Category: Torture

Darius Rejali, who knows more about the history and sociology of torture than anyone I know of, has a must-read piece on how torture has often begun in democratic societies. Money quote:

When we examine the history of modern torture technique by technique – and there are dozens of examples – we find that newer, "cleaner" tortures first appear in conditions of public monitoring, usually in democratic states. It is only afterward that we find authoritarian states adopting them.

If the spread of torture techniques suggests a blurry line between "us" and "them," it also teaches that there’s no real boundary between "there" and "here." It would be ignoring history to assume that what happens in an American-run prison in Iraq will stay in Iraq. Soldiers who learn torture techniques abroad get jobs as police when they return, and the new developments in torture you read about today could yet be employed in a neighborhood near you.

Curiouser and curiouser. I’ve learned to be a little suspicious when former CIA agents suddenly pop up on television describing torture sessions that have been wiped from the official record. Especially when those agents turn out not to have been actually present for the interrogation, give the opposition a morsel of truth – yep, this was torture – and yet also spin the story in ways amenable to torture advocates. You know how Fox News played the Kiriakou story.

Today, the Washington Post offers a must-read on conflicting versions of what was done to Zubaydah. The version relayed by FBI agents, and picked up by Ron Suskind, differs from the president’s account. Surprise! According to retired FBI agent Daniel Coleman, who led an examination of documents after Abu Zubaida’s capture in early 2002 and worked on the case, Zubaydah gave the only real information he had before he was tortured. But the CIA believed he had more info and the president authorized his extensive, months-long, Gestapo-playbook torture. This, moreover, was not some one-off 35 second waterboarding session:

Officials said, harsh tactics used on him at a secret detention facility in Thailand went on for weeks or, depending on the account, even months. The videotaping of Abu Zubaida in 2002 went on day and night throughout his interrogation, including waterboarding, and while he was sleeping in his cell, intelligence officials said. "Several hundred hours" of videotapes were destroyed in November 2005, a senior intelligence officer said. The CIA has said it ceased waterboarding in 2003.

Who should we believe? I’ve learned, alas, that this president is not credible in testifying to the details of his own war crimes. Recall the massive discrepancies between what the Bush administration first conceded went on at Abu Ghraib and what the photographs subsequently revealed. Now use your imagination to figure out what has really been going on under Cheney’s watchful eyes. The destruction of the CIA tapes was done for one reason and one reason only: to prevent it becoming indisputable that Abu Ghraib was not just Bush policy – official Bush policy was worse.

What you see in the Zubaydah case is what always always happens when you green-light torture. You enter a world where the truth is inherently corrupt. As soon as you torture, the information is suspect. Zubaydah gave some information before torture – most crucially the identity of Khaled Sheikh Mohammed. Nothing he gave thereafter is credible.

Notice what the Zubaydah case tells us about the key argument of torture advocates like Charles Krauthammer: that torture should only be used when we already know that someone has actionable information on an imminent catastrophic threat. We’re five years into the Bush torture regime and despite hundreds – and possibly thousands – of torture sessions, this was never, ever the case. Charles’ abstract argument has been rendered completely moot by the evidence of the past five years. The United States made the decision to torture Zubaydah after he had already given helpful information – solely because they suspected he had more – and not in response to any knowledge of any imminent, catastrophic threat. In the beginning – not even in the end – torture became its own rationale, creating a need for torturers to justify their war crimes by finding more information through more torture, and unleashing the sadism and evil that exists in every human heart – even the most trained and professional. And then the war crimes created a need to destroy the evidence of war crimes and so the criminality of the government deepened, cloaked in the secrecy of national security. and now we are caught between an acceptance that the president is a war criminal and the need to keep fighting a vital war.

In the end, Orwell was right. The point of torture is always torture. No executive that seizes this power can be contained once it has crossed that Rubicon. And that is why – more than any other reason – this policy must be ended. Because no president can be trusted with it. This is not about Bush and Cheney as such – although they reveal what a callow president and unhinged vice-president with radical theories of executive power can accomplish. It is about the presidency and its war powers – and the need for clear limits when war knows no geographical boundaries, no expiration date and no clear distinction between citizen and non-citizen.

Here’s a really helpful and deeply chilling open-source recreation of the chronology that led the United States both to legalize and authorize torture and to destroy the most glaring evidence – the CIA torture tapes. Imagine if the same people had been successful and destroyed the Abu Ghraib photographs. Bush would still be denying that any abuses had taken place at all.

Jonah Goldberg’s party might be dragging citizens off the street, incarcerating them without charges for four years and torturing them (if you haven’t heard of Jose Padilla, you’ve been reading too much NRO), they might have suspended habeas corpus indefinitely, they might be wire-tapping your phone without warrants, they may be claiming presidential authority to ignore laws and treaties … but the real fascism can be found in:

a female grade school teacher with an education degree from Brown or Swarthmore.

Be afraid.

Dan Froomkin is surely right that the president’s vow to veto legislation that simply reasserts the existing law, and upholds the Geneva Conventions is a clear assertion of the right of the president to engage in the following acts:

"forcing detainees to be naked, perform sexual acts, or pose in a sexual manner; placing hoods or sacks over detainees’ heads or duct tape over their eyes; beating, shocking, or burning detainees; threatening them with military dogs; exposing them to extreme heat or cold; conducting mock executions; depriving them of food, water, or medical care; and waterboarding."

Bush is now fully owning Abu Ghraib. That, I guess, is one helpful result of flushing out what this president has done. At the time, of course, he expressed shock at the techniques exposed by the photographs at Abu Ghraib. Now he is declaring them legal and necessary. They are not legal – and the president operating under the rule of law cannot simply invent or reinvent what is or is not the law. But of course, he is not operating under the rule of law. He is operating under the rules of the Decider.

An encouraging editorial from the conservative Armed Forces Journal, directed to Rudy Giuliani and Michael Mukasey:

Let AFJ be crystal clear on a subject where these men are opaque: Waterboarding is a torture technique that has its history rooted in the Spanish Inquisition. In 1947, the U.S. prosecuted a Japanese military officer for carrying out a form of waterboarding on a U.S. civilian during World War II.

Waterboarding inflicts on its victims the terror of imminent death. And as with all torture techniques, it is, therefore, an inherently flawed method for gaining reliable information. In short, it doesn’t work. That blunt truth means all U.S. leaders, present and future, should be clear on the issue.

Check out this NYT piece I read this morning. It’s about the use of waterboarding, sleep deprivation, hypothermia and other well-documented torture techniques throughout the centuries, all clearly outside the Geneva Conventions, and all universally recognized and prosecuted as torture in the past. And what do you find? Scott Shane uses the following terms:

"harsh treatment"
"tough interrogation methods"
"coercive techniques"

The only use of the word "torture" is when detailing critics’ assertions or a specific legal accusation. Everywhere else, the NYT wimps out. Then there is this passage:

The deaths of several prisoners who had been questioned by C.I.A. officers or contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan — but outside the detention program for high-level Qaeda prisoners — have been referred to the Justice Department. Only one C.I.A. contractor, David A. Passaro, has been prosecuted, receiving an eight-year sentence for beating an Afghan man who later died. Still, investigations can impose a high price no matter how they end. “It’s not just the fear of going to jail,” Mr. Goldsmith said. “It’s the enormous expense of hiring lawyers. It’s seeing your reputation destroyed. It’s losing your career.”

Again: "beating an Afghan man who later died." Here is the reality:

According to the prosecutors, Wali, while chained to the floor and wall of a cell, was tortured and beaten by Passaro on the arms, wrists, knees and abdomen using a metal flashlight, closed fist and shod foot. Passaro also, on at least one occasion, kicked Wali in the groin." According to Reuters, prosecutors also claimed Passaro kicked Wali so hard that the detainee was lifted off the ground and probably fractured his pelvis, making it impossible for him to urinate.

Here we have a case in which a CIA contractor tortured a man to death – and the sympathy is supposed to be primarily for those who may have to deal with legal bills!

There is in the reporting of the torture scandal in the MSM a total failure of nerve.

It is not a disputable opinion that waterboarding is torture. There is no debate here. There aren’t two sides to the issue. That waterboarding is torture is a legal, empirical, historical fact. There are many legitimate and legal methods of interrogation, and all can and should be debated. But torture isn’t one of them. And the cowardice in refusing to use plain English to state the truth is part of what enables torture to endure. Look at the headline of the piece:

C.I.A. Agents Sense Shifting Support for Methods

Now imagine if the headline had told the truth:

C.I.A. Agents Sense Shifting Support for Torture

Wouldn’t that help raise awareness? This is the same MSM cowardice that refuses to say in clear reporting when a candidate is simply telling an untruth; or that passes on rumors without clearly saying they are lies. Many in the press have done an amazing job in bringing the war crimes of the Bush administration to light. But too many are also critical in keeping them hidden. The New York Times is not alone. But Bill Keller needs to tell his reporters: torture is torture, and no euphemism will suffice. It’s the president’s job to cover his behind; it’s not the press’s.   

What a genuinely strong president does when confronted with torture by American soldiers.

Just when you thought the waterboarders couldn’t get any glibber…