I think the main point about torture and water boarding and all their lesser kin like sensory deprivation are being missed by most people in the current debate.
Recently New Scientist ran an interview with torture expert Darius Rejali (whose father was tortured by order of the Shah of Iran); it's online and here's the URL, but you won't be able to access it for free for about another 2-3 weeks.
So I'll summarize my major takeaways from the article:
1) There is no science of torture. To have any valid argument about torture working or not working you would actually have to collect data over time and analyze it. This is not done, even by the governments or organizations that employ torture on a regular basis (although I'm tempted to wonder if somewhere in Moscow or Bejing there's not such an archive), so there is absolutely no scientific evidence in existence to support the notion that torture or enhanced interrogation techniques will ever get you the information you want. In fact, the psychological models we do have suggest that the opposite would be expected.
2) Laws attempting to restrict or define torture have a tendency not to eliminate it, but to drive it underground, and to encourage interrogators to devise methods that leave fewer traces. This is, with Orwellian precision, now know in the intelligence trade as clean torture. Even had Congress overridden the President's veto and thereby legally restricted the CIA to the methods in the US Army Interrogation Manual, it is the nature of black ops and budgets that there is not sufficient oversight to determine what's actually happening.
But for the sake of argument I'm willing--just for the moment--to punt and say, "OK, let's assume torture works, and will reliably yield operationally useful information, what then?"
What indeed?
The standard, fear-driven mantra is to ask the rhetorical ticking bomb question: wouldn't you torture if you knew that there was a nuke about to go off in whatever city Jack Bauer lived in during the second season of 24?
Let's rephrase that one. Suppose there was a planted nuke, and the terrorists (and in this thought experiment were being honest) said, "Kill one American citizen in cold blood, at random, on satellite TV at noon and we'll give you all the information about where the bomb is and how to disarm it."
Would you order one American citizen randomly murdered to save a city of six million people from a possible nuke? If so, what about two? Sixteen? Three hundred and forty-four?
Are the two situations at all comparable? Well, let's see: both involve sacrificing a single human being for the greater good. One is a complete innocent and one is a potentially guilty party. Does that make a difference? People who tell me that the enemy combatants we capture are pieces of human garbage, and therefore deserve what they get have just engaged in exactly the same thought process that empowers terrorists.
Wow. I'm sure glad I'm not running for office in America today, given the implications of what I just said.
The only way to justify torture in an America that still has a Constitution with a prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment is to find a way to declare the victims as less than human. Notice that the language of the 8th Amendment ["Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."] does not limit the prohibition on such punishments to US citizens--instead it is a blanket prohibition on the activities that the Federal government is allowed to initiate.
If it is morally and constitutionally acceptable to torture terrorists, it must also be so to torture big-time drug-dealers, suspected child molesters, and clerks at the DMV who won't take my check.
Which is apparently where we're headed.
Recently New Scientist ran an interview with torture expert Darius Rejali (whose father was tortured by order of the Shah of Iran); it's online and here's the URL, but you won't be able to access it for free for about another 2-3 weeks.
So I'll summarize my major takeaways from the article:
1) There is no science of torture. To have any valid argument about torture working or not working you would actually have to collect data over time and analyze it. This is not done, even by the governments or organizations that employ torture on a regular basis (although I'm tempted to wonder if somewhere in Moscow or Bejing there's not such an archive), so there is absolutely no scientific evidence in existence to support the notion that torture or enhanced interrogation techniques will ever get you the information you want. In fact, the psychological models we do have suggest that the opposite would be expected.
2) Laws attempting to restrict or define torture have a tendency not to eliminate it, but to drive it underground, and to encourage interrogators to devise methods that leave fewer traces. This is, with Orwellian precision, now know in the intelligence trade as clean torture. Even had Congress overridden the President's veto and thereby legally restricted the CIA to the methods in the US Army Interrogation Manual, it is the nature of black ops and budgets that there is not sufficient oversight to determine what's actually happening.
But for the sake of argument I'm willing--just for the moment--to punt and say, "OK, let's assume torture works, and will reliably yield operationally useful information, what then?"
What indeed?
The standard, fear-driven mantra is to ask the rhetorical ticking bomb question: wouldn't you torture if you knew that there was a nuke about to go off in whatever city Jack Bauer lived in during the second season of 24?
Let's rephrase that one. Suppose there was a planted nuke, and the terrorists (and in this thought experiment were being honest) said, "Kill one American citizen in cold blood, at random, on satellite TV at noon and we'll give you all the information about where the bomb is and how to disarm it."
Would you order one American citizen randomly murdered to save a city of six million people from a possible nuke? If so, what about two? Sixteen? Three hundred and forty-four?
Are the two situations at all comparable? Well, let's see: both involve sacrificing a single human being for the greater good. One is a complete innocent and one is a potentially guilty party. Does that make a difference? People who tell me that the enemy combatants we capture are pieces of human garbage, and therefore deserve what they get have just engaged in exactly the same thought process that empowers terrorists.
Wow. I'm sure glad I'm not running for office in America today, given the implications of what I just said.
The only way to justify torture in an America that still has a Constitution with a prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment is to find a way to declare the victims as less than human. Notice that the language of the 8th Amendment ["Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."] does not limit the prohibition on such punishments to US citizens--instead it is a blanket prohibition on the activities that the Federal government is allowed to initiate.
If it is morally and constitutionally acceptable to torture terrorists, it must also be so to torture big-time drug-dealers, suspected child molesters, and clerks at the DMV who won't take my check.
Which is apparently where we're headed.
Comments
The second & third paragraphs of Article VI say that this applies to the State & local governments as well.