How Torture Cost Lives

In this ridiculous debate we're having now on whether America should torture people (next up for debate: Should America become Syria?), people only seem to be talking about the potential of torture to save lives. But what we should really be talking about is how torture costs lives. Which it has, on a grand scale.

I'm not talking about the nearly one hundred men who have died while in US custody (34 are suspected or confirmed as homicides, including beating men to death at Bagram Air Base and detainees whose arms and legs we broke just for "amusement"). Those are Arab detainees, though some of them were innocent, I understand that in the ugly America we live in today, people don't care about the lives of Arabs.

I'm talking about American lives that were lost because of torture. We now have declassified CIA cables that explain how we sent Ibn al Sheikh al Libi to be tortured in Egpyt. They buried him alive and beat him mercilessly until he confessed that Iraq and Al Qaeda were linked. The only problem was they weren't. He made up the story to get his captors to stop torturing him.

According to the CIA, al Libi "had difficulty even coming up with a story" on the non-existent ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda. The false admission beaten out of al Libi was later used by Colin Powell at the United Nations as a justification for starting the Iraq War.

The Iraq War has cost the lives of nearly 4,000 Americans. Another 30,000 Americans have been wounded or maimed for life. Hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis have lost their lives. Why? Because we beat a false confession out of al Libi about ties that did not exist between Al Qaeda and Iraq.

How many more lives are we willing to risk on false information we get out of tortured detainees? How many more Americans must die before we realize torture doesn't work?

Unless, of course, you wanted to get false information. But there wasn't anyone in the Bush administration who wanted false information about the ties between Al Qaeda and Iraq, was there?

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Comments

[research]

Thank you so much for catching this all important angle on torture.

tortuting people will never stop a terrorist event because tortured people lie.

But torturing works nearly 100% in getting people to confess for the crimes of those actually in power.

Torture is most effective at forcing scape goats to incriminate themselves.

...If we are foolish enough to believe a tortured confession.

[research]

Thank you so much for catching this all important angle on torture.

tortuting people will never stop a terrorist event because tortured people lie.

But torturing works nearly 100% in getting people to confess for the crimes of those actually in power.

Torture is most effective at forcing scape goats to incriminate themselves.

...If we are foolish enough to believe a tortured confession.

[grahamhgreen]

They are torturing to terrorize you and I.

It's part of their "war of terror".

Similar to the reign of terror.

[cynara]

Good point.

[outnow]

"Torture will save the world." At least that seems to be the attitude and belief of a significant majority of policy wonks and politicians or it wouldn't be happening.

The Christian Right supports torture, too. Doesn't torture fly in the face of the tenets of their faith? No matter, none of their beliefs are congruent with their behavior anyway. We used to call that hypocrisy, now we call it being a good Republican!

In the post-9-11 world we can now change all of our values and laws as a society and go back to the Robber Barons of the golden age of unregulated capitalism. In fact, we can use faith to go back to the Dark Ages before the Enlightenment.

The Dungeon of Cheney and the thumbscrews of Bush will be the emblem of our age. These guys were both big drinkers and chickenhawks. I know neither of them went to church when they were young men. They were too busy partying, drunk driving and all.

How do you go from a frat brat to a sadist in chief? Get the religious right to back your economic interests and then gin up the intelligence. Once you have scared everyone, the real intimidation starts at home.

[realitytrumpsbull]

When foreign aid stops being poor people in
rich countries suckered into giving money to
rich people in poor countries, call me.

Meanwhile, China's prepping for the moon...ni hao. Cat sandwich? Tabby, it's what's for dinner!

[AlButerol]

You've hit on the exact reason why Bush and Cheney have fought so hard for torture in spite of the fact that it's known that torture does not produce accurate intelligence. They don't want accurate intelligence. They want sources they can point to to back up any false claims that they invent. The purpose of the Military Commissions Act was not to legalize torture which they were engaging in anyway. It was to prevent any future prosecutions of these monsters for their use of torture.

[hopeless277]

It would be interesting to hear from a shrink about the long lasting effect of BEING a torturer of human beings and what kind of civilian job those skills would translate to.

[DavidHealy]

I think this group is torturing for the fun of it, for the self gratification that they derive from it. For them, it feels good.

[suki21693]

Every day I think, "we can't sink any lower." Every day I am proven wrong.

[NoFactsJustTruth]

Some of us have been yelling for a couple years now, Cenk, that the administration was doing EVERYTHING in their power to perpetuate to violence and hate of us in the Islamic world. Why - if peace broke out, it would likely cost USA corporations hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars. A peaceful Iraq has NEVER been a goal UNTIL this last round of escalation and segregation. Even THAT is only temporary though.

But then, OUR country was also once against pre-emptive war of ANY kind...

[grahamhgreen]

Apparently, our president and legislators cannot govern without torture.

[zjr909]

You hit the nail squarely on the head: getting false information. That's what torture was, is and always will be about: getting precisely the information you want, regardless if it's accurate or not. If you want good intel, you go out and get it covertly; if you want the exact intel you're trying to push, you go torture someone until he tells you what you want to hear. I have to admit though, I have a little trouble caring what torture has done to Americans, including the soldiers. It's been an open secret for at least two years, probably longer, that we torture. I don't hear much opposition to it from the troops or the general public. Therefore, I have to assume it's ok with most everyone if we torture our "enemy." So if Americans die because they bought into the neocon lies, it's at least poetic justice - which may be the only kind of justice the neocon's war crimes will ever yield.

[holliwoodinc]

Thanks, Cenk, for a terrific post. You have a great way of giving us a clearer outlook on issues the right-wing smokescreen tries to frame through chauvinistic, naval-gazing perspectives.

[Dogger]

Leave it to Cenk to see what others have missed: torture does work, if your goal is evil. If you want reliable information, try another tactic.

In addition to generating support for an unsupportable war, torture can reveal the existence of fantasy plots of terror that make it appear that the Bush League is doing something other than manufacturing hype. And torture can generate fear in your own populace when your goal is to secure a docile citizenry.

Early in our history, men feared witches and burned women. Incidentally, many confessed when subjected to a kinder, gentler form of waterboarding - dunking. But it's a good thing we did it; otherwise, they would have gotten away with it.