"Waterboarding is inhumane, it is torture, and it is illegal."President Obama recently caused consternation when he released formerly classified documents describing the much-debated 'enhanced interrogation techniques' used against prisoners and those accused of terrorism by the CIA and Homeland Security.Quoted from a letter by Rear Admiral Donald J. Guter, US Navy, Rear Admiral John D. Hutson, US Navy, Major General John L. Fugh, US Army and Brigadier General David M. Brahms, US Marine Corps (all retired, formerly of the Judge Advocates General judicial arm of the U.S. military
According to the reports, the six prescribed 'techniques' were as follows:
The Attention Grab: The interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt front of the prisoner and shakes him.The question of whether or not these 'techniques' can be classified as 'torture' is something that's being hotly debated at the moment.Attention Slap: An open-handed slap aimed at causing pain and triggering fear.
The Belly Slap: A hard open-handed slap to the stomach. The aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury. Doctors consulted advised against using a punch, which could cause lasting internal damage.
Long Time Standing: This technique is described as among the most effective. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding confessions.
The Cold Cell: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water.
Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.
Conservatives argue that they're not 'torture' as they don't cause any long-term physical suffering to the victim. Also, any question about how ethical these 'enhanced interrogation techniques' are is mitigated by the value of the information that has been gleaned from using them.
But as far as I'm concerned, the very fact that we're debating whether or not these 'techniques' could be classified as torture pretty much answers that question - of course they are. Waterboarding is the most troubling of them.
Is waterboarding torture?
There's a general consensus condemning techniques like 'waterboarding' - and it's not amongst 'liberals' and 'lefties' like the conservatives might think.Many, if not most, military experts agree that waterboarding is clear, unequivocal torture.
John McCain had this to say during his campaign for the White House:
"Waterboarding is where a prisoner is restrained and blindfolded while an interrogator pours water on his face and into his mouth—causing the prisoner to believe he is being drowned.
He isn't, of course; there is no intention to injure him physically. But if you gave people who have suffered abuse as prisoners a choice between a beating and a mock execution, many, including me, would choose a beating.
The effects of most beatings heal. The memory of an execution will haunt someone for a very long time and damage his or her psyche in ways that may never heal.
In my view, to make someone believe that you are killing him by drowning is no different than holding a pistol to his head and firing a blank.
I believe that it is torture. Very exquisite torture."
If the words of John McCain aren't enough to convince you, a quite glance at a history book should. The origins of 'waterboarding' are linked to the Spanish Inquisition - a brutal period of Spanish history in which those accused of heresy were tortured into giving confessions through a variety of brutal methods.The tortura del agua, what we now know of as 'waterboarding', was a favorite as it caused no scars, burns or visible injuries on the victim. This made their 'confessions' that much more compelling, as if wouldn't have been obvious that they'd been acquired through the use of torture.
The United States first experimented with waterboarding (then know as 'the water cure') during the Spanish-American war of 1898.
When President Roosevelt learned that a prisoner, Tobeniano Ealdama, had been tortured with 'the water cure' by a certain Captain Edwin Glenn, he dismissed the Captain from the army immediately and called upon the army to "prevent the occurrence of all such acts in the future."
Waterboarding was a technique used with alarming regularity by the Japanese Kempeitai and Nazi Gestapo during World War 2. French paratroopers later used it during the Algerian War of 1954-62. Henri Alleg, a French-Algerian journalist who was waterboarded during the conflict, reported that accidental death of victims was 'very frequent.' He described his experiences:
"I couldn't hold on for more than a few moments. I had the impression of drowning, and a terrible agony, that of death itself, took possession of me. In spite of myself, all the muscles of my body struggled uselessly to save me from suffocation."Waterboarding was officially regarded as torture by American generals during the Vietnam War It's use was strictly forbidden - with soldiers found guilty of using the technique facing swift court-martial.Henri Alleg, La Question, 1958
How that position could have changed in the intervening forty years is beyond me. This was a favorite torture technique of the Pinochet regime and the Khmer Rouge - that in itself rules out any ambiguity for all but the most rational of people.
Was torture worth it?
Like in much of what they do, conservatives have a contradictory two-pronged defense regarding waterboarding. On the one hand, they argue that it's not torture. Then, they argue that torture like waterboarding would be acceptable, anyway, because the information gleaned from it helped defend America from terrorism.
Turning to John McCain once again - probably the best qualified man in America to discuss the reality of torture - he has only this to say:
"I was once physically coerced to provide my enemies with the names of the members of my flight squadron.Certainly, the CIA operatives who 'waterboarded' 9-11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed clearly weren't satisfied with the answers he gave. They were forced to waterboard him 183 times over the course of a single month. That's almost six times every single day.
Instead, I gave them the names of the Green Bay Packers' offensive line, knowing that providing them false information was sufficient to suspend the abuse.
It seems probable to me that the terrorists we interrogate under less than humane standards of treatment are also likely to resort to deceptive answers."
An effective torture, one imagines, gets answers after only one judicious application.
Because Barack Obama has refused to declassify the information gleaned from waterboarding prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, it's impossible to judge whether the techniques were 'worth it.' That being said, it's very doubtful that I'd change my mind on the subject, no matter what information had been gleaned.
As far as I'm concerned, when a country is reduced to torturing its prisoners for the sake of 'protecting the country' it's no longer much of a country worth protecting.
The Bottom Line
Of course, I still think America is worth protecting. However, I disagree completely with the path that the government went down following 9-11 and think that the discussion about the 'validity' of torture is totally bankrupt. Why are we defending the indefensible?
What the conservatives who defend waterboarding, Guantanemo Bay and 'enhanced interrogation techniques' fail to realise is that these 'techniques' are all so unequivocally unAmerican that it's a stain on this country's history that such abuses were ever condoned.
It doesn't matter whether or not the 'victims' of this torture were terrorists. That's backwards thinking, trying to argue that the ends justify unjustifiable means.
The fact is, Americans are meant to be the 'good guys' - and good guys don't do things like torture. Not because torture is illegal, or ineffective (although it's both) - but because it's wrong.
America is a nation founded on the ideals of justice and freedom. As a nation, we've always believed (rightly or wrongly) that there are some moral absolutes. Whether or not torture works should always be second to whether we want America to be known as a country that tortures.
We condemn foreign lands that commit torture. One of the justifications for invading Iraq was that Saddam Hussein brutally tormented his subjects in secret 'torture factories.'
So when we discuss the issue of 'waterboarding' and other 'enhanced interrogation techniques,' it's that we should be thinking about. Do we want to live in a country that commits the crimes Saddam Hussein was eventually hanged for?
I certainly don't - and I'm overjoyed that President Obama has exposed this scandal so we can make sure it's never repeated.
4 comments:
According to this article, 'enhanced techniques used in interrogations "have led to specific, actionable intelligence as well as a general increase in the amount of intelligence regarding Al Qaeda and its affiliates."'
Let me put it this way: You're the president, and the CIA tells you they have captured a terrorist, and they've been able to determine he's been calling into the US. Those calls stopped last week, and the cell phones called have been destroyed. You have reason to believe that this is a plot to blow up, say, supermarkets in major cities.
Of course, he won't tell you anything.
What do you do? How many innocent lives are you willing to risk?
Enhanced interrogation is something to do because it works. I have trouble believing that the people who are doing this, and who are authorizing it, are doing so just to be cruel... I give them more credit than that.
Rather, I think this is one of those cases where I'd much rather not know of the things the government has to do to keep me safe.
Let's go surfin' now
Everybody's learnin' how
Do some waterboardin' with me!
Well, the trouble is that FBI investigators who were there, and their superiors, all report to the last man that all the information regarding, say, the capture of Khalid Sheik Muhammed and Jose Padilla were obtained in photo lineups, clever questioning, and assisting in the nursing of wounded captives back to health. When it became clear at black sites in Thailand that the CIA was hellbent on torture, the FBI filled complaints that said activities were both illegal and counterproductive and left in disgust. Hayden faces pretty serious odds of contempt or perjury charges for that testimony with so many sources pouring out of the woodwork to illustrate his sanctimonious asscovering.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103475220
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1893679,00.html?imw=Y
http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2008/12/torture200812?currentPage=4
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Was_Abu_Zubaydah_tortured_before_Bybee_0424.html
The ticking bomb plot is a Hollywood device- and it is self defeating to boot. If you knew an attack was imminent in hours-minutes-days, don't you suspect you would be able to withstand just about anything if you knew it had an end date? Do you think your interrogators would have time to separate out your fabrications or panicked delusions from any granules of truth? Morever, can you point to a time it has happened?
The CIA's own field manuals frown on coercion for purely pragmatic reasons, namely its a waste of everyone's time. As soon as waiting and questioning collapse to physical violence, the intangibles of waiting and evading are reduced to the pretty simple operation of enduring physical pain, coupled with the knowledge that your captors are growing desperate and you thus have a degree of power. I can;t find a full copy of the 1983 Kulbark manual online and lack the patience to scan mine, but this about sums it up too:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/15/AR2007011501204.html
Let's run another thought experiment. Your mother, or partner, or child, is in hiding for her life. You are captive. If they find her, she's toast. How many time do they have to punch you to make you tell? Is there a number? I suspect not. In fact, do you think you could remember a long list of useful details by that point? But if instead, you were bombarded with leading questions, befriended by one of your holders that seems more compassionate than the rest, that can offer your loved one at least the chance to survive if you let him know before the others, or you were presented with wave after wave of photos of other conspirators to turn in instead, which they may or may not already be aware of...
Which do you feel more vulnerable to?
This whole notion that counterterrorism belongs in a different basket from international police work is bogus as well. RAND, the principal blue-sky government research house, did some analysis during the Bush years on what ended terrorist groups since the end of WWII, and it worked that roughly 40% ceased violent activities by engaging in the political process and 50% through conventional, legal investigation, interdiction, and conviction. Only 7% were terminated through military action. Go down the list of what conventional military force is useful for- gaining and holding territory, enforcing blockades and embargoes, destroy C3I and infrastructure, and see how many of those translate to the interdiction of terror groups that hold no territory, utilize the same infrastructure as civilians, often their targets, and are indifferent to what areas are denied to them both from their undetectability and the plethora of possible targets. Now compare that list to a criminal element. Terrorists are caught by cops doing cop things, and black sites and torture don't have a place there.
http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2008/RAND_MG741-1.pdf
There are consummate professional in the officer corps, law enforcement and intelligence services that are starting to poke out their heads after two terms of being staked with kowtowing appointees. They know this isn't in their job description. Expect to be hearing more from them.
“High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qa’ida organization that was attacking this country,” Adm. Dennis C. Blair, [Obama's] intelligence director, wrote in a memo to his staff last Thursday.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/us/politics/22blair.html
Police approaches might be effective when a terrorist organization operates in a regime that can uphold the rule of law. But this isn't the case with Al Qaeda, which operates in places like Afghanistan and the Northwest Frontier of Pakistan, which are places where the rule of law is either nonexistent or supportive of their aims.
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