The Daily Background

Torture doesn’t work.

Without getting into specifics, President Bush has stated that his administration’s interrogation and detention program has been necessary to foil plots and save lives. Newsweek (broken up for readability) has this:

But is that true? In recent interviews with NEWSWEEK reporters, U.S. intelligence officers say they have little—if any—evidence that useful intelligence has been obtained using techniques generally understood to be torture. It is clear, for instance, that Al Qaeda operations chief Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) was subjected to harsh interrogation techniques, including waterboarding. His interrogators even threatened, à la Jack Bauer, to go after his family. (KSM reportedly shrugged off the threat to his family—he would meet them in heaven, he said.)

KSM did reveal some names and plots. But they haven’t panned out as all that threatening: one such plot was a plan by an Al Qaeda operative to cut down the Brooklyn Bridge—with a blow torch. Intelligence officials could never be sure if KSM was holding back on more serious threats, or just didn’t know of any.

The White House doesn’t want lowly citizens like us to know what they want to be allowed to do, but a few details have leaked out and confirmed earlier reports from as early as 6 months ago about tactics the CIA was using. Waterboarding (or simulated drowning) would be banned under the new rules, but seven other torture tactics (most of them explicit violations of international law– after all the Administration would hardly be trying to re-define the Geneva Convention if they weren’t) would be allowed. They are as follows:

1) induced hypothermia, 2) long periods of forced standing, 3) sleep deprivation, 4) the “attention grab” (forcefully seizing the suspect’s shirt), 5) the “attention slap,” 6) the “belly slap” and 7) sound and light manipulation.

So forcefully slapping detainees, grabbing them and dragging them off their chairs, not allowing them to rest, forcing them to stand up for hours on end, subjecting them to extremely loud noises which could cause lifelong tinitus, and forcing them into hypothermic states in which they could die– would be okay.

Here’s the thing, with torture in general though. The Administration’s justification for torture is fundamentally flawed. The White House says that being able to torture human beings is vital to protect the lives of Americans.

But this assumption that the White House peddles is an extremely unrealistic one that can only be believed if one has watched too many action movies where there is always a time-bomb, ticking down to zero, that can always be disabled if you just know where it is, and there is always an evil villain that’s been captured who always knows exactly where it is and how to disable it. That certainly wasn’t the case for Khalid El-Masri, but they tortured him nonetheless. And a great number of other people, it seems.

Both law and morality dictate that you cannot torture fellow human beings, if there is even the shred of a doubt that they may be innocent (or even if there isn’t). Countless innocent people have been executed by the “justice” system in the United States. But the idea that there will always be a villain with the key to unlocking the ticking bomb that will kill 5 million people in the next 2 and a half hours if not dismantled is a simplistic one, and one that only suits itself to Hollywood movies and television shows.

As much as the Administration would like everyone to believe that things are that simple, they never are. Hollywood scenarios can neither be used as justification for violating the laws of the international community nor the laws of simple morality.

Filed under: Human Rights, Z-TDB Blog