"Torture does not work because the information is not reliable. As far back as the middle ages, people confessed to anything just to stop the torture. Even though it meant they would be put to death. How can you say it is different today? Rep or Dem doesn't matter. It stops and those who approved this should be questioned vigorously." --William Pontemane, ABC News' "The Note" Contributor
Mr. Pontemane, another blogger like myself, said it better than I could so I repeat what he said here. The revelations of torture approved in White House approved memos, supported by Justice Department officials like John Woo and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez only serves to show how much we lose when we let the hysteria of certain high officials over ride our legal principles.
I welcome the Obama Administration going after anyone in the higher levels of the last government to find out how many of those in the Bush Administration and Congress know of and signed off on water boarding, body-slamming, and any other tactics that violate the spirit of the Constitution and America's status as a signatory nation of the Geneva Convention Accords against torture. I don't know if anything will be done, but the Senate Intelligence Committee is apparently launching an investigation and let the chips fall where they may as far as I am concerned.
Some prominent Bush Administration Officials (no less than Dick Cheney) and Republicans like John Boehner, the House Minority Leader, have defended the torture tactics as being effective in gaining information. That this line of argument completely ignores the moral bankruptcy of using torture as a matter of course, and the loss in national prestige and international cooperation we have lost by using "black sites" and contract CIA operatives to torture Al-Que-da leaders and innocent suspects alike shows how desperate these folks are to cover themselves using fear tactics. One person who was on site when the interrogations began has blown the whistle after many years of silence.
This from Ali Saufon, an FBI agent involved in fighting terrorism, in a recent New York Times op-ed column:
"One of the most striking parts of the memos is the false premises on which they are based. The first, dated August 2002, grants authorization to use harsh interrogation techniques on a high-ranking terrorist, Abu Zubaydah, on the grounds that previous methods hadn’t been working. The next three memos cite the successes of those methods as a justification for their continued use.
"It is inaccurate, however, to say that Abu Zubaydah had been uncooperative. Along with another F.B.I. agent, and with several C.I.A. officers present, I questioned him from March to June 2002, before the harsh techniques were introduced later in August. Under traditional interrogation methods, he provided us with important actionable intelligence.
"We discovered, for example, that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Abu Zubaydah also told us about Jose Padilla, the so-called dirty bomber. This experience fit what I had found throughout my counterterrorism career: traditional interrogation techniques are successful in identifying operatives, uncovering plots and saving lives.
"There was no actionable intelligence gained from using enhanced interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah that wasn’t, or couldn’t have been, gained from regular tactics. In addition, I saw that using these alternative methods on other terrorists backfired on more than a few occasions — all of which are still classified. The short sightedness behind the use of these techniques ignored the unreliability of the methods, the nature of the threat, the mentality and modus operandi of the terrorists, and due process."
We shall see what comes of this investigation and what will our government has to deal with past horrors without partisanship and with transparency. If nothing else, the American public (and the other nations of the world committed to human rights at least in word if not always in deed) will know what was done and who ordered it.
Doug there was much more to this as never had I forget his name - a head of the CIA pulled into the oval office where a few had him work over things that were a breach. Any civilized country has used methods but for the most part right now I felt that it was something to just move on with but now that it's all out there - Obama did not have to place it out he could have exercised one option as president and took care of it in a different manner. However it's out and lets see what happens as each country has a way of dealing with terrorists. Maybe this was something that has gone on for years but the manner that it was handled for 8 of those years is really something the a few former people may have to address. They discovered a few at the price of harming many.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion this was something that may lead outside of America and to a International Court. Who would have ever thought. For the life of me I can't see how this all took place without someone standing up - Powell left with all of this disarray and I really don't think that anything will come from it - but in this day and age - nothing surprises me.
There are and have always been other means....but Bush, Cheney and Rumsfield believed in imperialistic power in a manner that has never taken place in United States. What bothers me most is the deceit. With this and so many things and they got away with it.
Our civilization shows from the way powerful people treat the weak and unprotected ones.
ReplyDeleteOur democracy shows from the stance of majorities toward minorities.
Any thought about legitimizing torture, especially against SUSPECTS (who may finally prove to be not guilty[!], as it already happened with prisoners of Guantanamo), also shows how civilized we are.
I feel the same way! We must not ever lower ourselves down to the level with terrorists.
ReplyDeleteAs a member of Amnesty international I am aware of the awful suffering where there is torture. Confessions under torture should be ignored. If we inflict such suffering on others we are not upholding human rights and can't complain when it is used against one of our own. I also don't agree with humiliation of prisoners at the hands of their guards and we have heard much about this in recent years. I believe some people, who don't like violence, say sleep deprivation works just as well by weakening resistance. It is awful none the less. Wasn't it the Chinese who used this method when brainwashing?
ReplyDeleteI am sure the way we treat our prisoners, whatever they have done, must be seen to make us the better man.
Surely this will help other countries learn, that by treating someone in a humane manner, must be the way forward, and not an eye for an eye method!
Actually if sleep deprivation was use on me I'd tell all within the hour...
We need to weed out the racists who raped Moslem women in Iraq and prevent them from enlisting. I see some so-called vets on 'Ply who are visious about Moslems. No wonder why George W got shoes thrown at him.
ReplyDeleteBoth torture and capital punishment are symptoms of archaic and reptilian stages of political evolution with nothing morally to separate them. I hope that this retrospective inquiry extends it's brief to all aspects of medieval penal policy wherever it exists.
ReplyDeleteAaron has a solid grasp of the Bigger Picture - but we still have to kick some solid butt here at home by way of holding ourselves accountable.
ReplyDeleteIt amazes me how many people have written mountains of verbiage, justifying these actions because 'this is America', and that 'international law shouldn't apply to us'.
Yes, Jack, it was a wide net that was cast and many innocent Afghans and others were tangled in it, further proof that people will incriminate others just to stop personal pain.
ReplyDeleteWell summed up Andreas. We forget what ideals we are asking young people to protect.
ReplyDeleteQuite so. It appears more people are coming back around to a return to the old legal boundries, Goldie.
ReplyDeleteYou're right Cassandra. And I believe a lot of it comes from the people like yourself who support the work of groups like the Red Cross, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
ReplyDeleteAs something this is immoral, questionable in value, and shameful once revealed, torture employed by an open society fails all tests for a sensible tactic in my mind.
War and the pain inflicted toward the general population from it is bad enough without giving license to sadists.
ReplyDeleteThis is the thing which scares me, Doug -- no one in our government has mentioned the morality of the thing.
ReplyDeleteWhere are the Fundies now? Sorry, but my mind works this way - with all the vaunted 'religion' in America, is it really just a case of "Christians vs. Muslims?" They're somehow not 'worthy' of proper treatment, because they're 'different'?
Dostoyevsky said that "...a nation may be judged by observing its prisons." The truth of this is incontrovertible, and contains the seeds of our own destruction.
I totally agree, AA. The Senate inquiry indeed has its work cut out if they want to make a serious dent in restoring the rule of law in these matters.
ReplyDeleteOr idiots like Sean Hannity over at Fox who thinks water-boarding isn't torture. A true sign of moral cowardice is an idiot who creates "torturous" exceptions for his side in a fight he'd never grant to an enemy.
ReplyDeleteDostoyevsky was right, of course Astra. There does seem to be a moral bankruptcy here that calls us to hold our leaders to real account.
ReplyDeleteI had a similar 'discussion' with an online-friend who accepted none of the overwhelming evidence of Israel's many violations of both international law and the commonly-accepted rules of war during their recent rape of Gaza -- he simply kept stating, "Israel is not a repressive state."
ReplyDeleteI suppose if you just keep saying it over and over, eventually it becomes true (?)
Hannity, O'Reilly, and the rest of their ilk are morons. They're alive only for the day that 'their side; the right side' can come back into power somehow and 'git-r-dun'.
I'll go conspicuously silent if that happens -- either I'll be in one of Mr. Bush's new FEMA 'detention centers', or I'll be on Pitcairn Island, growing bananas....
lol. Yeah I don't especially want to wind up at FEMA's Camp Cheney in the Aleutians myself.
ReplyDeleteMoral bankruptcy indeed. The US administration, military and anyone else who uses violence, torture, and abuse have shown themselves to be nothing more than criminals and terrorists. Already its too late, they have already shown how untenable it is that they should be regarding themselves as "world leaders".
ReplyDeleteLast year there were complaints about the torture of sailors and marines at the hands of the Iranians. However, Jamil el Bannco was shopped by us to the Americans and abandoned for four years, god knows what he went through. The British government still uses confessions made under torture, this is all wrong! We rant on about other countries being less civilised, but what does it say about us, a country people use to look up to. America was once thought of as a haven for the free.
ReplyDeleteSomething I find very frightening, is that we are having cases of young children torturing each other. Many parents don't know what their children are watching on television. Even we as adults are getting desensitised to such things. Wasn't it Stalin who said, one man's death is a tragedy a million a statistic? I really do think at first the general population were horrified that torture was being used, now they fail to complain and it is accepted by many. We should all complain and keep on complaining.
Thank you Doug, as ever, an interesting blog.
This torture 'business' reminds me of my trip to Orlando where I had the displeasure of being able to tour a couple of barns full of medieval torture apparatuses on display. I took a lot of pictures while my skin crawled with visions of their use. I deleted tham all after looking at them when I got home. Has anything changed except the equipment and methods? Seems to me that it all makes the word 'civilization' a rather noxious thing.
ReplyDeleteWoo, Cheney, Bush and all the rest of those who sign the papers and provide the ultimate approvals for torture and the methods useable operate at arms length which makes their actions even more diabolical. And then there are guys like Harper who send supposed terrorist criminals back to their torturing countries and thus wash their dirty hands. And then there is the torture imposed under the heading of 'human rights abuse'.
I wonder sometimes why the men who actually do the torturing don't stand up and say, "No!" to what they are asked to do. And I wonder why so many torture others without hierarchical prompting. There seems to be some kind of safety net around these sorts and that has to be the biggest concern. Even animals don't torture other animals. I don't see people talk about this part, probably because recognition of it brings the dispicable too close to home. But, that's another street....... See what I mean?
Entirely despicable. I wonder why people look for careers in which being capable of torture or killing other human beings seems to be the main requirement. Perhaps if they weren't in those jobs they would be taking up spaces in prison cells like the psychopaths that they probably are.
ReplyDeleteThats's one of the things that bother me as well, Cassandra. The desensitisization of things like this through the media: programs like "24" which employ torture as a method of getting their "hero" more information. When you see torture used by protagonists in a drama, it's disturbing to say the least. And of course, sadly, children are the most susceptible.
ReplyDeleteI am surprised to hear that the British government allow torture confessions in a court of law--I thought this had stopped after the Good Friday Accords in '98.
I am also amazed when I go on US-based major news websites and see so many bloggers defending torture tactics. Are they simply personally frightened of terrorism and Islamic extremism or, that much more likely, immured by the barbarity.
And, as you point out in the British POWs case vis a vi Iran they would get upset if that done to their own captured soldiers and citizens. Empathy is a lost emotion for some.
It is bad, Iri Ani. It's come to the point where the lid is going to have to come off and people punished for past fragrant human rights abuses. It's going to be a long, long road back
ReplyDeleteVery true Wren. The idea of people defending Bush and Cheney as "statesman" in the wake of this is ludicris. Captured Al-queda leaders were reportedly to be "water boarded" 80 to 180 times, not to mention the crimes of Abu Gahib prison where no one of high rank was punished.
ReplyDeleteHow many times does such barbarity have to occur to get someone to say anything you want? What were the CIA black ops boys looking for--an excuse to invade Iraq maybe?
There's a reason why the American Constitution prohibits "cruel and unusual punishment" specifically in the Bill of Rights.
I'm thankful at least that Robert Mueller, the head of the FBI (Federal Bureau of Invesigation) allowed his agents not to be involved in these heinous procedures. The important thing to do right now is get all the material and witnesses out there for the Senate to produce a through investigation. What will come of that I hope will be at least an end to this horrid chapter in American history.
ReplyDeleteThe violence and torture of others is awful to witness even for an adult. The humiliation of prisoners seen to be crawling like animals on the floor, was shown throughout the day on the news. A mother is often in the kitchen preparing food and totally unaware of what her child is being subjected to. What it does to them is worrying. We are told that video games have warnings to say what age group they are for. It takes a responsible parent to put that into practice, but what of the other kind of parent?
ReplyDeleteThe last write up I read, stated, confessions made under torture are still used. The trouble is we aren't always told the truth, are we, Doug!
No the truth is rare in matters like this, Cassandra: not until officials absolutely, positively have to stop evasions do they tell the truth. And that's where I'm concerned that investigative reporters working in newspapers and magazines and the other "old media" television/radio outlets aren't decimated too badly by the rise of the new Internet-dominated media.
ReplyDeleteAnd, yes, there should be warnings on reporting this material on television so parents can be forewarned.
I agree with you all the way, Doug.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you are, Red!
ReplyDelete