What Torture Looks Like

32 thoughts on What Torture Looks Like

1. “Diet management?”

   Unless this means putting prisoners on Atkins until they beg to be allowed to deplaque their arteries, it’s not fucking “diet management.”

   Assholes. What’s the hip new euphemism for stress positions, then? “Extreme isometrics?” “Creative equilibrium intervention?” Maybe we could call those-unconscionable-practices-formerly-known-as-torture “sensory non-deprivation.”

2. “Sensory enhancement”

3. But they do result in prisoners talking – nearly 100 percent of the time.

   In the movie Three Kings, four soldiers–George Clooney, Marky Mark, Ice Cube, and some random dude–are out looking for stolen gold bullion in the aftermath of the first Gulf War. They go to a town where they think the gold is, run into some of Saddam’s Republican Army officers, put guns to their heads, and ask them if that’s where the gold is. Predictably, the Iraqis say no. Clooney puts a gun to the temple of the leader of the Iraqi officers, shoves a map in his face, and tells the guy to point where on the map the gold is. The guy points to a random spot on the map, and the Americans leave. Once they get outside of town, Clooney uses his cunning intellect to deduce that the Iraqis lied, and that the gold was where they just were.

   That is the kind of intelligence that you get when you toture someone. It doesn’t matter how little or how much torture you put someone through. The moron just quoted is right: people under torture will talk nearly 100% of the time. The problem is, all you’re going to get is what he or she thinks you want to hear, especially if that also happens to serve their self-interest, as in Three Kings. Almost never will you actually get the truth.

4. My only problem is that there doesn’t seem to be a definition of torture that everyone can agree on. I remember that some lefty sites and news sources were deeply disturbed about Muslims having the Israeli flag draped on them or the smearing red ink on them after telling them it was menstrual blood (and not letting them clean up afterwards). They called this psychological torture. If you accept that “sleep deprivation, diet management and stress positions” are torture, soon they’ll decide that keeping suspected terrorists away from other terrorists or denying them Koran is torture. Or maybe we’ll decide locking them up at all is torture since it causes stress.

5. Um, all due respect Eric P, but why have any rules at all, or any standards, about anything? Your question seems a bit absurd, especially considering that people have died. Part of what’s problematic here is that these euphemisms sound relatively benign but the practices themselves are horrific.

   As for sleep deprivation: as an insomniac, I can tell you it certainly feels like torture. Do it long enough and it can produce hallucinations. I’m sure THAT leads to good intel.

6. It doesn’t matter how little or how much torture you put someone through.

   The point is, this begs the question. Will an “interrogation method” not release valid information just because someone calls it “torture,” or because of the specific action and its effect? And doesn’t /all/ information gained from detainees/etc need to be verified/vetted in some way–and if it isn’t, doesn’t that mean there are even *more* problems in our intelligence gathering and processing capabilities?

   Your movie analogy doesn’t really work; can we really assume the guy Clooney threatened would have given valid info if he /wasn’t/ threatened? It seems to me if he didn’t want to talk, he wasn’t going to talk. The gun-pointing bit is a red herring (and it’s also fiction, BTW).

7. Rest easy Jill- now that the McCain amendment is set to become law, it will be illegal to interrogate high-level Al Qaeda targets using such blood-chilling techniques as shaking them by their lapels, poking them, or lightly pushing them.

8. Jon, did you look at those pictures? That doesn’t happen from shaking people by their lapels, poking them, or lightly pushing them.

   People also don’t die from the “blood-chilling” techniques you mentioned. And yet detainees have died in the hands of U.S. agents. Can you really argue that nothing beyond a little poking is going on?

9. Jill, I’m not arguing that there’s nothing more sinister than poking going on. It’s undeniable that there have been some extreme, regrettable incidents of what would universally be considered torture. The perpetrators of those incidents have been punished, and rightfully so.

   Unfortunately, the unrelenting drumbeat of anti-US and anti-military criticism is now driving our policy to err on the opposite side of extreme overcautionness. Something to think about the next we’re shaking our heads after the next terrorist attack, wondering why we couldn’t get the intelligence to stop it: 11 of 12 high-ranking Al Qaeda agents we captured after 9/11 only gave up intel on ongoing terrorist operations after being subjected to water-boarding. Under the McCain amendment, there’s a strong likelihood that we wouldn’t have been allowed to subject them to anything worse than loud yelling.

10. Shall I point out the difference between abuses that violate policy and policy itself? At no point, even without a McCain amendment, has the policy of the United States military been to beat people to death in detention, though your post doesn’t exactly make that distinction. Thus, any interrogators committing such acts are violating policy, whether it’s out of personal sadism or illegal direction from superiors, etc.

    Thus, your argument in the post over-relies on the idea that “because this has happened,” it can be extrapolated to a counter a slightly different argument against the definitions of torture expanding to coercive interrogation techniques. And it gives you the technical semantic capability to argue that the statement “the US Military doesn’t torture” is objectiveley false, without even acknowledging the distinction between policy and violation of policy by members of the military.

    An analagous example:

    Do you say that Americans are “murderers” or make the characterization (with its implication) that “Americans murder.” because 15,000 people are murdered every year, despite laws, law enforcement and the criminal justice system set up to stop murder, and 99.99% of Americans not committing murder?

    Assuming agreement on the nature of things like waterboarding, etc – a big assumption for the sake of argument, but part of a mature debate – the statement “The US Military Doesn’t Torture Prisoners” is not some wacky conservative fantasy land – it’s a statement of the policy and vast majority of behavior under that policy (again assuming agreement on definitions of torture) of the US Military, not a statement that encompasses all violations or aberrations of that policy.

    I mean, this is really the best argumentation at your disposal?

    And do you really find World Net Daily and TH to be the pinnacle of Conservative expression? Or just convenient second-tier targets that you consistently cherry pick to make broad arguments against “conservatives?”

11. Do we know whether that “intel on ongoing terrorist operations” has actually been of any verified use? Or was that “intel on ongoing terrorist operations” about as useful as when McCain cracked under torture and gave up the names of the Green Bay Packer’s as his co-conspirators?

12. Jon, did you look at those pictures? That doesn’t happen from shaking people by their lapels, poking them, or lightly pushing them.

    Under what circumstances were those pictures taken? Who is responsible? When a random web site posts pictures of abuse, etc., what level of skepticism to you apply to the source before choosing to validate? How long ago were they taken? Have you bothered to mull these questions in your head? hey, outrage is so easy, and it fulfills a predisposed narrative. My examination of the site provides very little context or detail.

    When blogs pushed the story of a manslaughter by US troops, and provided details and named names, the military investigated and brought the soldiers to justice. Why don’t you get on that? Get some specifics about those pictures, and push a complaint if you are certain you have enough detail to verify the claims?

    And if indeed elements of the Iraqi security forces are responsible, what level of responsibility is it fair to assign to policies of the US military? How can US trainers ingrain ethics with unanimity in security forces that have historically had none? How does this contextually reflect on the situation in Iraq post vs. pre-invasion? Your post argues that “we train them,” so the implication is that we’re encouraging it. It’s a ridiculously shallow implication.

13. Um, all due respect Eric P, but why have any rules at all, or any standards, about anything? Your question seems a bit absurd, especially considering that people have died.

    Absurd? I think most peoples’ definition of torture would include anything that would kill someone. My point was that many activities that don’t cause even temporary physical harm are now being called torture. “Sleep deprivation, diet management and stress positions” may make someone uncomfortable but it didn’t directly lead to the pictures Jill posted. All of them show physical abuse which is already illegal.

    As for sleep deprivation: as an insomniac, I can tell you it certainly feels like torture. Do it long enough and it can produce hallucinations. I’m sure THAT leads to good intel.

    It also reduces the ability to make judgements. Including internal rules not to reveal secret information. Obviously, the person could talk about pink elephants. The trick is to follow up with other prisoners or the same prisoner once he has had a chance to sleep.

14. One of our regular commenters (and a fellow blogger) is an ex-interrogater who maintains that torture is never necessary. I’ll see if I can find her most recent argument against torture.

15. I knew a guy who worked in and ran interrogation groups in both the Army and Marines for 20-odd years, from the tail end of Vietnam to 1991. He always made it quite clear that physical torture was not only illegal, not only morally wrong, but most importantly to him, it “ruined” the effectiveness of his interrogation groups.

    His last stint was during the First Iraq War. What he considers his most nasty stunt was when one Iraqi officer simply refused to say anything whatsoever after 12 hours of interrogation.

    He simply walked in, gave the Iraqi officer a doe-eyed look, said “My love…” in Arabic, and planted a big wet one on his cheek.

    (I should mention that this guy is 6′ 7″ and looks just like a Hollywood version of a Viking.)

    End of story.

    He now lives quietly with his wife in Eugene. And I know that he is one angry, sad man today.

16. Under what circumstances were those pictures taken? Who is responsible? When a random web site posts pictures of abuse, etc., what level of skepticism to you apply to the source before choosing to validate? How long ago were they taken? Have you bothered to mull these questions in your head?

    Actually, they were taken by a friend of one of my good friends. He’s living in Iraq right now, documenting the experience.

17. Will an “interrogation method” not release valid information just because someone calls it “torture,” or because of the specific action and its effect? And doesn’t /all/ information gained from detainees/etc need to be verified/vetted in some way–and if it isn’t, doesn’t that mean there are even *more* problems in our intelligence gathering and processing capabilities?

    Hi. Have you met Curveball?

    Let’s keep in mind a few things. First, the McCain Amendment seeks to have the Army Field Manual applied to interrogations. The Army is not really fond of using torture because it doesn’t work, but more importantly, if word gets out that you’re torturing prisoners, any of your forces who are captured are more likely to be tortured.

    Of course, now that there’s support for enforcing the Army Field Manual, the Pentagon is trying to change it to make it easier to use these techniques.

    Interrogators have often said that they get better information by winning the prisoner’s trust. There are a lot of psychological games that can be played, such as the prisoner’s dilemma, that will get what you need. Hell, the right to remain silent and the prohibition of police brutality haven’t dried up confessions, even spontaneous ones.

    There was an op-ed piece in the NY Times a few months back from someone who had been a military interrogator. It’s behind the subscription wall now, but I’ll try to find some blog posts on it that quote large chunks. Essentially, the writer said that a lot of the techniques that are being used now were brought into the repertoire from studying Communist interrogation techniques, where the whole idea was NOT to get accurate information, but to intimidate prisoners into signing false confessions.

    Finally, and most importantly: unlike the people who are cavalierly dismissing the McCain Amendment, John McCain was actually tortured. He can no longer raise his arms to comb his hair because he spent so much time hanging by his thumbs in the Hanoi Hilton. And he has said that he told his captors anything they wanted to hear when they tortured him. He was only expected to hold out for so long, long enough to protect the mission he’d been on when he’d been captured, because the military realizes that people under torture will say anything.

18. John McCain was actually tortured. He can no longer raise his arms to comb his hair because he spent so much time hanging by his thumbs in the Hanoi Hilton. And he has said that he told his captors anything they wanted to hear when they tortured him. He was only expected to hold out for so long, long enough to protect the mission he’d been on when he’d been captured, because the military realizes that people under torture will say anything.

    Yes, he told them what he judged they wanted to hear. He has made it quite clear on several occasions that he confessed truthfully only to trivial matters of fact they already knew, and concocted plausible lies to answer anything else. On a separate occasion he signed a coerced false confession to escape further torture – hardly providing useful intelligence. The other POWs who shared his imprisonment/torture similiarly got creative when it was time to stop the beatings by “confessing”. Sure, torture may produce more ‘intel’ than non-torture, but is it useful ‘intel’?

    From Tortures’s Terrible Toll, his Newsweek article:

    In my experience, abuse of prisoners often produces bad intelligence because under torture a person will say anything he thinks his captors want to hear—whether it is true or false—if he believes it will relieve his suffering. I was once physically coerced to provide my enemies with the names of the members of my flight squadron, information that had little if any value to my enemies as actionable intelligence. But I did not refuse, or repeat my insistence that I was required under the Geneva Conventions to provide my captors only with my name, rank and serial number. Instead, I gave them the names of the Green Bay Packers’ offensive line, knowing that providing them false information was sufficient to suspend the abuse. It seems probable to me that the terrorists we interrogate under less than humane standards of treatment are also likely to resort to deceptive answers that are perhaps less provably false than that which I once offered.

19. I have many points of political disagreement with McCain, certainly more now than I did in 2000, when I thought that maybe he was a Republican I could actually vote for, but I will never, ever doubt his judgment on matters of torture.

    I also have to love the fact that he answered Bush’s whisper campaign that he had become the Manchurian Candidate due to his time in a Viet Cong prison camp with winking references to Angela Lansbury.

20. Your movie analogy doesn’t really work; can we really assume the guy Clooney threatened would have given valid info if he /wasn’t/ threatened?

    No, but the point is that torture/a gun to his head did no better than not doing that would have, so what’s the point of doing it in the first place?

    (and it’s also fiction, BTW).

    No fucking shit. It doesn’t detract from my point. See zuzu above for a real life example.

21. Hmm… I have nothing of import to add to this discussion. I’d just like to say that I feel vaguely (vaguely!) sorry for Bush supporters these days. They’re put in the position of defending the indefensible again and again and again. Outing under cover agents… torture… What’s next? Eating babies?

22. They’re put in the position of defending the indefensible again and again and again.

    Again, see above: it’s only a defense of “torture” if you define “torture” to include “mild, non-injurious physical contact”.

23. This is the definition of torture contained in the UN Convention Against Torture:

    For the purposes of this Convention, torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

    Note that the US . signed this Convention in 1988 and ratified it in 1994. So we do, in fact, have a definition of torture that is considered the highest law of the land. And it includes non-physical torture.

24. Zuzu: pre-McCain amendment, UNCAT doesn’t apply to enemy combatants captured on the battlefield:

    McCain borrows the term cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment (CID) from the 1984 United Nations Convention Against Torture and Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment or Punishment (UNCAT). When the Senate ratified UNCAT in 1994, it enacted a significant reservation: the CID terms were limited to what was already covered under U.S. law by three Bill of Rights provisions: the Fifth, Eighth and Fourteenth amendments to the Constitution.

    As I’ve argued, here, this caveat reduced CID to a virtual nullity. The Bill of Rights does not apply to non-Americans situated outside U.S. territory. Under current law, UNCAT’s CID terms are thus unavailing to alien enemy combatants captured and held in foreign countries during wartime. Such captives may not be tortured, but CID poses no legal obstacle to aggressive tactics that fall short of torture. Tactics that yield intelligence which saves the lives of American citizens and soldiers.

    The problem with the McCain amendment is that it makes it possible to define objectively non-torture activities as torture.

25. I can’t say I agree with McCarthy’s interpretation of the reservation.

    In any event, even if the reservation in fact gives US personnel free reign to abuse prisoners so long as they do it outside the US, it does not change the fact that we do, in fact have a working definition of torture that encompasses non-physical torture. Alberto Gonzales and John Yoo spent a lot of time making very specious arguments in favor of narrowing that definition so much that only pain equivalent to organ failure or death could be considered torture.

26. >>Absurd? I think most peoples’ definition of torture would include anything that would kill someone. My point was that many activities that don’t cause even temporary physical harm are now being called torture. >>

    And why not? Is it okay to beat someone up as long as they’ll recover from their bruises in a week or so? Or to deprive them of sleep for only a week? There are hundreds of ways to injure someone and make them extremely miserable without causing permanent physical damage–take it from someone who does similar stuff in good consensual fun. Hey, what about rape? Can we rape and sodomize detainees? After all, there’s no physical damage involved, right? It’s only temporarily painful. Psychological injury doesn’t count as torture.

27. And remember — even if — even if — the reservation to the Convention Against Torture means that cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment is exempted somehow from the US interpretation of the Convention, there has been no claim that torture, as defined in the Convention, is subject to the reservation.

    And since the definition of torture includes physical OR mental torture, all the arguments that “well, it wasn’t really torture because we didn’t even touch him, we just fucked with his mind a little” fall flat.

28. Absurd? I think most peoples’ definition of torture would include anything that would kill someone. My point was that many activities that don’t cause even temporary physical harm are now being called torture. “Sleep deprivation, diet management and stress positions” may make someone uncomfortable but it didn’t directly lead to the pictures Jill posted.

    Oh, for the love of Mike!

    Imprimus, it is possible to kill people through sleep deprivation.

    Secondus, it is possible to kill people through “diet management”.

    Tertius, it is possible to cause serious pain and cripple people through “stress positions”. Indeed, one of the old medieval tortures was just that – locking someone up in a cage where they couldn’t sit down, stand upright or squat properly.

29. Zuzu, if the current ban on torture includes all the things you’re suggesting it does- poking, shaking, non-physical intimidation- then what possible purpose could the McCain Amendment serve? Are you saying that it’s just surplusage, reiterating bans on non-torture interrogation techniques that already banned? Plainly, that is not the case. The McCain amendment is designed to make it possible to further expand the list of prohibited interrogation techniques to harsh but non-torture activity.

    Secondly, legalities aside, what is your personal opinion of what we should be allowed to do to extract information from intransigent Al Qaeda detainees? Is there any level of harsh interrogation, short of torture of course, that you’d be comfortable with? Or do we have to give every Islamist we pick up on the battlefield tea and crumpets and hope they possibly decide to give us some information out of the good of their hearts?

30. Zuzu, if the current ban on torture includes all the things you’re suggesting it does- poking, shaking, non-physical intimidation- then what possible purpose could the McCain Amendment serve? Are you saying that it’s just surplusage, reiterating bans on non-torture interrogation techniques that already banned? Plainly, that is not the case. The McCain amendment is designed to make it possible to further expand the list of prohibited interrogation techniques to harsh but non-torture activity.

    You’re twisting my arguments. There is a definition of torture which is not affected by the reservation to the UNCAT, and that definition encompasses both physical and/or mental torture. UNCAT also prohibits cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. You’re arguing that the reservation to UNCAT means that as long as we do it to non-US citizens on foreign soil, CID is perfectly fine. I don’t agree with that interpretation, but even if that were the case, any of the techniques such as waterboarding, shaking, poking, sleep deprivation, stress positions, etc., can and have led to severe pain and death, thus elevating them to torture.

    Secondly, legalities aside, what is your personal opinion of what we should be allowed to do to extract information from intransigent Al Qaeda detainees? Is there any level of harsh interrogation, short of torture of course, that you’d be comfortable with? Or do we have to give every Islamist we pick up on the battlefield tea and crumpets and hope they possibly decide to give us some information out of the good of their hearts?

    Follow the fucking Army Field Manual, and allow only well-trained military interrogators to handle interrogations. Not CIA, not contractors, not hillbilly Guardsmen who weren’t trained for the work.

    Use the most effective techniques, many of which are psychological in nature and not physical. Harsh physical treatment, if you’ve been paying attention at all, is often counterproductive because the prisoner will say anything he thinks you want to hear to stop the pain.

    And by the way, not everyone we pick up is an “Islamist,” though the chances of that go up as our treatment of prisoners radicalizes the population. A hell of a lot of prisoners are there because they’re unlucky, or because their neighbors wanted to collect a reward.

31. Frickin’ bamboo slivers under the fingernails doesn’t result in death. Chopping off digits one by one doesn’t result in death. Putting thumbs in thumbscrews doesn’t result in death.

    Torture has nothing to do with death.

    Torture has to do with treating another human being so badly that he wishes he were dead.

    Bushist fascist swine.

32. Torture has to do with treating another human being so badly that he wishes he were dead.

    Exactly. We have no trouble making this distinction when it comes to, say, accused murderers. Why not accused terrorists?

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