Torture and Porn: Stuff You Know When You See It

porkbelly

Fine: answer this question, then. The "enhanced interrogation" of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed elicited information about a follow-up attack to 9/11 that was to target the Library Tower in Los Angeles. Hundreds - perhaps thousands - would have died. Because KSM talked they were spared. Would you have let them die? Because that's the choice: there is no muddling through, why-can't-we-all-be-friends middle way. If you truly believe in not mistreating, frightening, chilling, heating or otherwise causing discomfort to these creatures then you must accept that there will be a terrible human cost. You denounced the Iraq war for its toll on innocent life: can you then condone the death of thousands that you "morality" will require?

Steve N

The enhanced interrogation apologists would have us believe the following premises:
1. The techniques were effective
2. They were used only on the "worst of the worst"
3. They are not torture

It would be conceivable that interrogation practices might enlist committed people to share information through deceit, persuasion, or manipulation. But coercive techniques seek to overcome a person's will directly. How would it be possible to overcome the will of a committed opponent without inflicting great misery? The whole logic of the approach requires techniques that are sufficiently painful that they overcome a person's deep commitments. There is no way for the techniques to work except if they are torture. Of course we also known they were derived from the SERE program, which was about how to resist torture. What I'm saying is that the whole logic behind their "effectiveness" requires that they amount to torture.

Mr. Massey, please keep up a defense of sanity on the right.

ndm

Porkbelly asks: "Fine: answer this question, then. The 'enhanced interrogation' of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed elicited information about a follow-up attack to 9/11 that was to target the Library Tower in Los Angeles. Hundreds - perhaps thousands - would have died. Because KSM talked they were spared. Would you have let them die?"

"Would you have let them die?" Well, that is a question we do not need to answer because as Timothy Noah of Slate points out the Library Tower plot was foiled BEFORE Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was arrested. Consequently, the 183 times he was waterboarded, let alone any other acts of torture, had ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with the foiling of the Library Tower plot. Tomothy Noah writes:

-- What clinches the falsity of Thiessen's claim, however (and that of the memo he cites, and that of an unnamed Central Intelligence Agency spokesman who today seconded Thessen's argument), is chronology. In a White House press briefing, Bush's counterterrorism chief, Frances Fragos Townsend, told reporters that the cell leader was arrested in February 2002, and "at that point, the other members of the cell" (later arrested) "believed that the West Coast plot has been canceled, was not going forward" [italics mine]. A subsequent fact sheet released by the Bush White House states, "In 2002, we broke up [italics mine] a plot by KSM to hijack an airplane and fly it into the tallest building on the West Coast." These two statements make clear that however far the plot to attack the Library Tower ever got - an unnamed senior FBI official would later tell the Los Angeles Times that Bush's characterization of it as a "disrupted plot" was "ludicrous" - that plot was foiled in 2002. But Sheikh Mohammed wasn't captured until March 2003.

-- How could Sheikh Mohammed's water-boarded confession have prevented the Library Tower attack if the Bush administration "broke up" that attack during the previous year? It couldn't, of course. Conceivably the Bush administration, or at least parts of the Bush administration, didn't realize until Sheikh Mohammed confessed under torture that it had already broken up a plot to blow up the Library Tower about which it knew nothing. Stranger things have happened. But the plot was already a dead letter. If foiling the Library Tower plot was the reason to water-board Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, then that water-boarding was more than cruel and unjust. It was a waste of water.

Both the American and British right really need to get back in touch with reality. The right - and with regard to societal militarization Tony Blair was of the right - needs to reground itself in reality. It is pretty clear that the American right is unwilling to do that. The response of Porkbelly and almost the totality of commenters on Melanie Phillips' blog suggest the British right is not really much closer to reality than is the American right.

THX1138

Watch some "enhanced interrogation techniques" take place on Christopher Hitchens. He lasts about 20 secs.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/video/2008/hitchens_video200808

ndm I think a good deal of the commenters on Melanie Phillips' blog do now come from the US. She is now linked to by many an American "wingnut" blog, I read a whole series of posts recently peddling the Obama is secret Muslim BS. Personally I think that her presence on a moderate centre right magazine like The Spectator is increasingly becoming an embarrassment.

ex-LT U.S.N.

I went through the U.S. Navy SERE course in the California mountains east of San Diego in the summer of 1968 preparatory to going to Viet Nam for a year's tour as officer in charge of a Swift boat (PCF) (remember John Kerry?). The "resistance" part of the program involved being gathered in a stockade along with the other "POWs" in that week's group and then being taken individually into an interrogation room. There I was slapped around by a caucasian guy who was probably a Navy enlisted man, though he was dressed in a weird uniform sort of like Fidel Castro used to wear. He wanted me to reveal the details of my naval flight squadron, which would have been hard no matter my willingness to do so, since I was in the surface Navy. What I remember best about him, apart from the fact that one of his slaps chipped my front tooth (which I later complained about, to no avail), is that in his effort to achieve verisimilitude as a North Vietnamese interrogator or torturer, he had adopted a fake German accent which was straight out of a bad World War II movie about the Gestapo or the SS. The whole thing was in my judgment an utter farce, and as far from the despicable treatment by the U.S. of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Bagram and goodness where else as one can imagine. So the idea that what we've done to these prisoners is no big deal because we do it to our own people as part of their training is utter nonsense, unless SERE has become a great deal harsher than it was in my time. I seriously doubt that. (Even before the "resistance" phase of the course, the farcical quality of the whole thing had been brought home to me when, during the "survival" phase, we were shown how to make snares to trap wild animals for food. As part of this demonstration, the instructor had a bunny rabbit -- obviously purchased in a pet store -- which he tried to dispatch for eventual cooking by giving it a karate chope to the back of the neck. Unfortunately, it didn't cooperate by dying, forcing him insead to strike it repeatedly until it finally expired. It was a sickening and ridiculous experience.)

porkbelly

ndm - your conspiracy-theory chronology begs the question: is "torture" or whatever you wish to call it ever justified when lives are at stake? Or do decent cricket-playing chaps never go in for that sort of thng? What about shooting enemy soldiers on the battlefield without benefit of trial? Or dropping bombs on enemy cities where civilians are present? Willful naivete is not a credible security policy; either you defend yourself or you don't.

ndm

The UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment explicitly states:

-- No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

"No exceptional circumstances whatsoever" seems pretty explicit to me - and I see no mention whatsoever of an exception for "when lives are at stake."

Decent cricket-playing chaps obey the laws they create to govern their own conduct. Over the centuries and in response to an understanding of how easily humanity can betray itself in times of crisis decent cricket-playing chaps have created humanitarian laws to govern their behavior. These laws of war governing when an enemy soldier can be shot in the battlefield or when a bomb can be dropped on a city with civilians serve not only to protect the wanton killing of innocents they also serve to protect those serving in the military by providing legal and moral guidance on their behaviour.

It shocks the conscience that so many major public intellectuals in the West will debase themselves so willingly in defense of evil be it: decades of Israeli violations of the Geneva Conventions with regard to the Occupied Palestinian Territories; horrendous violations of the Convention Against Torture instigated by senior members of the Bush Administration; or even, closer to the home of The Spectator, wanton aggression towards innocents by the Metropolitan Police . Evil should be condemned not supported since continued acceptance and appeasement of evil only fosters its growth. The Westerners in the vanguard of this support of evil are not defending Western Values in the face of evil they are burning Western Values to light their way into the darkness of evil.

Naivete is certainly not a credible security policy but realism is. And that realism forces us to understand and be responsible for the consequences of our actions be they appeasement of the Israeli occupation, support for the Bush torture regime, or ignoring police brutality. History has made one thing clear, however, which is that evil is not a credible security policy. And decent cricket-playing chaps know it and they know it well.

ndm

"serve not only to protect the wanton killing of innocents" should of course be something like "serve not only to protect innocents from wanton killing"

porkbelly

ndm - this is nothing more than pious squeamishness masquerading as morality (and selective morality at that). Wars are not won by decent cricket-playing chaps who consult the rulebook at every turn; they are won by hard men who sometimes do things we would rather not think about. It is the height of hypocrisy to enjoy the security they make possible and still look contemptuously down upon them as your moral inferiors.

ndm

There was neither piety nor squeamishness in my comment. The best way to ensure the continued survival of Western Values is to defend them from those such as porkbelly who would have us abandon them. I reserve my contempt for those who pretend to defend Western Values even as they laud the violation of these values. The hypocrisy is theirs.

ndm

General David Petraeus wrote a letter to the soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines and coast guardsmen serving under his command in Iraq:

-- We are, indeed, warriors. We train to kill our enemies. We are engaged in combat, we must pursue the enemy relentlessly, and we must be violent at times. What sets us apart from our enemies in this fight, however, is how we behave. In everything we do, we must observe the standards and values that dictate that we treate noncombatants and detainees with dignity and respect. While we are warriors, we are also human beings.

"What sets us apart from our enemies ... is how we behave." Precisely.

It is tragic that more right-wing commentators - who almost to a man defend torture - do not share the wisdom of General Petraeus in his understanding of how we must behave in times of conflict.

porkbelly

Perhaps, ndm, you have seen "Shaun of the Dead" one too many times...the picture you paint of yourself and your brave band of defenders of Western Values valiantly holding off the army of blood-drenched slavering right-wing zombies is entertaining but hardly accurate.
I'm not aware of any right-wing commentators defending Abu Ghraib, or calling for wholesale torture and mistreatment of captured enemy soldiers. Perhaps you can cite some? What we zombies ARE saying is that there are exceptional circumstances where we have to be prepared to put aside our squeamishness - where we are dealing with brutal, non-state combatants who target our civilian population - where they possess information about imminent attacks. Behind closed doors, perhaps, and not codified as official policy, but known to the terrorists (a word I notice you are reluctant to use) themselves as a deterrent. I think our values are resiliant enough to withstand this (and I am quite sure that the carnage that would result from your UN-approved approach would place them under much greater strain).

delagar

Porkbelly apparently can't tell the difference between war and murder. Not surprising. Look up the definition of murder sometime, Porkbelly: it is unlawful killing. Killing someone during a battle is not unlawful. Killing someone who has surrendered, and whom you have on his knees with his hands bound behind his back -- would that be murder?

Why, yes, it would be. Get this: even if someone could argue that it was effective, because it's the safest way to kill the enemy (hey! he can't shoot back that way!) it would still be unlawful.

Torture is unlawful. That's why we're all upset to find agents who are acting in our name engaging in it.

Verity

ndm , quoting the UN on torture! What a hoot!

Next they'll be giving their opinion on parking violations.

ndm

Unsurprisingly, Verity mocks the UN Convention Against Torture - because God forbid the typical member of the ultra-right would have any moral standards. The UN Convention Against Torture was ratified by Britain in 1985 and incorporated into British law in the Criminal Justice Act (1988).

Here is the opening few paragraphs from the UK Parliamentary Joint Committee On Human Rights Nineteenth Report:

1. This Report assesses the United Kingdom's compliance with the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (UNCAT). The prohibition on torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment is at the heart of human rights protection. It is both a fundamental principle of our domestic common law,[1] and a key provision of the principal human rights treaties which bind the UK, including the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)[2] and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).[3] The Convention Against Torture builds on these guarantees of freedom from torture and ill-treatment, reiterating the prohibition on states' involvement in torture or inhuman or degrading treatment, but also specifying a series of positive obligations on states. These include obligations to prevent acts of torture or inhuman or degrading treatment,[4] to criminalise such acts[5] and to prosecute or extradite where there is evidence that they have been committed,[6] to investigate allegations of torture[7] and to provide appropriate redress for victims of torture,[8] and to train and educate officials in light of the prohibition on torture and ill-treatment.[9] The Convention also sets out specific prohibitions on deportations to face a real risk of torture,[10] and on the admission of evidence obtained by torture.[11]

2. The fundamental principle that everyone must be protected against inhuman or degrading treatment must be a guiding principle of all institutions of Government. Most importantly, at a time when the pressures of countering terrorism may challenge the protection of human rights in the UK and in other countries, the provisions of the Convention against Torture must be rigorously applied so as to afford real protection to individuals. The rights protected by the Convention, and their implementation in national legislation, policy and practice, deserve the close attention of Parliament, the Government and the public.