« Eurolicious | Main | Speed demons » Defining torture23 Nov 2007 01:07 pm While in Vietnam, the "what is torture" discussion came up once again. It seems to be an evergreen among journalists, though as you can imagine, there was not a lot of support for the Bush administration's definition in the group. My definition is fairly simple. If you saw someone doing something to a soldier in a movie, and that act alone was enough to tell you that the perpetrator was the bad guy, then that's probably something American soldiers shouldn't be doing to anyone else. Comments (39)
Your definition would certainly include "oldsmobile-ing": submerging the victim in a car and leaving them to die as they consumed the oxygen in the vehicle. This technique doesn't produce very much useful intelligence, but I suspect it is quite stressful on the victim. If I saw this technique being used, I would know that the perpetrator was the "bad guy". I would guess that most members of the Senate Judiciary Committee would agree. 
I'm not sure that works, for several reasons. 1. Movies are fictional; they often manipulate circumstances, point of view, etc., to make things seem better or worse than they objectively are. 2. We can't judge torture by film standards because it's usually obvious who the Good Guy is supposed to be- and that seriously influences our judgement. Dirty Harry in the real world would be very different from Dirty Harry in the movies. 3. The standards of what movies can show (on both the good and bad guys' sides) have changed quite a lot; but surely we don't want our definition of torture to change.
One problem with the torture discussion in America is that it focuses exclusively on physical torture, whereas psychological torture is much more common, and an accepted way of doing business, in America. According to a number of torture survivors - those who have been the subjects of physical AND psychological torture, the psychological torture is worse. There have been numerous confirmed cases in America where police investigators have used psychological torture to force suspects to make false confessions to crimes. Then, even after physical evidence makes it clear that the suspect could not possibly have committed the crime, there is seldom any action taken to clear them of the charge. Perhaps the most troubling example is the routine use of psychological torture on children in the United States. While some of the most obvious examples have been curbed (such as police investigators pressuring children into making false claims of having been sexually abused, by refusing them food or permission to go the bathroom until they make an accusation), examples that are only slightly less onerous still abound - in schools, in families, an in less formal police investigations. Also troubling is the fact that Janet Reno has never been held accountable for her part in the psychological torture of children in Florida (cf. Joseph and Laurie Braga), and is considered something of a hero on the left. Both Clinton's and Bush's appointees to the post of Attorney General condone torture. This suggests that approval of torture is not an issue of Left versus Right, but that Torture is the American Way. Does this give anyone else pause?
"Both Clinton's and Bush's appointees to the post of Attorney General condone (what I define as) torture." Apparently your definition of "torture" is not universally held. "Torture is the American Way."
One definition of torture might be 'something that we would never do to our own people in order to train them'. There are coercive interrogation techniques, which we might use on our own people in training sessions, and torture, which is extreme enough that we would not use it, even to train people to resist. Another measure might be whether people - for example journalists - volunteer for the treatment. The US has waterboarded three hardened terrorists, in order to get useful information to prevent attacks. I've heard of at least two journalists that have voluntarily submitted to waterboarding in order to do a story on what it's like. One of the two had undergone it earlier as part of military training, and then decided to go through it again recently, as a story, so he clearly knew ahead of time what he was getting into and yet chose to do it again. People in the US special forces have gone through it as part of their training. It seems to me that it's cheapening the term 'torture' to use it for a broad array of unpleasant or stressful experiences. There may be many interrogation techniques that we should use only rarely, or never, that still may not rise to the level of torture.
"..., the psychological torture is worse." Many of the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee who are so concerned about waterboarding were among those responsible for the gratuitous psychological torture of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas, among others. Obviously, torture in the service of partisan politics is somehow different from "torture" in the cause of national security. So much so that the senators express great pride in their accomplishments. Perhaps, someday, George W. Bush will take the opportunity to write the definitive volume on psychological torture and the techniques for resisting its effects. He has so far survived nearly seven years of viscious psychological assaults by some of the most vile creatures alive today, as well as by Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Amaramadingaling.
How about simply agreeing that we won't subject our captives to treatment that we would object to if applied to our own personnel when they are captured? We could call it the McCain criterion. Ken
MM wrote: My definition is fairly simple. If you saw someone doing something to a soldier in a movie Stop. If your definition hinges upon portrayals in an entertainment medium where the directed manipulation of emotions is the basis of whether or not the work-at-hand succeeds, you're going to end up very confused. The medium may sometimes be helpful in exploring why you object to a particular method or practice, but if you don't have a well-defined exterala set of criteria that guides the analysis, the medium will, in time, lead you wildly astray.
Jack Bauer and Dirty Harry are the bad guys.
It's certainly worthwhile to define torture, but let's not indulge the idea that doing so would make acts so defined would be any less acceptable to American chauvanists. The support for waterboarding doesn't turn on the idea that it isn't torture. It comes from the same set of simplistic notions that support jailing suspects without trial at Guantanomo, allowing private contractors to get away with murder in Iraq and bombing entire city blocks to rubble on the mere chance that Saddam Hussein might be housed nearby. The chauvanist American's moral house of cards is supported solely by the concept of a moral blank check. The thinking is that, since the country's survival is at stake, no action is too drastic, too brutal or too unAmerican, if it may help prevent that fate. This is why the chauvanist right squanders so much of its sparse intellectual capital on perpetuating the ludicrous notion that radical Islam poses an existential threat to the U.S. When the Cold War collapsed under its own contradictions, they lost their moral blank check. 9/11 gave it back, and they're not letting it go for anything. Torture? Domestic spying? War crimes? Anything goes because "it's war" they say.
Does that include killing?
"How about simply agreeing that we won't subject our captives to treatment that we would object to if applied to our own personnel when they are captured?" But in that case, circumstances and motivation matter. If they waterboard soldiers in order to force them to make propaganda statements, or simply as punishment, then we would certainly object. If they waterboarded only in extreme cases in order to get information that was likely to save the lives of their own people, I would still be sorry to see it happen to one of ours but wouldn't consider it a war crime.
Sure, and as soon as the Andrew Sullivans, Belle Warings etc. of the world agree that wrapping people in the Israeli flag, or exposing them to women in short skirts, isn't torture, isn't a war crime, isn't anything at all--that they are sorry to have even mentioned something so stupid--we can have a rational discussion. I'm not holding my breath.
Ed Reid wrote: "Statistically, it is probably more accurate to say that "Abortion is the American Way", since I doubt there are ~1.3 million instances of even your definition of "torture" each year." Let's see - figure a prison population of about 2 million, plus - what is it? another 5 million or so who are in the "justice" system one way or another? If you add in all the children being forced to attend schools that don't meet their needs but instead teach them helplessness and despair, and then add in minority communities that are driven to self-hatred by negative cultural forces, the number will be much higher - in the tens of millions, at least.
correction: "three and a half Americans" (above) should read "three and a half MILLION Americans". Just a little bit of a difference. . . .
There are coercive interrogation techniques, which we might use on our own people in training sessions, and torture, which is extreme enough that we would not use it, even to train people to resist. This is a rather silly moving of the goalposts, especially since, in the training you refer to that special forces soldiers undergo, they call it "torture" as in "this is torture, and here's how you resist it." Ken's definition is the most obvious and workable example of shocking the conscience--if it were done to one of us, would it be torture? To rephrase that, would you be willing to morally excuse our enemies for waterboarding our soldiers because we do it to them? The impulse to torture terrorists doesn't come from any supposed confusion about what's "really" torture, it comes from the impulse to torture them. The impulse is understandable; what's not is the mental gymnastics the authoritarian right performs to legalize it and pretend . BTW, Ann, any cite for the successful use of waterboarding besides the reports of those who used it and want to justify its continued use?
"BTW, Ann, any cite for the successful use of waterboarding besides the reports of those who used it and want to justify its continued use?"
I know that the reporters that went through it voluntarily said that it was very effective, and that they certainly would have revealed information. Are you really questioning whether or not it can be effective, or whether or not it's ethical?
If they waterboarded only in extreme cases in order to get information that was likely to save the lives of their own people, I would still be sorry to see it happen to one of ours but wouldn't consider it a war crime. Except that it would be a war crime, regardless of what you would call it; you can't as a legitimate soldier for anyting more than name, rank, serial number and birthdate. If by "one of ours" you mean a terrorist who happens to travel on a US passport, then the situation is quite different. Terrorists are, of course, not the same as soldiers. Many people who object to torture (or "torture," or whatever), detention at Guantanamo, etc don't make this distinction clearly enough.
Rob Lyman - I didn't know enough to put it clearly, but I agree. Normal soldiers, just doing their duty, aren't supposed to be subjected to such things according to the Geneva Convention. But Khalid Sheik Mohammed would seem to me to fall in a different category. Would he be classified as a spy? I guess part of the problem was that the Geneva Convention didn't really have a category for terrorists.
``Many people who object to torture (or "torture," or whatever), detention at Guantanamo, etc don't make this distinction clearly enough.'' Torture's biggest fans, from Dick Cheney to Rush Limbaugh, totally ignore the distinction by describing the entire Iraqi resistance as "terrorists" and, even more odiously, claiming that the invasion of Iraq is part of a "war on terror." The vast majority of fighters opposed to the U.S. led invasion and occupation of Iraq are militia members engaged in a battle for the survival of their tribe, neighborhood, mosque or other grouping, not "terrorists" by any rational definition. Within the American news media and popular discussion, the words terrorism and terrorist no longer have substantial meaning, as they have been hijacked so routinely for political ends. In most of the mediocre media, the word "terrorist" simply means an individual opposed militarily to the U.S.
Ann: IIRC, KSM was captured on the territory of a friendly but nominally nonbelligerent power, so he can't really be called a spy or sabatour subject to summary execution. As you say, I don't think he really fits into any catagory, which is a large part of the reason for all the controversy over treatment of him and his fellow terrorists. Oh, excuse me, "freedom fighters." The vast majority of fighters opposed to the U.S. led invasion and occupation of Iraq are militia members engaged in a battle for the survival of their tribe, neighborhood, mosque or other grouping, not "terrorists" by any rational definition. Well, I suppose that could be true. On the other hand, it could be false. There isn't much way to tell from where I'm sitting, and I'd be surprised if you had any way of actually knowing that, as opposed to believing it. And it has nothing to do with my point in any case.
I submitted a longish response to Ann that included three separate stories (Fox News, WaPo, Chicago Reader) about former interrogators rejecting waterboarding specifically and torture generally. One is a former SERE instructor; one is about WWII interrogators commenting on waterboarding; one is about an army interrogator who used 'coercive' techniques in Iraq. Unfortunately, the inclusion of links probably triggered a spam filter, and the comment is awaiting Megan's approval. If it doesn't show up by tomorrow, I'll post it without the links.
I've also seen comments by several ex-military and serving military people, including an Army interrogator, saying that torture doesn't work well for gathering information, because it's impossible to tell the real stuff the guy is telling you from all the stuff he's telling you just to get the torture to stop. I have no expertise in this area, thank God. But it's worth noting that the use of torture is associated with getting confessions in a lot of cases where it's clear that the confessions were made up to satisfy the interrogators. How many women do you suppose really had personal dealings with the devil?
Justin JJ - I'm looking forward to seeing the reply when it shows up. Again, there's a difference between objecting to waterboarding on moral grounds and arguing that it's not effective, so I look forward to seeing exactly what the objections were, from those familiar with it. Albatross - There's no doubt that waterboarding and any type of coercive interrogation method can be misused. You could object to any interrogation method at all, even simply asking questions, on the grounds that it might lead to false confessions. With someone like KSM, they weren't trying to get a confession, they wanted actionable intelligence. KSM could have given them false leads, so one could argue that the method isn't the most efficient (but relative to what? a magic truth serum?). However, KSM knew that if he didn't give the interrogators at least some accurate information, they would figure out eventually that he hadn't really been helpful. Plus he didn't know how much they already knew, so there was the risk that lies might be detected. Thus KSM had an incentive to give the interrogators at least some of what they wanted. If the objection is that the method might be misused, then the solution is to put in place procedures and safeguards that make sure it is used correctly. But you seem to be saying that it shouldn't be used in cases in which it's effective, simply because there exist other different situations in which it might not be effective.
If they waterboarded only in extreme cases in order to get information that was likely to save the lives of their own people, I would still be sorry to see it happen to one of ours but wouldn't consider it a war crime. They twisted the shattered limbs of captive US soldiers and pilots to get them to confirm information on US deployments in Quang Tri and on aircraft squadrons raiding Hanoi. So I guess the Vietnamese didn't commit war crimes; it was justified to save the lives of their people, and US soldiers shouldn't expect anything else when they're captured.
brooksfoe, I have to believe you are being intentionally obtuse. If not, please explain how waterboarding results in "twisted the shattered limbs".
For those of you acting like waterboarding is nothing more than an unpleasant few moments, the well-recognized long term effects include depression, panic attacks, and PTSD. To those who say it works, it does so by inducing real drowning temporarily that reflexively triggers primal terror. Given the immediate experience plus the long term effects, I don't think the comparison with twisting broken limbs is far off.
Ed, Ann was saying it comes down to motive -- that barbaric treatment isn't a war crime, regardless of whose soldiers it's committed against, if it's used to obtain information that saves lives. In that quote, she used "waterboarding" merely as an example.
Look, I'm not claiming to have this all figured out. I was saying originally that waterboarding to get people to 'confess' for propaganda purposes or simply for the sake of inflicting pain is not acceptable. But waterboarding someone like KSM to get information to prevent terrorist attacks seems acceptable to me, in tightly controlled circumstances, as a last resort. Where do we draw the line? That's hard to say. And I view waterboarding as different from 'barbaric treatment' including 'twisting shattered limbs' because, if done carefully, it shouldn't cause long term damage. Yes, Justin JJ, it might leave people with long term depression, panic attacks, etc. But if KSM has any decency, he'll be haunted anyway by the deliberate murder of innocent men, women and children that he helped to plan and carry out. To say that we shouldn't get intelligence that can prevent terrorist attacks because it might later leave hardened terrorists depressed sounds like a pretty weak argument.
Ann: But if KSM has any decency, he'll be haunted anyway by the deliberate murder of innocent men, women and children that he helped to plan and carry out. Thus my observation that the real impulse to use waterboarding is simply to see the evil get tortured. If someone as bad as KSM suffers from waterboarding, that's not so bad, isn't it? To say that we shouldn't get intelligence that can prevent terrorist attacks because it might later leave hardened terrorists depressed sounds like a pretty weak argument. It is a pretty weak argument--a straw man, in fact. The pragmatic arguments against waterboarding (and other techniques that don't seem as bad as twisting shattered limbs) are: 1) The slippery slope. It's well and good to agree that torture is okay under a ticking time bomb scenario, but what's been easily demonstrated over the last few years is how quickly and easily it becomes a broad policy. The supposed origin of what happened in Abu Graib is a program run by special forces in Afghanistan that was very successful in generating actionable intelligence. Four years later we had Captain Ian Fishback sending letters to Congress about the cooks at the American base in Tikrit 'blowing off steam' by helping the interrogators beat the prisoners. 2) It's not so bad if KSM suffers from torture for the rest of his life, but what if the tortured person is 100% innocent, like Maher Arar? He suffers all the symptoms I listed above after spending a year in a Syrian prison being tortured after being 'renditioned' while transitting JFK airport in New York on his way home to Ottawa. You may counter that 1 innocent tortured for every 100 terrorists is also acceptable, especially if it clearly leads to 100 lives saved. But what's become clear as well is that a large number of the inmates at Guantanamo, Abu Graib, and various CIA black prisons are innocent or only circumstantially guilty. Prisoners at Guantanamo were frequently 'sold' to U.S. Forces in Afghanistan for the bounty by rival tribes. Recently a German citizen was denied legal reparations for the time he spent in a CIA black prison--after they determined he was innocent, he was simply dropped off in the countryside. And again, the only reports we have that the prisoners are actually terrorists are the same self-serving reports from the people locking them up in the first place. No independent verification. 3) It precludes legal prosecution of terrorists: As a Gitmo prosecutor, [Lt. Col. Stuart] Couch had been assigned to prosecute accused al Qaeda operative Mohamedou Ould Slahi, one of fourteen "high value" prisoners. "Of the cases I had seen, he was the one with the most blood on his hands," Couch said of Slahi. Yet Couch determined he could not prosecute Slahi because his incriminating statements "had been taken through torture, rendering them inadmissible under U.S. and international law." 4) It precludes other, more effective interrogation regimes like the ones so successful during WWII, where the interrogators befriended those they were interrogating (especially with Japanese POWs, the contrast between what they were told to expect and what actually happened to them was usually enough to turn the information spigot on full blast). But when interrogators are under pressure to use apparently expedient methods, playing a long game falls by the wayside. The link to the WaPo story I submitted here goes into detail on this. 5) It's of dubious efficacy in and of itself. The quote I had in my other post that's awaiting moderation is this, from a former army interrogator in Iraq: "In Iraq, I never saw pain produce intelligence," Lagouranis told me. "I worked with someone who used waterboarding"--an interrogation method involving the repeated near-drowning of a suspect. "I used severe hypothermia, dogs, and sleep deprivation. I saw suspects after soldiers had gone into their homes and broken their bones, or made them sit on a Humvee's hot exhaust pipes until they got third-degree burns. Nothing happened." Some people, he said, "gave confessions. But they just told us what we already knew. It never opened up a stream of new information." If anything, he said, "physical pain can strengthen the resolve to clam up." Those are the pragmatic arguments against the use of 'coercive techniques'. It doesn't even touch on the moral side of the question, or the social side of what it does to the standing of the U.S. when its human rights champions chide other regimes for doing the same. It doesn't touch on the U.S.'s previous history of prosecuting both enemies and Americans for waterboarding prisoners and calling it 'torture'. Against that, we have only the self-serving rationalizations of the torturers themselves, who conveniently use the national security apparatus to suppress any independent verification or dissent (recall that David Hicks, the Australian inmate at Guantanamo, was released only on condition of signing a statement saying that he hadn't been mistreated--how credible is that?).
"Thus my observation that the real impulse to use waterboarding is simply to see the evil get tortured. If someone as bad as KSM suffers from waterboarding, that's not so bad, isn't it?" You're deliberately distorting what I said. If we captured Osama Bin Laden himself, I would not support waterboarding him simply to make him suffer. I would only support it to get information from him, and even then only as a last resort. As I said much earlier, the objective and the circumstances matter. Waterboarding is extremely, intensely frightening but unlikely to cause real physical damage. Against that, you pointed out that it could cause long term depression and panic attacks. I'm saying that the risk of causing depression in a terrorist is not enough to offset the benefits of being able to prevent future terrorist attacks. Based on all of the evidence that we have now, the US has only used waterboarding three times, in every case on established, hardened terrorists as a last resort. There's always a legitimate concern about the slippery slope, but that doesn't mean that such a useful technique should be off limits even for discussion.
Based on all of the evidence that we have now, the US has only used waterboarding three times, in every case on established, hardened terrorists as a last resort. There's always a legitimate concern about the slippery slope, but that doesn't mean that such a useful technique should be off limits even for discussion. Waterboarding has been used, according to various non-administration reports (c.f. Tony Lagouranis), much more widely than three times on various proven high-value targets. And even if it's true that it's only been used three times, comparable "non-physically damaging" techniques have been widely used. We're not debating waterboarding here--waterboarding is emblematic of a lot of coercive techniques (hypothermia, sleep deprivation, etc.) that don't seem to be that bad on the surface just because they don't leave a broken body afterwards. And the problem isn't what we are or aren't allowed to discuss--it's what U.S. servicepeople and intelligence are actually doing in your name, and the consequences thereof. I notice that you addressed none of my pragmatic arguments against waterboarding and comparable techniques, especially the valid concerns about its efficacy. The short version, Ann, is that you seem to be giving the Bush Administration the benefit of the doubt long, long after plentiful reasons to retract that benefit have been continually shoved in the face of the public. Honestly, at this point I don't know what might convince you beyond Bush himself calling a national address to say "we tried it, and it didn't work, and it was wrong to do so." After the last fifty years of presidential deception, how can you even think of uncritically accepting what you're told?
Perhaps the problem is the word "torture". It has come to mean so many things. There is a class of treatments that include inflicting burns, bamboo shoots under the fingernails, removing eyeballs, the rack, etc... that are clearly torture and clearly morally repugnant. Almost no one will defend those techniques. Then you have things like stress positions, waterboarding, etc... that inflict pain, fear, discomfort, etc... but can be done so as to not inflict any long term damage (or even short term). Some people thing these are acceptable under different circumstances. Finally you have things like sleep deprivation, thermostat adjustments, and loud music. Most people wouldn't consider them torture. I find it difficult to consider anything as unacceptable if it is inflicted upon our soldiers in training or if activists/journalists volunteer for it. However, by the original definition, shooting captives in the leg, electrocuting them, or injecting them with pain-inducing chemicals would all be acceptable (see 24). EI
Finally you have things like sleep deprivation, thermostat adjustments, and loud music. Most people wouldn't consider them torture. No, finally you have things like forcing the subject to look at scantily clad women or wear panties on his head. This may be culturally insensitive, but you can tell the real left wing nuts when they call it torture.
Just in case anyone wasn't clear on this, Jack Bauer IS THE BAD GUY.
If you saw someone doing something to a soldier in a movie, and that act alone was enough to tell you that the perpetrator was the bad guy, then that's probably something American soldiers shouldn't be doing to anyone else. Like... shooting them, for example? If I saw someone shooting at American soldiers in a movie, I'd know they were supposed to be the bad guys. American soldiers are the good guys because they are serving a good cause, not because every act they commit is, taken in isolation, obviously good.
There is a class of treatments that include inflicting burns, bamboo shoots under the fingernails, removing eyeballs, the rack, etc... that are clearly torture and clearly morally repugnant. Almost no one will defend those techniques. Then you have things like stress positions, waterboarding, etc... that inflict pain, fear, discomfort, etc... but can be done so as to not inflict any long term damage (or even short term). Some people thing these are acceptable under different circumstances. Bamboo shoots under the fingernails inflict no long term damage. Rape doesn't necessarily inflict any physical damage at all. We have been around the block on this many times. I still find it unconscionable that people can adopt definitions of torture under which the things that were done to, say, the victims of Stalin's purges, or to Winston in "1984", are not torture. Personally, I stick with the language of the UN Convention Against Torture, which the US has ratified, and which is thus the law of the land.
I should amend that: obviously the physical torture in "1984" would be torture under anyone's definition. The problem is with the use of Winston's phobia of rats.
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This test seems not very useful in that many episodes of 24 involve Jack Bauer doing something that is probably torture, but he is obviously not the bad guy.
[Welcome back.]
Posted by Colin Fraizer | November 23, 2007 1:12 PM