There’s a controversy brewing over waterboarding.
Did Democratic leaders in Congress know about the technique and its use in enhanced interrogation? It seems almost certain. Was the technique effective? Dick Cheney believes so, but his appeal to have certain documents that testify to its effectiveness released to the public have been rebuffed.
This argument will never be settled because there is a profound difference in philosophy at work here. Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, I was openly calling for a genocidal pogrom against the religious group that perpetrated the massacre. I’m not terribly proud of this moment in my life, but the anger and the hate that it induced was fierce.
After a while, I managed to calm down and recant this stance, mostly through the aid of a professor of mine in graduate school (a muslim, a pacifist, and an all-around great guy). He faced the issue head-on with students who were having trouble placing the events of 9/11 into perspective and gave us hope for eventual peace and co-existence.
I began to be influenced by the media. My resolve to see our country pursue the men responsible for such an act weakened over the years. When the Abu Gharib story broke, I found myself wondering if we had become something other than America by allowing our soldiers to commit such acts. Further, when the rumors gained momentum about the secret CIA prisons and the “enhanced interrogatio techniques” being practiced at Gitmo, I was further disturbed. I felt we had lost our way as a nation, and were becoming what we most detested in order to achieve victory.
At the culmination of this metamorphosis of thought, I happened to read Marcus Luttrell’s wonderful account of Operation Redwing in his book Lone Survivor. My rage was rekindled. I was ashamed that I had allowed myself to be insidiously influenced by the tide of public opinion. You see, while there is hope for peaceful co-existence with Islam, it lies in the moderate states where people are not ground under the boot heel of religious tyranny. I have come full circle; I believe it is absolutely necessary to win the war on terror at any cost, including temporarily sacrificing some of our identity to do so. The very future of our nation and our way of life depend on it.
With that foundation in mind, you already assume that I’m okay with waterboarding as an interrogation technique. You’d be right. In fact, I believe that suspects should be questioned under drugs, with biometric equipment (polygraph, cerebral blood flow scans, etc.). If they’re not, in fact, working with a known terrorist organization, let them go. If they are, continue questioning them until we have wrung them dry, even if we’re left with a vegetable at the end. Use practical counter-intelligence techinques. Implant a few of them with a GPS device or an RFID chip and go “fishing” for other cells.
These people are this generation’s barbarians at the gate. They have no couth, no code of honor, and no restraint. Given the right materials, they would unleash armageddon on the West in a heartbeat. If we fight them using conventional rules, we will eventually lose. They will use our codes against us, they will crucify us in the court of liberal public opinion, and they will shout their message of imperialist aggression to every U.S.-opposed media outlet in the world. No method of interrogation is too harsh, no military tactic is too ruthless. We must win. My child’s future depends on it. If I must bear the terrible sins so that he may breathe freely, not concerned about the possiblity of a terrorist attack on U.S. soil, then so be it. It’s a price I’m willing to pay, and further, it’s a price I’m willing to spend my franchise on.
If I could offer advice to the CIA, I would say: “Keep waterboarding. Better yet, use sodium pentothal.”
![Let’s Kill Hitler [HD]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51hESmStH-L._SL160_.jpg)
With men like my great uncle and John McCain in mind, both tortured at the hands of their captors, I’m very resistant to believe that any form of torture is acceptable. However, I believe its possible that I am reacting emotionally, out of my religious views, and out of the experiences of my family. Though I detest the notion of torture, I am willing to entertain a discussion concerning its nature… and here are some questions I wish to ask:
What constitutes torture? (any and all definitions… legal, physical, emotional, etc.)
What unacceptable situations are there for the use of torture? any unacceptable objects or recipients of torture?
If these definitions are supplied as a standard of acceptable/unacceptable operation, and compared to our police forces (fed, state, local, etc.), would any police tactics be considered torture?
What purpose(s) does torture serve?
What can be gained through torture that cannot be gained through alternative means?
What advantages/disadvantages does torture have compared to alternative methods?
What are the consequences of using torture? (to the captor, the victim, society, politically, etc.)
What are the possible consequences of removing torture as a method of intelligence gathering?
I don’t generally hold to the notion of “the ends justify the means”, however, war will make one think practically. Survival is supreme. Honor is a concern of the living, often acclaimed by those who have never had to make a life or death choice.
With all due respect, Pete, you’re wrong. Not about the horrors that have been afflicted on people by various members of terrorist groups, or that these groups pose a clear and present danger to us. You’re wrong when you assert that “No method of interrogation is too harsh, no military tactic is too ruthless” to use against these people.
First, this country has historically prosecuted others who tortured. After World War II, an international coalition that included the US called the International Military Tribunal for the Far East convened to prosecute Japanese soldiers charged with torture. At the top of the list of techniques was water-based interrogation, known variously then as ‘water cure,’ ‘water torture’ and ‘waterboarding,’ according to the charging documents. It simulates drowning. A number of the Japanese soldiers convicted by American judges were hanged, while others received lengthy prison sentences or time in labor camps.
Second, torture doesn’t work. Period. As former FBI agent Ali Soufan, a veteran of the FBI’s efforts to combat terrorism, told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the CIA’s abusive techniques were “ineffective, slow and unreliable, and as a result harmful to our efforts to defeat al-Qaida.” According to Soufan, his own nonviolent interrogation of an al-Qaida suspect was quickly yielding valuable, actionable intelligence — until the CIA intervened.
The Army Field Manual 34-52 Chapter 1 has this to say about torture:
“Experience indicates that the use of force is not necessary to gain the cooperation of sources for interrogation. Therefore, the use of force is a poor technique, as it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.”
Finally, as Roger Koppl, a professor of economics at Fairleigh Dickinson University noted in a 2006 study on torture – it doesn’t work because the government inflicting the torture can’t make a believable promise to the torture victim that the punishment will stop once he or she tells the truth. Torture victims know governments resort to torture because they do not know the truth, so they would be unable to recognize it when they hear it. And even if they do believe they have learned the truth, the victim has no reason to believe the torture will stop.
Yes, the previous administration has made claims that torture has worked, that it has “saved thousands of Americans.” But not one iota of credible evidence has never been offered — not even an authoritative leak of any major terrorist operation interdicted based on information gathered from these interrogations. Any evidence is classified as “secret” – we simply have to believe them.
Perhaps the most common argument for torture is the “ticking time bomb” scenario. An innocent’s life is at stake. The bad guy you have captured possesses information that could save this life. He refuses to divulge. In such a case, it is claimed, the choice is easy.
Wrong. In real life, things are never that certain. And trained interrogators say that even in the most extreme circumstances, traditional methods are the most effective.
When Ronald Reagan presented the the Convention Against Torture to the Senate for ratification on May 20th, 1988, he said in part:
“The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of the Convention. It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today.
The core provisions of the Convention establish a regime for international cooperation in the criminal prosecution of torturers relying on so-called “universal jurisdiction.” Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution..
By giving its advice and consent to ratification of this Convention, the Senate of the United States will demonstrate unequivocally our desire to bring an end to the abhorrent practice of torture.”
As for Sodium Pentothal, it’s and ultra-short-acting barbiturate used as an anesthetic during surgery, by psychiatrists as a part of narcotherapy, and by veterinarians to calm animals that are injured so they can be safely examined. It’s also used with pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride in lethal injections. It has been used as a so-called “truth serum” because it has the effect of diminishing activity in part of the brain, removing inhibitions and making people chatty. Those who advocate its effectiveness as a “truth drug” believe that by relaxing an individual in this way, the person will find it harder to lie than to to tell the truth.
But its effectiveness as a “truth serum” is dubious at best. If it had actually been found to provide reliable results with minimal risks to the subject, it would be in widespread use, especially given the lengths to which the US, former Soviet Union and other countries have gone to in order to “interrogate” subjects, and it’s not. Further, subjects dosed with the drug pick up on hints from interlocutors more readily than they would in an ordinary state of mind. Someone who is drugged might make a false statement because he or she is responding to a deliberate or unconscious cue.
Dr. Ronald Katz, who teaches anesthesiology at USC and UCLA, has used sodium pentothal on thousands of patients over the last 40 years. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times in November of 2001, he noted: “There is no good scientific data on what percentage of people will answer questions truthfully, but based on my experience it’s less than 50-50.” He also noted that it remains unclear how such a compound would work on someone who refuses to divulge information, as opposed to someone who is unwittingly repressing memories.
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But back to torture. if it’s permissible for us as a country to torture, to use tactics that we decry when others use them on us, what makes us any better than our enemies? Nothing. At it’s core, the argument for torture is an argument that the ends justify the means. If this end justifies these means, then any end can be made to justify any means. It’s clear where this kind of reasoning leads. There are going to be the inevitable arguments that when the very existence of the nation is in jeopardy anything is permitted. Let’s not forget just where this kind of argument can lead:
“Don’t be misled into thinking you can fight a disease without killing the carrier, without destroying the bacillus. Don’t think you can fight racial tuberculosis without taking care to rid the nation of the carrier of that racial tuberculosis. This Jewish contamination will not subside, this poisoning of the nation will not end, until the carrier himself, the Jew, has been banished from our midst.”
Speech delivered by Hitler in Salzburg, 7 or 8 August 1920, at an NSDAP meeting
“In real life, things are never that certain.”
So, in other words, since nothing is that certain, _you_ can’t be certain that it doesn’t work, right?
Sorry, Vince, but it does work. It’s not a panacea; but it does work, often enough. As a matter of fact, it works even when you don’t use it.
You see, there’s rarely been a non-coercive custodial interrogation in human history. Pain is always there as a threat, floating in the background. This is true whether it’s a criminal being offered a lighter sentence (a form of pain reduction) by police or prosecutor for cooperation or some captive Al Qaedaist in GTMO. Those various interrogators who insist that it’s unneccesary are being intellectually dishonest with you and with everyone, to include – quite likely – themselves, because the threat is there even if they don’t use it. The enemy’s own propaganda directed at his own people ensures this.
Please go reread that section from FM 34-52 you quoted. Did you not note how little internal logical sense it makes? To rephase: “X isn’t universally true, and therefore everything everyone on the left wants us to believe we’ll say is true.” It’s nonsense.
As for Koppl, his idiocies don’t pass the first smell test. Governments don’t have to convince anyone that the torture will stop; they need merely stop it.
I said above that it’s not a panacea. It isn’t; there are some preconditions, and some caveats. Among the precondtions the big one is that you have to have some information the enemy being interrogated doesn’t know you have, so that you can spot check for truth, or you must have two people whom you have good reason to believe have the same information that you want, then separate them and apply duress (that’s code for “torture”) until the stories match, or you must have a method of immediate feedback (the ticking bomb / rescued hostage scenario). If you don’t have one of those, or some other method amounting to the same thing, it would rarely be worth the effort and might very well lead you astray.
As for caveats, one must be very careful not to let it contaminate your civil legal system. One should not use it routinely as, just as with more normal interrogation, those who can do it well are few; let it become routine and normal and you will contaminate your own intel apparat with questionable information. Thirdly, it should not be used against anyone we don’t plan on putting to death anyway. (This is a very low bar, as _everyone_ in or supporting Al Qaeda has voluntarily joined a conspiracy to wage war contrary to the laws of war*, and thus may be tried for his life and executed. And the trial needn’t be much.)
(*No, since AQ has elected to wage war contrarily to the law of war, they get _zero_ protection under the Geneva Conventions – the GCs simply don’t apply – barring only a limited judicial process to establish that they have failed to meet the requirements for lawful combatancy.)
As for America ceasing to be America – a common enough plaint, the French used torture extensively in Algeria. Does that mean that France isn’t France today? How surprised Carla Burni would be that she didn’t marry the President of France after all.
I disagree with torture, but also believe punishment should be swift and decisive. Swift and decisive punishment for obvious crimes would leave little need for interrogation.
I realize this discussion isn’t about capital punishment, but I believe capital punishment makes up many cogs in the wheel of this discussion.
Excerpt taken from online source:
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Deuteronomy 13: verses 10 and 11 concerning a duly convicted criminal
“And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; . . . (11) And all Israel shall hear, and fear, and shall do no more any such wickedness as this is among you”
Yes, so people shall hear, and so that they shall fear, and shall do no more any such wickedness. Today, when Capital punishment is applied, the punishment is not soon after the trial, but it is years, sometimes decades after the crime. When man does the right thing, the wrong way, he gets the wrong results. Man’s way of Capital punishment does not prevent other crimes.
But properly applied, Capital punishment does prevent crime, God says so, but only when God’s Law is applied, not man’s way, but God’s way. After a fair trial, and if found guilty, punishment that is speedy, and public. As an example to others. So that people will hear, so that people will fear, so that people shall do no more any such wickedness, no more crime.
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We (Americans) are so intent on getting information from a criminal in order to catch other criminals that we are ignoring the punishment for the crime or prolonging the punishment. If we are swift in dealing with terrorists/criminals then who will rise against us? We foment the terrorist and criminal element with our lack of decisive and expedient action.
We’re all friends here, Vince!
Besides, you know I like to toss the occasional verbal grenade out there.
Random thoughts that popped in my head this morning as i read these arguements,
What would Jack Bauer do? (Whatever it took to save innocent and/or American Lives…)
The needs of the Many outweigh the needs of the Few. (Depends on the Many and the Few I guess)
If we lower ourselves to the level of our enemies, then they win the ultimate battle. But wouldn’t it be nice to know that a whole bunch of them won’t be around for the trophy ceremony? (Dennis Miller from ‘way back’)
“Man’s way of Capital punishment does not prevent other crimes.”
Sorry to disagree (NOT!) Catalyst22, but I have never seen an executed criminal come back and commit another crime.. I am a peace loving person.. Remember, there is nothing more peaceful than a dead man… Blitzfike
What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?
What good for a man to save his soul, Tasuja, but to forfeit the world?
“For whoseover saveth the life of one, it shall be as though he saved all mankind.” Quran, Sura 5: 32. Thus, the man who uses torture and saves others from death shall be duly rewarded by God. His soul’s pretty safe, in other words.
Tom, if you save your soul and lose the world, then you have found the only thing that matters.
I do not care what the quran says and I do not live in fear of what a terrorist may do. I do live in fear of becoming one of them in a wasted effort to pretend I have control.
We can protect ourselves, and we can protect our children, but the moment we become what they are, we have lost. There is nothing to fight for. We can rebuild on the broken bodies of those wrongly used and abused by past atrocities, or we can try to become something better.
You talk about how france is what france is now and they used whatever they used in the past, but ultimately, is anything better for it? You look at it as if they have some sort of victory, but where is it?
If we torture terrorists, do terrorists no longer exist? Where is the victory, and at what cost will it ever come?
In all of this, I will be labeled as some kind of liberal peace lover who just wants to turn the guns into flowers, but in reality, I just feel the price is to high. It is exactly how I feel about capital punishment. You cannot unkill the innocent. You cannot untorture the people that know nothing. As soon as you can guarantee me that no innocent person will ever be punished under this, you will have my endorsement.
Until that day comes, I have as much to fear about my son being labeled a terrorist and tortured as I do him being killed by one.
Blitz,
“Man’s way of Capital punishment does not prevent other crimes.”
Man’s way of capital punishment is to prolonge it. I’m all for “field expedient” termination. Its the long drawn out “man’s way” of holding criminals forever then executing them in quiet back rooms somewhere with little fan fair. Not much to learn from in that situation.
When I discipline my kids I don’t take them aside from the rest of the kids. I do it right there, right then in front of the family. Their embarassment and hurt fealings are part of the punishment and often all that is needed. They also serve a pretty good example.
I forgot to say that Tasuja is a smelly liberal…
What do you mean by soul? The expression is used for everything from how one feels about oneself to that divine spark judged by God or reincarnated by whatever. If you are referring to the latter two, what is your basis, theological or otherwise, for believing that the soul is held accountable only for what it does, rather than for what it does _and_ what it had the power to prevent but failed to? If you don’t have an answer for that, then try rephrasing your original question as: “What matter if a man keep his hands clean in this life, and lose his soul in the next for his wilful or negligant failure to prevent evil it was in his power to prevent?”
I could be wrong in my belief, but the seat of my belief in capital punishment rests heavily in the below verses. I think it might be interesting to any Christians passing by
ACTS 25:6 “And when he had remained among them more than ten days, he went down to Caesarea. And the next day, sitting on the judgment seat, he commanded Paul to be brought. 7 When he had come, the Jews who had come down from Jerusalem stood about and laid many serious complaints against Paul, which they could not prove, 8 while he answered for himself, “Neither against the law of the Jews, nor against the temple, nor against Caesar have I offended in anything at all.”
9 But Festus, wanting to do the Jews a favor, answered Paul and said, “Are you willing to go up to Jerusalem and there be judged before me concerning these things?”
10 So Paul said, “I stand at Caesar’s judgment seat, where I ought to be judged. To the Jews I have done no wrong, as you very well know. 11 For if I am an offender, or have committed anything deserving of death, I do not object to dying; but if there is nothing in these things of which these men accuse me, no one can deliver me to them.”
By soul, to use your terms, I mean “divine spark judged by God”. As for my theological reasoning for why I would be held accountable for such actions. I have a hard time reconciling how torturing people would be loving my enemies.
I am not accountable for the actions of others. I will not be judged by who kills someone. If I was given a hypothetical where I would have to either kill my wife or my son, I would kill neither, and thier blood is on the hands of those who forced the situation.
To think torturing some will allow us to win this war is folly. We will never win this war, for with each torture we create 10 more enemies. We are creating an army, and the more we rage against it, the bigger it will become.
I believe our only chance is with justice and mercy. Torture is not justice, it is cruelty.
Torture works has for maybe a thousand years, you just have to be sure you have the right person most will say anything to stop the pain. BTW someone should water board Nancy peolsie , I am not kidding
Tasuja’s ideology is torture!
Catalyst, you and I are together on the field expedient methodology. I believe that there should be a “reasonable” amount of time for appeals or new evidence, like a month or two at most, then do the deed. There will sometimes be innocent people who get caught up in the system, but as the Rurales used to say…
“God will sort the souls…”
The topic, for a bit, seemed to stray into Biblical semantics. Am I to assume that the majority of the commenters take one of the following positions?:
1) Torture should never be used under any circumstances
or
2) The needs of the many outweigh the principles of the few
I’d still like to hear what we collectively consider “torture” to be… anyone care to take a stab at a definition?
Conservative talk show host voluntarily gets water boarded and changes his tune. Link includes video of him actually being water boarded.
This is coming from the guy who calls Obama a secret Muslim.
“It’s absolutely torture.”
If you can watch this without getting queasy or setting off your panic button, there is something wrong. Those of you sitting in Cheney’s camp insisting this isn’t torture, one of your own had the stones to put his money where his mouth was.
Now imagine being water boarded over 200 times. Sounds like after 6 seconds Mancow was ready to tell anyone, anything.
I have some definite objections to the video, but would like to hear others voice their opinions before I rip it a new one.
It is apparent to me from this video that this technique, much like the false electrocution scenario, tortures through creating fear, not through anything that could be remotely described as true bodily harm. Perhaps this is the hair that is split to determine what is an “enhanced” torture technique? Torture by terror, not by beatings or pain infliction… Even so, I am against this technique. Though it may be a stretch to so analogize, I liken this to the robber (rapist, kidnapper, etc.) who uses a toy or model gun instead of the real thing. The victims are still forced to comply under the fear of death or of great bodily harm. The robber uses such as the false weapon is cheaper to acquire, still exacts the same effect (fear and control) and intended results, and provides a legal loophole should he be captured by law enforcement (there was no intent to cause death or bodily harm, in spite of the obvious assault).
That aside, it reminds me of “Chinese water torture”. Perhaps it is a variant. Note the term includes the word “torture”, and that this technique was feared, despite the seemingly innocuous dripping of water upon the victim… there is no threat of drowning, choking, etc. yet torture it remains.
My previous questions still stand.