You Call This Pressure on Obama to Keep Torturing?

Supposedly, there's an entrenched, influential pro-torture constituency that is threatening to thwart President-Elect Obama's pledge to bring an end to ruinous detention and torture policies.

A front page Washington Post article on Saturday entitled "Obama Under Pressure On Interrogation Policy" promised, but ultimately failed, to make the case that key players in the national security establishment who back torture practices are mounting an effective opposition to banning torture.

"Some See Harsh Methods as Essential," screamed the subtitle. The article cites four tangible sources as "critical" of Obama's promised torture ban: soon-to-be-ex Vice President Dick Cheney, soon-to-be-ex CIA Director Michael V. Hayden, "one senior [Bush] administration official," and "another [Bush] administration official."

The article did not name any torture advocates who would have any official responsibilities in the incoming Obama administration.

The Post also lavishes the faintest of praise on the effectiveness of the torture policy. Citing an unclassified DNI report titled "Summary of the High Value Terrorist Detainee Program," the waterboarding of Al Qaeda big fish Abu Zubaida led directly to uncovering the role of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (K.S.M.) in the 9/11 plot and to the capture of another Al Qaeda big fish, Ramzi Binalshibh.

Neither the Post article nor the DNI report mentioned anything about ticking time bombs, atomic bombs, dirty bombs or any other imminent threats to Americans. In other words, torture has been used as a garden variety human intelligence technique, not as a once-in-a-lifetime last resort.

So does anybody who matters want to keep torturing?

The article does state that career intelligence officials "want to see how supportive the new president and his team will be," noting that "all the agency's actions were authorized by Bush with legal opinions and concurrence by senior White House officials and Congress." This indicates that CIA will trot out a paper trail leading right back to the Bush White House, should mid-level and junior intelligence officers get sucked into an investigative witch-hunt.

But that doesn't mean that rank-and-file CIA officers are lobbying behind the scenes to continue to mistreat terrorist detainees. Indeed, most of the former and serving intelligence officers I know are disgusted and disappointed to learn that their agency-their colleagues-have been involved in torture and extrajudicial imprisonment.

And does anybody who matters think that torture is worth the cost to American greatness?

Republican cheerleaders such as Joe Scarborough, like, totally think torture is totally awesome!

This past Monday morning Scarborough exclaimed, "I know for a fact that waterboarding brought our interrogators, brought Americans, probably about 70-75 percent of what they get."

Jane Hamsher of FireDogLake debunked Scarborough's ridiculous claim right away, citing The Dark Side by Jane Mayer and David Rose in Vanity Fair. Mayer wrote of how one senior CIA official recounted that he was told K.S.M.'s coercive interrogation produced nothing "solid" and that K.S.M. later recanted much of his forced confessions. A former Pentagon analyst told Rose, "K.S.M. produced no actionable intelligence. He was trying to tell us how stupid we were."

But I digress: Joe Scarborough doesn't really matter, though his views-detached as they are from fact-based reality-are representative of the torture dead-ender constituency.

And skeptical Americans don't need to know the inside baseball of intelligence analysis and operations to come to the following conclusion about torture: no massive terrorist plot menacing thousands of Americans has been thwarted because of torture.

How do we know this?

Because news of such a thing undoubtedly would have been leaked and spun by Joe Scarborough and the rest of the conservative noise machine into a triumphant narrative vindicating torture.

Instead, the leaks of how torture doesn't work tell a story of barbarity, failure, and desperation. The end of torture promises to move America onto a path of humanity, success and intelligent, patient strength.

How can anyone, liberal or conservative, argue against that?

 

Follow Frank Naif on Twitter: www.twitter.com/frank_naif

Comments

[in10se]

10:53 PM on 01/16/2009

I
" Instead, the leaks of how torture doesn't work tell a story of barbarity, failure, and desperatio­n. The end of torture promises to move America onto a path of humanity, success and intelligen­t, patient strength. How can anyone, liberal or conservati­ve, argue against that?"

I would argue that no tool should be unavailabl­e to the President and his Intellenge­nce apparatus.
Never give up any advantage. The safety and security of the nation is the first responsibi­lity of government­.

[DavidEBrown]

12:13 AM on 01/16/2009

My sense is that the primary motivation for using methodolog­ies like torture or other "enhanced interrogat­ion" measures is because they provide a kind of grotesque make-work project for those authorizin­g and/or employing those methodolog­ies so that they can persuade themselves that they are asserting control over a situation in which they feel otherwise very much out of control and therefore vulnerable and helpless (one of the most intolerabl­e states for those who believe they MUST be in control all the time, in what is perceived to be both a hostile and dangerous world).. These methodolog­ies are, in fact, relatively easy to employ, require little imaginatio­n, skill, or expenditur­e of energy or other resources, and almost invariably produce some kind of product which we can persuade ourselves we would not have if we hadn't employed those techniques­, and whose value is very difficult to disprove. As Mr. Naif has indicated, however, it rarely produces a product whose value can be clearly establishe­d, often produces product that is more harmful than beneficial­, and always diverts resources and attention from more soundly productive methodolog­ies.
Unfortunat­ely, and inconvenie­ntly, sound interrogat­ion techniques require preparatio­n, and an understand­ing of how and why people think and do the things they do. When you can understand those concepts and acquire the skills to effective employ that knowledge, it is truly remarkable how you can help an individual want to give you the informatio­n they have, because they view you as an ally rather than a threat.

[ouroborous]

08:03 PM on 01/14/2009

I think you are conflating overt support for torture (which just about nobody but Dick Cheney advocates in the political world) and a great degree of pressure to keep the status quo, go with "experienc­ed" profession­als, not "rock the boat" and so on.

All of those positions, while not explicitly "pro torture," would lead to the same end: a continuati­on of the "harsh interrogat­ion tactics" -- nee, torture -- that went on under Bush 43.

That's not to say that Obama will cave in to the pressure; indeed, I have guarded hopes that the Good Guys will win the day. But please don't confuse a lack of overt support for torture with a lack of fairly significan­t pressure to keep the previous, torture-ap­proving regime in place.

[anachoret]

06:52 PM on 01/14/2009

You're posts are absolutely fantastic, Mr. Naif. The good kind of fantastic, I mean. Unlike the fantastic claims that a guy like Morning Joe (am I still dreaming) Scarboroug­h makes. But he's on at the same time as Washington Journal, and isn't TiVo worthy. So I only hear what he says when it's silly enough to be news. 70 to 75%...?

[sticksnstones]

06:44 PM on 01/14/2009

The Washington Post is bound and determined to self-destr­uct. The article was nothing less than a position paper parroting the views of the owner/publ­isher. Newspapers are making themselves irrelevant with this kind of " news ". The print media whipping-b­oy, declining readership­, is a REACTION to biased, subjective­, social- conservati­ve babble.