No Scream? Ice Cream!

Might be worth a read:

What is the best way to break a terrorist? Waterboarding? Stress positions? What about pizza, ice cream, or sugar-free cookies?

The most surprising element of former FBI interrogator Ali Soufan's memoir, The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against al-Qaeda, is how receptive terrorists are to food. When Soufan takes L'Houssaine Kherchtou, an Al Qaeda fixer, out for pizza, Khertchou tells him he's "not an Al Qaeda guy anymore." Mohamed Rashed Daoud al-Owhali, who helped facilitate the bombing of the American embassy in Nairobi in 1998, spills the beans after being plied with cookies and Meals Ready to Eat. Tariq el-Sawah, captured at Tora Bora and currently detained at Guantanamo Bay, has a fondness for ice cream. And in the desperate hours immediately following the 9/11 attacks, Soufan wears down the diabetic Abu Jandal, a former bodyguard for Osama bin Laden, with sugarless cookies, establishing that Al Qaeda was indeed responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

All together now: what a horrible person Dick Cheney is.

How much further in the fight against terrorism might we be, had we not, in the face of all evidence, descended to their level, using techniques whose purpose has always been to force false confessions? And yet Dick and his demon spawn travel the country still, welcomed to the air, rewriting history like the Texas Board of Education.

He Should Know

Two different commenters have implied they're buying the desperate attempts of our home-grown war criminals and their RWS™ apologists to claim that torture played a key role in the killing of Osama bin Laden. I'll repeat a couple of things I've said in commentoid response, and add this, from John McCain, who knows personally the real value of torture; namely, to force false confessions, like the one he made from the Hanoi Hilton. (I would have, too, I'm pretty sure; I know you would have):

'I stand on the side of the United States and by the Geneva conventions,' John McCain said.

Sen. John McCain denounced “advanced interrogation” methods like waterboarding Wednesday amid a growing debate over its effectiveness reopened by the killing of Osama bin Laden.

McCain told reporters leaving an intelligence briefing for senators by CIA director Leon Panetta that he has seen no information so far to indicate that techniques like waterboarding factored significantly in the information gathering that led to bin Laden’s death.

The two memes rising like stink from a cesspool, and as fast as Sarah Palin to a twitter feed, are that torture works, and that Obama deserves no particular credit for finding bid Laden.

No doubt there's nothing to be gained by joining the battle over credit due; but the matter of torture is something else entirely. Our future could be at stake. Whereas we may never know exactly what information was or was not pried loose by torture in this particular case, and whereas we'll also never know if the information gained from torture could have been obtained from legal methods (and maybe even faster, taking less than 185 sessions!), there are a few things people ought to be able to recognize, even if they'll never admit it here.

First and foremost, as already mentioned, historically torture has had only one use, and its effectiveness in its purpose is inarguable: it gets people to confess to crimes they didn't commit. Whether during the Inquisition, the Salem witch trials, in Hanoi or Cambodia, in Saddam's torture chambers or Ahmadinejad's, forced and false confessions have flowed like blood.

Second: from falsehood flows uncertainty. In the matter of revealing information, we know for sure people have produced erroneous data; in the case of "Curveball," it was used to justify the invasion of Iraq.

Under torture, people lie. We know it. They may also tell truths. What we don't know at the time is which is which.

But here's the kicker, which, I'd think, would give the most pause to this guy I know and everyone who loves the idea of US presidents claiming legal authority to torture. Set aside that it can't be trusted, that in the "ticking time-bomb" scenario (at one time the main argument, now morphed into any time, any place, any body) getting untrustworthy information could be massively fatal. Just think about this: Given the effectiveness of torture at eliciting false confessions, how would the RWS™ advocacy group like the idea of, say, a secret Muslim terrorist president having the ability to torture, to wring a false confession from some patriotic white Christian Republican heterosexual native-born American and thence to use it to destroy him? Or her. I mean, sure: give Cheney a hose and a face-cloth, a pair of pliers -- who could see a problem there? But Obama? In a room with you???

After all, that's what governments have used torture for since its invention. That it's effective as hell is beyond conjecture. I simply can't reconcile the idea of torture-love with the same people who claim to distrust government. Like pretty much everything else from the mouths of RWS™ and teabaggers, it simply makes no sense.

From A Guy Who Knows

This interview is worth a read, especially if you're a torture-lover. Written by a man who taught torture techniques for the SERE program -- the existence of which has been used by the Cheneys and their apologists of this world to pretend waterboarding isn't torture, and a variant of which I went through on my way to my year in Vietnam -- it makes a pretty strong case. It's particularly hard on the former Bush speechwriter and now Washington Post columnist, Marc Theissen, who loves everything about Dick Cheney and loves torture even more:

Marc Thiessen is a fool of the highest magnitude if he thinks he knows anything about waterboarding. His claims are based not on first-hand experience but on a classified briefing from people with an agenda of justifying what was done. That makes Thiessen into a court stenographer for war criminals rather than a person with any real claim of expertise. As for his claim about the relationship between Pol Pot–era waterboarding and what we have done derived from the SERE program, he’s wrong. Before I arrived at SERE, I went to S21 prison in Cambodia. Right next to the Wall of Skulls sits the exact waterboard platform that the SERE program copied for our own use in the training program. Remember, our goal was to prepare pilots for the techniques they might face if they fell into the hands of our enemies. I was waterboarded on arrival at SERE, and then as a senior staffer, I performed the technique or supervised it through hundreds of evolutions.

[...] He claims that these techniques are unpleasant but have no long-term physical or mental impact. Really? I challenge him to put up or shut up. I offer to put him through just one hour of the CIA enhanced interrogation techniques that were authorized in the Bush Administration’s OLC memos–including the CIA-approved variant of waterboarding. If at the end he still believes this is not torture, I’ll respect his viewpoint. But not until then. By the way, I can assure you that, within that hour, I’ll secure Thiessen’s written admission that waterboarding is torture and that his book is a pack of falsehoods. He’ll give me any statement I want in order to end the torture.

There's lots more in the interview on which to chew, and it rings true to me. Not least because I've been making the same points here; but also because the guy is an expert. As opposed to most of the talking heads, smugly virtuous and military virgins all, who opinionate about it until hair grows on their palms.

Water Bored?

In the Foxified world, Obama's policies against torture are tantamount to giving the country to the terrorists. Reality, it seems, suggests otherwise:

Michael Sulick, head of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, told a student audience last week that the spy agency has seen no fall-off in intelligence since waterboarding was banned by the Obama administration.

"I don’t think we’ve suffered at all from an intelligence standpoint," Sulick told students and some faculty members at Fordham University, his alma mater, on March 25. "But I don’t want to talk about [it from] a legal, moral or ethical standpoint."

The thing is, though, as Fox "news" and the rest of the RWS™ and their Republican employees know only too well, for their listeners such data mean nothing. Same with the 16,000 IRS agent lie, death panels, and whatever other dishonest talking point is felt likely to sway the greatest number of their unquestioning followers.

A perfect example is the torture cheerleader Marc Thiessen, whose recent book all but claims that in ending torture, President Obama has opened the door and invited terrorists in. That his book is based on lies and errors is well documented. Nevertheless he's been amply rewarded with round-the-clock credibility by the right wing, most especially the editorial page of the formerly readable Washington Post.

The "discussions" about torture perfectly encapsulate, in my view, the problem with political discourse in this country at this time. Devised as a way to get people falsely to confess to crimes they didn't commit -- at that, it's unarguably excellent; just ask John McPOW -- torture has clearly given unreliable information when flipped from its calling. And "standard" interrogations have led to the overwhelming bulk of useful intelligence from prisoners. Yet it's still a perfect left-right separator. To me, that's as incredible as the fact that it's only right wingers who think the earth is six thousand years old and that the globe isn't warming.

At least the torture argument has slipped a bit from center stage. But that's only because we're now arguing about which sort of dictator Obama is.

How They Do It

Warning to the readers of this blog who like to ingest propaganda but prefer not to digest facts. This post is mainly a link to a knowledgeable and fact-filled article. And it's about a subject more easily lied about than subjected to truth. Perfect, in other words, for Fox "news" and the RWS™.

As you will know, the Department of Justice just issued a report "clearing" the writers of the torture memos (John Yoo and Jay Bybee, mainly) of legal liability. This was after the Office of Professional Responsibility recommended sanctions. So, naturally, the right-wing media are crowing about the "exoneration." Dana Perino, Bush's last press secretary, and Bill Burck, some guy I've never heard of, wrote an article in the National Review, a formerly reputable conservative magazine, founded, as I recall, by the actually honorable (for the most part) William F. Buckley. Worth reading in its entirety, here is a response by Glenn Greenwald, former US Attorney and very thorough critic of, among other things, Bush's torture regime and other Constitutional transgressions. For those of you unwilling to read the whole thing, some highlights:

I didn't think it was possible, but former Bush officials -- desperately fighting what they know will be their legacy as war criminals -- have become even more dishonest propagandists out of office than they were in office. At National Review, Bill Burck and Dana Perino so thoroughly mislead their readers about the DOJ report -- rejecting the findings of the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) of ethical misconduct against John Yoo and Jay Bybee -- that it's hard to know where to begin.

He goes on:

Perhaps the most deceitful claim is this one:

So, in one corner we have a legal all-star team of Mukasey, Filip, Estrada, Mahoney, Goldsmith [all right-wing Bush lawyers], and Margolis. In the other corner, we have OPR operating far outside its comfort zone and area of expertise. This shouldn’t have been close -- and it wasn’t, on the merits.

Compare that to what Margolis actually said (p. 67):

For all of the above reasons, I am not prepared to conclude that the circumstantial evidence much of which is contradicted by the witness testimony regarding Yoo's efforts establishes by a preponderance of the evidence that Yoo intentionally or recklessly provided misleading advice to his client. It is a close question. I would be remiss in not observing, however, that these memoranda represent an unfortunate chapter in the history of the Office of Legal Counsel. While I have declined to adopt OPR's finding of misconduct, I fear that John Yoo's loyalty to his own ideology and convictions clouded his view of his obligation to his client and led him to adopt opinions that reflected his own extreme, albeit sincerely held, views of executive power while speaking for an institutional client.

Just think about that for a minute. Margolis said that whether Yoo "intentionally or recklessly provided misleading advice to his client" when authorizing torture -- about the most serious accusation one can make against a lawyer, as it means he deliberately made false statements about the law -- "is a close question." That's the precise opposite of what Burck and Perino told National Review readers about Margolis' conclusion ("This shouldn’t have been close — and it wasn't, on the merits").

And I liked this doozy:

As Yale Law Professor Jack Balkin so clearly explained, the only thing that saved Yoo in Margolis' eyes was that attorney ethical rules have been written by lawyers to protect themselves, and the bar is therefore so low that it basically includes only "sociopaths and people driven to theft and egregious incompetence by serious drug and alcohol abuse problems." As a result, Margolis could not ultimately conclude that Yoo -- as shoddy and misleading as his torture authorizations were -- purposely lied because Yoo "was an ideologue who entered government service with a warped vision of the world in which he sincerely believed." Does that remotely sound like exoneration?

There's more. And it's most definitely worth a read.

[P.S.: sorry for the font size menage. Correcting the HTML after all that copying, pasting, and blockquoting was too much for me.]

[P.P.S.: Here's an interesting analogy between what the torture memos did, and the guy who produced the justifications for al Queda's murders.]

Disgusting

Okay, it's time to see the world as the right wing sees it: this guy is truly disgusting. See how soft he is on terror, making all sorts of bleeding heart claims about torture. He wants to close Guantanamo. He even -- this could be worst of all -- pronounces "Pakistan" in that elitist America-hating way that our president does.

Go to this link, if you dare. Be warned. It's leftist defeatist drivel at its most shocking.

Oh, and at the same time, another lilly-livered unAmerican lefty was spouting off, as if he knows something about war and diplomacy. Where does the liberal media get these guys?

For The Record

I'll be waiting to hear from those who continue to argue that our president is mistaken in closing Gitmo and in ending torture. Because now their military hero (and with that I'd agree) David Petraeus has said it's the right thing to do. So, previously, has the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

The deniers have kissed off calls for ending torture when they come from professional interrogators who served in Iraq: after all, how could such a person know what he's talking about. If Dick Cheney dismisses the argument that torture was a recruitment tool, then surely a guy who saw the evidence of it daily must be a liar. How, one wonders, will they reject the Commander of Centcom?

More and more clearly, the policies of torture and detention under Cheney/Bush are revealed as devastating mistakes, rising nearly to the level of devastation of the invasion of Iraq itself. Near the top among the reasons I keep harping on it is that the defense of those policies is a perfect microcosm of our politics in general, and that of the current Republican party in particular. The facts are there, indisputable. The people who are the most expert are virtually unanimous. And yet, for reasons beyond comprehension, some on the right wing of the right wing refuse to accept it.

It's not as if we're arguing something abstract, like hating or loving the Yankees (although in that, my position is absolutely correct). Once again, we see the problem for our political future: some people -- most of them conservatives -- are fundamentally unable to deal with facts that disprove a desired belief. And although only about twenty percent of people now identify themselves as Republicans, they represent forty percent of the US Senate.

To me it seems hopeless. If people who are refractory to factual arguments have a veto over those that aren't, how can we hope for progress on anything? Societies contain people of all sorts. Good or bad, that's the way it is. I can hurry by or engage the guy on the street corner ranting and handing out leaflets. Local color. Not an issue one way or the other. But when our political system appears now to have been rigged to see to it that those people are elected to Congress, there's real cause for real alarm. When the only ones remaining who favor continuing detention at Guantanamo and the use of torture are those who ignore all the data and the professionals, it says something.

And what is says, for the billionth time, is that we're screwed.
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Deal Or No Deal

So another right-wing talker gets waterboarded. This guy lasted six seconds. Before, he'd been saying it's not torture. After, he decided it is. Fine.

Notice, if you watch the video, that he got to sit up and call it off as soon as he crumped. That's okay, I guess; I don't want the guy to die. (Never heard of him; maybe if I had, I would.) But here's what I'd like to see. Let one of these macho chickenhawks (still waiting for Hannity) agree to it under more real circumstances: tied down. No bailing in a few seconds, no sitting up, not stopping until the "operator" decides to. And how about this: you'll be waterboarded until you say "Barack Obama is a great president and George Bush sucked." Write it down and sign it. Let's not worry whether it's torture. Let's just see if it can be used to make a self-righteous blowhard say something he doesn't believe.

Any guesses? Would anyone take up the challenge? Would anyone refuse to cop? If they signed, would it change minds about using it?

No.

No.

And no.
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On Further Review

Following up on yesterday's posts: the reviews are coming in and there seems general agreement among those with eyes and ears and matter behind/between them that Cheney's speech was, at best, the same old sh*t, and, at worst, full of omissions, lies, and distortions. (Which, of course, is the same old sh*t. So I repeat myself.) Not everyone loved Obama's, naturally; some civil libertarians were disappointed, and the RWS™, unsurprisingly, were unable to process such depth and thoughtfulness at all. But there weren't lies.

Giving Cheney the benefit of the doubt, I'll assume that 9/11 scared the crap out of him. How terrifying must it have been -- especially for a guy who (unlike me) managed five deferments to avoid serving in Vietnam -- to sit in a bunker somewhere not knowing what was going on and wondering if you might die. (Been there, done that. Not the bunker part, but the die/fear part: daily, nightly, for months on end. He didn't have time to get used to it, like I did.) So, okay. Bad guys, need to fight back. Yes.

I'll even forgive him, in his moment of panic, for turning to torture as his brain, drained of blood, scrabbled for protection. His hero, after all (the one on the right), when he was Cheney's age, couldn't distinguish between movies he'd been in or life experiences he'd had. So let's assume he tortured people (for it's now clear that the approvals came from him) for higher purposes, believing it works. But can we really swallow the idea that he considered it legal?

The tortured memos he demanded (yes, that's an assumption, but the evidence is that the torture began well before the memos, which smells of an attempt at retroactive cover) simply made up rationales for calling a pig a princess. What was done was torture. Torture is illegal.

But, okay, you want to save lives, you break the law. No big deal. If it works, who cares? Right?

Wrong. First of all, the way torture has always worked is in extracting false confessions. Ask John McCain. And as the evidence accumulates that most of the information obtained from captives was from legal methods, and that torture produced false information that was used to justify war (even after it was suggested that the info was false), and that torture was further used to try to get people to confess to links between al Queda and Saddam Hussein, it has become clear to all but the the deadest of dead-enders that torture is a bad thing. And that it was used, deliberately, by the United States of America, in exactly the way it had been used by despots and dictators for centuries: to force false confessions. Why doesn't that scare the crap out of everyone, even (especially) the RWS™?

Cheney insists we got useful information from torture. Maybe we did. What we still don't know is, first, whether it could have been gotten in other ways; second, how much false information was obtained (we know there was some, and it led to disaster); third, how, in a time of crisis, you can tell whether you're getting good or bad information, since it's undisputed that torture gives bad information (or desired answers, true or not); fourth, how much damage to the nation was done as the rest of the world found out what we'd done?

Listening to him yesterday, I wondered what he's really up to. Does he believe what he says? If so, is it because he's truly delusional, or because he knows things we don't? If that, does he simply discount the known failures? Is he trying to justify a program for his own protection, or because he still believes it was a good thing? Is he trying to change the subject from illegality and deliberate dredging for falsehoods to efficacy alone? Seems shaky ground either way, given what we're learning.

So he's a real puzzle, putting it mildly. Trashing his predecessor while claiming dissent gives comfort to our enemies. Making a case based on omissions and distortions. Can he not know?

There's one thing he says for which I'm all: release the documents. All of them. And, sure, let's find out about what was said to Pelosi. All of it. Let's have a full-fledged investigation of the whole program of torture, all of it.

Of course, that's not what he really wants. Like the Congressional Republicans, he wants to be highly selective and hide the ball. But let's not. Lets dig it all out, and let the chips fall. Where ever. Because if torture works, I want to see the data; and then, I want there to be a full discussion. Should we reject the Geneva Conventions, the agreements on torture, go it alone for our own safety? Should we be using it in our legal system? On guys like Timothy McVey? Serial murderers? Is there a line? Where? Why? I know what I think: no. It degrades us, it endangers us. It gives unreliable information. It makes us no different from those over whom we claim to have the higher ground.

Torture is illegal for good reasons, not the least of which is that it's too damn easy. To guys like Dick Cheney. Panicked, in his bunker. Looking for ways to feel unafraid. Looking for ways to feel tough, damn the implications, damn the dangers of falsehood it produces. Because of the falsehoods.

That's why I say no. And why I think it's time for Dick Cheney to return to Wyoming and lecture cows or whatever they have there. And for the media to stop acting like he has credibility equal to Barack Obama's.
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Torture Truths

Readers will already know that Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson was Colin Powell's chief of staff when the latter was Secretary of State. He still strongly identifies himself as a Republican. Pulling no punches, he has a guest editorial at The Washington Monthly which is worth a read. Or two. No fan of Dick Cheney or torture, he. And he reiterates something I said a while back: torture was used to try to force false confessions to justify invading Iraq.

So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney's office that their detainee "was compliant" (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP's office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods. The detainee had not revealed any al-Qa'ida-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, "revealed" such contacts. Of course later we learned that al-Libi revealed these contacts only to get the torture to stop.

There in fact were no such contacts. (Incidentally, al-Libi just "committed suicide" in Libya. Interestingly, several U.S. lawyers working with tortured detainees were attempting to get the Libyan government to allow them to interview al-Libi....)

He makes (among many others) another interesting point as well:

My investigations have revealed to me--vividly and clearly--that once the Abu Ghraib photographs were made public in the Spring of 2004, the CIA, its contractors, and everyone else involved in administering "the Cheney methods of interrogation", simply shut down. Nada. Nothing. No torture or harsh techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator. Period. People were too frightened by what might happen to them if they continued.

What I am saying is that no torture or harsh interrogation techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator for the entire second term of Cheney-Bush, 2005-2009. So, if we are to believe the protestations of Dick Cheney, that Obama's having shut down the "Cheney interrogation methods" will endanger the nation, what are we to say to Dick Cheney for having endangered the nation for the last four years of his vice presidency?

To me, these things are obvious. And yet there remains in the Republican party, reflected in the utterances of the RWS™, the notion that torture is good and that claiming anything else is treasonous; that in eschewing these things Obama has made us "less safe." It's preposterous, and yet there it is. Everywhere. Amid silence from the rank and file (and few) remaining Republicans. Heck, even some people intelligent enough to read this blog defend Beck, and Hannity, and Limbaugh and the rest of the RWS™ as reasonable. It's an alternate reality, in which up is down, black is white, truth is peanut butter.

As is clear to anyone who visits here, it's hard for me to be optimistic about much of anything these days, when this sort of thinking is so prevalent. I guess it isn't "thinking" so much as disingenuous propagandizing to further a failing political agenda. In any case, there are still enough Republican senators (and a couple of occasional Democrats who buy in) effectively to prevent much of what President Obama is trying to do. Were it on the basis of even half-decent arguments, it wouldn't bother me nearly as much. But when they're led by Mitch McConnell, who says "The administration needs to tell the American people how it will keep the terrorists at Guantanamo out of our neighborhoods and off of the battlefield," I can't but think that we're too far gone to find our way back.

I found the suicide interesting, too.
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Winds

When I'm wrong, I'm wrong. Until now I'd thought the US had a corner on the self-destructive make-ourselves-stupid market. But darned if our neighbors to the north, whom I've always considered pretty civilized and practical, don't also have their share. In Alberta, anyway, where the weather's said to be good in the fall. Don't like science contradicting your religious beliefs in your public schools? Opt out. No sense having to think, or having your prejudices challenged. Extrapolate that!

Meanwhile, in an interesting temporal juxtaposition, a poll is released correlating attitudes toward torture with religious belief. Among the categories, evangelicals of the regular church-going variety were the most in favor of its use. Posted without comment.
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Mouth: Both Sides Of...

I watched John McCain on "Face The Nation" yesterday. Patrick Leahy was on, too, and the transcript is here. To his credit, McCain didn't hesitate to use the word torture and to condemn its use by the US. He did, however, resist any idea that there should be investigations or prosecutions, framing the issue strictly in terms of a few lawyers giving bad advice. If that's all there were to it, I guess we'd all agree that investigation is uncalled for. Which, of course, is why McCain and his pals are all over the airwaves framing it exactly in that way, ignoring what are, in fact, the real issues.

In my opinion, there's much more at stake, and I've said so. In particular, I wonder about the extent to which those opinions resulted from directives from the White House to produce arguments to justify torture; ie, the extent to which the lawyers obliged a demand to rationalize an unlawful plan (which, as we now know, was already in place). That, I think, is grounds for disbarment, if nothing else (my dad was a judge, after all, so I know these things). I'm even more concerned about the extent to which torture was used to try to gain "confessions" of falsehoods, namely of that non-existent connection between Iraq and al Queda, in order to justify a war. That ought to outrage EVERYONE. Most amazingly, it doesn't.

But what really struck me about the McCain interview was this exchange, near the end of the interview (emphasis mine):

SCHIEFFER: So you wouldn’t favor even appointing a special prosecutor to look into it?

MCCAIN: The allegations are that they gave the wrong counsel. That’s -- and that bad things were done. And we violated fundamental commitments that the United States of America made when we signed the Geneva Conventions, and we disregarded what might happen to Americans who are held captive in the future. And by the way, those who say our enemies won’t abide by the Geneva Conventions, they will if they know that there’s going to be retribution for their violation of it.

That's unspeakably mind-blowing: having just argued against consequences for any involved in what he acknowledges is a violation of the Geneva Conventions by the US, he says that others will be deterred by fear of retribution.

If I flipped my arguments 180º every time my party was in or out of power, I'd be embarrassed. In fact, I don't think I could do it. "Up or down vote" was the Republican mantra when they were in the majority and Bush was nominating judges. "Rule of law," they cried when Clinton was in office. Their political deity, Ronald Reagan, signed the UN Conventions against torture, but now they love it like the air they breathe. (I guess they believe Ronnie was soft on terror, hated America, and made us less safe.)

How can these guys say what they do without turning red or exploding? It's unfathomable.
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Mass debaters

Torture, for right-wingers, is the new gay marriage: on their side (pro the former, contra the latter, need it be said?) of the debate (a bit of a stretch, terminologically), they are resorting to distortions, declarations as fact things which are either unprovable or demonstrably false, and to outright lies. It's stunning.

Central to the argument for torture is the claim that it has kept us safe. It's impossible to disprove, of course, in that there's no way to show we'd have been attacked were it not used, nor that other techniques would not have produced even better data. Be that as it may, the only instance on the public record -- namely that torturing KSM led to information which stopped a bombing in LA, a meme now dutifully repeated by the RWS™ and their echo machine -- is a FLAT OUT LIE. The plot, such as it was, was uncovered a year before the capture of KSM. No matter. They keep on saying it. Surprised? Moreover, I have to believe, given past willingness to use classified data to their advantage when it suits them, that were there more clear-cut episodes they'd be out there already. Central argument: no evidence/lie.

Perhaps even more central is the contention that the "enhanced interrogation techniques" we used are not, in fact, torture, despite the fact that in other wars the US has prosecuted as war criminals people who employed the same measures. On the rare occasion when a Republican politico lets his tongue slip, he quickly backsteps. "The United States does not torture," they continue to say. Amazing. Is there literally no point beyond which partisanship will take some people?

And now, in unison for the past few days, there's this from the RWS™ and their brain-numbed listeners, the equivalent of "gay marriage threatens all marriage:" releasing the torture memos has harmed us in the fight against terrorism. The atom bomb, the cosmic whopper, the mother of all nonsense.

"Now they know, so they can train against it."

Funny. The Republican Secretary of Defense was okay with releasing the memos.

Does anyone really think the info was not out there before they were released? Do they think the only thing that went on in al Queda training camps was playing on monkey bars? It's been in media for years. The Red Cross released a report; former prisoners have been interviewed; the use of "black sites" was well-documented. It's simply laughable on its face. Like recruiting your kids into the gay lifestyle.

I suppose I should be happy the arguments we hear are so ridiculous; surely it's impossible that they are convincing to anyone but those mouthing them. Would that it were so. Hasn't it been said: if you repeat a lie long enough people will begin to believe it. The RWS™ sure have bought in, like it was a pile of winning lotttery tickets. Joining them, Liz Cheney claims that since we train our own soldiers to resist these techniques, they aren't torture. Yep. That's what she says. Other entities water-board, sleep-deprive, stress-position. We put our soldiers through it. QED. Wow.

As we now see that the real reason for engaging in torture was to force false confessions, making us just like our enemies, it seems to me it becomes even more important to get to the bottom of it, to have a conversation about it based on facts. God knows that even when facts are indisputable, people will interpret them differently, to their own ends. But this is serious business, affecting our security, our standing in the world (which affects our security), and our relationship to our laws. How nice it would be if, just this once, those on the right could address the issue frontally, honestly, and with willingness to get to the truth. After all, if torture really is the best way to get certain information, wouldn't they be proved right?

I guess they're afraid of opinions like this, from someone who seems to know. Or this, from a person in charge.

Is it possible -- just possible -- that the people who lied about it in the first place are lying about it again? If so, won't anyone on the right rise up and ask? Doesn't a serious issue like this deserve serious arguments? Can't any Congressional Republicans and their water-carriers (or is it the other way around?) bring to the debate something that makes sense? Anyone at all?

Maybe it's time we listen to George W. Bush.
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The Answer

WHY NOT TORTURE?

Here's the answer.

The historically perfected use of torture, as we all know by now, has been in the producing of false confessions, be they of heresy, witchcraft, or political treachery. So imagine this: by some sort of horrible twist of fate, this country elects leaders of ill will. Maybe a delusional and paranoid vice-president (let's call him Dick) and a credulous and malleable president (any suggestions?) And what if they had certain questionable plans in mind, for concealed reasons, like, say, going to war against a country that was no threat to our security. (To be really outrageous, let's pretend they were both oil men, and the country in question had lots of oil. I know. I know. We're getting sort of science fictiony and conspiratorial here. But it's just for the purpose of making a point, okay? Bear with me.) Could it happen that, in order to gin up a plausible cover for their plan, they'd round up people and try to torture them into "revealing" a non-existent link between that country and, say (bear with me, again), a terrorist group?

A former U.S. Army psychiatrist, Maj. Charles Burney, told Army investigators in 2006 that interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility were under "pressure" to produce evidence of ties between al Qaida and Iraq.

"While we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida and Iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al Qaida and Iraq," Burney told staff of the Army Inspector General. "The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . . . there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results."

So, what's the big deal, the RWS™ and their apologist commenters on this blog might ask? None, I guess, as long as it's god-fearing and truth-telling and thoughtful leaders such as those recently departed. But can you imagine Barack Obama, that godless America-hating Nazi communist, getting his hands on a waterboard? Forcing some CEO to request regulating his industry?

Seriously. How close did we come to returning to the Spanish Inquisition? Close enough, I'd say, to be indistinguishable. If what we are learning about our use of torture and the potential consequences thereof isn't chilling to everyone -- even conservatives!! -- then the danger to our nation is even greater than my rantings imply. There are, we are told, many effective ways to elicit the truth from prisoners. Getting false confessions, for your own purposes? Like Pol Pot, like Torquemada, like Ho Chi Minh, like Stalin, like William Stoughton, like... For that, you need torture.

Trying to force desired answers whether true or not, in order to provide rationale to a predetermined and hidden agenda. Is there anything more potentially destructive to the foundations of democracy?

Seen in that light, ought it not be an entirely non-partisan issue?
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Tell It Like It Is

In the debate (more like a shouting match) over torture, I think it's fair to want to know to what extent it works. To that question, there are conflicting answers. For every Cheney-like declaration are ones on the other side, from professional interrogators, saying the opposite. I do think it's indisputable that over the history of human beings torturing one another, it's been in the production of false confessions that it's been a real sparkler. Witch hunts and other forms of religious inquisition come rapidly to mind. As do military examples. No argument: for convincing a person to say whatever you want him or her to say, there's nothing quite like torture.

But something I read today was provocative:

[T]he memos note that, "as Abu Zubaydah himself explained with respect to enhanced techniques, 'brothers who are captured and interrogated are permitted by Allah to provide information when they believe they have reached the limit of their ability to withhold it in the face of psychological and physical hardship." In other words, the terrorists are called by their faith to resist as far as they can -- and once they have done so, they are free to tell everything they know. This is because of their belief that "Islam will ultimately dominate the world and that this victory is inevitable." The job of the interrogator is to safely help the terrorist do his duty to Allah, so he then feels liberated to speak freely.

Now, I think the point of that quote was both to justify "enhanced techniques" and to deny that they were torture: rampant sophistry is a major weapon in the armamentarium of torture proponents, and this quote is, on one level, a pretty chilling example. Still, it's an interesting thought; if true, it's important in that it frames the argument differently. It moves it to where I think it should be.

With no significant exceptions, the tactic of the RWS™ and their washed-up and embarrassing politicos, has been to deny that we torture, or to laugh it off, or to suggest that releasing memos saying what everyone already knew somehow makes us unsafe. By every definition, many of the techniques used were torture, and the US has condemned and/or prosecuted people of other countries for doing them. Bush tried to make his statements "true" by undefining the word, by getting a bunch of third rate lawyers to make fourth rate arguments that somehow what we did was legal.

Another true statement: by international law, to which the US has been a signatory, torturing prisoners is a war crime. By definition. Inarguable.

So here, at long last, is my point: we shouldn't be parsing words, hiring sh*tty lawyers to tell us what we want to hear (it took tortured logic -- and the cynicism of a true believer -- but not actual torture to get them on board), or pretending it's no big deal. Or lying about it. If there's an argument to be made, make it. It would, I suppose, go something like this:

1. Based on the following information (it would have to be provided), torture works. It provides useful and reliable information, and does so more effectively than other methods.
2. Since the time of the Geneva Conventions, the world has changed, the stakes are higher, the time-frames shorter, and we believe there are circumstances in which the greater good demands the use of torture (they would have to be enumerated.)
3. For the following reasons (we'd need to hear them) we believe the harm to our country in terms of resorting to what have been considered illegal and inhuman methods, and in terms of its effect on our claim to higher ground in the war of ideas, is less than the potential harm from using other proven techniques.
   
4. Therefore, it shall now be the (overt, instead of hidden and denied) policy of the United States that we will no longer follow the Geneva Conventions and other international law as pertains to torture, and we will use it at our discretion.
5. And now you know.

I don't claim to know the facts, if there are any. Based on the statements of many professionals, I believe torture to be unreliable and less effective than other methods, and that if it has sometimes provided useful information, it's also resulted in dangerously wrong information (some of which was the basis for the disastrous decision to invade Iraq. Deliberate disinformation? Giving bin Laden exactly what he wanted?) I'm pursuaded that other techniques would have done better. And I believe that the harm done by our methods and our lies about them, in terms of world opinion, of contradiction of our ideals, of "proof" to our enemies that our democracy is false -- that all of those considerations add up to a huge mistake in resorting to torture.

But I'd like it if the argument were straight up. If torture advocates are right, we ought to be able to hear why. It might still be true that the majority would support a correct argument; and if democracy is truly the best way to govern, they ought to be able to hear one.

In the open.

[Update: here's an article about the opinion of Obama's intelligence chief that sheds some light. Unfortunately, it comes down on both sides.]

[Update #2: unsurprisingly, the right wing brain trust is willfully misconstruing the above.]
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More Torture

On the subject of US torture, Andrew Sullivan is far more eloquent than I. Among many articles he's posted on the subject, this one may be the best summary. Within it is a key paragraph:

Looked at from a distance, the Bush administration wanted to do two things at once: to declare to the world that freedom is on the march, and human rights are coming to the world with American help, while simultaneously declaring to captives that the US has no interest in the law, human rights, accountability, transparency or humanity. They wanted to give hope to all the oppressed of the planet, while surgically banishing all hope from the prisoners they captured and tortured. And the only way they could pull this off is by the total secrecy they constructed and defended. So we had a public government respectful of the rule of law, and a secret government whose main goal was persuading terror suspects that there was no rule of law at all. It is hard to convey just how dangerous this was and is.

We know the harm torture has done to our standing in the world. Other than unproven assertions, most of which have been contradicted by people at the center of it, we have no evidence that it helped in any way.

Many conservatives are horrified that the Obama administration has released the torture memos, and they pooh-pooh the idea that the techniques described even are torture (Heck, even Jenny Craig tortures: yes, it was used as justification!) Once again we see how certain issues that ought not have any political preference at all (among them: age of the Earth, creationism, climate change), seem to divide us along party lines. Given the undeniable truths about what it has and has not accomplished, I'm happy to be in the party that rejects torture.
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Not Good

In several posts I've made my views known about torture; how it's damaged our country, and how it's been shown to have produced no useful information (there are many more posts than those links). As more information comes out -- most specifically, the report of the International Committee of the Red Cross is now available in full -- my opinion has only solidified.

So I share concerns of many liberals regarding the reluctance of the Obama administration to release the relevant documents, nor to consider prosecution of those who dreamed it all up. This article is a good summary. It includes this paragraph:

"...Sen. Dick Durbin was forced to tearfully apologize on the Senate floor for accurately comparing our treatment of detainees at Guantanamo to the techniques used in Soviet gulags and by Gestapo interrogation squads, but those who perpetrated these war crimes have apologized for nothing, remain welcome in decent company, and are still shielded by our Government from all accountability."

It's ironic, isn't it, that as our politicians have become so polarized, they are, in effect, protecting themselves. Basting in hyper-partisanship and hyperbole, our elected officials are actually playing softball with themselves. Ever since the impeachment of Bill Clinton over oral sex, any action taken by Congress actually to investigate serious and damaging crimes by our government becomes nearly impossible, because it will be seen as payback. So we can become international war criminals, and no one has the guts to act. (Speaking of guts, there's now some attention being paid to my fellow physicians, those who aided and abetted the torture.)

I wish I knew the reasons behind Obama's reluctance. My guess it has to do with the urgency of those things on the front burner: he doesn't want to risk cooperation from the rare Republican when he might need it. Likewise, as he's trying to rebuild connections with our allies, and to make a new path toward our enemies, it might be that he considers this the wrong time to open the sores. And yet, in the long run, I'd say that fully debriding the wound is the only way to convince the world how seriously we take it. Assuming we do.


How strange that -- Obama aside -- practically the only politicians and citizens calling for airing this out are Democrats. Why should it be such a partisan matter? By all definitions and by conclusion of the international body specifically and legally designated to identify and investigate torture, the US has committed war crimes. Isn't there a single Republican leader who finds that problematic? And, were it a Democratic administration that had done it, would they still be silent? For a microsecond? In fact, there are some who see the Republicans as so frightened over the release of the torture memos and related material that they are threatening the President over it. One can only wonder what they're so worried about.
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Vindication

There seems to be a confluence of events around the Bush legacy of torture, coincident (or not) with Dick Aptonym Cheney's brief return to the human realm wherein he declared the US less safe under Obama.

Asked if he agreed, General Petraeus -- a credible voice, one might argue -- says no. More significantly, an article appears confirming that no useful information was in fact obtained in one of the most famous and highly-touted (by George Bush) cases of water-boarding and other torture techniques. It wasn't the first time it's been said. In fact, Bush continued to claim not only that important intelligence was garnered, but that the victim was an al Queda bigwig, even after he knew both statements to be false. Worse: he pressured George Tenant to keep quiet about it:

"'I said he was important,' Bush said to Tenet at one of their daily meetings. 'You're not going to let me lose face on this, are you?'

'No Sir, Mr. President.'"

Knock me over with a feather.

A former Bush official opines that Bush "panicked" after 9/11, and that Guantanamo was a major overreaction. In other words, after he finally managed to put down that book, he went nuts, endangering us all. Contra Cheney.

Waking up from a long slumber, some media outlets are actually using the word "torture" to describe what was done (sort of), having for years accepted Bush's avowal that the US doesn't torture simply because he undefined the word.

And now it seems legal action might actually be taken against those who established the illegal and destructive policies. Not in the US, not yet anyway. But somewhere. Given all of the above, it's hardly lefty craziness to think it ought to be done here, too. In fact, in a world in which principles mattered, you'd think conservatives would be the most outraged at this illegal and dictatorial abuse of presidential power. But, most certainly, that's another world.

Having argued here many times that torture is ineffective and that its use has done us great harm, I'm feeling a little vindicated by these recent bits of news. Me, and everyone else who's been paying attention and able to see beyond ideological blindness. And as long as I'm feeling smart, I'll add this: we'll see the resurrection of the economy as a result of Obama's programs. And if I turn out right about those things, how about this prediction: once the economy is clearly on track and jobs are growing, President Obama will do the politically unthinkable and take on entitlement reform and military spending as ways to bring the budget back to balance. Because, as I've also claimed, and continue to believe, I think he's for real. If he does that, he'll end up pissing off the far left and the far right.

Then all he'll have left is everyone else; ie, about 80% of the country.
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Damn Lies

Two years ago, in acknowledging that the US took prisoners to other countries for "questioning," George Bush said (I'm quoting from a NYT article that appeared 3/15):

“...the C.I.A. used an alternative set of procedures.” He added: “These procedures were designed to be safe, to comply with our laws, our Constitution and our treaty obligations. The Department of Justice reviewed the authorized methods extensively and determined them to be lawful.” (emphasis mine.)

The article is worth reading in full. Among the descriptions of "safe" and lawful procedures:

"I was taken out of my cell and one of the interrogators wrapped a towel around my neck; they then used it to swing me around and smash me repeatedly against the hard walls of the room.” The prisoner was then put in a coffin-like black box, about 4 feet by 3 feet and 6 feet high, “for what I think was about one and a half to two hours.” He added: The box was totally black on the inside as well as the outside.... They put a cloth or cover over the outside of the box to cut out the light and restrict my air supply. It was difficult to breathe. When I was let out of the box I saw that one of the walls of the room had been covered with plywood sheeting. From now on it was against this wall that I was then smashed with the towel around my neck. I think that the plywood was put there to provide some absorption of the impact of my body. The interrogators realized that smashing me against the hard wall would probably quickly result in physical injury.”

There's much more. It should also be said that the article is based on a comprehensive report by the International Red Cross, which conducted extensive interviews, and that the prisoners had had no contact with each other; in addition, they were told that the information would not be made public. That they described virtually the same things lends believability.

“They placed a cloth or cover over the box to cut out all light and restrict my air supply. As it was not high enough even to sit upright, I had to crouch down. It was very difficult because of my wounds. The stress on my legs held in this position meant my wounds both in the leg and stomach became very painful. I think this occurred about three months after my last operation. It was always cold in the room, but when the cover was placed over the box it made it hot and sweaty inside. The wound on my leg began to open and started to bleed. I don’t know how long I remained in the small box; I think I may have slept or maybe fainted."

The conclusion of the IRC report states:

“The allegations of ill treatment of the detainees indicate that, in many cases, the ill treatment to which they were subjected while held in the C.I.A. program, either singly or in combination, constituted torture. In addition, many other elements of the ill treatment, either singly or in combination, constituted cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”

I know at least three of my readers are saying "So what?"

Let's leave aside the issue of whether torture is useful (because it's pretty clear it isn't) and whether we should be doing it (since it gives unreliable information and eliminates trying the prisoners in a court of law, we shouldn't). Let's just ask: did it serve US interests to have our president get up and lie, bald-faced, about such a thing as this? And what should we call a "Department of Justice" which ignores the law to serve up only what the president wants to hear? And finally, since by international agreement it's the International Red Cross that identifies instances of torture, what is the appropriate legal response? (Rhetorical question. We already know the answer, and we know nothing will happen.)

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Torture Datum

To those interested in the debate over torture, I recommend this brief article, by a man who was "...national security adviser to Vice President George H. W. Bush from 1982 to 1988 and ambassador to Korea from 1989 to 1993, worked for the C.I.A. for 30 years..." It includes these paragraphs:

In regard to a Vietnamese officer who liked to torture prisoners:

This colonel routinely tortured prisoners, producing a flood of information, much of it totally false... The colonel finally relented and turned over a battered prisoner to me, saying, “This man knows a lot but he will not talk to me.” We treated the prisoner’s wounds, reunited him with his family and allowed him to make his first visit to Saigon. Surprised by the city’s affluence, he said he would tell us anything we asked. The result was a flood of actionable intelligence that allowed us to disrupt planned operations, including rocket attacks against Saigon.

And this, referring to Dick Cheney's recent worries:

There’s a sad twist here. Mr. Cheney forgets that the Bush administration followed this approach with some success. A high-value prisoner subjected to patient interrogation by an Arabic-speaking F.B.I. agent yielded highly useful information, including the final word on Iraq’s weapons programs.

His name was Saddam Hussein.

The author acknowledges that a couple of anecdotes don't make a case. But it's not as if he doesn't know what he's talking about.