them inside the trucks by feeding the exhaust into the truck’s rear compartment. That also took too long, so they eventually moved on to death camps and Zyklon B. Read your history.
Electrophoresis, you failed to address the substance of my post, and promptly erected a strawman argument in no way connected with my original points. You wrote, “A question this foolish superbly illustrates FM’s point that America is currently drunk with hubris. In short, this question presupposes that America is Superman, and we can fly overseas in our red cape and blue tights and alleviate torture and mass murder and poverty and so on anywhere in the world…”
Especially telling is your phrase, “This presupposes that America is Superman…” Who is doing the presupposition here? You are, for nowhere in my post did I make that statement or anything like it. You are engaging in projection, defined by Wikipedia as “a psychological defense mechanism where a person’s personal attributes, unacceptable or unwanted thoughts, and/or emotions are ascribed onto another person or people. Projection occurs when a person’s own unacceptable or threatening feelings are repressed and then attributed to someone else.”
If you examine my comment, I made no mention of intervening anywhere abroad, nor did I defend the invasion of Iraq (which I now regard as a mistake). I merely asked about the huge double-standard that exists when people like Dick Durban relentlessly attack U.S. practices, but excuse them, ignore them, or otherwise decline to address them elsewhere. Durbin et al. seem less interested in human rights than using the issue of abuses committed by U.S. personnel as a political club with which to bludgeon opponents – which is irresponsible and craven, to say the least. How else can one explain Democrats like Durbin and now Obama cozying up to repressive thugs like Castro (who maintains a substantial Gulag system, and has executed and tortured numerous of his own people), while making every mention possible of alleged and/or real U.S. abuses?
You accuse me of tolerating torture, of being depraved. Again, wrong… 100% wrong. What I asked was where you set the line in what is permissible and what is not in questioning suspected terrorists. You say that any torture is impermissible. Fine, define torture – is it playing loud music? Is it making someone stand in an uncomfortable position? What? You tell me, you are such a paragon of deceny and righteousness. Perhaps we should simply let them go, so they can recycle themselves into the battle as one recent former Gitmo prisoner did. I don’t claim to have the answers but since you are so wise, let’s here how you’s handle this.
And why the character assassination accusing me of hubris, shallowness, and the like? I have disagreed with your posts at some times, not on others, but I have not stooped to name-calling, the last resort of someone who has run out of arguments. And don’t you dare question my sense of decency, I have never harmed a single person and would not condone doing so. You’ve crossed the line, moving from attacking my arguments, which is fine, to attacking my character, which is not. I doubt you’d have the courage to make such comments to my face.
Mark Bowden, in this detailed study of interrogation (“The Dark Art of Interrogation“, The Atlantic, October 2003), seems to share grave moral doubts about torture and “coercion,” but quotes several experts who suggest that in rare circumstances, it may be necessary. He concludes that such techniques should be illegal, but rarely prosecuted. The idea seems to be that we don’t want to encourage our front-line interrogators to use these techniques freely, only when “self-preservation” would seem to require it. On the one hand, this seems to answer FM’s plea for expert opinions in favor of harsh treatment of prisoners under limited circumstances. On the other, it suggests that if such techniques are abused, the abusers should be punished.
If anything, it is fascinating to me as a document that seems heavily influenced by the then-recent events of 9/11. One wonders if our distance from that days events have cooled our passions, and whether or not that’s a good thing.
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Fabius Maximus replies: I believe this is consistent with the sources I cited. Everybody can imagine hypothetical situations where torture is the only available option (e.g., the much discussed ticking bomb scenario). But this bears little resemblence to the Bush Administration’s actual use of torture. We’ve seen the classic slippery slope at work. Rapid progression from an extreme imaginary situation to routine use.
Pete claims that I failed to address the substance of my post, and promptly erected a strawman argument in no way connected with my original points.
His claims are flatly false and flagrantly contrary to observed reality, as I shall demonstrate.
Pete goes on to assert: Especially telling is your phrase, “This presupposes that America is Superman…” Who is doing the presupposition here? You are, for nowhere in my post did I make that statement or anything like it.
This contradicts the facts so obviously that it passes beyond the realm of exaggeration into deliberate misreprepresentation. Let us examine Pete’s own words:
Why are certain segments of American society (and the international community) so willing, even eager, to prosecute fellow Americans of human rights abuses, but utterly unwilling to confront equally (or more) cruel acts committed by others abroad?
What conclusion does a reasonable people draw from Pete’s use of the word “confront” with relation to Saddam Hussein?
Would a reasonable person conclude that Pete is suggesting America perform a fan dance to make Saddam aware of our disapproval of his torture and murder?
Would a reasonable person conclude that Pete proposes the American ambassador write a sonnet expressing our discomfort at the way Saddam feeds his enemies feet-first into industrial shredding machines, and then perhaps set it to music and perform it as an aria before the U.N.?
Or would a reasonable person conclude that Pete is using the word “confront” as a euphemism for “ball right in and overthrow tyrants like Saddam, because nothing else seems to stop them from torturing their own people”?
Three guesses.
We can see from Pete’s own words that he is lying outright when he claims “If you examine my comment, I made no mention of intervening anywhere abroad, nor did I defend the invasion of Iraq…” On the contrary. Pete is lying when he says he made no mention of intervening anywhere abroad because that is exactly and precisely what his euphemism “confront” means when applied to Saddam Hussein. Pete knows full well that America tried lecturing Saddam, we tried blockading him, we tried sanctions, we tried threats, we tried bribing him, we tried everything, but none of it stopped Saddam from torturing and murdering his own people. So when Pete claims America didn’t “confront” Saddam over his barbarities, he cannot possibly be talking about anything other than using force against Saddam — and Pete knows damn well that’s exactly what he meant.
In addition to his previous lie, Pete goes on to tell his second lie by claiming that “people like Dick Durban relentlessly attack U.S. practices, but excuse them, ignore them, or otherwise decline to address them elsewhere.” We understand clearly that Pete is here using the euphemism “people like Dick Durban [sic, the proper spelling is Durbin — you really need to learn these people’s names before you start assassinating their character, it makes the McCarthy-style smear much more effective since it shows that you have some idea you know whom you’re talking about]” as a cowardly substitute for “Democrats like Dick Durbin”…or, in the more usual phraseology employed during this sort of Joe McCarthy-style smear, Dhimmicrat surrender monkeys like Dick Durbin.
Notice, ladies and gentlemen, that Pete is here falling into the classic logical fallacy of the non sequitur argument. We are supposed to forget about American soldiers torturing people to death in violation of their constitutional oaths and contrary to the Geneva Convention to which America is a signatory and contrary to all known laws of war and in violation of every tradition of civilized behavior established for the last 500 years, and we’re supposed to get enraged by those damn Dhimmicrat traitor pinko bastard fifthc olumnists like Dick Durbin.
Sadly for Pete, this kind of sleazy Joe McCarthy-style smear no longer works too well because we’ve been there and done that too often. Nixon excelled at setting father against son by craftily using this ploy, and then Reagan got people fired up by accusing Democrats of being soft on communism, and then Newt Gingrich advanced his craven political career for a few years by portraying Democrats as “weak” and “corrupt” and “soft on crime” and “godless” and finally Karl Rove and his insectile kin succeeded for a couple of years at getting poor uneducated people distracted by portraying the 70% of Americans who insisted on talking about facts and logic as an “elite” which “despises true Americans” and a bunch of “traitors” with (in Ann Coulter’s words) “a preternatural disposition for treason.”
But the problem for old Pete is that this sort of cynical setting-father-against-son McCarthyism has just gotten worn out. Despite dire warnings in the last 2 election cycles that “if the Democrats win, the terrorists win,” the American people just aren’t buying that horseshit anymore. The smear got so tired, and so old, and so worn out, and everyone just stopped believing it. So Pete’s non sequitur argument — “Look! Stop! Don’t pay attention to Americans trashing the constitution and torturing and murdering people, instead pay attention to these eeeeeeeeeeeeeevil liberals! Oogah booga booga! Eeeeeeeeeeeevil liberals! Eeeeeeeeeevil!” — just doesn’t fly.
Pete compounds his previous 2 lies with a third lie, namely that prosecuting gross violations of the constitution is partisan politics. This is a particularly cowardly lie, since if we follow it to its logical conclusion, we deduce that if a party controls all 3 branches of government, no one should ever investigate or prosecute any abuses committed while that party was in power, since such prosecutions constitution “partisan politics.”
Notice the cleverness of Pete’s lie. Logically, a reasonable person would have to conclude that anypolitical party which controls all three branches of government must have sole and complete responsibility for the policies enacted during its period of control. This leaves Pete with a very serious problem — how can he weasel out of responsibility for torturing and murdering prisoners, most of whom are known to be innocent?
Aha! Pete suddenly sees a way to cleverly evade responsibility. He turns the situation on its head by trying to claim that since one political party controlled all three branches of government, any proectuion of its crimes can only be partisan politics.
This seems clever, but of course it’s actually stupid, as any sensible person can instantly see. Democrats and the few reasonable Republicans with a conscience have been calling not only for investigations and prosecutions of Republicans who authorized and aided and abetted torture and murder and violations of the Geneva conventions, but also for investigation and prosecution of Democrats who authorized and aided and abetted torture and murder and violations of the Geneva conventions.
Moreover, it’s entirely obvious to any reaosnable person that Pete’s claim of “partisan politics” is a transparently obvious lie, since it would logically mean that any investigation of a White House by an opposition party would be heinous partisan politics and completely off limits…yet Pete’s beloved Republicans wasted a billion dollars and 5 years hounding Bill Clinton about Whitewater, without ever proving a single crime. This proves beyond doubt that Pete is lying through his teeth, he’s lying pathologically and he’s lying with malice aforethought because mysteriously, for some unknown reason, Pete isn’t fired up with outrage at the Whitewater witch hunt. In fact, Pete never even mentioned the Whitewater investigation.
If Pete were really serious about the alleged evils of partisan witch hunts, he would have started by lambasting Republicans for their outrageous partisan behavior. But no, Pete never utters a peep about that outrage…instead, he chooses to express faux outrage only about the suggested prosecution of a president whom we know personally authorized torture.
Notice, ladies and gentlemen, the complete unseriousness of old Pete here. He utters not a peep about a 5-year-long investigation involving a special prosecutor which wound up impeaching a sitting president for the high crime of…lying about a blow job from an intern. But when it comes to investigating proven acts of torture and murder committed by American officials, why, that’s completely outrageous. That’s beyond the pale. Impeaching a president for a blow job is serious non-partisan responsible behavior…but refusing to prosecute or even criminally investigate White House officials for ordering torture, murder, violation of due process, kidnapping, sodomy, slicing prisoners’ genitals with razors, why, that’s suddenly sleazy partisan politics.
Try again, Pete. You need to improve your lying skills. Even a brain-damaged two-year-old can see through fibs this transparent.
Pete goes on to seal his own fate with a fourth lie: How else can one explain Democrats like Durbin and now Obama cozying up to repressive thugs like Castro (who maintains a substantial Gulag system, and has executed and tortured numerous of his own people), while making every mention possible of alleged and/or real U.S. abuses?
How else can I explain that than partisan politics?
Well, let’s see: maybe I could explain it by pointing out that suggesting opening up trade with Cuba after Fidel Castro is no longer in power, and after the Soviet Union collapsed, might make sense in the same way that Richard Nixon’s opening to Communist Red China made sense.
Notice, ladies and gentlemen, that we don’t hear old Petey here shrieking and howling about what a vile traitor Richard Nixon was for his overture to Red China. No, somehow, when America does hundreds of billions of dollar worth of international trade with Communist China today, that’s just a clever way of forcing the Chinese to liberalize and push them toward humane democratic values, right? Because, after all, as Communist China finds itself opening up his economic system, it will develop a middle class, and logic suggests that an increasingly open economic system will inveitably lead to an increasingly open political system. This, as Republicans have assured us, is a clever and subtle way of easing that terrible tyranny Communist China toward democracy.
But suddenly, when we apply the exact same reasoning to Communist Cuba, it no longer applies — why is that, Pete? Oh…that’s right…I remember now. Free trade with Communist China to subtly ease them in the direciton of democracy is good because Republicans did it…but free trade with Communist Cubs is bad because Democrats are proposing it.
Once again, we can see that Pete’s lies just don’t rise to the high quality required to make this kind of sleazy McCarthy-style smear tactic work. You really need to improve your lying skills, Pete. Your scam is showing. I mean, it’s really showing, it’s just as obvious as a wart on a porn star’s ass.
Pete goes on to deep six his reputation once and for all by playing word games about torture: You accuse me of tolerating torture, of being depraved. Again, wrong… 100% wrong. What I asked was where you set the line in what is permissible and what is not in questioning suspected terrorists.
No, that’s a lie, Pete. You need to check what you wrote before you tell these kinds of lies. You can learn from Newt Gingrich: when you tell a lie, make sure it’s a plausible lie, otherwise you just embarrass yourself.
Here is what Pete originally said: Are there gradiations ;sic] in suffering, in pain?
Yes, and that’s a god damned dishonest word game and you know it. There are gradations of coercion in which a guy has to sweet-talk his girlfriend into bed because she’s not that enthusiastic, but we all god damn well know that this has nothing to do with rape. Everyone knows exactly what rape is, and playing word games about how reluctact somebody’s girlfriend is to go to bed isn’t relevant.
Torture is entirely clear and perfectly obvious. When kidnapped prisoners scream like wild animals because they can’t stand the pain, that’s torture. When doctors have to stand by to make sure the detainees don’t die while they’re being drowned and beaten and frozen, that’s torture.
Don’t you dare try to play these god damn word game with me, you miserable crawling lille insect, because you know just as well as everyone else does what torture is, and you’re crawling and cringing and craven effort to defend torture, and it’s indefensible.
Pete went on to degrade himself and insult our intelligence by whimpering: Is the infliction of any pain upon a captive/detainee/POW (choose your definition) to be considered “torture”?
Obviously not, and that’s irrelevant, you cowardly nit. Study the historical record! The most fearsome interrogator in WW II, the British master interrogator who broke virtually every German general and spy he every interviewed, never found it necessary to use any kind of violence whatsoever.
In fact, the testimony of all the most successful interrogators on the Allied side during WW II are unanimous in their testimony that violence and the infliction of pain does not work. These master interrogators all affirm repeatedly that getting the subject’s trust and playing on the subject’s fears works much better than torture. And guess what? The track record of these successful interrogators backs up their claims. Unlike the incompetent liars and lazy frauds of the previous maladministration who succeeded only in extracting garbage information that was worthless by torturing people like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the WW II Allied interrogators succeeded in getting real valuable intelligence from the German generals and spies they interrogated…and they did by explicitly avoiding and renouncing violence and torture.
As for the ACLU’s claims, this is the well-known logical fallacy of the excluded middle. In the classic excluded middle fallacy, a dishonest debater tries to draw our attention from the vast middle range of realities by citing an absurd extreme. Thus, Pete is trying to deny the obvious reality of torture by claiming that one fringe group baselessly asserts that depriving a detainee of a Koran is “abuse.”
Of course the answer to this excluded middle fallacy is that no sensible person gives a damn what the ACLU claim, this is an issue of heinous violation of the Geneva Conventions, not claims made by the ACLU. This is an issue of the 108 documented proven deaths of detainees many of which have been ruled “homicides” by the U.S. military’s own medical examiners.
But Pete doesn’t want you to pay attention to these documented facts. Pete desperately wants you to ignore these facts so he’s blowing smoke up your ass with bullshit about the ACLU. Every sensible person knows this isn’t about the ACLU, it’s about grotesque proven repeated violations of basic human rights, it’s about massive violations of the 9th amendment and the 5th amendment and the 6th amendment. This is about beating kidnapped prisoners who were never charged with a crime and never told what they were accused of and never given a trial, beating them until they died screaming like animals. That’s what this is about. This is about slicing open the genitals of a kidnapped guy with a hood over his head who’s never been charged with a crime and never been given the opportunity to defend himself in court. That’s what it’s about, you dishonest little twit, and everyone knows that.
Pete really steps in it when he pumps his spindly little chest in faux outrage and blusters, Perhaps we should simply let them go, so they can recycle themselves into the battle as one recent former Gitmo prisoner did. I don’t claim to have the answers but since you are so wise, let’s here how you’s handle this.</I.
Yes, Pete, that’s exactly what we should do with most of the tortured kidnap victims at Guantanamo Bay and Bagram airbase and the rest of the CIA’s black ops secret torture prisons — we should let them go.
And the facts prove that we should let most of these people go, because the facts overwhelming prove that most of the kidnapped torture victims held in secret prisons like Gitmo and Bagram are not terroists, there’s no evidence against them, and they’re almost certainly innocent of any wrongdoing whatsoever.
How do we know these people are innocent?
Because courts of law have proven it.
Just look at the dismal record of the previous maladministration when it brought these so-called “terrorists” to trial in open court. In every single case, every single case, the trials fell apart. The charges were thrown out by the judges, the prosecution’s case disintegrated. And you know why?
Because there was no evidence against these kidnapped torture victims other than their own tortured “confessions.”
Hell, you torture me long enough, and I’ll confess to killing JFK and Abe Lincoln and Julius Caesar…but if that’s the only evidence you’ve got, any judge will throw out your case because it’s pure bullshit.
Well, guess what, Petey old boy?
That’s exactly what has happened in every since “terrorist” trial brought over the last 8 years.
The charges have been thrown out, the cases have fallen apart, every…single…time.
Want proof? Read the goddamn newspapers, you twit! It’s all printed in blac and white for everyone to read! It’s as plain as the nose on your face! The evidence is overwhelming! These so-called “terrorists” are almost all innocent bystanders like Dilawar the cab driver, a schmuck who got sold to the Americans by corrupt Afghan warlords who told the lie that Dilawar was a terrorist just so they could grab the fat reward money the Americans were offering.
At the interrogators’ behest, a guard tried to force the young man to his knees. But his legs, which had been pummeled by guards for several days, could no longer bend. An interrogator told Mr. Dilawar that he could see a doctor after they finished with him. When he was finally sent back to his cell, though, the guards were instructed only to chain the prisoner back to the ceiling.
“Leave him up,” one of the guards quoted Specialist Claus as saying.
Several hours passed before an emergency room doctor finally saw Mr. Dilawar. By then he was dead, his body beginning to stiffen. It would be many months before Army investigators learned a final horrific detail: Most of the interrogators had believed Mr. Dilawar was an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time.
This is what you’re defending with your word games, you cowardly little twit.
Torturing innocent cab drivers to death for the sheer sport of it. That’s what you’re trying to excuse and redefine out of existence with your infantile verbal calesthenics.
Notice, ladies and gentlemen, the true motivations of the torturers — they tortured suspects and refused them trials for the simple and obvious reason that gathering evidence and bringing someone to trial and convicting him of a crime is hard work. It takes skill. It takes a competent prosecutor to collect evidence and amass it and parse it and present it in such a way that a jury will convict someone.
The people in the previous maladministration were too lazy and too stupid and too grossly incompetent to collect evidence against real terrorists, so instead they phonied up bogus charges against innocent bystanders to try to create the illusion that they were doing something useful in the “global war on terror,” and that is why every single “terror” trial the United States government mounted has fallen apart. These trials fell apart because there was never any evidence against the people on trial, the people like Padilla the so-called “dirty bomber” who never had anything to do with a dirty bomb, never built one, never collected the materials for one, never even knew how to create a dirty bomb. It was all bullshit and lies cooked up a bunch of incompetent dishonest crooks in the white house and the pentagon and the CIA to cover their own asses and justify an unjustified “war on terror” which, like the fantasy WMDs, was pure bullshit, 100% smoke and wmirrors, without a goddamned iota of fact to back it up.
Don’t believe me? Just study the trial records.
Just google “terror trial falls apart” and “charges against terrorist thrown out” and you’ll find example after example after example.
A federal judge threw out conspiracy and money laundering charges Tuesday against three Texas men who originally were accused of planning terrorism, saying there wasn’t enough evidence to bring them to trial.
Sears tower terror trial collapses.
Justice Dept. Drops ‘Dirty Bomb Plot’ Allegation Against Binyam Mohamed
Judge throws out overlapping charges in Padilla case
Persecution, not prosection: “bioterror” case falls apart
The collapse of Omar Khadr’s Guantanamo trial
Liquid bomb “terror plot” collapses in court.
And the coup de grace, the ultimate proof that every single charge brought against every single alleged “terrorist” in every single court case by the previous maladminsitration was pure horseshit and fantasy, a pack of lies based on nothing but hysterical screams recorded during torture to make innocent bystanders say anything the interrogators wanted them to say:
<A HREF=” A US federal judge on Thursday threw out the June 2003 convictions of three Detroit-area men accused of being members of a terrorist “sleeper operational combat cell.” The ruling, issued by US District Judge Gerald Rosen, came at the request of the Justice Department following a nine-month internal review of the case. The department’s findings showed that prosecutors railroaded the defendants to prison, concealing dozens of pieces of exculpatory evidence that should have been given to defense attorneys during the trial.
The Detroit convictions were the only successful post-9/11 terror-related prosecutions, and had been hailed by administration officials and cited as one of the Justice Department’s “notable achievements.”
Read that again, Petey, old boy. THE DETROIT CONVICTIONS WERE THE ONLY SUCCESSFUL POST-9/11 TERRO-RELATED PROSECUTIONS.
And the judge threw them out because they were 100% garbage, based on nothing, a pack of lies from start to finish.
The logical conclusion any sane person would draw from this 100% record of failure in the courtroom is that all the people who have been brought to trial in American on charges of “terrorism” and innocent, and the charges against them are complete bullshit, made up out of nothing, pure fantasy and delusion, 100% smoke and mirrors.
The futher conclusion to which we are forced is that with a 100% failure rate in these terror trials, it is highly likely that most of the kidnapped torture victims held in secret “black site” prisons like Guantanamo Bay and Bagram airbase are innocent bystanders like Dilawar.
So, yes, Pete. We should let them go. The evidence overwhelmingly shows they’re innocent. These are guys who drove their cabs at the wrong time int he wrong place, and corrupt Aghan warlord decided to make a quick buck by telling the lie that these innocent guys were Al Qaeda, purely to grab some fast reward cash from the Americans.
Ask yourself — if there was any evidence against these so-called terrorists, any evidence at all, why did every single one of their “terror” trials collapse and fall apart?
Explain it to me, Petey.
Everyone knows that a halfway decent prosecutor can convict a ham sandwich. So when you get trial after trial in which the judge throws out the charges and says there isn’t even enough evidence to put the defendant on trial in the first place, what does that tell you?
It tells me the entire war on terror is a scam, the prosecutors are incompetent liars, the defendants are innocent, and the entire Guantanamo Bay and Bagram network of black sites and secret CIA prisons are a giant con game designed to sell the lie that the world is awash with evil people who are plotting to destroy America. In fact, the U.S. intelligence community is so grossly incompetent it couldn’t find a terrorist if they locked the entire CIA in a room with Bin Laden. And the proof is overwhelming — the CIA has been consistently wrong, 100% wrong, wrong about WMDs, wrong about the Shah being secure in power, wrong about the Soviet Union being dangerous and stable and threatening us just before the Berlin Wall collapsed, wrong, wrong, wrong, every time and in every way, the CIA has been consistently wrong.
So it’s obvious that all these secret prisons exist for the sole purpose of selling a lie. It’s obvious also why the government is so reluctant to charge these so-called “terrorists” with any kind of crime and bring ’em to trial in a courtroom — because they aren’t terrorists, and there isn’t a shred of evidence against them, and the administration knew goddamn well that it was all a scam, and they could only maintain the illusion that America was actually fighting some kind of credible “global war on terror” instead of lying and fumbling an stumbling and bumbling around like a bunch of inept drunken frat boy who couldn’t tell their asses from a hole in the ground.
So, yes, Pete, in almost every case, the evidence converges on the inescapable conclusion that we should let them go because they’re not terrorists and the court cases have proven it in every single instance.
Oh, and Pete? That claim that “at least one detainee released from Guantanamo Bay rejoined Al Qaeda to fight against the U.S.”?
It’s a myth and a lie and scam, just like all the other myths and lies and scams you’ve been trying to sell us.
You seem to love Wikipedia, so chew on this wiki article.
All lies, nothing but urban legends.
You have no idea what you’re talking about Pete, you’re spouting non-stop bullshit and lies and trying to patch them up with cheap rationalizations, transparent errors of logic, and infantile word games, and the trouble is that after 8 long years of this horseshit, people have gotten tired of all the lies. They’re just not buying it anymore.
There are real terrorists out there. But the evidence shows that there are only a handful. The hard facts show a tiny tiny group of people, not some vast global network. No Al Qaeda in Iraq until America attacked Iraq, no WMDs, the whole fantasy of a global network of evil masterminds plotting America’s destruction, all bullshit and lies to justify the rollback of civil liberties, the destruction of the Bill of Rights, and the expansion of unaccountable dictatorial powers under a cloak of bogus secrecy by a unitary executive who is a king in all but name. Governing gets a whole lot easier if anyone who dissdents gets labeled a “terrorist” and whisked away by goons in riot helmets. Governing becomes much easier when you don’t have to worry about pesky problems like building political coalitions or the intricacies of the law and instead just order unconstitutional things to be done in secret, and imprison anyone who reveals your crimes. Governing gets a lot simpler when everything you do is classified “top secret” so the political opposition can’t object or debate your policies.
If you’re lazy and incompetent and stupid, it’s a lot easier to just to declare innocent bystanders “terrorists,” whisk them away to secret black prisons where you can put them on trial in kangaroo courts with nothing but gibberings and howls of agony that were tortured out of them as the “evidence” against them, then hurl these people into “black” prisons forever so no one ever realizes the total lack of evidence against them or the total phoniness of your so-called “global war on terror.”
There are many advantages to bypassing the constitution and kidnapping innocent bystanders and torturing them into saying whatever you want them to say and then throwing them in a black hole and tossing away the key, but they are the advantages of theft over honest labor, and the advantages enjoyed by a stupid person who cheats on an exam instead of doing the hard work required to get a good score. That’s your “war on terror,” Pete the incompetence of lazy stupid liars who thought the constitution was just too much trouble.
One last point: FM claims verybody can imagine hypothetical situations where torture is the only available option.
No they can’t. In fact, that scenario is stupid. It’s logically self-contradictory and makes no sense at all. The entire hypothesis of the “ticking bomb” scenario falls apart of its own internal contradictions.
Consider: either there’s very little time left before the awful horrible dreadful ticking bomb explodes…or there’s lots of time left.
If there’s very little time left, then torturing the suspected terrorist will accomplish nothing because the terrorist knows he only has to hold out for a short time. He need only think to himself, “Only fifty nine minutes left until the atomic bomb explodes — I can hold out that long!” No matter what they do to him, a dedicated terrorist can always hold out for the few minutes required for the bomb to explode.
If, on the other hand, there’s a great deal of time left — days or weeks — then torturing the suspected terrorist is unnecessary, because good old-fashioned police work will surely succeed in tracking down the bomb.
So either way, the scenario makes no sense.
The whole idea of a ticking bomb scenario is stupid. It’s nothing but a cheap and transparently phony excuse for sadism. Colonel Robin “Tin Eye” Stephens, the greatest interrogator of WW II, said as much, and his track record proves the worthlessness of torture. Anyone who concocts any scenario in which torture is “necessary” is stupid and ignorant, and the facts prove it. The more fearsome interrogators of all time, masters of the art of intimidation who left their subjects trembling with fear and broken in will, universally affirm the worthlessness of torture as a method for extracting useful information.
On the contrary: the tortures employed by the CIA at Guantamo Bay and Bagram airbase and elsewhere are precisely those tortures originally created by the Communists for the express purpose of extracting false confessions. These torture methods are not designed to reveal the truth, they were specifically cooked up by Chinese communist goons to get innocent people to confess to lies. And that is exactly how they were used in Guantanamo Bay, and the failure of every single terror trial since 9/11 proves it conclusively.
Here’s the link to that article, the URL to which somehow got screwd up:
“A US federal judge on Thursday threw out the June 2003 convictions of three Detroit-area men accused of being members of a terrorist “sleeper operational combat cell.” The ruling, issued by US District Judge Gerald Rosen, came at the request of the Justice Department following a nine-month internal review of the case. The department’s findings showed that prosecutors railroaded the defendants to prison, concealing dozens of pieces of exculpatory evidence that should have been given to defense attorneys during the trial.
“The Detroit convictions were the only successful post-9/11 terror-related prosecutions, and had been hailed by administration officials and cited as one of the Justice Department’s “notable achievements.” Coinciding with the Republican National Convention in New York, the collapse further exposes the fraud of the Bush administration’s `war on terror,’ the cornerstone of its re-election bid.”
Words of Ronald Reagan when the Convention Against Torture to the Senate for ratification (20 May 1988):
From “U.S. signs UN convention against torture”, US Department of State Bulletin, August 1988 (source)
FM: So many Americans approve of torture; what does this tell us about America?
I’m really glad you brought up My Lai. For me the alternative is <1% torture / wrongful deaths by US servicemen, as compared to the 100% total of the N. Viet commies / Cambodian commies / Muslim Taleban.
I choose less torture — do whatever it takes for the US / US supported allies to win. Those opposed to the US winning, are opposing the US fight against greater torture. The Killing Fields of Cambodia, accepted by the ‘anti-war’ (more anti-American / anti-Christian) Left, are the biggest torture tragedy of my life.
I would prefer to win without torture. It’s not clear the US knows how, nor does anybody else. I would prefer to win with small US accepted/ condemned torture, than lose, and allow the US enemy to win. In IndoChina, in the Middle East. Too late for 2 million Cambodians. Not 10 times My Lai (5k), not 100 times, not 1000 times — but 4000 My Lais. Americans probably committed other atrocities in Vietnam, but at a less than 1% level of our commie enemies.
While I agree with the argument that US torture only makes it harder to win ‘hearts & minds’ — the American soldier in foreign land fighting against ‘speakable but not so often spoken about evil’ deserves more respect and a large benefit of the doubt — tho NOT a blank check. I think the current balance is too much criticism of the US side, not enough balanced & equal criticism of the enemy.
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Fabius Maximus replies: I am not sure what you are saying. It reads like you believe that bad acts by others justify bad acts by us due to some obscure moral calculus, even when our bad acts are unconnected to any utility or purpose. What a weird way to justify a deliberate policy choice by senior Bush officials.
Esp odd is your use of the common trope of “our boys in the field.” As if that has anything to do with dark deeds done by civilians in soft DC offices.
A hundred comments! I’m impressed. That seems like a lot for an FM post. What does that say? I assume any resultant implications are germane to the subject or the audience.
Here’s one more comment. Having several times been through the receiving end of interrogation training (SERE), having spent a year as a potential captive subject to enhanced interrogation, having friends in the interrogation business, and having friends (not acquaintenances) who spent time in Hanoi during US involvement in SE Asia, I suggest that torture (however it is defined) can be discussed by holding up a single finger on one hand and three fingers on the other hand.
The one finger stands for right or wrong. I would classify all “wrong except for …” opinions as being in the “right” column – for several reasons, discussions of which would exceed my 250 words.
For any opinion in the “right” column, the three fingers then represent accuracy, latency, and relevancy. Once again, explanations of why those three words are important here or why they are important to me would exceed my limit of writing and your limit of digesting.
And then there are the legal issues, consequence issues and effectiveness issues.
I resisted as long as I can. Uh, is one out of three OK as per “too-long, intemperate, or off-topic comments, per the comment policy” in ref to “coloidial whatever” in #97? In that one I guess he’s on topic, I’m not sure anyone on this site has disputed the immorality or the “evilness” of torture. Pete certainly did not. Killing children in schools is evil at its worst but having so stated and so believing does nothing to fix the problem.
The need for intelligence in war, in crime stopping is always critical, but 4GW puts a very special emphasis on lack there-off. As bad as “torture” is, not discussing how it plays out serves no good. “electrophoresis,” you are a man among men, we exalt you, but less ranting works better.
As related, in this ‘better method of getting info than torture’ line, I checked out some of your British interogator stuff, ole Col Tineye, and for the life of me can’t figure this out. He never touched anyone but supposedly left them quivering in fear, figuratively on the point of a knife. How did he do that? Good chat, good cigar, little whiskey maybe? Multiple stories on him, but not one on this wonderful method??
As to the “debriefs of German scientists and Generals” in multiple articles could not find dates. Use of quotes here is of note. Could it be we only had said prisoners after WWII was over, and that would change a lot wouldn’t it?
This is an intriging post by FM (but sir, were you asleep with #97?)
Question to me should not be so much focus on Bush administration as much as it should be understanding the impact of continued potential (no matter when we get out of Iraq or Afghanistan) of other fourth generation warfare confrontations. Is it worth stating that those on this blog and DNI are only a very few who have a clue what 4GW means much less implies? Fabius is right, winning at 4GW is most difficult, staying out the best course, but that may not be an option. Bad as some make us, there are some really bad folks running around without even the first intent to follow some set of rules of war.
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Fabius Maximus replies: All good points. The general obliviousness to the rise of 4GW is, of course, commonplace in history. As seen in the conventional thinking about war as of 1 August 1914. Or the role of airpower (esp naval air) on 1 January 1939.
Part of the problem is that the key aspects of 4GW are simple, but obscured in much of the 4GW literature. Today the important things to remember, perhaps the essence of 4GW:
(1) The moral highground is often decisive.
(2) The home court advantage is usually decisive.
The information gained from torture must be offset by its strategic damage, per #1. Both in terms of domestic and international publics.
It seems more than a little ironic to me that the notion of American exceptionalism is often an ingredient (if indirect) in any defense of torture, while any such defense simultaneously demonstrates how truly unexceptional we have become. I am deeply concerned that we will quite simply be crushed under the weight of our own hubris.
After all, at this moment in history the only nation strong enough to destroy the USA, is the USA itself. There is no other credible existential threat out there. Great post, please keep at it.
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Fabius Maximus replies: I have often said much the same thing, but never so well. You might find of interest the post going up in one hour about assassination.
I notice that you seem to equate torture with “no-knock SWAT raids” that you say have killed “quite a few Americans”. I am generally an admirer of your precision in expression
so I feel compelled to ask:
1. How many americans do you think were killed because the officers were under a legitimate threat unrelated to the no-knock provision or the fact they may have been in a SWAT operation as opposed to a patrol operation?
2. What number of these do you think can be attributed to the raid as not involving the knock-and-announce procedure as opposed to a mistaken, negligent or malicious act on the part of the officer shooting?
3. Unless you are asserting that these raids were designed to result in the death of the occupants of the home, how does it relate to any justification of torture as a planned, intended action?
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Fabius Maximus replies: I dont’ equate torture with SWAT raids. I draw a narrow and specific comparison between them, but there is not so much as a hint of any broad similarity.
Ok, I can accept that. I suppose I was thrown off by the words “potentially like”. To me that suggests some kind of similarity. I still dont understand what the specific comparison was but if you say there is not so much as a hint of any broad similarity thats good enough for me.
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Fabius Maximus replies: Comments are written in haste and not always clear! Esp for someone not familar with SWAT. The full text was:
“based on some intelligence data (which might or might not have been correct). Potentially like the “no-knock” SWAT raids that have killed quite a few Americans.”
SWAT no-know raids have a long, disturbing history of errors based on poor intel. Often by informers providing info to save their own skins. For articles about SWAT see Reason Magazine.