One of the things I failed to note in the disquieting series of revelations about our national torture program was the timing of it; it seems that quite a bit of the ramping-up was occurring in late 2002 and 2003. That’s odd, of course. One would expect that if we were terrified of additional terror attacks in the wake of 9/11, we would have been looking into torture in late 2001. What was going on in late 2002 that suddenly made us turn to forms of interrogation that shock the senses?
The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist.
Such information would’ve provided a foundation for one of former President George W. Bush’s main arguments for invading Iraq in 2003. In fact, no evidence has ever been found of operational ties between Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network and Saddam’s regime.
So to summarize, we tortured prisoners so we could find the non-existent Iraq-al Qaeda link, which would justify the war against Iraq that the Bush Administration desperately wanted to wage.
I don’t even know how to express how depraved that is.
Of course, we daresn’t do anything about it. Karl Rove says that investigating war crimes would make us into a “Latin American country run by colonels in mirrored sunglasses,” as if torturing prisoners to justify a war of choice hasn’t already taken us far beyond that moral event horizon.
These people are evil. They are sick. And history will not treat them — or us — kindly.
I can’t decide which version of the afterlife I prefer for Karl Rove, Christianity with burning in hell for eternity or Buddhism where he can be reincarnated as an intestinal parasite.
I’m going to have to go with Christianity. Intestinal parasites make other people suffer, but I don’t think they particularly mind their own existence.
This stuff … every time you think it can’t get worse, it gets worse.
Jeff,
I think it’s actually that the run-up to the war in Iraq was when the Bush Admin felt the need to be sure that what people were doing was legal — they knew that information about an Al Qaeda – Saddam connection would get at least a little scrutiny if it were being used to take the U.S. to war. According to Jane Mayer, CIA agents already were using the “enhanced” techniques in June, without even the thin cover of the August 2002 memos.
While I was willing to defend as inappropriate targets for prosecution those agents who had taken bad actions in good faith reliance on the DOJ’s legal advice, these folks who were using techniques that had not been approved as legal even by the OLC clowns have no such defense. They — and the psychiatrists and others who helped them devise their methods — are wide open for being put on trial.
Hm. According to your cite, that was a reason for part of the time that the techniques were used, but not the main reason.
The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11).
It’s also interesting to note that according to the New York Times (I specifically cite them because I have observed that folks here find them trustworthy) the techniques actually succeeded:
This was edited out of the condensed version of this memo released to the press. He also said
which indicates to me that the Administration is likely to continue to not prosecute the people involved.
Now this is a reversal from Adm. Blair’s testimony during his confirmation hearings:
at least with regards to the “effective” part. Adm. Blair also said
and that’s fair enough. We don’t know. Heck, he doesn’t know and he’s supposed to be an expert on such things. But what we do know according to testimony from both sides of the aisle now is that effective information was gained by the use of these techniques. That leaves us with a question to be answered the next time the situation comes up – do we engage in their use knowing that while they are effective their utilization is at least morally questionable and may affect the perception of American society? Or do we try alternative methods whose effectiveness I have not seen discussed and accept what may be an increased risk of the loss of American lives?
RonF,
I think there might be a logical fallacy here.
“High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qa’ida organization that was attacking this country”
=/=
those methods were necessary to obtaining high value information that otherwise would not have come out of those interrogations.
The fact that X (interrogations) had quality Y (torture) and X achieved goal Z (high value information) does not mean that X without Y would not achieve Z, only that X with Y was the method used. Would you be willing to stake anything on how much time was spent interrogating some of these suspects before interrogators turned to “enhanced” techniques? I’d be willing to bet that at least one person captured by the U.S. was tortured within the first two weeks of CIA agents having the capability to do it to him — a time-span completely insufficient for using conventional interrogation methods such as gaining the detainee’s trust.
And NONE of the information gained of which we’ve heard has been of a ticking time bomb type in which one could say that we didn’t have enough time to use conventional methods. Indeed, former Bush Admin officials have been doing their best to mislead us about timelines in order to pretend that waterboarding KSM 180-something times saved Los Angeles.
By way of explanation, the reason I’ve been giving the agents on the ground the benefit of the doubt is that it’s so easy to scapegoat the people at the bottom rungs and ignore who was setting policy, creating the environment in which these things happened, etc. We did it at Abu Ghraib, and I don’t want to see it keep happening again:
So long as we’re looking at the people who carried out the orders, our attention is distracted and our desire for punishment directed away from the people who gave the orders. I really, really don’t want to screw over the career military and CIA folks and then let their politically-appointed (and elected?) superiors go free.
This is why we need to prosecute the designers of these programs to the full extent of the law, because otherwise Americans who imagine themselves to be moral human beings will advocate the formal acceptance of the use of methods for which we executed people after the Second World War. Frankly, we should prosecute the people who carried them out to the full extent of the law as well, but I have no hope of that happening.
By the way, if you haven’t heard the effectiveness of non-torture methods of interrogation discussed, then you have not been listening to any serious discussions of interrogation methods, know nothing on the subject, and are wildly unqualified to discuss the subject even in the comments of a blog.
Hang on, people. The Times didn’t report that the torture* elicited useful info, it reported that Adm. Blair said that the torture elicited useful info. There’s a world of difference there. From what I have read, what KSM and Abu Zubaydah gave up under torture (as opposed to other methods, which apparently were at least somewhat successful with Abu Zubaydah) was either publicly available or bogus, and at least some of the latter type resulted in a lot of time and money wasted on wild-goose chases.
*You can call it anything you want, but it was torture by any reasonable definition, and that’s what I’m calling it.
Hang on, people. The Times didn’t report that the torture* elicited useful info, it reported that Adm. Blair said that the torture elicited useful info. There’s a world of difference there
Ayup. And Adm. Blair also said in the memo that torture didn’t gain anything that couldn’t have been found through conventional means, and that torturing damaged American credibility in the world, which did more damage to us than any information we obtained could make up for.
Ultimately, I don’t care if torture does work. The Nazis made all sorts of medical breakthroughs thanks to experiments conducted on concentration camp prisoners, breakthroughs that might well have saved lives — but doctors chose to killfile the research, believing that using that research, even if it saved lives, was tantamount to condoning the barbarism.
Similarly, using information obtained through torture, even if it saves lives, condones the barbarism that is torture. I do not want my life, or even my daughter’s life, saved through the infliction of inhuman pain on a prisoner. It cheapens the value of our lives, and the value of our country.
Is that true? I had always read the experiments were noted for their total lack of scientific value or method and their sheer sadism.
Is that true? I had always read the experiments were noted for their total lack of scientific value or method and their sheer sadism.
It’s my understanding. Of course, it’s hard to know; while I assume it’s not impossible to get access to the information, by virtue of the fact that the experiments’ results were actively suppressed, it’s entirely possible that it was mostly dross.
Indeed, that makes the parallel more apt; torture might spin out a nugget of gold amidst a field of dross, too. But all of it, across the board, should be ignored.
Have you read the descriptions of the experiments? I don’t need to see the results to know whether anything useful was gleaned. All you need to read is descriptions of the experiments to know it was complete and utter bullshit on a scientific level. I also, frankly, have a hard time believing we would toss it if it was useful, given the way we grabbed up every Nazi rocket scientist we could.
I think you give too much credence to our pre-Bush moral authority. I understand why it’s different and worse to have this stuff ordered directly and explicitly by the White House, but we have always tortured and we have always abetted torture and we have always done what was expedient. We just kept in on the down low a little more.
Similarly, using information obtained through torture, even if it saves lives, condones the barbarism that is torture. I do not want my life, or even my daughter’s life, saved through the infliction of inhuman pain on a prisoner. It cheapens the value of our lives, and the value of our country.
I agree, Jeff, and you’re right, this is the important point. But I want it clearly fixed in our minds, especially the minds of people now insane with rage because Obama may have bowed to the Saudi king, that torture doesn’t even work. Clearly some people are immune to moral suasion.
If I thought it would save my child’s life I would do anything at all to get info out of anyone who had it, especially if I knew that they had already been guilty of horrible crimes. I would want them to die a slow, agonizing death, and I’d take great pleasure in their suffering. And this is why we have the rule of law, to prevent our baser instincts from getting free rein, and it’s why flouting the law this way “in a good cause” is so dangerous: we are all savages under the skin.
The Nazis made all sorts of medical breakthroughs thanks to experiments conducted on concentration camp prisoners, breakthroughs that might well have saved lives — but doctors chose to killfile the research, believing that using that research, even if it saved lives, was tantamount to condoning the barbarism.
It’s my impression that most of the Nazi experiments were bad science as well as bad ethics but that they may have more or less accidentally found out some useful things about hypothermia. I can’t get too excited about the need to killfile this data, if it is genuinely useful, given that we use the Tuskegee data and call Marion Sims the “father of gynecology”.
If I thought it would save my child’s life I would do anything at all to get info out of anyone who had it, especially if I knew that they had already been guilty of horrible crimes. I would want them to die a slow, agonizing death, and I’d take great pleasure in their suffering.
A perfectly normal and natural response. But that wouldn’t make it right. Or useful.
The way I look at the “why not torture them they’re guilty of horrible crimes” argument is this: I don’t admire the way al Qaeda works. Therefore, I oppose anything that makes my country more like al Qaeda. Such as the use of torture, preemptive attacks, and terrorism.
And once again, The Onion nails it:
Slightly OT, but I’ve always wondered why Dukakis didn’t make this point when he got the “wouldn’t you want the death penalty if someone raped your wife?” question in the 1988 presidential debate. Yes, I’d want the person who did that drawn and quartered, but there’s a reason we have a system of laws instead of letting people carry out private vengeance and blood feuds.
Dianne: A perfectly normal and natural response. But that wouldn’t make it right. Or useful.
I believe I said that, Captain.
PG:Slightly OT, but I’ve always wondered why Dukakis didn’t make this point when he got the “wouldn’t you want the death penalty if someone raped your wife?” question in the 1988 presidential debate. “Yes, I’d want the person who did that drawn and quartered, but there’s a reason we have a system of laws instead of letting people carry out private vengeance and blood feuds.”
Believe it or not, I first formulated that response after watching that debate.