Torture Works, So Does Pedophilia
By Larry Johnson on April 22, 2009 at 2:00 AM in Current Affairs
(bumped up from Tuesday afternoon)
Nothing like sex with a young child to provide full gratification. Disgusted? (I hope so.) It does not matter whether or not sex with a minor is pleasing or fulfilling. It is wrong and it is a crime. So then why in the hell are we allowing the baying voices of Bush supporters and some on the right to insist, without a shred of empirical evidence, that “torture” works. For starters it does not matter whether it “works.” It is illegal and inhuman.
But let’s go with the claim that it does work. Why should we believe that? Because Dick Cheney says it works.
How could Dick Cheney be wrong? Isn’t he the one that insisted that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction? (whoops, okay, he missed that one). Isn’t he the one who insisted Iraqi intelligence agents were meeting with Al Qaeda in Praque? (another dry hole). And he continues to be adamant that Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden were in league together even though the CIA repeatedly has said, no, not so. So, just because Dick Cheney says “it is so,” count me a skeptic. His truth track record sucks.
The “torture” works argument is wrong and misleading on many levels.
For starters, torture is illegal under any circumstances. That’s the law. The convention against torture, which the U.S. signed and the Senate approved, stipulates:
the term “torture” means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions. . . .
No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political in stability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture. . .
An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.
What is it about English that the torture advocates do not understand? It does not matter a good goddamn whether it is effective or not. It is illegal. Period. No exceptions.
Although the law exists it does not prevent governments and people from engaging in such conduct. Let’s review the countries that have used torture and excused its use by claiming they needed to protect the homeland or the motherland or the fatherland–Nazi Germany, Stalinist Soviet Union, Castro’s Cuba, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, Egypt, Pakistan . . . Beginning to get the picture.
And now the supporters of George Bush want to justify torture because “we’re protecting America?” Horseshit!! Excusing illegal behavior because it benefits us or is perceived to benefit us does not make it right.
This line of argument also assumes, falsely, that the option is either torture or no information. But we do not have to assume anything on this front. We have the actual experience and testimony of FBI Agents–Dan Coleman, Jack Cloonan, Ali Soufan and Steve Gaudin–who have interrogated successfully terrorist suspects. As Jane Mayer reports in her book, The Dark Side, Soufan and Gaudin were among the first to question Zubayda. Mayer writes:
Both believed progress was being made using the traditional “rapport-building” techniques of questioning. They sent back early cables describing Zubayda as revealing inside details of the attacks on New York and Washington, including the nickname of its central planner, “Mukhtar,” who was identified as Khali Sheikh Mohammed. This tidbit, later trumpeted by the Bush Administration as a significant breakthrough, actually only confirmed information previously received but inadequately processed by the CIA in the months before the attacks. The 9/11 Commission report documents this.
The FBI does not have to imagine preventing an attack. Nope, they actually disrupted a plot to blow up the Lincoln and Holland tunnels in New York City thanks to an informant. Did not have to waterboard or sleep deprive a soul.
We need to worry as well about the effect of torture on those who are the “givers.” We need to pay special attention to the psychological effect. The people who actually apply the torture have experienced psychological trauma. Even the dreaded, supposedly heartless Nazis could not escape this phenomena. German soldiers suffered significant psychological harm after participating in the mass shootings of civilians, whose bodies were stacked in pits. That’s why the masters of the Holocaust switch to using gas to murder Jewish men, women and children. It was more impersonal and the Germans did not have to see the immediate aftermath of their work. They used other Jewish prisoners to haul out the bodies.
If you are 35 or younger you probably have no effective memory of the Cold War. Too bad. I spent most of my adult life supporting our Government’s policies to confront the spread of communism and tyranny. We opposed countries like the Soviet Union and Cuba who routinely engaged in torture using the excuse that they were rooting out “enemies of the state.” Now I have lived log enough to witness people who once opposed the abuses of tyrannical states justify the methods of those states because we want to believe that it makes us safe. It matters not that such a belief is predicated on TV shows like 24 and mindless fantasies penned by guys like Vince Flynn, it has become truth by virtue of repetition.
Just a reminder, no matter how many times Dick Cheney insisted that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and Saddam was backing and supporting Bin Laden he was at best delusional or committed to a lie. Regardless, those who press the argument that “torture works” is a pernicious lie that threatens the very foundation of our nation.
, the basis for the Best Motion Picture Nominee (Golden Globes) starring Brad Pitt.
, the novel by John Le Carre, a new motion picture starring Gary Oldman and Colin Firth.
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.by David Fredosso who wrote 2008's 
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