Former Vice President Dick Cheney has triggered a roaring debate by his recent and repeated claim that torture "worked." Last week, Senator Lindsay Graham echoed the claim that torture "works" and added that is has for five hundred years (a timescale which connects us to the Spanish Inquisition).
Recent polls show a slim majority of Americans opposing any investigation or prosecution of torture under the Bush Administration, even though a majority acknowledges that torture took place. Cheney's claims may have had a major impact on public opinion.
The reliability and truthfulness of information obtained under torture is in serious doubt. But even if it weren't, the whole argument over the claim that torture works is grotesquely beside the point. The issue is not whether torture works, but whether there are other methods of obtaining equivalent or better information that don't incur the enormous moral, legal and security hazards torture entails.
Torture advocates want us to think that there is no other way to obtain this critical information in the "war on terror," but it's simply not so. Standard interrogation procedures, both in the criminal justice system and in the military, routinely produce valuable intelligence. Highly skilled and trained professional interrogators regularly get people to talk about and confess to serious crimes like murder, without using coercive techniques.
As a former Brooklyn District Attorney, I know that non-coercive interrogation works. My office was one of the nation's largest, handling prosecutions of tens of thousands of serious crimes annually, with no coercion whatsoever. Yet we videotaped thousands of voluntary confessions.
Across America, police and prosecutors handle dangerous crimes every day without resorting to waterboarding, stress positions, sleep deprivation, food deprivation, nudity, exposure to extremes of temperatures, slamming people into walls, or the like. Whether it involves homegrown terrorists such as the Oklahoma bombers, organized crime or "ordinary" murderers and rapists, the criminal justice system solves crimes, learns who else is involved and brings the culprits to justice -- without torturing them.
Professional interrogators might not get confessions every time they ask questions. But no one knows how often torture produces truthful confessions, if ever. What we do know is that our regular criminal justice system, with its due process and noncoercion, produces convictions where torture doesn't.
The criminal justice system identified and convicted some of those involved in the 1993 World Trade Center attacks. By contrast, not one person has been prosecuted for the 9/11 attacks, although seven and a half years have gone by. Even Khalid Sheik Mohammed, one of the masterminds of 9/11, is unlikely ever to be convicted in US courts because he was repeatedly subjected to torture. Significantly, the cruel and torturous methods used on detainees never yielded enough information to capture Osama Bin Laden or his chief deputy. So much for the claims of torture's efficacy.
But beyond that, in America, torture can never be used because our Constitution bans it. There are no exceptions -- not for heinous crimes or ticking bombs. The use of torture against a criminal defendant would only constitute another crime and immunize the defendant from conviction. Similarly, the Geneva Conventions prohibit the cruel and degrading treatment of detainees even in wartime.
Military interrogations in wartime are critically important. They might reveal, for example, where the enemy is going to strike next, and affect the lives of thousands of American troops. Yet until the Bush Administration took office, the US did not adopt torture as an official tool to extract such information. It's good to recall why.
After horrific mistreatment of detainees during World War II, including the torture of American POW's by the Japanese, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme commander of Allied forces, urged the US to ratify the Geneva Conventions. General Douglas McArthur voluntarily instituted the Conventions for American troops in the Korean War, even before they were ratified.
These commanders supported the Geneva Conventions, not because they thought it acceptable to "tie our hands" during combat and expose American troops to unnecessary risk, but because they realized the real danger to our country lay in using torture, not in abstaining from it. They saw professional interrogations produced important information without torture. They knew torture only weakens our reputation and our ability to project "soft power" -- to command respect and persuade abroad. They perceived inhumane treatment of the enemy would only further endanger the lives of American troops.
They were right. In our own time, US use of torture at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere has become a major recruiting tool for Al Qaeda, and led to the loss of hundreds, possibly thousands, of American lives. The FBI, no friend to terrorists, rejected the CIA's torture program because it understood the untenable consequences. The FBI began the interrogation of terrorist detainees, but once the CIA began to use torture it stopped participating and walked away. It refused to engage in what it believed were war crimes that would only undermine the effort to get the information we needed and endanger Americans. What vital intelligence have we lost because the FBI had to withdraw its expertise?
The FBI rejected torture, our Constitution bans it, and we have ratified the Geneva Conventions as the law of our land, not because we are nation of wimps or bleeding hearts. Unlike former Vice President Cheney, who ran from the Vietnam War, and former President George Bush, who never saw a day of combat in his life, those who wrote the Bill of Rights fought a bloody revolution to win their independence from Britain. They weren't afraid to fight hard to create and keep this country. They rejected torture not out of weakness, but out of strength.
They weren't interested in any specious claim of torture's efficacy; they knew that torture produced unreliable information. They also knew that forcing people to incriminate themselves was a slippery slope. Once torture was condoned in one case, it would become irresistible in other cases, particularly involving political opponents, religious dissidents and the like. Above all, they knew torture was inimical to the conception of human dignity that underlay our constitutional framework, so they adopted a granite opposition to it.
Now as then, Americans should reject specious arguments justifying torture. They should not be misled by former Vice President Cheney's unverified claims that torture worked, and recognize that even though the CIA's Inspector General long recommended a thorough, expert analysis of the question of torture's "efficacy," it was never conducted because the Bush Administration didn't want to know the truth.
Now it is important for Americans of all political persuasions to reaffirm the truth, as drafters of the Bill of Rights believed so deeply and etched so indelibly into our constitution, that torture is a moral and human atrocity that never makes us safer, and in the end only causes our nation incalculable harm.
It follows from this that we must hold government officials who ordered or engaged in torture accountable under our laws. Applicable US statutes make torture and other cruel and abusive treatment of detainees a federal crime. It's time we commenced investigations to determine if criminal charges should be brought under those laws. That's the vital question that the phony debate over torture's "efficacy" serves to obscure.
Mr. Valkrie, I appreciate those links, there's much to consider and they bring questions along with answers. Deferring to Mr. Nance, looks like water does get up into the lungs. I stand corrected at this point.
The name calling and personal attacks? When it gets to that, I stop. I make a point of not descending to that level.
This goes way beyond a debate about waterboarding. It goes to what this country will be like in 5 or 10 or 20 years. As long as we have leaders in government that DON'T do what they say, from either side, we're doomed. For all the rhetoric, what we have we really gotten? I can speak for myself and say there's precious little the GOP has done in the last 8 years and certainly the last 2 that meet with my approval. I'm for smaller government, and I never got it. I'm for more personal freedom, and I'm losing it. Considering what was promised by Mr. Obama during the campaign and what's going on now, I don't think you're getting what you want either. This waterboarding issue is a perfect example of a serious issue that needs debating used as club against the 'other guys' for political points and to keep the faithful on either side at each other's throats, like now. If we continue screaming at each other, we leave Washington alone, and that's they way they like it.
I'm sorry I attacked you personally. Please bear in mind though, if you defend the indefensible, i.e. t o r t u r e, you expose yourself to the risk of being attacked. It's outrageous that there are people--at high levels of government!--who maintain that this is an acceptable practice for Americans. I would have the same reaction if you were defending, say, r a p e camps as a means to pacify the Afghani population. It's not always a question of rational debate. There are some things that are just beyond the pale and don't deserve to be engaged that way. To me, t o r t u r e is one of them. Nevertheless I engage because what else is there to do? I can't very well leave the conversation to the yahoos and the authoritarians.
Because that's exactly why it was used.
Lets start over. Went Merriam Webster online. Here's what I got for:
TORTURE
1 a: anguish of body or mind : agony
b: something that causes agony or pain
2: the infliction of intense pain (as from burning, crushing, or wounding) to punish, coerce, or afford sadistic pleasure.
OK Now lets make sure about we're talking about:
ANGUISH:
extreme pain, distress, or anxiety
AGONY:
1 a: intense pain of mind or body
Anybody want to take a stab at where water being poured up your nose with saran-wrap over your mouth for some seconds fits in? Keep in mind we're dealing with adjectives like extreme, intense and words like 'agony' and 'anguish'
Our laws already have done that.
Nearly all of the "enhanced interrogation" practices are coercive in nature, and are legally defined as torture. Worldwide.
Please, volunteer to go on TV and be water boarded, by your worst enemy.
But you are complicit or ignorant.
You haven't answered why you would torture when every source says it loses wars, not wins them. Get false info and loses hearts and minds.
Why do you keep defending.
Legally,
the defense of Torture is a war crime.
http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2007/10/waterboarding-is-torture-perio/
"Waterboarding is a controlled drowning that, in the American model, occurs under the watch of a doctor, a psychologist, an interrogator and a trained strap-in/strap-out team. It does not simulate drowning, as the lungs are actually filling with water. There is no way to simulate that. The victim is drowning. How much the victim is to drown depends on the desired result (in the form of answers to questions shouted into the victim’s face) and the obstinacy of the subject. A team doctor watches the quantity of water that is ingested and for the physiological signs which show when the drowning effect goes from painful psychological experience, to horrific suffocating punishment to the final death spiral.
"Waterboarding is slow motion suffocation with enough time to contemplate the inevitability of black out and expiration –usually the person goes into hysterics on the board. For the uninitiated, it is horrifying to watch and if it goes wrong, it can lead straight to terminal hypoxia. When done right it is controlled death. Its lack of physical scarring allows the victim to recover and be threaten with its use again and again."
'Male detainee died while in U.S. custody. The details surrounding the circumstances at the time of death are classified. Cause of death: Asphyxia due to smothering and chest compression. Manner of Death: Homicide. Significant findings of the autopsy included rib fractures and numerous bruises, some of which were patterned due to impacts with a blunt object. DOD 003329 refers to this case as "1 blunt force trauma and choking; died during interrogation." DOD 003325 refers to this case with note "Q[uestioned] by MI [Military Intelligence], died during interrogation."'
This is just one of many entries from data kept by the military itself.
No person should argue against torture or defend their position opposing it. If you fight for your position, you concede that it is assailable, something that requires justification. The furthest I'm willing to go is to remind my Republican relatives that torture is inhuman and it is illegal, and that's the conversation stopper, unless they're eager to shame themselves by defending the indefensible.
By the way, venerable NPR continues to characterize this controversy as being about interrogation. This is simply a lie. The matter is not interrogation, it is torture. I listen every day and I've never heard NPR say the word torture in this context. This is a deep shame on NPR.
http://www.amnesty.org
Under Bush/Cheney/Rumsfield, the CIA began to use the SERE manual in reverse--to train the CIA to _use_ the very torture techniques that they used to teach soldiers to resist. But they failed to acknowledge the fact that the torture techniques in the SERE manual were never intended to get actionable information. They were intended from the beginning to produce false confessions.
The previous administration--locked in its own fantasy reality--chose to ignore that part of the report--just like they chose to ignore warnings about an imminent attack by al Qaeda, and chose to ignore warnings that the New Orleans levy needed repairs.
Facts about waterboarding, also known as "Chinese water torture": It is not "simulated" drowning, it is actual drowning: the victim's lungs really do fill up with water. The torturer stops just short of actually killing the victim by drowning, allows them a moment to recover, then starts again. It is very possible to kill someone by waterboarding them; all you have to do is skip the recovery part.
Guitangaran and other who argue that waterboarding isn't REALLY torture because the victims can still walk afterwards are basing their argument off right wing talking points, which were drawn from Jay Bybee's erroneous and specious justification for torture. He held that since American military trainees must endure controlled waterboarding as a part of their SERE training, and endured no ill effects, waterboarding had no long-lasting effects and must therefore not be considered "cruel and unusual." However, Bybee's reasoning falls apart at first glance: it's akin to claiming that enduring a mugging and beating is not traumatizing, since martial arts students are beaten up as part of their training.
The loss of control and fear for one's life is the really paralyzing part of being waterboarded; this can result in permanent psychological damage, which is one of the criteria for torture according to the U.N convention, which RONALD REAGAN signed.
Any verifiable source on the 'lungs filling up with water" part? Just curious.
What I've seen is the the water is limited to the mouth and nasal cavity, which is pretty extensive, actually. With the head tilted back somewhat to get up into the nasal cavity, its somewhat difficult for water to go 'uphill' from there.
"Guitangaran and other who argue that waterboarding isn't REALLY torture because the victims can still walk afterwards..."
I believe I said full use of extremities, faculties and Psyche, so to speak, but you leave out whatever part you feel impinges on your argument. If the technique is that devastating psychologically, then we can let them all go right? They'll all be zombies unable to function for the rest of their lives. Oh wait, it was only used on 3 out of hundreds, so lets turn those 3 loose on your doorstep and you can report back on how emotially crippled they are.
Why do you believe only 3 were tortured?
You do know hundreds were mistreated, humiliated, degraded, and subjected to pain and sleep deprivation.
All of which are torture.
Here: a less than one-minute google search revealed this:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/08/AR2007110802150.html
Waterboarding Is Torture, Says Ex-Navy Instructor
"In my case, the technique was so fast and professional that I didn't know what was happening until the water entered my nose and throat," Nance testified yesterday at a House oversight hearing on torture and enhanced interrogation techniques. "It then pushes down into the trachea and starts the process of respiratory degradation. It is an overwhelming experience that induces horror and triggers frantic survival instincts. As the event unfolded, I was fully conscious of what was happening: I was being tortured."
You really aren't paying attention, are you?
If you read Stephen Kinzer's excellent book "Overthrow"
http://www.democracynow.org/2006/4/21/overthrow_americas_century_of_regime_change
you can see a steady escalation in the tactics to undermine democracy employed by the United States over the last 100+ years.
That we're now openly in a debate over the effective use of torture serves to display -- in stark relief -- how far we have descended as a culture and as a nation.
Conservative historian Andrew Bacevich's recent book "The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism" spells this out better than I ever could in 250 words.
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/8/20/the_limits_of_power_andrew_bacevich
Unless and until we come to grips with our behavior over the last century or more and take concrete steps to ensure that we don't continue, we are doomed to repeat and exacerbate our crimes.
While the vast majority of Americans remain blissfully ignorant of the United States record, the world does not. As our stature in the world inevitably declines (do the math), the famous classical image of justice as a blindfolded woman holding scales will be ripping off her mask and using her instrument to thwack us repeatedly about the head.
Compared to? Nazi Germany? Communist Russia? Communist China? North Korea? I mean, where do we fall here? Like on a scale of 1 to 10 we're currently a what, 6? Just trying to get some context.
"Conservative historian Andrew Bacevich..." I'm not a big reader in my old age, but when you have Moyers and NPR, and Democracy Now as outlets for his work, I'm not thinking conservative. For that matter having Charles Beard as his homeboy doesn't do much for his Conservative creds. Beard's work has been discredited for years as the 'progressive' tripe that it is.
"While the vast majority of Americans remain blissfully ignorant of the United States record, the world does not."
In the case of the rest of the world, I think its more a matter of forgetting what we have done and continue to do. This war-monger Bush putting more resources to combat AIDS into Africa than any other regime, for one. How 'bout the Marshall Plan? Berlin Wall coming down? Rebuilding Japan? You want perfect, go somewhere else, we ain't sellin' that here. You want the one place where the rest of the world (that is, regular people like you and me) is trying to get into by hook or crook, look no...place... else.
Good deeds don't atone for torture.
Do you think the dead prisoners find anything different about USA torture versus Nazi torture?
Why do you want to brutalize people for no good reason?
Feeble and over simplistic attaempts to justify the use of water boarding by former vice-president in exile Dick Cheney and his daughters, along with Republican National TV -Fox News, don't hold water.
Why does the media allow Cheney so much space to justify what he knows and they know is criminal?
His attempts to trivilize waterboarding as "advanced interrogation techniques" having valuable results, is ludicrous.
Torture is forbidden, or was. Cheney and Bush revived it. Now we have a whole bunch of right wingers claiming it to be a humane way of extracting information.
Stick your head face up in a bowl of water for five seconds. Hold your breath. Enhance the procedure by having your best friend hold you under. After five seconds, surface, then go under again. Repeat for forty seconds, until you confess to whatever you've been accused of.
Too rigid? Try the other right wing bally-hooed enhancement. Manacled and handcuffed, lie back. Your best friend will place a moistened cloth over your nose and mouth and carefully spill one or two drops of water on the cloth for forty seconds.
Ever had a dripping faucet and tried to sleep?
The right claims these procedures led to that earth shaking disclosure that Saddam Hussein had the Bomb, and was cranking out chemical weapons.
After forty seconds of immersion I would have told them that Hussein's Navy was paddling across the Atlantic to invade America.
So now the criteria for determining 'real' torture is whether or not you still have a pulse? You've raised the bar pretty high there. I would have figured that permanent physical or mental disability would have sufficed, right along with excruciating physical or psychological pain. Since I'm obviously an average American, perhaps you could elaborate?
"More than 100 + have died while receiving this treatment."
That is astounding. What is your source for that number?
Assuming it happened in some other country, perhaps we can assume they're simply incompetent in their interrogation technique? Can't get information if they're dead, you know.
As to what Nancy Pelosi understood were legal, enhanced interrogation techniques, the facts surrounding the request to employ them was the interrogators had judged there was other vital information they weren't getting, and the other techniques weren't effective in getting it.
"If only you could be subject to a little of this treatment, tough guy."
My point exactly. I'd probably sing like a bird in 2 minutes and tell them everything I know, and still walk away intact. Its called "effective interrogation"
You're not from here, are you?
That is astounding. What is your source for that number? "
Source: The US Military's own investigations. So far of the hundred or so detainee deaths only 12 have been dealt with by the military.
http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/us_law/etn/dic/exec-sum.asp
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-05-05/how-many-were-tortured-to-death/full/
"More than 100 + have died while receiving this treatment."
Still, a rediculous statement on its face.
Going with your first link, there was nothing about waterboarding or anything else descriptive enough to indicate a specific interrogation technique was at fault.
Now, if a combatant IS beaten to death or any interrogation technique goes too far, it should be prosecuted appropriately. To the degree it hasn't, bad on those in charge. However, the article you cite assumes that all cases HAVE to be instances of criminal activity, or else the military isn't doing its job.
What happened to 'innocent until proven guilty' for our own, or does that only apply to innocent bystanders in the field of battle armed with AK-47s, C-4, and bomb diagrams in their pockets?
Cruel and degrading treatment does.
Coercive interrogation does.
We interviewed the Nazi's and got the info we needed.
all the information we have gotten from Prisoners was from Interviewing.
That is, force or threats of force used.
You think it ok to rough a prisoner, a SUSPECT?
A suspect is guilty or not.
with so many prisoners gotten by warm body bounties, lots of them are innocent, we have already acknowledged that.
So if you can be respectful to all suspects as if they are innocent, the American Legal system requirement, or you can project your own fears and suspicion onto the suspects and force them to say the words that verify you own delusions.
Tortured prisoners are brutalized puppets,
forced with pain and fear,
to say the words the torturer think sound "true".
That's what you are defending.
Mr. McCain can't raise his arms above a certain point. He was tortured, and it shows.
The pictures I've seen of German POWs under control of Winston Churchill don't look any better than the Jews at Auschwitz, irrespective of what Mr. Obama said about the Prime Minister.
That was torture, and it showed
Our guests at Guantanamo still have full range of movment of their extremities, have generally gained weight, and are in good enough psychological shape to lie about their Korans being flushed down the toilet.
That ain't torture. Whatever abuses have occured, haven't those folks been put in jail?
Now, in terms of your experience as DA in Brooklyn, wouldn't you agree that different interrogation techniques are required, depending on who you're dealing with? A hardened criminal picked up for Murder 1 isn't going to break down and confess by simply being yelled at like some pimply-school boy caught knocking trash cans over. Circumstances dictate the technique.
This is war against an enemy that uses beheading as an intimidation technique. The moral equivalency arguement is really getting tired. I'm tired of people like you calling the USA the bad guy when so much effort has been put out, including informing folks like Nancy Pelosi what they were doing and whether or not it went to far.
This article? Yeah, torturous in its logic
More than 100 + have died while receiving this treatment.
Ha, you even throw out the RWTP of Pelosi. Shame on you!
It's surprising how the debate is clouded by such simple tactics, but perhaps not, given the intelligence level of the average American [like the above poster]. However, the ability to internalise GOP propaganda and spew it back out as one's own, this remains undimmed.
The best line of argument is to avoid the 'torture works' because it is a fact that other methods work, too. It's possible to fry an egg with a magnifying glass, it 'works', but that doesn't mean a frying pan and a gas ring are not a superior method.
As for USA as bad guy, when you operate a worldwide network of black sites and are torturing people, expect to look bad. And, indeed, there is no moral equivalence, unless you can point to some AQ network of sites that are forming American citizens plucked off the streets of Prague, Milan, etc, and whisked away in shackles to be detained indefinitely w/o charge and formed into human pyramids and chained upside down with their panties on their head, etc.
If only you could be subject to a little of this treatment, tough guy.
"I for one am yet to find anything about the techniques involved that could be classified by a rational person as torture. "
Assuming you are serious and not being cynical or feigning ignorance, I suggest you might want to start with reading the Geneva Convention's Article 26 on torture here: http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/91.htm
Or the United States Code Title 18 : Section 2340A which defines torture as a crime punishable by up to 20 years of imprisonment:
Additional information can also be found at these locations:
The Purpose of the Torture Was To Find A Justification For The War in Iraq (& How The FBI's Effective & Legal Techniques for Getting Actionable Intelligence Was Shut Out):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSw-B5Iq8tE
How We Know That The Torture Came On Orders From The Very Top, And Not "A Few Bad Apples":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZO_2jd78UUw
Ghost's of Abu Graib
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-82848561528142057
Frontline: The Torture Question
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=abu+grab+prison&emb=0&aq=1&oq=abu+gr#q=abu+grab+prison&emb=0&aq=1&oq=abu+gr&start=10
Frontline’s “The Dark Side”
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/view/
The Geneva Conventions really don't make any provision for the types of combantants we're facing here today. Of course, the document is what, 60 years old? Do you think that the world and how warfare is waged has changed significantly since then?
As to all your other links, the problem is with the assumption that waterboarding, the technique at issue, is in fact torture. As I had mentioned in a previous post, If I come out an interrogation with my limbs, faculties, and emotional state of mind intact (other than remorse for revealing where the dirty bomb's been planted to kill untold innocent people), I can't call it torture.
If, on the other hand, I'm unable to lift my arms past a certain point because of the treatment by my captors to gain information from me, I've been tortured.
What is missing here is common sense. What's too much in place is using an interrogation technique for political reasons. Congress voted to fund the invasion of Iraq. People in position to know were informed about what was being done. Moral outrage after the fact is not moral at all.