Former Vice President Cheney has masterfully shifted the debate about torture from the realm of law and ethics to that of pure efficacy. Liberal columnist Richard Cohen "has to wonder if what he is saying now is the truth -- i.e., torture works." The famously secretive Cheney is now clamoring for the release of CIA memos that he contends shows that torture led to disclosures that he is "absolutely convinced... saved thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives." And so the Washington press pack heads off in hot pursuit of the elusive memos from the CIA, which will no doubt surface eventually.
It would not be surprising that, "having taken the gloves off" seven years ago, the CIA would have a memo in its files claiming that what it was doing actually worked. Washington is famous for bureaucrats larding the file with memos to superiors lauding the effectiveness of pet projects. Would the famously obliging George Tenet really have sent a memo to the eager Vice President telling him that after waterboarding two detainees 266 times -- including waterboarding Abu Zubaydeh 83 times in one month alone -- that waterboarding was totally useless? Abu Zubaydeh's original interrogators maintain that all of the useful information obtained came through traditional rapport building measures and that the information flow stopped once waterboarding started. No doubt, there is a counter-bureaucratic narrative. Cheney wants to take what is a stark legal and moral issue and turn it into yet another Washington "some argue this; some argue that" controversy. It is a clever bureaucratic maneuver, but it fundamentally distracts from serious debate about torture.
Let us assume that sometimes torture sometimes is effective. Let us also ignore the question of whether it is more effective than other techniques. Virtually all of the empirical evidence shows that torture is usually ineffective and is almost invariably less effective than other methods of interrogation. Also, tortured confessions frequently generate massive amounts of false information, leading to endless and costly false leads, and in turn, to a round robin of further interrogations of those wrongly identified.
But it is wrong to engage in the discussion whether torture is effective policy. The absolute prohibition on torture is not based on a consensus that it never works. Rather, it is based on the sad realization that the impulse to torture is ever-present; that human beings who are frightened or zealous or full of rage -- as human beings invariably are -- will feel a powerful need to torture and a powerful justification for acting on that need. It is useful to recall the understandable fear and anger after September 11 not to justify or excuse torture, but to understand that it is precisely at the moment of most stress that the norm against torture must be powerfully affirmed.
From the thumbscrew to the rack to the boring insects to the electrode to the waterboard, amazing human ingenuity and energy have been devoted to inflicting pain. Torture remains a constant across time and across culture. Equally universal is the human ability to wrap sadism in an overarching moral narrative. Torturers never assert that they take satisfaction in domination; that imposing cruelty assuages their anger; or that inflicting pain satisfies righteous anger against guilty outsiders. Torture is always presented as a sad necessity to a greater good. To recognize the power and ubiquity of the urge to torture is not to say that the articulated threats are not real. But history shows that torture always seems to be the solution and a solution imposed with increasing cruelty and frequency as panic and frustration increases. Can it really be the case that when Khalid Sheikh Muhammad was waterboarded for the tenth, hundredth, or hundred eighty eighth time that the interrogators or Vice President Cheney honestly believed they would obtain a better result that time than all the times before? And when Secretary Rumsfeld established a protocol at GTMO where hundreds of people, now acknowledged to have nothing to do with terrorism and no actionable intelligence, were all subject to sleep deprivation, extremes of hot and cold, stress positions, and unmuzzled dogs, could he have truly believed that there were hundreds of people who knew about future September 11ths, all of whom needed to be tortured?
There is an absolute prohibition on torture not because the impulse is alien to human nature but because it is so deeply familiar. When torture does not work, the urge is to turn up the voltage and to widen the dragnet. We do not allow torture in the ticking time bomb scenario because when the would-be torturer looks out on the landscape, he sees it littered with ticking time bombs and people who might know something about them. We do not balance the costs and benefits to see if torture works because there will always be some argument that can be made that it works or it might work or people believed at the time that it would. By refocusing on whether torture worked, Vice President Cheney wants to deflect attention from the fact that civilized legal systems make torture criminal precisely because we are ever tempted that it might work.
The possibility exists that morality has superior advantages while wickedness is a mortal weakness. Mr Cheney, for example, was wrong about everything: WMD, crony capitalism, and upholding his oath to support the Constitution. All the while, he sneered at personal virtue quite as if there were some other kind.
Those who established the Republic knew all about the Star Chamber and the Inquisition. They ruled that truth was a defense against libel, nobody should be forced to self incrimination or have to suffer cruel and unusual punishments. Federal officials and soldiers take an oath to support their works.
Whatever fools may think of this, Mr Cheney is forsworn.
--CIA : is al-Qaida in Iraq ?
--KSM : no they're not, Saddam don't like us.
--CIA : you're lying pig!! " dump more water on him! "
--KSM : i swear it we have nothing to do with Iraq.....
*** water slash *** 183th TIME
CIA : NOW JUST SAY YES AND WE'LL STOP
KSM : ok ok ok *gasping for air* YES!! al-Qaida does live in Iraq and Saddam has WMD's!!! *crying*
now do you tro//ies see what i mean about the use of torture will give false leads...huh?
Our President’s talking points disappointed me. He has a way of making nothing sound like something...like when he said he was closing Gitmo, but offered no plan for how he would do it. I listened for the details of his plan, but he wimpishly said, "I'll be working with Congress on that"! Boy, doesn't that make us all feel better now? So much for eloquent meanderings.
Polemically, the former Vice President's rebuttal was much more reasoned, specific, and to the point. Sadly, Cheney made Obama sound like a whimpering Washingtonian weasel. But that's just my take.
Otherwise
Return them to where we picked them up.
Or ANYONE can be jailed forever without trial.
Anyone can be tortured into confessing.
The Government can torture people into justifying any war crime anywhere.
KSM Was tortured to force him to say Saddam had something to do with 9/11.
Do you understand that?
Torture, war crimes Corrupt the entire society.
2,819 people perished on 9/11 -- How do we forget? you ask.
4,300 American deaths and counting in the Iraq invasion
1,331,578 Iraqi deaths due to U.S. invasion (extrapolated from Lancet report), in a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 -- no matter how many people were tortured to make the connection
686 US fatalities in Afghanistan (and, as a multi-national operation, this number does reflect the 118 Canadians killed, or 161 Brits, or...)
2,118 Afghan civilians killed last year, up from 1,523 the year before.
Do you think these millions of people will forget what we've done; are we safer? What have we accomplished that makes the turning inside-out of our laws and the shredding of even our apocryphal honor worthwhile?
I listened to a News story today about a group of Middle School Girls who were harassing another class mate... They put images online of pushing the girl off a cliff, hanging her, etc... The Girl, her Mother, Police and School Authorities are all now involved...
BUT, what got my attention! The Doctor they interviewed said: " Children need to know there are consequences for their actions!"
CONSEQUENCES??? Like Consequences of the USA unlawfully Torturing People and the World knowing those involved are being given a Political pass, and NOT Prosecuted???
President Obama, is that the your idea of being a Role Model and the "Education" you desire for our Children??? YOU, President Obama, a Constitutional Scholar, NOT pushing for Prosecuting because the timing is bad, or it might interfere with Political Goals for the Nation??? The Message? Do as we say, not as we do? Because of Politics, a President and Administration can violate the Constitution in front of the World, undermine our Nation, and get away with doing so...
I understand a need for passing Health Care, Environmental Legislation, Energy, etc., and there's an Economic Crisis going on... BUT not prosecuting at the COST of the USA now becoming less Law abiding and less American??? That is the America you desire for our Citizen's, including our children??? Spying on Citizen's without Warrants and saying WE don't Torture even as WE allow it being done???
Agree? Feel Free: http://www.whitehouse.gov/CONTACT/
Cheney destroyed evidence that would have cast light on these issues and shown him to be the un-American tyrant that he is.
There is certainly no reason he would treat those any differently.
I guess it's true what wise men say, you make your own hell.
Respectfully asked,
Francis Jens Erickson
They sent our soldiers into harms way as if they were their toy soldiers to play with.
WHY IS CHENEY GETTING MAJOR AND HUGE MAINSTREAM MEDIA COVERAGE FOR HIS OUTLANDISH ATTACKS ON OBAMA?
EVERYONE IS MISSING THIS KEY ISSUE. IF PEOPLE LIKE ¨MEET THE PRESS BOB SHIEFER WHERE NOT PUTTING CHENEY FRONT AND CENTER, WE WOULD NOT BE HAVING THIS DEBATE OF CHENEY VS. OBAMA.
CHENEY IS GETTING BIG COVERAGE IN ALL ESTABLISHMENT, CORPORATE MEDIA. WHY IS THIS?
QUESTION WHY MAINSTREAM MEDIA IS PUSHING CHENEY INTO OUR VIEW. THAT IS THE BIG QUESTION.
BILL G.
Factually accurate investigative journalism is being retired in favor of sensationalism.
A travesty, to be sure.......
The open, and as yet unaddressed, question is: when did (do?) they plan to deploy it here?
It will soomnbe that to complain about being waterboarded means you are less of "a man"
Interesting how the suspicion of being gay drives the rhetoric
CIA REDUX
" The Bay of Pigs was not simply a stinging defeat for the CIA but the end of an epoch. For a time, a disgusted President Kennedy stopped reading the CURRENT INTELLIGENCE BULLETIN provided him by the Agency. The CIA's credibility was clouded at best, and Agency confidence in the president fared no better. Allen Dulles tendered his resignation that November. Three months later, on February 28, 1962, Bissell resigned." (p. 120)
"No longer could the Agency believe that moral superiority and victory inevitably went hand in hand. That belief, a quaint legacy of World War II and the OSS, was now part of the detritus of history. The time for blind faith was over." (p. 121)
On September 23, 1961, a shaken CIA moved into its new headquarters building at Langley. On the wall in the marble lobby were engraved the scriptural words from John: "and the truth shall make you free." The Agency, practiced in the art of deception, had itself become the victim of deception." (p. 121)
in THE BOOK OF HONOR--Covet Lives and Classified Deaths at the CIA, 2000, Ted Gup. (reporter with Bob Woodward at Washington Post and at Time)
"Let us assume that sometimes torture sometimes is effective. Let us also ignore the question of whether it is more effective than other techniques." LET'S NOT!!!!!
Then you go on to say how it's not true. Then don't assume it in the first place. Whenever someone makes that statement, Dick Cheney smiles.
To torture for information not even known to be possessed means we are all potential targets.