Why torture horrifies us

On TheBackFence, one person who himself experienced waterboarding as part of his Marine Corps training to resist torture, insisted that it wasn't so bad and he didn't really regard it as torture. He also insisted that he is opposed to the use of real torture, but this isn't it.

Still, most people are feeling revulsion in reading about the techniques actually used in our name.

Jay Mulberry asks:

"Why do we feel horror at this one-on-one violence [torture], done with a purpose, when we overlook the hideous burning, dismemberment, destruction of families, famine etc. that is war?"

And Pete Zimmerman answers:

[Historically, as far back as the Bible,] "Violence was admired only when winner and loser were somewhat well-matched, when the winner could have lost catastrophically. It is tolerated when it is antiseptic (ie dropping bombs from 50,000 feet or launching an ICBM over 6,000 miles) and in our cause, but it's not admired. . . .

". . . we see the obvious analogy: the victim in torture has no chance to respond or fight back except by staying silent. Accordingly, what the interrogator does is an act of unmitigated evil, and probably sadism. We don't admire sadism for good reason. It offends our innate moral sense to kick a guy who's down or to shoot somebody in the back."

In another article, writer Christopher Hitchens volunteered to undergo waterboarding at the training camp of the type that the Marine experienced. His description of the procedure is chilling. With his permission and with signed waivers that it could result in his injury or death, he was then seized, handcuffed with his hands behind his back, a black hood placed over his head, and then strapped down to a gurney. He goes on to describe the panic that allowed him to last only a few seconds when water was poured over the cloth covering his nose and mouth.

But the obvious thing here is that they had provided him with a pre-arranged signal that he could halt the procedure at any moment. And he did. It is my assumption that was also true for the Marine training.

So we have a major difference: with Marines, it had a purpose: to teach them to resist, and it was done for their benefit; with Hitchens, it also had a purpose -- his own purpose, and he could stop it at any moment.

So neither of these really meets the criterion that the victim has no chance to fight back or to stop the process. It seems that the essence is the one-sided power of torture, where there is a perpetrator who has all the power and a victim with no power. And that does seem to us more horrible than the fighting, the bombing, etc.

It also helps explain the absolute horror we feel about gas chambers and -- for me -- about capital punishment, in general.

Ralph

Torture and responsibility

Obama has said that CIA interrogators will not be prosecuted for using Department of Justice approved techniques as revealed in the just-released memos. That reasoning seems to accept the idea you shouldn't be held responsible for doing what top government lawyers told you is legal and proper, even if later on that was proven to be illegal and morally wrong.

On most things I agree with Obama. And this is certainly a gray area. If it's clearly wrong, like sending innocent civilians to the gas chamber, they should certainly be prosecuted and held responsible as individuals for doing something that is clearly murder.

If it is something where two experts might disagree about what constitutes torture, as in the case of these memos, then I would agree with Obama's decision.

However, I do not agree that it should be dropped there. I think there should be a full investigation upward into how these decisions came to be made and who was responsible for the pressure on the DoJ to come up with these memos.

A note in today's NYTimes says:

"The first use of waterboarding and other rough treatment against a prisoner from Al Qaeda was ordered by senior Central Intelligence Agency officials despite the belief of interrogators that the prisoner had already told them all he knew."

In my opinion, this is exactly the tactic that Cheney and Rumsfeld used: continually insisting and badgering the CIA into coming up with what they wanted to find (WMD, for example), implying that they weren't doing their job or were incompetent until they produced what they wanted to hear. That's how we wound us with bad intelligence; they didn't allow intelligence analysts to use their judgment about reliability of data but insisted on having the raw data themselves. And then they could cherry pick what suited their agenda.

I'd like to see the emails or phone conversations (probably in the great heap of deleted ones) where CIA is saying the guy has told us all he can and Cheney is insisting that they rev up the torture until he "breaks" and tells them what he's holding back. What if the interrogators are right and he has nothing more to tell? Then they torture him, he makes up stuff to get them to stop, and then we go on wild goose chases, make claims that aren't true, and throw innocent people into Gitmo.

I think it is admirable that Obama wants to move forward and not get bogged down in the blame game, which will only increase the partisan divide. He thinks it will hamper getting his big agendas through Congress.

But I think it is vital that crimes done in our name be exposed and responsibility identified. I'm less interested in sending people to jail and more interested in getting the truth on record.

Let's have investigations where it looks like crimes were committed; and for the gray areas and for identifying those responsible up the chain of command -- all the way to the White House -- I think the Truth and Reconciliation type commission is the way to go.

Chris Dodd, who has proposed it, still has the best phrase about that: "We shouldn't turn the page until we have read the page."

Ralph

Torture

Interesting discussion on TheBackFence about torture from a group of very bright and knowledgeable people across the political spectrum. Here are some excerpts:

From John Joyce:

My fellow Marines and I always used to comment that the rumors leaking out about the interrogation techniques didn't seem very horrifying to us at all. We would almost uniformly compare it to the SERE training that most of us had undergone . . . It turns out our comparisons were right on. According to this memo the interrogation techniques they were using at Gitmo were directly cloned from the approved SERE school techniques.
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In light of this memo I can't imagine that anyone can continue to call these methods torture. If you honestly believe that then you have to assume the position that the US government is systematically torturing thousands of its own troops every year.
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In closing, it's important for me to say that I am totally opposed to the US torturing anybody under any circumstances, even the ticking-timebomb scenarios, and during this whole ongoing controversy I've felt conflicted about the situation at times. After seeing this memo I feel a lot better about the situation and don't have any problems with the techniques that have been used.

From Carl Manaster:

That doesn't make it OK. SERE techniques were authorized as being in the interest of the Marines who go through it, to better prepare them for circumstances when we are facing a less ethical force than ourselves. . . . Subjecting Marines to [waterboarding] doesn't remove that label or that fact. Torture is unethical and illegal, and it doesn't work. It is unacceptable for us to do it to prisoners. . . . I'm sorry you were subjected to it; I think we are wrong to practice it even for the reasons SERE justifies it. But nothing justifies its use on prisoners, even guilty ones, and I will remind you that many . . . of our tortured prisoners at Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, and our other facilities were entirely innocent.

From an article in Washington Post:

Or listen to Army Col. Stuart Herrington, a military intelligence specialist who conducted interrogations in Vietnam, Panama and Iraq during Desert Storm, and who was sent by the Pentagon in 2003 -- long before Abu Ghraib -- to assess interrogations in Iraq. Aside from its immorality and its illegality, says Herrington, torture is simply "not a good way to get information." In his experience, nine out of 10 people can be persuaded to talk with no "stress methods" at all, let alone cruel and unusual ones. Asked whether that would be true of religiously motivated fanatics, he says that the "batting average" might be lower: "perhaps six out of ten." And if you beat up the remaining four? "They'll just tell you anything to get you to stop."

And from another Post article:

When CIA officials subjected their first high-value captive, Abu Zubaida, to waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods, they were convinced that they had in their custody an al-Qaeda leader who knew details of operations yet to be unleashed. . . .

In the end, though, not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida's tortured confessions, according to former senior government officials who closely followed the interrogations. Nearly all of the leads attained through the harsh measures quickly evaporated, while most of the useful information from Abu Zubaida -- chiefly names of al-Qaeda members and associates -- was obtained before waterboarding was introduced, they said.

Torture is illegal, immoral, AND it doesn't work.

Ralph

Torture memos

It seems obvious from reading the torture memos that they were very carefully written as cya (cover you ass) documents for people who were very very worried that they were going too far and would be liable to prosecution.

If we ever get access to the emails ABOUT the memos, that will be the real treasure trove.

Ralph

What the memos reveal

I briefly skimmed over the torture memos, which are available online now. The description of torture techniques is chilling enough -- to realize that this was done in our name.

But, for me, it was doubly shocking and shameful to read that a physician and a psychologist were required to be present when the waterboarding took place. Not only that, but medical and psychological consultants advised about the procedures in the first place.

This is completely unethical for a physician or a psychologist to participate in torture. Both professional organizations have strict rules against it.

Ralph

A good call

Obama had been listening to the pros and cons from his Attorney General (pro) and intelligence people (con) about releasing the torture memos.

Today, he made his decision, and it is a good one. Here is what the president said:

"While I believe strongly in transparency and accountability, I also believe that in a dangerous world, the United States must sometimes carry out intelligence operations and protect information that is classified for purposes of national security. I have already fought for that principle in court and will do so again in the future. However, after consulting with the Attorney General, the Director of National Intelligence, and others, I believe that exceptional circumstances surround these memos and require their release."

And Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Christopher Dodd said this:

These legal memoranda demonstrate in alarming detail exactly what the Bush administration authorized for "high value detainees" in U.S. custody. The techniques are chilling... We cannot continue to look the other way; we need to understand how these policies were formed if we are to ensure that this can never happen again. This is why my proposal for a Commission of Inquiry is necessary.

Now that it looks like the Spanish chief prosecutor is not going to bring a case against the bush six (Gonzales, Feith, Addington, et al) who were involved, releasing these memos is even more essential. It might even lead to some sort of investigation here in the U.S.

Ralph

Good sense

Elizabeth Warren, the economics professor that Obama appointed to oversee the TARP bailout, impressed John Stewart -- and me.

She's got the whole deregulation thing mapped out and made a very strong and clear case in explaining the dire consequences we have suffered from it, beginning with the S&L crisis.

"We start[ed] pulling the threads out of the regulatory fabric and what's the first thing we get: we get S+L crisis," Warren said. "Seven hundred financial institutions fail. Ten years later what do we get? Long Term Capital Management, where we learn that when something collapses in one place in the world it collapses everywhere else. Early 2000s we get Enron, which tells us the books are dirty. And what is our repeated response? We just keep pulling the threads out of the regulatory fabric. So we have two choices, we are going to make a big decision, probably over about the next six months. And the big decision we are going to make is going to go one way or another. We are going decide, basically, hey we don't need regulation. 'You know, it is fine. Boom and bust, boom and bust, boom and bust, and good luck with your 401k.' Or alternatively we are going to say, you know, we are going to out with some smart regulation that is going to adapt to the fact that we have new products and what we are going to have going forward is we are going to have some stability and real prosperity for ordinary folks."

She also threw out a line worthy of the show she was on:

"Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without hell."

That speaks to one of my concerns: the idea that some financial institutions got "too big to fail." And once you take away those consequences, you have given them a license to take risks, to cheat, and to obfuscate.

It's so refreshing to have smart people in charge who actually know what they're doing and are committed to fixing the problems instead of using the office to destroy the function of the office they hold.

Ralph