Turley On Torture: New Administration, Same As The Old Administration
The current set of lying, lying liars in The White House are claiming that torture paid off in finding Bin Laden. Law prof Jonathan Turley writes:
What is striking is not only the lack of any support for the claims, but the immediate effort of Obama officials to justify torture. No doubt these are the same officials supporting Obama's decision to bar prosecution of individuals who carried out the torture -- and later barring the investigation of those who ordered the torture....Just as the Bush officials continually responded to war crime allegations by claiming that the torture produced good intelligence, international law does not have an exception for beneficial acts of torture. It is a prohibited act and a war crime. Yet, Obama officials are not only justifying torture but suggesting that the use of torture is somehow legitimated if anything usable is derived from it.
It is equally interesting to see CIA officials stoking such stories and (rightfully) questioning the culpability of Pakistani intelligence. However, what does Bin Laden living for years in a huge compound say for our current intelligence capabilities? We heard continual CIA reports of Bin Laden being in caves and other locations. If the story is true that he was in area for years, shouldn't there also be some question of our own capabilities since we have long said that we could not trust Pakistani security officials?
It's pretty clear that the interrogation methods worked.
ParatrooperJJ at May 4, 2011 7:20 AM
Turley's point is that there is no exception in criminal law for "good torture" or "effective torture." What he assumes is that what the CIA and Gitmo interrogators did is torture.
18 USC §2340 provides a definition for purposes of U.S. law:
(1) “torture” means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control;
(2) “severe mental pain or suffering” means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from—
(A) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering;
(B) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality;
(C) the threat of imminent death; or
(D) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality.
I think reasonable people could differ over whether waterboarding or sleep deprivation (to name 2 techniques we have been told were used) would qualify.
RichardL at May 4, 2011 9:48 AM
It's unpleasant to contemplate our government using these techniques because we as a society want to feel morally superior and the thought of our government officials engaging in that type of behavior is unconscionable to many. But have no illusions, "Black sites" and "Black Operations" are a necessary evil.
The Bush Administration took a lot of heat for their stance on this matter. Obama used the promise of shutting them down as a campaign promise and his first executive order was to close them along with stopping "enhanced interrogation techniques". The Ignorati decried that "we are above that" and "how can we be a nation of laws while 'torturing'?". They were smug, indignant, and wrong. Without the evidence obtained during one of these sessions, OBL would still be sipping tea in his compound.
As to whether Pakistan knew of his location, I believe they did. They were playing both sides; protecting Al Queda and the Taliban while helping the U.S., Clinton tipped her hand recently when she accused them of withholding information about OBL and the whereabouts of Taliban leaders. Congress should withhold the flow of cash to Pakistan immediately until some over-site and accountability are in place.
Savant-Idiot at May 4, 2011 12:06 PM
I'll believe it when we court-martial and convict the instructors of every Survival and Evasion training class conducted on our aircrews for decades. They were waterboarded by members of our military, and they are on our side.
If you accept the premise that waterboarding is torture, then that's where we must go.
The next step is to turn president Obama, who ordered the assassination of OBL, over to the Hague for trial. He ordered the murder of an unarmed man.
Professor Turley is entitled to his principles. I don't think they will resonate with the average American.
MarkD at May 4, 2011 12:17 PM
What RichardL said - and frankly, who gives a fig for "international law" as it stands?
Not me.
The entire point of the Geneva Conventions, for instance, was that they were symmetrical; they applied only between contracting parties and only while both sides obeyed their strictures.
I am not aware of a military opponent to the United States that obeyed the Conventions generally since they were written, with the ironic exception of Nazi Germany.
They are, as they stand, no more than a political tool for anti-Western forces to use for propaganda while ignoring their requirements themselves, just as they were ignored by the Communists during the Cold War for every other purpose.
(Further, defining "torture" down from what it used to mean to "very unpleasant conditions" leads, as you might have noticed in all comment threads about the subject that weren't populated entirely by Leftists, to people simply automatically assuming the term "torture" referred to the latter, rather than to the original horrible referents.
The term has thus been - completely unsurprisingly - made a pawn of politics, to the point where it's almost meaningless in political discourse.
So thus I tend to automatically discount lectures about American "torture" in such contexts - which is a shame for the activists, since now if anything Legitimate ever comes up they'll have to fight against that.
Sucks to be them. I'm not going to lose sleep over all their linguistic game-playing, as if the labels have moral value irrespective of their new definitions.)
Sigivald at May 4, 2011 1:10 PM
Why do nitwits try to mention laws in cases like this? Short story: if you confuse a battlefield with a courtroom, you are mentally deranged. Get help at once!
Here's a horrifying thought for you: "fair" means our guys win.
And the other people die, sometimes quite spectacularly, sometimes slowly and horribly.
You're not changing that rule. Combat is not really a game.
I suggest that if you feel guilty when our guys win, you have a deep-seated emotional problem!
Radwaste at May 4, 2011 3:05 PM
"They are, as they stand, no more than a political tool for anti-Western forces to use for propaganda while ignoring their requirements themselves, just as they were ignored by the Communists during the Cold War for every other purpose."
Yep. Since the Korean War, American POWs in uniform have routinely been tortured and executed by our enemies. And yet, although our current enemies fight entirely as irregulars, violating every single standard of the Geneva conventions, we are expected to grant them not only the rights of regulated military under Geneva, but all of the rights of American citizens. That standard has never been applied to any other force in any war, ever.
(Further, some of those "rights" are not even specified under the Geneva Convention that the U.S. signed on to, but by a proposed 1970s extension that was never ratified by the U.S. Senate.)
I can point out another example of this: Remember land mines? Remember how horrible the U.S. was for using them in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam? After much pressure, the U.S. government forked over billions for supposed cleanup efforts, and discontinued all manufacture and use of land mines. Yet, the anti-land-mine people (led by the gullible Princess Diana) tarred all Americans with original sin for ever having used them in the first place.
Well, guess what? When our enemies started successfully using land mines (i.e., IEDs) against American troops, all of the international anti-land-mine community went silent overnight. You never hear a peep about land mines anymore. You see, as long as they're killing Americans, land mines are okey-dokey. Wait and see how quickly the anti-nuke international community disappears as soon as Iran successfully uses a nuke against someone.
Cousin Dave at May 4, 2011 3:21 PM
Otto at May 4, 2011 6:32 PM
"Using torture != winning, just so you know. However, since you like strawmen, I suggest that if you like the idea of torturing others, you have very deep-seated emotional problems. So put away the nipple clamps and car battery, unless you're going to the BDSM club later."
Focus. That's not what I said. It's common for a post of mine to not be all about you.
But hey - the hit dog will holler!
Radwaste at May 5, 2011 4:50 AM
You said "if you feel guilty when our guys win, you have a deep-seated emotional problem." Who was talking about us winning? Yes, we got OBL, and I didn't hear anyone on this blog complaining about that. The idea that torture was necessary, or even helpful, in getting OBL is dubious at best. (10 years?) I said what I said to point out that if you want to construct strawmen out of others' positions, don't be surprised when the same is done to you.
Combat is horrible. However, once someone is captured, other rules are supposed to apply. If you want to say "fuck that" and lower yourself to the same level as the 14th century barbarians we're fighting, do so. But understand that 1) it most likely will not be helpful, especially if you have captured the wrong guy, and 2) once moral equivalence between terrorists and US soldiers / US government functionaries is established, it will have confirmed the worst things our enemies say about us.
Otto at May 5, 2011 10:49 AM
Gratuitous mistreatment of captives is barbaric, no doubt.
However, what the CIA dealt out to certain Islamofascists was not gratuitous, and was driven by the decentralized nature of the enemy.
Imagine this scenario: We have three captives, about each of whom we know some things, but not everything. None of them know how much we know, or what the others have yielded. This means coerced statements can be verified (asking them a question we already know the answer to) and corroborated (comparing statements against what other captives have said).
Considering the coercion techniques did not cause lasting physical harm, under what moral calculus is it OK to kill these people in combat, but not OK to deprive them of sleep, or provide the sensation of drowning, in order to obtain information to prevent future slaughter?
Your assertion of moral equivalence is a cheap shot, and sounds like the sort of thing people who have no skin in the game are too quick to conclude.
Hey Skipper at May 5, 2011 11:10 AM
International law did so much for Kristian Menchaca and Thomas Tucker.
Turley is welcome to bring his law books to a gunfight.
MarkD at May 5, 2011 12:07 PM
perhaps folks need to remember what real torture is under folks like the north vietnamese, north koreans, SS, gestapo, etc.... I have alwats thought that calling waterboarding "torture" was just an effort from the left to villify america, which somehow seems to get their rocks off.
ronc at May 5, 2011 4:28 PM
Dont forget books, dropping books on the ground is torture too!!!
lujlp at May 5, 2011 10:03 PM
"Who was talking about us winning?"
Umm, I was. Because there are lots of people upset at the idea.
You do not see my support for torture above. You're making that up. What you do see above is my assertion that fantasies about fairness are just that.
Now: if you hate the idea that an enemy of the USA was killed, say so outright. Then, we can explore the idea that you would get a "fair" trial of some sort at the hands of OBL's minions.
While two wrongs do not make a right, there are also situations where tolerance is NOT the answer. Life itself is not fair. You do not get a "do over!" for the majority of battlefield conditions, and it is both good and bad that more Americans do not know that.
Radwaste at May 6, 2011 7:37 AM
Now, about the actual utility of torture.
Nowadays it's more effective to drug the subject silly and ask questions. This in itself is a horror, because some of the drugs can produce long-term problems.
But all applications of stress, in which the individual is forced to talk, results in information, which can then be examined for its utility.
Whether you are confused by pain or by drugs or by sleep deprivation or by simply clever conversation, when keeping a consistent story together is more difficult, real information leakage is more difficult to prevent.
Now, do not forget the most important component of interrogation: when the subject thinks relief will be the reward, the motivation to give a deceptive answer becomes tiny by comparison.
-----
Now: notice that in the total absence of stress, a "cold reader" can tell you a lot of things about your life. In such cases, the audience member is more impressed than a serious spectator, who can go over the transcript and reveal the bulk of information is volunteered by the audience member.
Do you really think a modern interrogator is a movie "bad guy", with a hammer or The Rack, working on a screaming victim?
She isn't. Think on that for a while.
Radwaste at May 6, 2011 7:50 AM
"perhaps folks need to remember what real torture is under folks like the north vietnamese, north koreans, SS, gestapo, etc"
A point worth making is that, in most instances of serious torture, the goal is not to gather information, but to use the person being tortured to produce propaganda. Why did North Vietnam torture the American POWs they held at the Hanoi Hilton? Few of the POWs had any info that was of any use to the ChiComms, and anyway the ChiComm army mostly lacked the ability to exploit any information they did gain. Instead, the goal (other than letting the torturers get their rocks off) was to force the prisoners to produce "confessions" that could be used for propaganda. They did succeed in some cases, and some of the "confessions" they produced were successful in turning some people in the U.S. -- notably Jane Fonda. And in the more recent case of Americans who have been beheaded by Islamists, the purpose was also propaganda; it was red meat for their supporters, and intended to demoralize their enemies. Daniel Pearl's executioners gained no useful info from him, nor did they have any expectation of doing so.
By contrast, all of our "enhanced interrogatoin" -- call it torture if you want, I really don't care -- has been done for the purpose of producing information. Only in a couple of cases that we know of has torture been done by our side for any other purpose, and those cases are regarded by almost everyone on both sides of the issue as abusive.
Cousin Dave at May 6, 2011 9:41 AM
Brought about, in each case, by a breakdown in unit leadership and discipline.
Hey Skipper at May 6, 2011 10:04 AM
I'm going to leave after this, because I don't think I'm going to change anyone's mind, and I know no one is going to change my mind. Let me state my position clearly - I have no sympathy for the terrorists, and while I would have preferred to see bin Laden brought to trial, I'm not really upset with how he was killed.
If you want to say waterboarding is not torture, then you'll have to disagree with some American flyers captured by the Japanese in WWII. They were subjected to it, and they viewed it as torture. Furthermore, the US prosecuted the Japanese who inflicted as war criminals.
That the interrogators didn't inflict it out of sadism is irrelevant in my view. I don't think it's effective, and I wouldn't support it even if it was. There are plenty of effective interrogation techniques that don't involve morally suspect actions.
As for my assertion of moral equivalence (to Hey Skip, not rad) - I mentioned lowering ourselves to their standards not in reply to you, but someone else who basically said they didn't care - it was okay to do anything since the people we were fighting were such scumbags. Ignoring, or perhaps unaware, that many of the Gitmo prisoners were grabbed days, weeks, or months after the battle, on the often dubious word of paid informants. If that person was fully aware that we might have been torturing innocent people, then I have no problem saying they are the moral equivalent of a terrorist.
Treating the worst people humanely is not a gift to them. It's a standard we should hold for ourselves. "He who fights monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." Retaining our humanity is not easy when fighting evil people, but it is necessary.
Otto at May 6, 2011 4:10 PM
It wasn't about you, Otto. That's all.
Radwaste at May 6, 2011 10:04 PM
People, the bottom line, all the shit stripped away, is that no matter how principled you are, if you want to win a war, that means doing unprincipled things.
War is ugly. It is brutality, blood, and death. And if it takes hurting somebody or scaring,, or scarring, them to keep MY soldiers alive, sobeit.
Things are done this way because these ways WORK.
There is a reason no handwringers work as interrogators...they'd suck at it.
Robert at May 7, 2011 2:28 PM
Leave a comment