Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Talking Points on Torture

By

Here is a collection of talking points for discussing the recent revelations on torture.

  1. Waterboarding is torture pure and simple.

    1. International norms consistently classify waterboarding as torture, for example, the U.N..

    2. U.S. soldiers who engaged in something similar in the Pillippines after the Spanish American War were court-martialed. There are a number of cases where U.S. courts have recognized waterboarding as torture.

    3. The Japanese War Crimes Tribunal sentenced Yuikio Asano to 15 years hard labor for waterboarding.

    4. Before the Bush Administration bought into it, the military’s Joint Personnel Recovery Agency labeled it torture in 2002.

    5. The Bush Administration attempted to redefine torture in 2002.

  2. No useful information was extracted from Abu Zubaydah by way of torture.

    1. All useful information was extracted from Abu Zubaydah using traditional interrogation methods. This included his identification of the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.

    2. Despite President Bush’s claims, “Abu Zubaydah also appeared to know nothing about terrorist operations; rather, he was al-Qaeda’s go-to guy for minor logistics“.  In other words, he was unlikely to know anything about major attacks anyway.

    3. In a fit of futility and cruelty, he was waterborderd 83 times in August 2002.

  3. The Bush Administration engaged in significant torture to justify an attack on Iraq and not to keep the country safe.

    1. Al Qaeda is militantly anti-secular. They wish to overthrow regimes that do not conform to their religious doctrines.

    2. Sadam Hussein and the Baathists were secular — precisely the sort of regmie Al Qaeda wished to destroy.

    3. It would be self-destructive for Sadam Hussein to arm Al Qaeda.

    4. Nonetheless, the Bush Administration believed there was a connection. Cheney and Rumsfeld pursued it despite contrary CIA reports.

    5. Detainees were needlessly tortured to establish that link, according to the Senate Armed Services report: Major Burney to the Army Inspector General:

      [T]his is my opinion, even though they were giving information and some of it was useful, while we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq and we were not being successful in establishing a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq. The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish this link … there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results.

  4. Waterboarding is an ineffective interrogation technique.

    1. Waterboarding became part of SERE training because the Chinese communists had used it to extract false confessions From the Senate report:

      Using those techniques for interrogating detainees was also inconsistent with the goal of collecting accurate intelligence information, as the purpose of SERE resistance training is to increase the ability of U.S. personnel to resist abusive interrogations and the techniques used were based, in part, on Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to elicit false confessions.

    2. Dr. James E. Mitchell, the psychologist with the SERE program who advocated the use of waterboarding, had never run interrogations, only mock interrogations.

    3. The CIA and military have personnel who are expert on interrogation. They were not consulted.

    4. Other SERE trainers warned Administration officials that this method would be ineffective.

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Comments

  1. Conservatives shouldn’t be wavering on this issue… Ronald Reagan was clear:

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    p>

    “The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of the Convention. It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today.

    The core provisions of the Convention establish a regime for international cooperation in the criminal prosecution of torturers relying on so-called ‘universal jurisdiction.’ Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution.”

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    p>h/t Ed Brayton and Andrew Sullivan

    • The Reagan Department of Justice prosecuted a Texas Sheriff and three deputies for waterboarding suspects.

      Federal prosecutors secured a 10-year sentence against the sheriff and four years in prison for the deputies. But that 1983 case – which would seem to be directly on point for a legal analysis on waterboarding two decades later – was never mentioned in the four Bush administration opinions released last week.
      . . .

      Horton suspects that Bybee, Yoo and Bradbury were well aware of the case law, but simply chose to ignore it in order to give the Bush administration what it had asked for.

      “To take one example, there was a court-martial addressing the practice of waterboarding from 1903, a state court case from the twenties, a series of prosecutions at the [post-World War II] Tokyo Tribunal (in many of which the death penalty was sought) and another court-martial in 1968,” Horton said. “These precedents could have been revealed in just a few minutes of computerized research using the right search engines. It’s hard to imagine that Yoo and Bybee didn’t know them.

      “So why are none of these precedents mentioned? Obviously because each of them contradicts the memo’s conclusions and would have to be distinguished away. Professional rules would have required that these precedents be cited, failing to do so reflects incompetent analysis.”

      • Where does this “ethical duty” to report these sporadic and seemingly IRRELEVANT cases come from? To claim there is an ethical duty to report every case that is even tangentially related to your issue is absurd – and suggests a totally impractical practice of law.

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        p>The ethical duty to report adverse law is narrow and limited – only when the law is binding and only when before a tribunal. Is the 1903 case binding? The 1983 case regarding waterboarding of prisoners in domestic prisons? Doubtful. Furthermore, where is the tribunal?

        <

        p>If the Office of Legal Counsel were asked to write a memo regarding the constitutionality of the death penalty, would they be acting unethically if they failed to cite to Furman v. Georgia that capital punishment is “arbitrary and capricious”? Would a failure to mention this outdated case constitute a recognition of the change in the law OR simply “giving the White House what it wants”?

        • when this has been the consistent position of the US since WW II. Irrelevant would be a single contrary decision, which, by the way, hasn’t been found.

          • … thing they did.  They were very competent at making the case for the administration to any future judges.  

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            p>Too bad that wasn’t their job,… their job was to make the case for the Constitution to the administration.

  2. Between Iraq and Al Quaeda. Bush might have been dumb enough to believe it, but I think Cheney was acting in bad faith. I doubt he believed there was a connection between Saddam and 9/11.

  3. a timeline to the Zubaydah section, debunking the stupid theory raised here and elsewhere that these “interrogations” of Zubaydah prevented an attack on the Library Tower in LA.

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    p>I have heard this repeated several times as evidence that the torturing people “protected America.”

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    p>The impossibility of protecting America by degrading it notwithstanding, this purported justification  is not possible unless Cheney had a time machine.

  4. This may sound snarky, but it is not meant that way.  Is any (for lack of a better word) nonpolitical person talking to you about torture? It would be nice if they did, but I’m not hearing about it unless I bring it up.

      • My wife and I both work in settings with a higher than typical representation of professionals (particularly scientists) from other parts of the world — Indonesia, India, Asia, Europe, etc.,

        <

        p>We are frequently asked questions along the lines of:

        <

        p>(1) Why did the American people re-elect the Cheney/Bush administration in 2004 when so much was already known about the kidnappings, abuse, torture, and murder?

        <

        p>(2) Do I/we think the US Government will really do anything about these crimes?

        <

        p>How do you think I should answer the latter question?

        • But it still doesn’t come up (though to be fair, my workplace is more or less virtual).

          <

          p>As to the question, I’d say, “I hope so.”

      • I’m not entirely certain I should take this question at face value, but what I meant was “someone who doesn’t obsess over politics like we do.”

        <

        p>You know, a normal person.

    • I’m thinking of gathering up corrections and additions from the comments and re-posting. CMD’s timeline suggestion is interesting, too. On Daily Kos, the user DanK is Back tried to put together a Zubaydeh timeline and had some trouble with it. Possibly a talking point on how much of the push-back has not been intellectually honest would help, too. Finally, I wish I could resolve the Pelosi thing — to my mind it is politically motivated and meant to be a distraction — but I cannot get to any objective conclusions because there’s a lot of he said/she said going on where no Democrat has said she’s lying and no Republican has said she’s accurate.

      <

      p>The HTML was a bit of a pain: The tag <ol type=”a”> was what got me the lettered bullets even though “type” is deprecated.

      • She has been denying she did and others have said she was absolutely briefed. Supporters of her will no doubt believe her while detractors (me) will not believe her. I think there is enough smoke to seriously consider there is fire. But it would be good to get the facts and let them speak for themselves.

        • Let me get this straight. The Bush Administration waterboarded someone over 80 times to get them to “confess” to a non-existent alliance between Iraq and Al Qaeda — after hastening to use interrogation methods at once sadistic and ineffective.

          <

          p>And you are concerned over what exactly? Over whether something Nancy Pelosi said in a press conference was true or false?

          <

          p>Okay. Well, I’m glad you’re paying attention to the important stuff.

            • BMGers are quick to talk about the hatred that fills the right… while holding our bibles and guns. I think it may be gut-check time for BMGers since I observe shiploads of hatred spewing on these page daily. Many posters here are angry and it seems the Republican party is the cause of all that is evil. I even read a post here the other day saying the problem with the Democratically controlled House and Senate in MA are the Democrats Pols who are really Republicans.

              <

              p>Can’t you guys take the fault for “anything”? There are posts here everyday from people looking for blood, sometimes mine, but mainly ANYONE who is a Republican.

              <

              p>You own the White House, the US Senate and the House. You are in complete control of our government (with luckily the SCOTUS remaining neutral). Stop being so angry and turn your energy into construction and not destruction… that’s my job.

                • …including repeatedly referring to me as “she” based on my sexual preference.

                  <

                  p>But yes, it’s time to move on.

                • without some data. Below are 2 data points. Now, can you point to any data suggesting Pelosi was not present for the water-boarding briefing other than “solely” on her babbling denial? Got any souces other than your love (vs my hate) for her? Any other Dems come out to back her up?

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                  p>Story

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                  p>

                  “All of this information was downloaded to congressional leaders of both parties with no objections being raised,” House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) told reporters today, specifically citing Pelosi as someone who received the briefings. “Not a word was raised at the time, not one word.”

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                  p>And this

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                  p>

                  In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA’s overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

                  <

                  p>Maybe she has some cosmetic surgery the day of the briefing and was still feeling the effects of a face numbing medication…Nice picture

                • Who are the people making the claim that Pelosi was told about the torture techniques? Boehner and “officials.” Not persuasive.

                • Maybe, for instance, the speaker doesn’t remember that in September 2002, as ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, she was one of four members of Congress who were briefed by the CIA about the interrogation methods the agency was using on leading detainees. “For more than an hour,” the Washington Post reported in 2007, “the bipartisan group . . . was given a virtual tour of the CIA’s overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

                  <

                  p>http://online.wsj.com/article/…

                • Why, no – they weren’t at the meeting. The Post article quoted unnamed “officials.” If I quote some officials saying “John Boehner has a great fear of soap that causes him to smell like a herd of goats,” will you assume that it’s true?

                • . . . well, we don’t have a VIDEOTAPE that shows OJ doing it, so how do we know he did it?

                • … except that guy ‘unnamed official’ fed us so much misinformation at the time.  ‘Unnamed official’ seems always to have an agenda and dangles ‘access’ in front of the press in order to get them to help him.

                • . . . and sometimes the agenda = getting the truth out there for public consumption.

                • I contend that this is a problem of sources.

                  <

                  p>I’m going to carriage return and line feed though because I want to raise something new.

                • Are you calling the Minority Leader of the House a liar?

                  <

                  p>Then…

                  <

                  p>Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-FL) was also a party to the briefings.

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                  p>

                  “Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing,” said Goss, who chaired the House intelligence committee from 1997 to 2004 and then served as CIA director from 2004 to 2006. “And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement.”

                  <

                  p>Looks like another liar is involved.. Former Rep. Porter J. Goss.

                  <

                  p>I think I figured it out, anyone with an R after their name is a liar. If a Democrat comes out and says water-boarding was never discussed, I’m sure you will believe them without question. Partisanship can do funny things to our brains.

                • 0-worthless
                  1-whiny and shrill
                  2-WTF?
                  3-Christ that was dumb
                  4-Still dumb
                  5-good
                  6-swoon

                  <

                  p>I’ll give you a 1.

                • 0-worthless
                  1-whiny and shrill
                  2-WTF?
                  3-Christ that was dumb
                  4-Still dumb
                  5-good
                  6-swoon
                  6.5-pointless snark

                • But I find that the combination of you, huh, and JohnD are like a cancer that metasticizes to different threads of BMG. He makes some stupid gotcha comment tangentially related to the topic and you and huh attack him in a snarky and usually overly personal manner. JohnD then oscillates back and forth between being ‘above it all’ and being victimized while the two of you continue to pile it on in a mean spirited way.  It’s sometimes hard to determine exactly when this cancer turns from benign to malignant, but I thought that this post was the turning point for this otherwise healthy thread. It piled on to your comment, it was personal, it was unnecessary, it elicited the typical victimized response from JohnD, and all of a sudden several more off topic posts followed shortly thereafter (including one from a moderator telling you to cut it out).

                  <

                  p>The three of you should just have your own running thread where JohnD can post his random thoughts and you and huh can lambaste him for doing so. But I will give 0s for infecting otherwise healthy threads.  

                • I thought huh’s comment was explanatory and not in any manner baiting.

                  <

                  p>I believe that if you want to communicate something the best IMHO to do so is by commenting: Peter Porcupine is still annoyed at me for a communication-by-numbers I did almost a year ago.

                  <

                  p>This site rules do not recognize trollery as bad. Consequently, someone can write six diaries a day and respond to every comment in every thread without running afoul of the site rules. This creates a sort of tragedy of the commons. As huh points out, the best practice is to starve trollery of attention. What does one do when that’s not possible?

                  <

                  p>Not clear.

                  <

                  p>If you have a constructive suggestion, I’m open.

                • Treat it like any cancer. Try to catch it early and excise it completely. A community chemotherapy of 0s.

                • a ratings war.

                  <

                  p>That’s not going to work as ratings wars are worse: Witness the O’Reilly-Kerry debates here where they got nasty or on Daily Kos where they resulted in Hillary supporters leaving the site during primary season.

                  <

                  p>For zeros to be effective, one needs eight of them to send a comment into oblivion.

                  <

                  p>That doesn’t happen too often.

                • At the risk of getting personal, you’ve long been one of my least favorite posters on BMG.  I find your writings mean-spirited, dismissive, and pompous.  I honestly can’t think of a single instance where your contributions advanced a discussion.

                  <

                  p>Does that mean I should “troll rate” your posts rather than ignore you? It seems like a really bad idea to me.  Hostile, too, but that’s typical of your approach.

                  <

                  p>As I indicated above, I’ve decided that JohnD, like you, is not worth engaging.  I’m moving on, in silence.

            • Don’t understand all the huffiness here. In JohnD’s responses on this thread (and others), he admits to a hatred of Pelosi. Huh’s comment, “He’s raised hatred to a religion”, while blogerifically hyperbolic, isn’t too far from what JohnD himself will say.

              • Any post which starts with “I hate her and want her gone” then lists a series of unsourced accusations is suspect by any standard I can think of.

                <

                p>I don’t understand the zeroes, either.  Is there a “deliberate hyperbole” emoticon?

              • then does your hatred for George Bush invalidate anything you write about him? Should people on BMG refrain from writing about MMitt Romney and Dick Cheney due to their zealous disdain? Please don’t attempt to belittle my comments against someone just because I have a preconceived opinion about that person, unless of course you support effectively shutting down BMG.

          • I have raised multiple faceted issues in the past and you chose whichever aspect of my post you chose to respond to. Often times I challenge you back and ask for responses on the “meat” of what I was discussing and you have all sorts of standard responses… “I’m not playing that game”… :just because I don’t comment on something doesn’t mean I don’t care…” but in the end you simply pick a small slice of what I write (usually the snarky or controversial part) and unleash. Can’t I do the same? Do I have to reply to the section of post that YOU want me to?

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            p>As for the relevance… you, KBusch, said the below quote and I was responding to your words…

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            p>

            Finally, I wish I could resolve the Pelosi thing – to my mind it is politically motivated and meant to be a distraction – but I cannot get to any objective conclusions because there’s a lot of he said/she said going on where no Democrat has said she’s lying and no Republican has said she’s accurate.

            <

            p>YOU, brought up the “Pelosi thing”, not me. YOU said even the omnipotent KBusch could not get an objective conclusion so how is it that my remarks seem so off base. YOU, who are trying to come across so unbiased have no more information than I do but have decided that this is “politically motivated and meant to be a distraction”. Did you get a memo that I didn’t? Is this a “reckless defense” of Pelosi on par with my “reckless accusation”. Sounds like we are both simply being tribal.

            <

            p>I am paying attention to the “other stuff” but just didn’t comment on it (much like the famous KBusch does). Have you commented on the famous Sen Dodd situation and the CEO bonuses? Does not commenting mean you aren’t paying attention to the important stuff or that you just didn’t feel like talking about it?

              1. I brought up the Pelosi thing as a right-wing talking point that it was going to be difficult to close. You didn’t advance the discussion an iota. Expressing your prejudices does not advance anyone’s understanding.
              2. Why aren’t you asking for Boehner’s head?
              3. “Verbose” means extra words. It doesn’t mean a lot of words. Your responses, this included, are verbose.
              4. I am not the New York Times. I am not required to comment on everything.

              • From an oldie, but goodie:  Ignore them!

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                p>WHAT IS A TROLL?

                <

                p>Well, in a nut-shell, a TROLL is someone who constantly disrupts a NG for no reason other than just because they CAN. They will often post off-topic, and attack members of the NG that have done nothing to provoke hem. The troll will then often try to make it look like the NG member had attacked THEM. They will constantly refer to posts made by that member in which the member had “flamed” them. What they naturally fail to ALSO say is that the posts are in RESPONSE to a flame originated by the troll himself.

                <

                p>SOME SIGNS THAT A POSTER IS A TROLL:

                <

                p>The troll will often re-arrange the nickname of another poster, in order to mock them.
                When responding to a post, they will often include some or all of that post and respond to it line-by-line.
                The troll will complain about how the entire NG is always “picking on them”.
                The troll rarely, if ever, contributes to the NG itself.
                They will often call for the NG to “get back on topic” while constantly posting to off-topic threads in order to keep them going.

                <

                p>You will also notice that a troll will respond to nearly every poster in a thread individually. Rather than reading the entire thread, then adding their view, they will click a post, respond, then go to the next and do it again, EVEN if they are stating the same thing over and over again.

        • Second, Mrs. Pelosi has categorically declared the CIA never told her waterboarding was being used. “My experience was they did not tell us they were using that, flat out,” she recently told reporters. “And any, any contention to the contrary is simply not true.”

          Her claim puts her at odds with Porter Goss, a former CIA director who had at the time of the briefings served on the same House Intelligence Committee with Mrs. Pelosi. In an op-ed for the Washington Post on Saturday, Mr. Goss said he was “slack-jawed to read that members claim to have not understood that the techniques on which they were briefed were to actually be employed.”

          <

          p>http://online.wsj.com/article/…

          • His wording was very careful, you may note:

              Mr. Goss said he was “slack-jawed to read that members claim to have not understood that the techniques on which they were briefed were to actually be employed.”

            He did not say:

              Mr. Goss said he was “slack-jawed to read that members claim to have not understood that we were describing our plans.”

            Pelosi’s claim was that they informed her they thought such techniques were legal not that they were going to use them. For example, one might imagine saying, “We think A, B, and C are legal” when A, B, and C are all stupid or self-destructive things to do. For all I know the CIA guys might have been doing a wink and elbow nudge approach, where they were trying to say stuff without saying stuff, and Pelosi simply took them too literally.

            <

            p>Anyway until I hear a Democrat contradict Pelosi or a Republican contradict Goss, I don’t think we can say for sure what happened. Furthermore, it’s less important than the culpability of Rumsfeld et al.

            • Nancy Pelosi is “pushing back” against charges that she was aware of — and acquiesced in — the CIA’s harsh interrogations of terrorist detainees nearly from the moment the practice began, reports the Politico Web site. Maybe she’s suffering from amnesia.

              Maybe, for instance, the speaker doesn’t remember that in September 2002, as ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, she was one of four members of Congress who were briefed by the CIA about the interrogation methods the agency was using on leading detainees. “For more than an hour,” the Washington Post reported in 2007, “the bipartisan group . . . was given a virtual tour of the CIA’s overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

              “Among the techniques described,” the story continued, “was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder.”

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              p>And even more at the source:

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              p>http://online.wsj.com/article/…

              <

              p>As for me, I believe Tenet:

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              p>

              Or maybe the speaker missed what former CIA Director (and Bill Clinton appointee) George Tenet writes in his memoir, “At the Center of the Storm,” about the CIA interrogation of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed:

              “I believe none of these successes [in foiling terrorist plots] would have happened if we had had to treat KSM like a white-collar criminal — read him his Miranda rights and get him a lawyer who surely would have insisted his client simply shut up. In his initial interrogation by CIA officers, KSM was defiant. ‘I’ll talk to you guys,’ he said, ‘after I get to New York and see my lawyer.’ Apparently he thought he would be immediately shipped to the United States and indicted in the Southern District of New York. Had that happened, I am confident that we would have obtained none of the information he had in his head about imminent threats to the American people.”

              Mr. Tenet continues: “From our interrogation of KSM and other senior al Qaeda members . . . we learned many things — not just tactical information leading to the next capture. For example, more than 20 plots had been put in motion by al Qaeda against U.S. infrastructure targets, including communications nodes, nuclear power plants, dams, bridges and tunnels.”

              <

              p>War is hell, ladies and gentlemen.  War with a non-nation-state that takes the fight directly to a civilian population is even hell-ier.  Sure, you can seize the moral high ground by upholding the noble Queensbury rules, but the moral high ground serves you no good when you wind up dead because the people who want to kill you don’t give a flying f*ck about being polite and above-board.  Methinks many BMGers are helplessly naive on this score.  This is a grizzly blood-and-guts street fight, not an internet debate.

              • Why on Earth would you believe him, of all people?

                <

                p>As for being helplessly naive, please inform us about the part of your resume that informs your ability to lecture us about what war is or is not.  

                • to prove the point that “war is hell?”  Are you under the impression that war is a fun little Disney World ride or something?

                  <

                  p>As for me, I think I’ll trust Sherman’s take on the matter.

                • Having witnessed it firsthand, I tend to be irritated by people lecturing me on the subject, unless they are similarly familiar with it. So are you – or are you just another Keyboard Kommando?

                • Old Scratch is really one of our better conservative commentators. He (?) tends to justify what he writes. He does so in a reasonable, non-hyperbolic tone. His opinions are not stereotypical.

                  <

                  p>These are good things.

                  <

                  p>I want the better conservative commentators to crowd out the worse ones. So please, give him a bit of a break.

                  <

                  p>And yes, I agree with you kirth, much much more than I agree with Old Scratch, even here.

                • I don’t find “Methinks many BMGers are helplessly naive on this score” who are “under the impression that war is a fun little Disney World ride” to be reasonable and non-hyperbolic in tone.

                • It is comparatively mild hyperbole although, applied to you personally, I can see how it can be insulting.

                  <

                  p>It’s also consistent with the conservative view that we liberals somehow underestimate the dangers. I find that sentiment noxious, frankly, but it is what lots of conservatives believe.

                • it’s not part of their charm. Especially when they express it with condescension founded on ignorance. (Which may not be the case here, but my question remains unanswered.)

                • The set of “many BMGers” = kirth.

                  <

                  p>Very good.  At least I’ll know this going forward.

                • kirth, except to express the not-so-revolutionary notion that war itself is largely an absence of everything that’s good about humanity.  How else would you describe an endeavor in which the goal is to destroy other human beings?  Do you mean to suggest that war isn’t the hell that Sherman described?

                  <

                  p>Luckily, old top, I had the good fortune to serve in peacetime, not wartime, for I would not have thrilled at the prospect of killing other people—though, if asked to do so, I would have done so to the utmost of my abilities.  But I hardly think the notion that I served during peacetime rather than in wartime disqualifies me from expressing the notion that war is somehow . . . unpleasant.  This notion I learned from my father, who had the unfortunate task of killing Vietnamese with miniguns and rockets, and from my uncle, who had the unfortunate task of killing them with an M-16 (and is still, for all intents and purposes, fighting the war), and from my brother, who had the unfortunate task of killing Iraqis with an F/A-18-mounted 20 mm cannon and a host of nasty bombs and rockets, and my great uncle, who won the Silver Star at Clarke Field only to be surrendered by Dugout Doug MacArthur and subsequently treated to an all-expenses paid WW II vacation by the Japanese Imperial Army.  Shall I talk about what I’ve learned vis-a-vis my neighbors who served, or my friends’ fathers, or my classmates who not only served during war, but are currently serving now at the 0-5 level?  What do you think?  How much background do I really have to draw on to declare the completely-radical notion that “war is hell?”  Can one understand, empathize with, and express Sherman’s statement only if one has been shot at in person?  

                  <

                  p>Really?  You going to go with that?  If so, I hope you’ve never picked up a book with the intent to learn something from it.

                  <

                  p>Save your pique for situations that truly warrant it.
                   

                • merely express those ideas. You did it in a disrespectful way that I have outlined, from an implied lofty perch that you have no standing to assume. Some of us know more than you do about war, and still disagree with your views on torture.

                  <

                  p>When you were serving, did you not have to read the Geneva Conventions guidelines regarding treatment of prisoners? I did. I was issued a laminated card which I had to keep. I bet your father and uncle did, too. I’d be surprised if your brother didn’t, but I don’t have any certain knowledge of that. At any rate, if your father or your uncle tells you that even though they were under general orders not to mistreat prisoners, they support torturing terrorists and their children, I’d want to ask them why.

                  <

                  p>As I am sure they would tell you, the Vietnam War was no less “a grizzly blood-and-guts street fight” than the occupations of Iraq or Afghanistan are. Or were you using that phrase to describe the rendition program? If so, I’d say you’re raising false equivalence to new heights.

                • You just had a hair across your *ss, and wanted to call me out.  Period.  Who knew it was presumptive to make the statement “war is hell,” but there you go, you learn something every day.  I’m sure your war was more hellish than Sherman’s, old top, but you’ll have to take up that pissing match with him, and he’s long dead.

                  <

                  p>Thanks to my training and schooling, military or otherwise, I’m very aware of the Geneva Conventions.  And you may be surprised to discover that I am not all “gung-ho for torture” as a matter of course.  I do, however, believe that using means which some may feel excessive to extract actionable information from captured individuals is acceptable under circumstances in which that captured individual is not otherwise forthcoming with that information.  As an officer I’d much rather face a court martial for that then have to write a letter to a private’s mother or father.  Sorry.

                • I quoted you doing it here. Notice here that I am talking about things that you wrote and ideas you expressed, not whether you were in a bad mood or had some unexpressed desire. I am not a mind reader. From the evidence, you aren’t either.

                  <

                  p>Could you please tell us what “actionable information” was obtained as a result of torturing any of these people? The only specific claims I’ve seen have been discredited by authoritative witnesses.  

                • Others even described what I wrote as a comparatively mild hyperbole.  Just admit it: you had a hair across your *ss, and you felt like flexing your internet muscles a bit so you could win at internet.

                  <

                  p>Or try to win at it, for the point is, I could’ve been completely dishonest and claimed wartime service.  I could have done it in a way you could’ve never, ever called me on.  But that’s not my style.  And for that matter, I’m taking it on faith that you are who you are and you’ve done what you’ve claimed to have done.  For all I know, you could be a complete bullsh*t artist.  The beauty of debating on the internet is that we’re all one dimensional entities with only the strength of our arguments, via the written word, to stand on.  That’s why posturing on the internet, as you’ve done, is a non-starter.  You can claim to be anyone—win on your intellect, not on whatever gravitas you claim.

                  <

                  p>The fact that we haven’t been attacked on US soil since 9/11/2001 is enough “proof” that actionable information was obtained through interrogation, torture, what-have-you.  Given your blog-post “proof” that the US tortures children below, that statement alone should satisfy your burden for proof.  Your standard for proof seems pretty low—but perhaps that’s only when it comes to demonizing the United States.

                  <

                  p>

                • I’m not going to “just admit” to something that isn’t true, unless you torture it out of me. Even then, it still wouldn’t be true.

                  <

                  p>Your “fact” about us not being attacked is also not true.

      • I seem to recall Democrats were getting killed in the 2002 midterms for not being extreme enough on terrorism.  I suspect that a good many knew (or should have, and chose to look away) because they thought (probably correctly) that being “soft on terrorism” was a loser in 2002-2004.

        <

        p>Yes, it is not as big an issue as the torture itself.  But it isn’t a non-issue.

        • When the Cheney/Bush administration rolled out their full-bore sales pitch for the Iraq invasion — WMDs, mobile weapons labs, aiding 911 plotters, and the rest — it was very difficult to vote “No” to the requested war resolution.

          <

          p>Why? Because IF there was any truth whatsoever to the administration claims, then to do anything else was recklessly irresponsible. A “No” vote meant, in essence, that the legislator was accusing the administration of deceit, distortion, incompetence, or any mix of all three — and there was precious little hard evidence, in 2003, to support such an implied accusation. The sitting Secretary of State, after all, rolled out all those satellite photos, NSA briefings, and all the rest — it certainly presented the appearance of a grave threat.

          <

          p>Either immediate action was demanded — or the President was lying.

          <

          p>After the 2003 invasion, and especially after the disclosure of the torture memos, the disclosures pursuant to the Libby case, the Justice Department fiasco (which demonstrated the same tactics with a different goal in mind), and the domestic surveillance abuses, it has become clear enough that the prior administration was, in fact, either lying, distorting, bungling, or some combination of all three (pick your own favorite reason).

          <

          p>As I see it, the problem is the conflict between being “soft on terrorism” and “careless with the truth”. Too many politicians, on both sides of the aisle, chose the latter.

          <

          p>We are paying the price today — and tomorrow, and for the forseeable future.

            • I agree with you, and I was aggressively saying so to anyone who would listen at the time (such as Barney Frank). I think (though I’m not sure) that it was Mr. Frank who replied that to make such an accusation (regarding Iraq) without evidence to support it was political suicide.

              <

              p>That’s my only point, that our elected officials weren’t nearly as aggressive as they should have been in demanding confirmation of the evidence to support the extravagant claims of the prior administration.

              <

              p>As Carl Sagan was fond of saying, “Exceptional claims demand exceptional proof”. I think our legislators could have, and should have, done better in 2003.

          • the Iraq War.  Because I was one of those early supporters of it who ended up being duped by the Bush administration.  I bought the WMD argument hook, line, and sinker, even the more so because it was delivered by Colin Powell, a man I respect(ed).

  6. are the media “centrists”, like David Gergen and Andrea Seabrooke who were on “On Point” last week advocating for “circumspection” and “contemplation” with regard to pursuing criminal cases, in spite of their own personal abhorrence of torture. Such prosecutions, in their mind, would be too disruptive at a time when the national agenda is already filled.
    In actuality, we have no democracy, if we imply that some, by virtue of their status, are above the law.

  7. Shoplifting “works” to the extent that the shoplifter obtained what he wanted, but that doesn’t make it right.

  8. are often based on completely made-up stories like that reported by ABC’s Brian Ross who shamelessly perpetuates lies in service to the myth of American exceptionalism and his own vaunted role in the established punditocracy.

  9. Is the fact that not torturing protects our troops.  A few years ago I posted to my now-defunct blog about my great uncle, shot down over Belgium in WWII and captured by the Nazis.

    <

    p>It turned out that one of his guards had a son who was captured by the US.  The son wrote letters to his father telling him about how well he was being treated, and the guard in turn treated his charges well.  I can only imagine how much worse off my uncle would have been if the guard had found out the US was waterboarding his son.

    • got to take a nice little stroll over the Bataan Peninsula and then stay at little vacation palaces at Camp O’Donnell and Cabanatuan, all courtesy of the Japanese.  Of course, they later “extracted” payment from him, in kind, via a nice stint of slave labor in a home island coal mine.

      <

      p>Think the Japanese really gave two sh*ts about how we treated Japanese POWs?

      <

      p>Or the Vietnamese gave two sh*ts about how we treated captured NVA or VC?

      • Prosecuted Kenji Dohihara, Seishiro Itagaki, Heitaro Kimura, Akira Muto, and Hideki Tojo, for water torture of US prisoners?

        <

        p>

        Kenji Dohihara, Seishiro Itagaki, Heitaro Kimura, Akira Muto, and Hideki Tojo, the IMTFE defendants who were convicted on Count 54 (ordering, authorizing, and permitting commission of war crimes including, inter alia, torture), were all sentenced to death by hanging. IMTFE Judgment, supra note 96. Shunroko Hata, Kuniaki Koiso, Koki Hirota, who were convicted on Count 55 (failure to take adequate steps to prevent war crimes), were sentenced to life imprisonment, but defendant Iwane Matsui was sentenced to death after he was convicted of failing to prevent the Nanjing massacre, and Mamoru Shigemitsu was sentenced to seven years imprisonment based on mitigating circumstances. Id. Many of the defendants were, of course, convicted of other crimes of conspiracy, of aggression and against the peace.

        <

        p>Here is the description, from the “water torture” link above, of what the term “torture” meant when five Japanese defendants were executed:

        To indicate the prevalence of torture and the uniformity of the methods employed we give a brief summary of these methods (emphasis mine).

        The so-called “water treatment” was commonly applied. The victim was bound or otherwise secured in a prone position; and water was forced through his mouth and nostrils into his lungs and stomach until he lost consciousness. Pressure was then applied, sometimes by jumping upon his abdomen to force the water out. The usual practice was to revive the victim and successively repeat the process. There was evidence that this torture was used in the following places: China, at Shanghai, Peiping and Nanking; French Indo-China, at Hanoi and Saigon; Malaya, at Singapore; Burma, at Kyaikto; Thailand, at Chumporn; Andaman Islands, at Port Blair; Borneo, at Jesselton; Sumatra, at Medan, Tadjong Karang and Palembank; Java, at Batavia, Bandung, Soerabaja and Buitennzong; Celebes, at Makassar; Portuguese Timor, at Ossu and Dilli; Philippines, at Manila, Nichols Field, Palo Beach and Dumaguete; Formosa, at Camp Haito; and in Japan, at Tokyo.

        <

        p>So what say you, Old Scratch?

        <

        p>Did we correctly and morally prosecute and execute war criminals for violating basic standards of human decency that should have been known to everyone, or did we incorrectly and immorally wreak vengeance on a defeated enemy, killing innocent victims in process?

        <

        p>How do you think your answer should relate to the fate of the perpetrators of the same torture today?

        • To the victor belongs the spoils.

          <

          p>I thought you were a fan of realpolitik, friend?  The law can be stretched to do downright anything.

          • I couldn’t disagree with you more strongly, but I grant you points for candor.

            <

            p>I don’t think “realpolitik” has to mean “no morals”.

            • that has to be taken into consideration.

              <

              p>The country was mobilized and engaged against a foreign enemy that had been demonized as less-than-human—especially, in this country, the Japanese.  We had just fought a total war on two fronts.

              <

              p>And the US hegemony emerged only after WWII, not before it.  It’s unsurprising, therefore, that we’d want to seize the moral high ground and lead from there.  Over time, however, we ended up learning things that the British and the French and others probably knew for years—morality’s certainly a virtue, but alone, it’s not going to keep you on top.

              • I think that basic tenets of morality — such as “Torture is immoral” — do not change with time (in the scales we’re discussing), enemy, and relative stature.

                <

                p>If staying “on top” requires torture (which I believe is utter nonsense), then I think it’s time to step down.

                • in certain extreme circumstances of military necessity, I, personally, have  no problem with doing what it takes to get the job done.  As I said upthread, as an officer, now a former officer, I’d rather face a court martial than have to write a letter to a private’s mother because I played sea lawyer instead of military commander.

                • Whether we agree or disagree, we aren’t talking about “certain extreme circumstances of military necessity”.

                  <

                  p>We are talking about sitting around a conference table in the WHITE HOUSE, for crying out loud. Surrounded by impenetrable security. No doubt enjoying the finest refreshments.

                  <

                  p>Writing, editing, and then signing formal documents ordering torture.

                  <

                  p>Not exactly the heat of combat. More like the heat of blood-lust, vengeance, or perhaps simple bigotry or xenophobia.

                  <

                  p>As you observe, you correctly assess that you would face a court martial if you tortured someone. The result of the process should be a conviction and sentence if you did it.

                  <

                  p>I invite you to offer a citation of a circumstance where a US officer admitted to torturing a prisoner — for whatever reason — and was not convicted of a crime and punished.

          • … conservatives for moral relativism.

            <

            p>The problem with moral relativism is the damage it does toward making assertions about right and wrong.

            • I was asked to explain something, and I did.

              <

              p>The US went after an enemy for doing Y, but they’re not going to go after themselves for doing Y.  Why?  “To the victor goes the spoils.”

              <

              p>Why would the US prosecute itself for war crimes?  Why would Obama want to prosecute Bush as a war criminal?

              • If war crimes are immoral, then deciding not to prosecute is an act of moral relativism.  That’s what you’re advocating here,… unless what you’re saying is that you’re just demonstrating a phenomenon and not commenting on it’s moral worth… that it’s just a reality that the US won’t prosecute itself and that it really isn’t morally ok that it doesn’t.

                <

                p>There are plenty of good philosophical defenses of moral relativism… you just don’t usually hear them from conservatives.  (Although you do tend to hear them more on military matters, interestingly.)

                • that the US should prosecute itself for war crimes because it’s the right thing to do.

                  <

                  p>In a perfect world, you’re exactly right, and I agree with you wholeheartedly.  Who wouldn’t want to live in a world where countries, governments, and everyone else always acted morally?  We’re talking no more wars, no more conflicts, total Kingdom of God stuff.  Sign me up for it.

                  <

                  p>What I’m saying is it’s not going to happen, especially not in this respect—prosecuting ourselves for war crimes.  I’m not assigning a moral value to it; I’m just saying it’s not going to happen for a whole host of reasons having to do with realpolitik.  Don’t think for one moment that St. Obama doesn’t realize this, too.

                  <

                  p>

                • … that if you think war crimes are immoral, then the moral prescription is necessarily prosecution.  I think you what you are saying is that you agree with me.  

                  <

                  p>I’m under no illusions about Mr. Obama’s (or any president’s) ability to enact immoral policy.

                  <

                  p>That we are a nation of laws is a kind of civic bargain we make to ourselves that we break when we let this stuff slide.  I do think while this seems convenient and utilitarian in the short term, it does way too much damage in the long term.  As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, the fact that we’ve never properly confronted Iran-Contra and Watergate leads any potential administration to go down these roads.  Right now I’d have a hard time imagining someone doing it worse than Bush did,… but the truth is that I probably only have to wait… someone will.

                  <

                  p>The harsh fact seems to be that laws matter, unless politically expedient.

                • Well, yeah.

                  <

                  p>

                  Indeed you will note that the rule of law seems to have been thought up for the sole benefit of those cold, indolent characters who expect to obtain their pleasures from marriage and their well-being from frugality and hard work.  But what does the social order do for the brilliant geniuses and passionate characters, burning for gold and pleasure, who want eagerly to devour their allotted span?  They will spend their lives in prisons and end them in a torture chamber.  Fortunately, human institutions are not really what they seem to be.  Laws are barriers, they are sufficient to turn aside passersby but those who want to cross them get over them or under them.

                  –Don Belial, a character from The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, by Jan Potocki, c. 1815

              • not itself, but members and agents of its government, because that’s what it agreed to do when it ratified the Convention Against Torture in 1988.

                Article 2
                  1. Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction.
                  2. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.
                  3. An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.
                . . .

                Article 4
                  1. Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law. The same shall apply to an attempt to commit torture and to an act by any person which constitutes complicity or participation in torture.
                  2. Each State Party shall make these offences punishable by appropriate penalties which take into account their grave nature.

                Article 7
                  1. The State Party in territory under whose jurisdiction a person alleged to have committed any offence referred to in article 4 is found, shall in the cases contemplated in article 5, if it does not extradite him, submit the case to its competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution.
                  2. These authorities shall take their decision in the same manner as in the case of any ordinary offence of a serious nature under the law of that State. In the cases referred to in article 5, paragraph 2, the standards of evidence required for prosecution and conviction shall in no way be less stringent than those which apply in the cases referred to in article 5, paragraph 1.

                • it’s not going to happen.  The US isn’t going to open up war crime trials on itself.  Scores of lawyers will come up with thousands of different legal excuses as to why what we allegedly did wasn’t technically a war crime under our interpretation of the convention/treaty/what-have-you, and that’ll be it.

                  <

                  p>A war crime trial wouldn’t just be an indictment of the Bush administration—it’d be an indictment of the United States.  You really think the US would want to do that sort of open heart surgery—on itself—on the world-wide stage, to boot?  You really think even Bush’s biggest enemies don’t realize what a disaster it would be for this country to initiate war crimes proceedings?

                • treaties, the Constitution, and actual enacted laws are no longer in force when it would be  – what – inconvenient? embarrassing?

                  <

                  p>Might as well not bother signing those treaties or passing those laws, then. And officially declare that the Constitution really is just a piece of paper.

                • that if we actually “enforced” our own Constitution, much of the very things you, as a “progressive”, embrace, politically, would be non-starters.

                  <

                  p>I’ll make a deal with you.  Once we start enforcing our own Constitution, and peeling back all the layers and layers of extra government bravo sierra we’ve been subjected to because of your politics and other big government politics—including the GOP’s—I’ll take seriously your insistence that we enforce, to our utmost diligence, some extraneous treaty.

                  <

                  p>You just argued your way straight into a tiger trap, old top.

                • Abortion.

                  <

                  p>A “penumbra” of a right to privacy?  A bit of a stretch.

                  <

                  p>Or, if you don’t like that—and I certainly don’t relish talking abortion—we can talk about how the federal government believes the Commerce Clause gives it free reign to do whatever the hell it wants to do.

                  <

                  p>Of course, while I targeted the flavor of my post above at progressives, that’s not to say you guys have exclusivity when it comes to setting the Constitution aside to do whatever it is you want to do.  Big government conservatives are just as guilty.  There aren’t any good guys or bad guys here (except for libertarians ;-)).

                • … you’ve outlined have all been tested in court.  That is, they have been put through and checked within our system of laws.  You may disagree with the outcome (as I may well also do if trials on torture lead to acquittals), but it did happen.  The lack of trials in the case of torture here isn’t analogous because the system designed to sort it all out has been interrupted.

                  <

                  p>This is an important difference distinction in what is meant by ‘non-enforcement’.  The issues you brought up were enforced, but not to your liking.  The torture issues haven’t even been tried yet.

                • . . . “enforced” in 5-4 decisions by the USSC that often are decided on political grounds rather than legal grounds?  

                  <

                  p>(sometimes the USSC gets it wrong, yes?)

                  <

                  p>Plessy v. Ferguson?
                  Wickard v. Filburn?

                  <

                  p>

                • … we decided to live by.  Can it result in ‘wrong’ decisions?… sure, but the distinction still stands.  They have all been tested in the system.  What we’re talking about here is the equivalent of not even letting Plessy v. Ferguson get to court, or even letting the judiciary decide if it wants to hear it.

                  <

                  p>Its the difference between injustice and lawlessness.  You find the outcomes unjust, but they were lawful.

  10. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/t…

    <

    p>Russian death squads ‘pulverise’ Chechens
    Elite commandos have broken their silence to reveal how they torture, execute and then blow captives to atoms to obliterate the grisly evidence

    <

    p>

    “We are not murderers. We are officers engaged in a war against brutal terrorists who will stop at nothing, not even at killing children. They are animals and the only way to deal with them is to destroy them. There is no room for legal niceties in a war like this. Only those who were there can truly understand. I have no regrets. My conscience is clear.”

    <

    p>If you think for one second that “torture” is not a common occurence, universally practiced, as a means of intelligence gathering you are all fools. Because you outlaw it—it will cease? It may cease as an unsavory
    policy of last by our government–it will not cease to be practiced by the troops in the trenches.

    <

    p>Let the purge begin. It will mean absolutely zero in the final analysis. It will be curious to see how many democrats are implicated and how many are prosecuted for lying under oath. Ms. Pelosi is already doing a tap dance.  

    • by all ethnic groups of the Caucusus, not just the Chechens. And this hatred has and will last for centuries. This kind of torture, based in tradition and ethnic hatreds, has existed for a long time and is different from what is being discussed here. I like to think that we are a country that doesn’t use torture, but would do so to protect itself against future attacks by terrorists.

      • As a small example: In Budapest and Prague every word of Russian has been scraped off.  Even the name plates on the Russian built trains have been removed…  

    • its ideals, its institutions, and its role as “shining city on a hill” is discouraging.

      <

      p>My ancestors did not emigrate here because they hoped that the place would be like Russia.

  11. I think what I’m hearing from the right is something like the following:

    1. Pelosi (allegedly) knew everything the Bush Administration was doing because they told her.
    2. Pelosi did not object to those policies then, when the country was under threat.
    3. Now the Democrats are in power, the country has been safe for seven years because of George Bush. Only now do people have the luxury to be upset about “torture”.
    4. As those harsh interrogation techniques kept our country safe, Nancy Pelosi is just pursuing a partisan attack against American heroes.
    5. Where was she when it would have been a tougher, more courageous choice? Nowhere because she couldn’t have gotten any partisan advantage out of it.

    Answers:

    • #1: We’re beating on that one up thread. I’ll leave it alone here.
    • #2 and 5: “Where was she when it could have been tougher?” Obeying the law. The law was such that Nancy Pelosi could not have spoken about these things until they were revealed by the Administration.
    • #4: My references in the diary refute that. However, I should also add that those implicated in the Bush torture policies are going to say whatever they can to make it sound as if they were good people doing the difficult, bad, but necessary things.

    • what would you expect them to say, or what would expect them to be thinking about themselves other than that they are/were good people doing the difficult, bad, but necessary things?  Do you think they woke up each morning all chock full o’ energy because it was such a grand day to torture people?  And if they couldn’t be torturing people at Gitmo, they’d be punching innocent preschoolers in the stomach and yanking the tails of pussycats and puppies alike?

      <

      p>What would have been better:  a strict adherence to any and all sensitivities regarding torture AND another terrorist attack on US soil, or a more lenient stance regarding torture AND no more terrorist attacks on US soil?  Remember, we’re dealing with a non-nation-state willing to take a sate of war directly to a civilian population.  We’re talking about a type of warfare that doesn’t piss on the Geneva Conventions—it never even considered them in the first place.  We’re talking about an enemy that fights like a judo expert—using the very essence of our nation (our open society, our legal protections) as weapons against us.  Remember, if Tenet is to be believed, KSM fully expected to be afforded full legal rights and be tried like a garden-variety criminal.

      • I am generally warm to utilitarian arguments, so I’m not inclined to be dismissive of them on those grounds.

        <

        p>However, even in this case, the torture regime as I documented was based on methods designed to yield false confessions. Get that? False confessions.

        <

        p>False confessions do not give useful intelligence. Period. Full stop. End of utilitarian argument. If it causes harm and it doesn’t work, you cannot say it’s moral even in Dewey-Bentham World.

        <

        p>So if I were to extrapolate, it sounds to me as if these folks were angry at teh Muslims. They felt moral righteousness in their anger. Moral righteousness is famous for justifying immorality. (Spanish Inquisition, anyone?) They were happy to punish them. They didn’t think carefully about how to gain intelligence. (See In Adoptiong Harsh Tactics, No Look at Past Use)

        <

        p>One of the chilling things about SERE, by the way, is that some SERE programs have had to be shut down just as one would predict from the Milgram experiments. It’s clear, from the excessive use of the waterboard, that something similar was going on in the Bush Administration’s behavior toward detainees.

        • “designed to yield false confessions?”

          <

          p>The way I read it, and from the research I’ve done, it reads to me like the Chinese developed that technique in order to coerce “confessions” from American airmen—that they had engaged in germ warfare, etc.—so they could use those confessions for propaganda purposes.  Now I’ve never been a POW, and since kirth holds me to those standards I’ll declare that now, but I’ve read that every human being has a breaking point at which they’ll “confess” to just about anything, and one of the purposes of SERE—again, kirth, I never had to go through SERE, but my brother and father (Naval aviators both . . . I can get their number of traps, too, if you’d like)—is to give the servicemen and women who go through it a way to explore their breaking points and employ strategies to last as long as possible without breaking.

          <

          p>But it’s not entirely clear to me how a method designed to do one thing can’t be employed to do another.  Is the hardware, if you will—the device by which drowning, say, is simulated—so intrinsically tied to the software—the questioning designed to elicit a response—that the system can only be used for one thing, and not any other?  After all, a hammer was designed to drive nails, but you can use it to kill a bug.  Hell, you can even use it to open a beer.  Could a medieval iron maiden be used only to make someone confess to being a heretic even if it were untrue, but it could not be used to make someone confess to knowledge about a certain attack?

          <

          p>

          • I believe it is a common idea in design that a well-designed tool that does one thing extremely well will end up having multiple uses. Just like a hammer.

            <

            p>By my reading, quite a bit of thinking has gone into how to learn things through interrogation. A lot can be learned by traditional means. As for truth through torture, didn’t they get Galileo to recant by just such means? Good thing that, no?

            <

            p>Useful tool or not, with the Bush Administration, we’re seeing something weird. Eighty uses of the waterboard has to be excessive. It strongly suggests that, even if this were a useful tool, they used it incompetently — and I’d go on to say that their selection of tool was incompetent as well.

            <

            p>Traditional interrogation is based on getting the detainee to feel an alliance with his captors. You’re more likely to get something true out of a captor so motivated. Who knows what you’ll get out of someone pushed past the breaking point? One of the sources to which I linked mentioned that the CIA was essentially running a Factory of False Leads.

            <

            p>False leads are expensive. The opportunity costs can be our security.

            • Waterboarding, as a form of torture, might have been designed with one sort of goal in mind, but could be used to achieve a different sort of goal, yes?

              <

              p>And we agree that there might be other forms of interrogation better suited to obtaining actionable information than waterboarding.  Yes?

              <

              p>What should happen now, in your opinion?

              • Waterboarding might be effective as an interrogation tool, but it is torture, hence illegal. The excuse that it is necessary under these exceptional times is undercut by your second paragraph.

                I suspect that we shall find out that it is worse than that. I referenced the Milligram experiments above. Various experiments in social psychology show that people given the power to punish have a tendency to go overboard.

                <

                p>Not just a little overboard, but way overboard.

                <

                p>Possibly excellent and strong management is required to prevent excesses. The 83 waterboardings within the space of a month or so certainly point in that direction as do the abuses in Abu Ghraib. Since the Bush Administration has so often shown itself incompetent at managing anything but the political message, I fear that we will learn that matters are worse, much worse than I outlined above.

                <

                p>Investigations are certainly called for and yes prosecutions.

          • Statement before the U.S. Senate, Committee on Armed Services, September 25, 2008, Steven M. Kleinman, Colonel, USAFR.

            <

            p>From page 2, we learn that we have the Milligram experiment:

            From the beginning, there was incredible pressure on interrogators to elicit actionable intelligence from practically every individual we took into custody.  Some of these detainees were complicit, others innocent; some were knowledgeable, some truly clueless.  In far too many cases, we simply erred in pressing interrogation and interrogators beyond the edge of the envelope.  As a result, interrogation was no longer an intelligence collection method; rather, it had morphed into a form of punishment for those who wouldn’t cooperate.

            <

            p>A meeting on best practices of interrogation comes to a conclusion, page 2:

            Our respective professional experiences led us to a single, emphatic conclusion: the most effective method for consistently eliciting accurate and comprehensive information from even the most defiant individuals-to include terrorists and insurgents-was through a patient, systematic, and culturally enlightened effort to build an operationally useful relationship. Similarly, we shared the belief that coercive tactics that relied on psychological, emotional, and/or physical pressures were, in the long run, not only ineffective but also counterproductive.

            <

            p>Page 3: he confirms that SERE officers got involved in interrogations: “While interrogation and teaching resistance to interrogation have much in common, they are nonetheless profoundly different activities.”

            <

            p>He points out that in SERE training it is very easy to detect whether one is being fooled by the detainee: you ask the guy’s unit. Thus, SERE trainers never develop the skill to detect deception. This is a key skill for interrogators.

            <

            p>As I said, ineffective.

        • Of course in order to make a proper utilitarian argument for torture, you have to show that it’s outcome was preferable to the outcome of ‘not torture’.  By most accounts this hasn’t been the case.  Much energy is therefor spent coming up with hypothetical scenarios where it might be.  Even so, it remains the problem that moral utilitarian judgment on the torture that did happen must rely on the consequences of the torture that did happen… hypotheticals are irrelevant in such a utilitarian analysis.

          <

          p>What is more interesting in debating utilitarianism is the followup question of lawbreaking.  Even if you buy that the torture was ‘good’ from a utilitarian perspective, the aftermath is a separate question.  Clearly there were laws broken, whatever the mitigating circumstances people want to claim.  As such, the new question is how to handle the fact that laws were broken.  Obama, for a while there, seemed to indicate that it was preferable from a utilitarian perspective to ‘move on’.  That is, the consequences of disregarding lawbreaking, the precedent it would set, the damage it would inflict on our reputation as a self-described ‘nation of laws’, and the impact it might have on future executive behavior is somehow preferable to the consequences of the alleged ‘elevation’ of policy disputes to the legal realm (which I don’t buy because following the law isn’t optional depending on your policy positions).

          <

          p>It seems to me that the other side of the coin is more of the problem.  Iran-Contra lawbreaking was the bastard child of Watergate lawbreaking, and this is the bastard child of both of them.  Rather than deferring to ‘move on’ I think it’d be better to face the music and give this phenomenon a permanent vasectomy.

          <

          p>Even if you buy, as MLK did, that laws can be justifiably broken,… this is an entirely different assertion than asserting that there shouldn’t even be a trial.  The alleged moral ‘rightness’ of torture, even if true, does not remove the necessity for the rest of us to confront the issue.  This confrontation must be in the form of a trial, a pardon, and then legislation.  “Moving on” just delays our moral development as a people in favor of easing tensions.  King understood that ‘easing tensions’ is exactly what is not called for when dealing with a ‘wrong’ law.

          <

          p>

          • Further, we haven’t even begun to discuss the effect on foreign relations. Viewers of ’24’ and Cheneyophiles might think torture harsh interrogation represents a noble and difficult decision, but Europeans tend be horrified at it. And Europeans are supposed to be among the bestest friends ever of the U.S.

            <

            p>Secondly, we have yet to factor the incompetence of the Bush Administration into this fully. Remember there were a lot of deaths of people in U.S. custody in Afghanistan and Iraq. Waterboarding can cause fatal spasms in the larynx so that those conducting the water cure eventually had to bring medical tools for puncturing trachea so that the detainee could breathe if the throat closed up due to spasm.

            <

            p>We have no visibility now into who this false confession technique was used on to gain false confessions — nor on how many innocents died as a consequence. I have no proof that that occurred. The track record and the deaths do not make it all too possible.

            <

            p>So just as a utilitarian calculation of Iraq War policy had to take account of administration conducting it, so too its torture policy.

          • It’s pretty clear to me that Obama will not prosecute these confessed war criminals.  Half of the country believes that torture is justified and effective – probably 2/3 of the country would be enraged to see Bush et al on trial, and we’d be punished badly at the polls.

            <

            p>As you state, ignoring these crimes is a very bad idea as well.  If there’s a serious crime, there’s an obligation to prosecute – and we’re talking murder and torture, the worst stuff there is.

            <

            p>I hate to say it, but the least-hideous alternative might be a pardon.  Obama would be acknowledging that prosecutable crimes occurred, but we wouldn’t have the nation ripped apart by the criminal prosecution of an ex-president and his administration.

            • is either having some other branch of government prosecute, or having his administration be clearly forced to do so. If he’s forced to do it, there will be less justification for the Republicans screaming about “partisan witch-hunts,” although they will certainly do that anyway.

              <

              p>The tearing-the-country-apart argument was used against impeaching Nixon. If we’d punished him as he deserved, Bush and Cheney might have been less eager to do these things. I think we’re facing a choice between your theoretical country-tearing and the definite continuation of our national character being ratcheted further down into the slime with each new ethically-deficient administration.

              <

              p>We effectively excused Watergate. Then we excused Iran-Contra. We’ve excused invading Iraq under false pretenses. Now we’re talking about torture. Is there a bright line we will not cross, or is whatever the President wants really acceptable, no matter what laws we pass, no matter what treaties we sign?  

          • On Abu Ghraib and Gitmo as causes of loss of American lives, Former Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora:

            <

            p>

      • Is torture against the law or not? If it is, then of course, “a strict adherence” to the law against it is required. To equate the law with “any and all sensitivities” is to throw away 200 years of jurisprudence.

      • that obeying the law is “adherence to any and all sensitivities regarding torture,” because that’s really what it sounds like. Your hypothetical situation is empty of weight – the torture did not deter any terrorist attack, and was being for other reasons anyway.

        <

        p>Again – you choose to believe Tenet, who’s been shown many times to be a liar.

        <

        p>Are you comfortable with children being tortured, too?

        • puppies and kitties and bunnies and little chicks and moonbeams, too.

          <

          p>Give me a break.

          <

          p>But while we’re on the subject of hand-wringing over children, let’s see how much the lovable Khalid loved his children, the ones that the evil US tortured by putting ants on their legs.  From your source:

          <

          p>

          The interrogators then told KSM “his children would be hurt if he didn’t cooperate.” However, his response was, “so, fine, they’ll join Allah in a better place.”

          <

          p>

          • that makes it OK for us to torture his children? Because we’re the Good Guys, or what? It takes some real flexible morality to justify that one.

            • bandy about the act of putting ants on the legs of children as if it were the equivalent of shoving bamboo spikes under their fingernails.

              <

              p>We are the good guys, kirth—or did you walk the line for the bad guys?

              • we aren’t the good guys. And it’s gone far beyond putting ants on them. Have you somehow managed to completely ignore what happened at Abu Ghraib?  

        • “slander” and “reckless accusations” by inferring Pelosi was lying about what she knew about water-boarding (even though there are multiple sources). I’m sure these right-minded individuals will be all over you for calling Tenet a “liar” with no citations. Do you have any proof of him being a liar (please don’t use aljazeera as a source).

          • America doesn’t torture, and that Ms. Pelosi should be treated the same as any other potential suspect.

            <

            p>I am, frankly, nauseated by otherwise reasonable people attempting to calmly discuss the “utility” of torture.

            <

            p>If a putative moral foundation does NOT categorically declare torture to be immoral, then what “utility” can that moral foundation serve AT ALL?

            <

            p>Sorry folks, I’m not buying it. Torture is immoral. Period.

          • the first time JD, here it is again, just for you. I could find lots more, but so could you – statements about WMDs, Saddam’s Al-Quaeda connection, etc, etc. Check it out.

            • Impressive. If I’m not mistaken, there have been a number of questions about Tenet, particularly his memoir.

        • your allegation that the US is even torturing children at all.

          <

          p>Your link:

          <

          p>http://hcgroups.wordpress.com/…

          <

          p>It’s a blog post.  

          <

          p>Here’s the pertinent quote:

          <

          p>

          According to a statement made by Ali Khan, the father of high value detainee Majid Khan, KSM’s children were “denied food and water by … guards.” In addition, “They were mentally tortured by having ants or other creatures put on their legs to scare them and get them to say where their father was hiding.” Accounts of the children’s ages at this time vary, although they are generally said to have been under ten.

          Ali Khan said that he was told about the children by his son Mohammed, who was kept in the same detention center and obtained the information from Pakistani guards there. He also claimed that his son Majid was tortured, for example using stress positions, face slaps, hooding and cramped confinement.

          <

          p>In other words, we’re talking complete hearsay.  

          <

          p>Pakistani guards give Mohammed Khan information of some kind.  Mohammed Khan tells his father, Ali Khan.  Ali Khan then makes the statement, and it’s accepted as gospel truth.  Okay.

          <

          p>To bolster the claim:

          <

          p>

          A set of memos recently released by the Obama administration provide some support for allegations that the children of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) were tortured to reveal their father’s whereabouts.

          <

          p>Which sounds like the smoking gun, until you read this:

          <

          p>

          The recently released memos expressly approve the use of insects in an attempt to scare a detainee into talking. For example, a memo by Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee dated August 1, 2002-a few weeks before KSM’s children were captured-approved the use of “insects placed in a confinement box.” However, this memo only deals with the interrogation of training camp facilitator Abu Zubaida.

          The memo sets out more detailed rules for the use of the insects. For example, if interrogators place harmless insects in the cell and tell Abu Zubaida they are actually stinging insects, then they are legally bound to tell him “the insects will not have a sting that would produce death or severe pain.”

          According to an endnote to another of the memos, drafted by Steven Bradbury of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel in May 2005, the technique was never used. “We understand that – for reasons unrelated to any concerns that it might violate the statute – the CIA never used the technique and has removed it from the list of authorized interrogation techniques,” Bradbury wrote.

          <

          p>Emphasis mine.

          <

          p>So how do we know the US is torturing children?  Because the father of a high-risk detainee said his son—the brother of the high-risk detainee—told him that Pakistani guards gave him some information to that effect (presumably).  And because a CIA memo says it approved the practice in a wholly-unrelated case involving a man accused of facilitating terrorist training camps, even though another CIA memo expressly says the bug technique was never used, not even on the training camp guy.

          <

          p>Wow.

          <

          p>I can’t believe I’m defending the government around here, ladies and gentlemen—I’m the libertarian.  But doesn’t this seem like a bit of a stretch to anyone but me?

          <

          p>

          • I’m having to try and persuade Americans that torture is a bad thing, and against what the country has stood for since at least the Civil War.

            <

            p>If it’s so easy for us to give up our morals, we’ve already lost the war on terror.

            • You’re claiming something very different—that the US tortures children.  And you’re basing that claim on pure bravo sierra, as I’ve pointed out.  You’re basing it on double hearsay and a memo wholly-unrelated to the issue at hand.

  12. I suspect verdicts will be “not guilty,” on both the facts and the law, as judged by 12 men good and true.  KBusch can outline all the talking points he wants but there will be defensible counter-arguments to every point he makes.

    <

    p>Let’s start with the CIA folks in the field, and work up to Dick Cheney and George Bush.

    • As the remaining 21% rump of the Republican Party continues to defend the Bush Administration, it will not sit happily with the remaining moderate Republicans that their leadership is defending waterboarding someone 80 times to give the former Administration political cover. How does one defend that? And why do we continue to hear no horror about it from Republican side?

      <

      p>With one exception, every Republican I know now votes Democratic.

      • Congrats to all of you for a most compelling discussion.  Although it heats up from time to time, I found it to be both entertaining and educational.  That’s why I enjoy coming to this site.  Thanks to KBusch and friends, and to Old Scratch and JohnD.

        • Do you have any other remarks to share on this? I’m kind of curious. Your comments on the Russians were interesting.

          • have the kind of expertise or background that most of you have.  I do have opinions, however.  Having lived with Russians on and off over the years (and with Armenians and Kazakhs) I am not averse to sharing my ideas on certain realpolitik themes.  KBusch, how the heck do you find time to do all that research?  I am really impressed.  

              • Interestingly enough the issues he is discussing today really transcend leftwing/rightwing idealogy.  I agree with him completely about large banks, lobbyists and the other topics.  What is right is right and what is wrong is wrong.

                • Glad you like him.  Interestingly enough though, he get’s demonized as a moonbat, despite the reality, because much of what he says he started saying during the previous administration.

      • I think I heard last night President Obama say that actionable intelligence was indeed obtained from KSM. Am I mistaken?  

        <

        p>OK, if I heard him correctly, then memos containing this information will come out, and will color the opinions and judgments of the jury, not to mention American opinion.

        <

        p>Combined with the limited use of waterboarding potentially to save lives, this information will, I believe, lead to exoneration of those you accuse of “war crimes.”  (Shouldn’t you now call them “Overseas Contingency Operation Crimes?”)

        <

        p>Acquittal, or jury nullification to you, happens all the time.  It will happen here too, in the court of public opinion first, and at trial later, if it goes that far.

        • … in thinking that trials would actually exonerate a torture policy.
          Ezra:

          <

          p>

          I don’t want to agree with Tyler Cowen on the politics of torture prosecutions, but I think I actually do:

          I believe that a full investigation would lead the U.S. public to, ultimately, side with torture, side with the torturers, and side against the prosecutors. That’s why we can’t proceed and Obama probably understands that. If another attack happened this would be all the more true.

          Tyler notes that he agrees with the moral stance of those criticizing Obama’s attitude towards prosecution. So do I. But insofar as Obama’s opposition to torture prosecutions goes, I think it might be as much the calculation of an anti-torture pragmatist as the cowardice of a politician who’d prefer to move on.

          <

          p>He goes on to illustrate other counterarguments including Greenwald:

          …the notion that the law can and should be ignored whenever we think doing so would produce good results or would constitute good policy was the engine that drove Bush lawlessness.

          <

          p>Personally I think you need trials either way it comes out.  If you’re ok with what was done, then trials are still needed to set precedent so that others can operate in the new landscape without fear.  

        • http://www.timesonline.co.uk/t…

          Although Mr Obama described the decision by the previous Administration to sanction such interrogations as a “mistake”, rather than – as human rights groups allege – a crime, he also rebuffed claims that they were necessary to save lives by yielding vital intelligence on al-Qaeda plots.

          “We could have gotten this information in other ways, in ways that were consistent with our values,” he said, “in ways that were consistent with who we are.”

          There does seem to be an implication there, but it’s not an outright statement that useful intel was produced.

          <

          p>I still haven’t seen any real intel named as being produced by torture, other than the Library Tower thing, which is demonstrably false. Can anyone else produce anything, or do we have to wait for Cheney’s personal list to be declassified?  

  13. CNN columnist Owen Gross has published a well-written piece on CNN this afternoon that touches on most of the topics raised here.

    <

    p>From the header of the piece:

    Oren Gross is Irving Younger Professor of Law and director of the Institute for International Legal & Security Studies at the University of Minnesota Law School. Between 1986 and 1991, he was a senior legal advisory officer in the Israeli Defense Forces’ Judge Advocate General’s Corps. He is co-author of “Law in Times of Crisis: Emergency Powers in Theory and Practice” with Fionnuala Ní Aoláin.

    <

    p>Some highlights (emphasis mine):

    Popular clichés notwithstanding, not all is fair in war. The idea that war is subject to legal rules is an ancient one.

    Over time nations have come to accept that their decisions whether to go to war as well as how to conduct warfare once armed conflict has erupted are limited by legal norms.

    But do such limitations hold when the enemy is not another nation that itself plays, more or less, by the rules, but rather a nonstate actor such as al Qaeda that flagrantly ignores them?

    Does not following the rules in this context mean that we would be fighting with one hand tied behind our back? And if so, should not all be fair at least in war against such an enemy? Yes, yes, and an emphatic no.

    Al Qaeda does not pose a threat to the United States’ (or any of its allies’) existence. Its real threat lies in provoking us to employ authoritarian measures that would weaken the fabric of our democracy, discredit the United States internationally, diminish our ability to utilize our soft power and undermine our claim to the moral higher ground in the fight against the terrorists.

    In other words, the critical threat is not that the United States would fail to defend itself but that it would do so too well and in the process become less democratic and lose sight of its fundamental values. “Whoever fights monsters,” warned Friedrich Nietzsche, “should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”

    …

    And so the only claim left is the one made by former Vice President Dick Cheney and former CIA Director Michael Hayden — that waterboarding and similar techniques actually worked. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that by “worked” they mean that through the use of such techniques the CIA got information that led to the foiling of future terrorist attacks. Let us even assume that such information would have been impossible to obtain using less radical methods of interrogation (both assumptions are controversial, of course).

    Even so, the use of torture would not become lawful. In this case, neither necessity nor effectiveness could render legal that which otherwise would have been illegal. And the absolute prohibition on torture recognizes, as we said earlier, no exceptions. As far as the law is concerned, it matters little whether torture resulted in useful intelligence leads or none at all. Consequently, no legal opinion could give advance authorization to use such techniques.

    <

    p>Bravo.

    • Al Qaeda does not pose a threat to the United States’ (or any of its allies’) existence.

      <

      p>All it takes is a well-coordinated, platoon-sized group with a test tube of nasty bugs and this country—or any other country, for that matter—is cooked.

      • biochemists stop their superbugs from spreading to Islamic countries and killing all their allies? If they’re smart enough to make or get those bugs, they’re smart enough to know it’s a losing strategy to use them.

        • demonstrably don’t quite give a care about formulating strategies that ensure long-term success or the safety of their compatriots.  

          <

          p>Exhibit A:  Driving airliners into buildings and killing civilian Americans.  That bright move all but assured the greatest military power the world has ever known, the United States, would do everything in its power to bring the fight to them, and wipe their organization off the face of the earth.  Not the greatest long-term warfighting strategy, especially if one is concerned with the non-militant portions of one’s group.

          <

          p>Exhibit B:  suicide terrorists, in general, destroy themselves knowing full well that the group they’re attacking will respond against their own kind.  Demonstrably they don’t care about those left behind, who’ll have to face the wrath of the enemy attacked by the cowardly suicide terrorist.

          <

          p>In short, kirth, I think terrorists demonstrate quite vividly that they don’t give a flying fig about those of their ilk that they leave behind.  So cracking open a vial of bug somewhere inside the Great Satan would be of no great concern to them.

          <

          p>And I’m talking about any terrorist org here, old top.  Islamic is your label.  You assume I have different standards for the IRA, say, because they’re white, Irish, and catholic?  I bet you’d love it if I did, eh?

          <

          p>

          • is in the comment I posted immediately after that one. You know – the one you chose to ignore.

            <

            p>And you can stop calling me “old top.” It doesn’t fit with the idea that you present in a “reasonable, non-hyperbolic tone.”  

          • I fear you are fighting the wrong battle in the wrong war, because you seem not to understand the goal and strategy of the Islamic terrorists.

            <

            p>I emphasized it in my quote, upthread, of yesterday’s piece:

            <

            p>

            Its real threat lies in provoking us to employ authoritarian measures that would weaken the fabric of our democracy, discredit the United States internationally, diminish our ability to utilize our soft power and undermine our claim to the moral higher ground in the fight against the terrorists.

            <

            p>This is a holy war, a Jihad. The Islamic terrorists seek to destroy a way of life that they find fundamentally immoral and evil. Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush danced like puppets on a string to the tune that AQ rather skillfully played.

            <

            p>Their goal was to demonstrate US arrogance, greed, and corruption to the rest of the world — and to bring down the US power structure in the process.

            <

            p>The economic cost, to the US, of our response to 911 has been staggering. Our entire economy is reeling, in no small part because of the insanely stupid decisions made by the prior administration.

            <

            p>It appears to me that the Islamic terrorists were making enormous gains against the American way of life, far out of proportion to the costs to them of your “Exhibit A” and “Exhibit B” cited above.

            <

            p>Fortunately, America finally seems to be coming to our senses. The question now is whether we have done so in time to reverse the damage so grievously inflicted at the hands of the criminally incompetent prior administration.

            • that it didn’t take a couple score of Islamic terrorists to demonstrate “US arrogance, greed, and corruption” to the rest of the world.  Those already pre-disposed to believe the US was all this believed so, Islamic terrorists or no Islamic terrorists.

              <

              p>If anything, perhaps, the Islamic terrorists hastened a decline into some non-“American way of life” that was already happening.  For if their one strategic goal in all of this was to point out all the ways in which the US has failed to deliver its promise of an “American way of life” (but for whom, exactly, and in what form), I’d say that many people on your side and on mine would reply “tell us something we don’t already know.”

              <

              p>I think you’re dead-on accurate in your assessment that this is a holy war.  That’s why I believe we, as Americans, need to stand united at least on this one score.  After all, it’s a holy war directed at Americans—at all westerners, perhaps—of all political persuasions.  

              <

              p>So how do we fight back?

              <

              p>Because the unfortunate reality of the state of warfare today is like I said it was—a well-coordinated, platoon-sized organization of zealots could take our country, or any other country, down, given the right weaponry.    

              • The first step in fighting back is to understand what these guys want and how they plan to get it. All this “united” talk just seems beside the point as if it were a cheerleading competition where lack of enthusiasm is the deciding factor. That, by the way, has been a frequent problem with Bush Administration policy.

                <

                p>As American citizens, we have a civic duty to understand Islam and the Middle East so, as democratic agents, we can vote for and support a correct and efficacious policy.

                <

                p>Al Qaeda’s primary goal was not to take over the U.S. with airplanes: it is to re-establish a caliphate. That means some fundamental change in the Muslim countries. If Al Qaeda’s ideology becomes broadly popular, for example, in the much more populous Indonesia, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, we are facing some significant trouble.

                <

                p>If the choice is between soft power and low-intensity warfare, it’s an obvious choice. Low-intensity warfare is:

                • expense
                • often counter-productive because it alienates the country in which it is conducted
                • difficult because enemies and friends look alike
                • rarely successful
                • slow as it takes years and years
                • often brutal and morally abhorrent (think My Lai massacre, Algeria, and Guatemala)

                The conservative heuristic, to look for ways to use force first, misfires here.

                • pursuing a strategy of low-intensity conflict creates a state of never-ending war; war with a fuzzy metric for strategic success and even fuzzier tactics to obtain those strategic goals.  And if the country is constantly on a war footing, this gives the powers-that-be all the more reason to do things which would be non-starters in peacetime.

                  <

                  p>One would have thought we would have learned these lessons from Vietnam, but I digress.

                  <

                  p>I think a far better strategy would have been engaging the “enemy” through non-military means.  After fully understanding our enemy’s beef with us, we could, for example, re-examine our overseas commitments and withdraw from those with which our enemies had the biggest issues.  I’m not suggesting we should retreat into our shell, but rather, take a cold hard look at what we’re getting for our military and aid dollars across the globe.  We need to take a more measured, more sober approach, using military action ONLY as a last resort.  And when we do act militarily, we should do so with surgical precision and use overwhelming force to put out fires as quickly as possible.  

                  <

                  p>We should, for example, look into ways that might give some of those who might otherwise become Islamic extremists some sort of economic hope.  I may be wrong, but it’s my gut feeling that those who have jobs, families, and economic hope don’t become suicide bombers, or, at least, zealots for the cause.  

                  <

                  p>The other side, however, must be willing to make concessions as well.  For example, they have to come to grips with the notion that Israel has a right to exist, and they have to buy into the notion that they, as a society and a people, can co-exist with Israel.

                • (Nice response by the way. We agree more than I’d guessed.)

                  <

                  p>It’s interesting to hear you refer to economic hope because I tend to think that the “economic hope” diagnosis is just an embarrassingly fuzzy liberal analysis of the hug-criminals-into-rehabilitation variety. (Note: I think only some criminals can be educated. Hugging not so much.)

                  <

                  p>But I don’t know.

                  <

                  p>The economic hope thing could be accurate. Certainly people engrossed in commerce might be less inclined to radical violence. A resolution of the Israel-Palestine problem would help a lot. Islam has a number of traditions that abjure any accommodation with changed circumstances. So some schools fit uncomfortably into the modern world. There also must be some painful cognitive dissonance about the immorality of non-Muslims and the success of non-Muslims.

                  <

                  p>In Franks’ What’s the Matter with Kansas?, one gets the impression that the radical anti-abortionists seem to have the following supernatural economic policy:

                  • Our state is the site of abominations in the eyes of the Lord.
                  • We will eliminate these abominations.
                  • The Lord shall reward us for our righteousness with prosperity.

                  So they vote for people who kick away farm supports and plunge rural Kansas into poverty. Not so successful.

                  <

                  p>I suspect that a similar dynamic may be in play among radicalized Sunnis. A new and attractive theology might be very helpful.

                • Admittedly, the economic hope theory is rather fuzzy and a total gut reaction to what I know about the plight of the average Middle Easterner in these strife-torn areas, which is next to nothing and wholly colored by documentaries and fiction.  But after seeing a documentary about daily life in Iran, I couldn’t help but estimate that perhaps one thing that radicalizes these youth is that they have nothing else going for them . . . their economic prospects are quite bleak.  And it seems to me that when you have nothing, it’s easy to blame others for your troubles, and once you start believing that, that’s when the more evil-minded of the radicals can really start to mold you into something you might not have been, given other opportunities.

                  <

                  p>And I know turning to fiction isn’t the brightest thing to do when thinking about real world issues, but I was really struck by Andre Dubus’ recent book “The Garden of Last Days,” where he recreates the final moments—fictionally, of course—of one of the 9/11 terrorists.  Andre depicted the guy as turning to the extremists largely because he had nothing better to do—no better prospects, etc.  This may or may not be the case, but to me, it just rang so true that there has to be some truth behind it, I hope.

                  <

                  p>Andre’s one hell of a writer.

              • I think the most effective way to “fight back” in a holy war is to vigilantly and rigorously renew our commitment to the core values and vision that have always made us strong:

                <

                p>1. An OPEN society
                2. Due process for all
                3. Human rights
                4. Unwavering commitment to ALL constitutional protections
                5. Diversity
                6. Secular government
                7. A literate, informed, and empowered electorate
                8. Compassion for the underdogs, the poor, and the least powerful.

                <

                p>I’m confident that our lists might vary in order and content, but I strongly suspect that they largely overlap.

                <

                p>The effect of the prior administration’s response was to betray, subvert, and shred each item on the above list. This, in turn, is in my opinion a significant contributor to the economic and even spiritual (in the sense of how we collectively feel about ourselves) malaise we feel — individually and collectively. The return to these values, and the accompanying feeling of individual and collective healing, is in my opinion a significant aspect of President Obama’s “charisma”. Deval Patrick tapped a similar vein during his campaign.

                <

                p>I strongly suspect that the lowliest suicide bomber knows more about the specifics and generalities of his or her extremist Muslim views than the insight demonstrated by most of our leadership during the past eight years — never mind the Rush Limbaugh’s and teabaggers.

                <

                p>In my view, this confusion and lack of action (and understanding) of our own core values — if not outright betrayal of them — is why we were losing the Jihad.

  14. The CIA’s $1,000 a Day Specialists on Waterboarding, Interrogations

    According to current and former government officials, the CIA’s secret waterboarding program was designed and assured to be safe by two well-paid psychologists now working out of an unmarked office building in Spokane, Washington.

    Bruce Jessen and Jim Mitchell, former military officers, together founded Mitchell Jessen and Associates.
    . . .

    “It’s clear that these psychologists had an important role in developing what became the CIA’s torture program,” said Jameel Jaffer, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union.

    Former U.S. officials say the two men were essentially the architects of the CIA’s 10-step interrogation plan that culminated in waterboarding.
    . . .

    The new documents show the CIA later came to learn that the two psychologists’ waterboarding “expertise” was probably “misrepresented” and thus, there was no reason to believe it was “medically safe” or effective. The waterboarding used on al Qaeda detainees was far more intense than the brief sessions used on U.S. military personnel in the training classes.

    • Liberal hawks used to say that they supported toppling Hussein even though Bush was in office. Doves warned them that it wouldn’t be managed well.

      <

      p>Now we know that the Bush Administration mismanaged a lot of stuff. In Iraq alone, they:

      • relied too heavily on Chalabi who turned out to be an Iranian agent
      • turned over the Provisional Authority to inexperienced Republican operatives
      • prevented post-war planning because it might cause pre-war political misgivings
      • allowed the Defense Department to ignore the State Department’s study of what to do post-invasion
      • allowed the Defense Department to shut out not just liberals, not just Democrats, but knowledgeable employees of their own Department of State from work on the occupation
      • lost millions of unaccounted for dollars
      • let contractors brutalize and alienate Iraqis

      I’ll skip Katrina for now.

      <

      p>So torture apologists give us this too perfect scenario: Detainee knows about plot. Detainee won’t confess. Torture extracts it. Plot is avoided.

      <

      p>Let me put aside from the fact, that this plot happens thousands of times more on TV than the real world. Instead we seem to have: Detainee knows little. Detainee won’t confess because there’s nothing to confess. Excessive use of torture is applied. Detainee makes up shit. Agents spend time tracking it down. More torture is applied. Detainee says more stuff. Intelligence officers scratch head. Tapes are destroyed.

      <

      p>It should not be forgotten either that a lot of Afghani and Iraqi detainees lost their lives in detention. At least one Afghani lost his life for no good reason at all.

      <

      p>Conclusion: the torture apologists are not talking about some kind of perfect moral problem in a Sophocles play. They are talking about the bumbling assholes of the Bush Administration carrying out torture.

      <

      p>The results are what one might expect.

      <

      p>Apologies for the profanity but I think it is merited.

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