A Disconnect on Torture
By Philip Giraldi on June 24, 2009 at 10:00 PM in Current Affairs
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., a friend of Larry Johnson’s, is the Francis Walsingham Fellow at The American Conservative Defense Alliance (www.ACDAlliance.org) and a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer. This article was originally published at the CampainForLiberty.com.
Torture has been universally condemned and banned by both Geneva and United Nations Conventions for good reasons. It is also illegal under US law. It is widely recognized that torture is a line that should not be crossed, that it starts out with sleep deprivation and winds up with torn out fingernails and even death. On a practical level, it only is really good at producing confessions, many of which turn out to be false. It debases and turns sadistic those who carry it out and those who order it. It is a black mark on the government that condones it and it opens the door for other countries to engage in the same or similar practices.
Many governments that have routinely tortured to obtain information have abandoned the practice when they discovered that other approaches actually worked better for extracting information. Israel prohibited torturing Palestinian terrorist suspects in 1999. Even the German Gestapo stopped torturing French resistance captives when it determined that treating prisoners well actually produced more and better intelligence.
Nevertheless, in spite of the historical record, the torture advocates continue to speak out, ignoring ethical and moral considerations and stressing that “torture works.” Former Vice President Dick Cheney has even succeeded in changing the terms of the narrative on torture, which he freely admits was carried out when he was in office though he prefers to describe it as “enhanced interrogation.” He asks the American people to trust him when he says that torture worked and saved thousands of lives. But did it?
If there has been any “lesson learned” from the past eight years it is that government officials like Cheney are not to be trusted when they assert something without the support of incontrovertible evidence. Cheney bases his critique of Obama policy on two alleged memos drafted by the CIA that he claims demonstrate that enhanced interrogation of terrorist suspects actually produced information that stopped terrorist attacks. There are two problems with the Cheney memos, even assuming that it can be demonstrated that specific information obtained led to the direct thwarting of a terrorist attack, something that has not yet been demonstrated in any credible way. First, the memos only support a torture policy if they demonstrate that the information obtained could only be obtained by torture and not by other means. Second, any document drafted to support a certain course of action is not by its very nature evidence that the underlying policy was sound. The reports apparently were prepared by the CIA at the request of the White House to validate the program, not critique it. Asking the CIA, which was carrying out the torture, to justify the practice is a bit like asking the fox why he ate all the chickens in the hen house. Did anyone expect Langley to admit that torture had not worked after it had been approved by all of CIA’s senior management at the urging of the White House?
Several prominent former CIA officers have also supported the Cheney point of view. One in particular, Michael Scheuer, who once headed the Bin Laden Task Force, has asserted that if extraordinary rendition is halted there will be a major terrorist attack in the United States within one year. Scheuer has recently written a widely circulated Washington Post Op Ed that asks “Is it moral for the president of the United States to abandon intelligence tools that have saved the lives and property of Americans and their allies in favor of his own ideological beliefs?” It is a serious charge, but is Scheuer right? Did he actually see information that came from someone who was tortured that could not have been obtained in another fashion that stopped a terrorist attack? If so, we need to know the details — Who? What? When? Where? Several former intelligence officers who knew Scheuer well claim that he was only an analyst, that he never had any interactions with actual CIA sources and that he was never in any way involved in handling detainees or personally involved in any interrogations. If that is true, how did he obtain his information that enables him to conclude that extraordinary renditions and enhanced interrogations, which almost everyone but Dick Cheney agrees is torture, saved many lives and will save even more lives in the future? Scheuer’s voice gives credibility to the advocates of torture. If he cannot or will not provide the details of interrogations that he knows about first hand and intimately he should stop going around describing himself as an insider who is an expert on the subject of extraordinary rendition and enhanced interrogation.
It might be argued that Scheuer, like Cheney, lets his agenda drive him. His enthusiasm for torture of alleged terrorists is perhaps related to his embrace of a clash of civilizations concept that would make Samuel Huntington blush. In Imperial Hubris he wrote “Killing in large numbers is not enough to defeat our Muslim foes. With killing must come a Sherman-like razing of infrastructure. Roads and Irrigation systems; bridges, power plants, and crops in the field, fertilizer plants and grain mills–all these and more will need to be destroyed to deny the enemy its support base. Land mines, moreover, will be massively reintroduced to seal borders and mountain passes… As noted, such actions will yield large civilian casualties, displaced populations, and refugee flows. Again, this sort of bloody-minded is neither admirable nor desirable, but it will remain America’s only option so long as she stands by her failed policies toward the Muslim world.” Scheurer is surely right about failed policies towards the Islamic world, but much of what he writes is high minded fear-mongering that is really his own opinion and should be regarded as such, not expert testimony.
Another recent fan of torture is British author Andrew Roberts in “How Torture Helped Win World War II.” He asserts that the Normandy Invasion succeeded because nineteen Nazi spies were coerced into reporting false information to the German intelligence service, the Abwehr. How does he know that? He doesn’t. He admits that “full firsthand details of the enhanced interrogation techniques have not emerged, either from the British or the German side.” Roberts assumes the men were tortured, that the torture was successful, and that it resulted in the men’s changing sides to help the British. He provides zero evidence that that is what took place.
Americans who believe in the US constitution, with its promise of a rule of law, protection of individual rights, and due process should shun torture. That a number of leading figures are currently parading around and defending the practice is perhaps a measure of the sorry state of morality and ethics in our time. When the Cheneys, Scheuers, and Roberts of this world argue that torture works and saves lives they should be challenged hard because many Americans will believe that what they say is true and some will accept that the infliction of pain somehow should have a place in our judicial system. Torture is an unmitigated wrong, both morally and practically, and it is time that the American media and public rally against the merchants of fear who have been promoting it.
(Release: November 13)
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Great read–thanks for posting.
Torture is abhorrent to me. There is absolutely no justification for it. There are other ways to gather information from someone that doesn’t involve inflicting pain or discomfort on them or humiliating them. America is supposed to be about promoting human rights around the world, but we have lost credibility since the world knows we have engaged in torture.
we are a civilized society, condoning torure makes us no better than the barbarians we are combating in third world countries for doing the exact same thing!
Larry,
Scheuer’s problem is that he has watched too many episodes of 24, and Scheuer thinks that ‘he’ IS Jack Bauer.
Lord knows what makes Mikey tick, but him and his ilk are a distortion of space.
Bottomline? Until Mr.Scheuer can explain to me WHY, he being on point in the hunt for UBL, did not GET UBL I will not give him no quarter.
Was it that the “methods” he was using were based on information gained from torture and the result was bad information and the outcome predictable as seen by so many other trained pro’s?
LJ, is there such sycosis as “24 on the brain”, like some high constant fever?
Please refrain to bend history to make your point. The Gestapo went on torturing French resistance members until the very last days of the war. And unfortunately were so skilled at it that they did obtain true and valuable information through it.
Why do you insist on teinting the argument by rewriting history?
Isn’t it enough to argue that torture is morally wrong? And that it destroys not only the torturee, but also the torturer?
I still have a copy of Imperial Hubris. I tried to read it and ended up skimming through the last half of it I consider myself a sophisticated reader, but that was a book that really confused me. I just didn’t find a compelling central argument.
I do remember getting the creeping sensation in the first part of the book that Scheuer was in some way jealous of the religious fanaticism of the terrorists, that he almost admired them for the strength of their religious devotion. It seemed strange to me at the time when I got the book a few years ago.
I wonder if I have the stomach or the will to reread it now that I know its background.
Dr. Giraldi and Larry, thanks for the post and the continued offense against the use of torture, no matter what euphemism people want to apply to the practice.
There is no question that torture is an unmitigated wrong morally. Unfortunately, Dr. Giraldi’s proof that torture is an unmitigated wrong practically is left unproven by the above treatise, which fails to definitively cite primary sources that have actually witnessed the success or failure of torture firsthand. Instead, Dr. Giraldi chooses to make his case by citing torture advocate Mike Scheuer and offering the tortured logic (hey, good pun!) that if Scheuer is for it, it must be wrong from a practical perspective. There are better arguments to be made, and I wish that someone would make them and leave Scheuer to his apparent destiny as a talking head who is nearing obsolesence.
Perhaps the IG report will do this. As of this moment, however, there is at least one primary source on contemporary counterterrorist torture operations that says, on the record, that “torture worked” in the case of captured Al Qaedans.
That it is wrong morally should be enough. However, there are primary sources involved in relatively recent interrogation efforts within the CIA that can attest to whether or not it “works.” It would certainly be interesting to hear from them.
In contrast to the current CWOT, during Central American operations in the mid to late 1980s, CIA spent a lot of time retraining and reorienting indigenous military intelligence officers in non-torture interrogation methods that were very successful in “turning” captured opponents. The results were very powerful because the turned opponents became willing collaborators as part of our team rather than just giving us information to avoid pain.
Is this approach difficult? Yes, it requires interrogators to be skillful, knowledgeable, and very quick-witted. But the results are worth it. Former proponents of torture admitted that not only did it work better, but also that the torture methods that they had previously used were more about their own ego and desire to extract retribution from the bad guys than it was about information.
Perhaps some day all of this will come out and we will realize that we need to maintain a trained, well-qualified cadre of professionals who are dedicated to the employent of these techniques.
They don’t make for a very compelling episode of 24, and those who are most successsful in employing them rarely look like Kiefer Sutherland. But they will help to win a war. Of that, we have proof.
You are precisely right on. There IS no room for discussion here about whether “torture works,” or how *much* torture is OK for Americans to perpetrate on other human beings. Those who advocate for torture are cowardly, demented individuals. They are sick. They are anti-American and against all that the words of our Constitution…”We, the people….in order to form a more perfect union….”stand for. Each and every one of them should be indicted, prosecuted and if convicted, punished to the full extent of the law. Good job, Spanish, who are proceeding forward with the prosecution of the American lawyers involved in this incredible evil.
I remember the shock and horror when the first “tame” photos showing the victims of US torture. Regardless of political party — there was universal condemnation of what this “rouge” band of National Guard troops where doing to prisoners in Iraq. I also heard Veterans and active duty military personnel remark that torture of prisoners puts the troops IN THE FIELD at great risk. The Iraqis knew this was happening — so this was no big secret where it was happening. In the US we had no idea — until those photos emerged.
Fast forward — the PR propaganda machine has now twisted the WORDS — and now seemly rational people are defending the use of torture on prisoners.
If our first gut reaction to the first photos was disgust, horror and outrage that a rouge National Guard Unit would bring dishonor to America — THEN we should still be outraged that in fact the National Guard Unit had the support of the chain of command all the way to the President and Vice President of the USA.
There is no defense for torture. It does put our troops in the field in danger and the ones doing the torture have crossed a line that no human should cross.
We should NOT become the enemy in order to defeat the enemy.
I grew up in the military — my dad was doing a job that put him at risk for capture and torture. We were taught that America does NOT torture — only the BAD guys torture.
The simple fact is that what Bush/Cheney did to the GITMO prisoners was not torture, and even if it was, waterboarding was carried out on a grand total of three (3) prisoners. Oh .. well, unless you want to say that putting a harmless caterpillar in the KSM’s prison cell was torture. Oh yeah, I see, it was torture because KSM didn’t know that the critter was harmless. I see. Only liberals can get their panties in a wad about the way the GTMO prisoners were handled. So go ahead … prattle on if it makes you feel better. Meanwhile we who have not lost our minds on account of Bush Derangement Syndrome will continue to support our leaders success in bringing death, destruction, and defeat to America’s enemies.
JimBob
TeakwoodKite: Mr. Michael Scheuer (spelling?)did not “get” UBL, because he and his team were ordered not to fire on the house at which UBL and his lads were holed up. It was, in fact, Mr. Sandy Burglar … uh …. I mean Mr. Sandy Burger(Democrat)who gave that order. I guess you never figured that out even though Burglar … uh .. Burger was caught burgling the National Archives.
Jimbob