Thanks, Laura – though I deleted out that last parenthetical reference to McCain’s excessive campaign rhetoric – not because I withdraw the sentiment, but because it was in the wrong spot.

CK MacLeod on April 21, 2009 at 2:56 PM

in which he asked a rhetorical question meant to appall – Which City Would You Sacrifice? – and received a bit-torrent of decreasingly funny answers.

That whole thread is disgusting. I understand naming a city is one way of ardently supporting strong national security. But it’s sick, imo. I don’t like either-or choices, but I’m not afraid of my answer, which is torture. But that in no way shapes or represents my opinion on the subject, which is anti-torture. It should be extremely rare, covert, and openly illegal.

Good post.

Free Constitution on April 21, 2009 at 3:06 PM

they’re the extremists, and, along with the Obama Administration, they seem intent on testing the sturdiness of their moral postures at the expense of other people’s reputations, our citizens’ lives, and our country’s future.

moral posturing? because only gun freaks, jesus freaks and pro-life nuts have principles, everything else is moral posturing? you’re promoting torture but you call yourself a christian? despicable. you and your ilk brought shame to America.

sesquipedalian on April 21, 2009 at 3:25 PM

The majority of the enhanced interrogation techniques, aka “torture” were standard practice during SERE (survival, evasion, resistance, escape) training I, along with thousands of others, received in the Navy in the 1970s. I know of no service member who has called for the prosecution of SERE trainers or those higher in the chain of command because they were “tortured” during their training. I would be surprised if these methods are not in use in SERE schools today. How can methods that have been employed in armed forces training programs for over three decades now be considered “torture” just because they were used in interrogation of our enemies?

BillyRuffn on April 21, 2009 at 3:42 PM

whatever.

There is no convincing.

blatantblue on April 21, 2009 at 3:54 PM

moral posturing? because only gun freaks, jesus freaks and pro-life nuts have principles, everything else is moral posturing? you’re promoting torture but you call yourself a christian? despicable. you and your ilk brought shame to America.

sesquipedalian on April 21, 2009 at 3:25 PM

I’ve not noticed anyone here claiming to be a Christian or appealing to Christianity for justification, or referring to anyone’s religion at all – except for the above commenter, apparently a through-and-through bigot unable to reason except by stereotype.

For someone willing to get beyond stereotype, however, our culture’s peculiar relationship to torture, including our religious culture’s, is interesting. Christianity puts the intense physical suffering of Jesus Christ at the center of of its doctrine – and the organized churches have had an extremely complex, you could even say rich, relationship to torture. Many Native American tribes, whom many on the multicultural left are always after us to praise and emulate, sustained elaborately ritualized cultures of torture. Interestingly, the Communists typically banned torture from interrogations: They saw it as “bourgeois sadism” – and yet it never prevented their security forces from ending up among the modern world’s greatest torturers, if under different names.

CK MacLeod on April 21, 2009 at 4:02 PM

CK MacLeod on April 21, 2009 at 4:02 PM

it’s despicable, whether or not you’re a christian. it’s unpatriotic and against our values. shining city on the hill, say fuckin goodbye to that. you keep telling yourself that they didn’t suffer, that it was just a little roughing’em up – it wasn’t. it was planned, systematic torture, as described above.

you believe former bush people that torture worked. so far, no evidence, only hearsay. you want to believe them, because you can’t face the truth. that we senselessly tortured people, and gained very little from it. we tortured people not just to stop a ticking bomb, but to gather the “mosaic” info, random data that may be useful one day. we tortured people for that.

history will not be kind to these people.

sesquipedalian on April 21, 2009 at 6:29 PM

Excuse me if I doubt sequipedalian was ever a big fan of the “shining city on a hill.” As a matter of fact, in the community of the man who originated the phrase, many practices that people would today consider torture, or in any case cruel and unusual, were normal.

As for the effectiveness of waterboarding and the other techniques, we’ve heard claims by people in a position to know that they were highly effective in gathering intelligence, stopping plots, and apprehending terrorist leaders. However, those of us who support the interrogators, the lawyers, and their superiors would do well to keep in mind that, if it was morally right to apply those interrogation methods, it was right even if they produced no useful intelligence.

We might conclude that aspects of the operation were ill-conceived and ill-considered, but the moral question would be unaffected by anything short of gross negligence. If, in an emergency situation, it’s justifiable to apply true torture to someone honestly believed to have critical information, failing to extract the information in time wouldn’t remove the justification.

The facts on the effectiveness of the interrogations would be of great interest, and will potentially be of great practical political effect if the Obama Administration honors Cheney’s demand, but they do not and cannot by themselves resolve the underlying issue either way.

CK MacLeod on April 21, 2009 at 8:34 PM

above quote is of course from a noted leftist rag.

sesquipedalian on April 22, 2009 at 7:42 AM

Apparently you take the position, based on nothing other than your suspicions and presumptions, that everyone who disagrees with you does so out of self-interest.

i take this position based on my life experiences and a basic understanding of human nature.

All information – even the information gotten from willingly cooperative witnesses honestly striving to tell you everything they know – is unreliable until checked.

yes, but i assume you’re aware of the phenomenon whereby individuals tend to agree with anything, or are willing to provide false information, if they believe that will please their tormentors and end their suffering. the more intense the suffering, the more pressure is on the individual to come up with anything plausible. this is why the reliability of the information gained this way is inversely proportional to the amount of pain and mental stress the source endures.

My argument would be that life on Earth generally, and warfare especially, always involves acceptance of the lesser evil against the greater one. It’s sad, but grown-ups get used to it. It may be the definition of being a grown-up.

i appreciate your kind and condescending answer, but you’re wrong. the problem is that even though we’re sanitized to human suffering when it doesn’t affect us directly, we still have a responsibility to uphold our values. we have a responsibility not to inflict torture upon a human being. that is why we’re not saddam’s iraq or the pol pot regime.

so my answer to you is this: grow up already and accept the fact that not torturing people is the lesser evil compared to not torturing any last bit of information (that may or may not be useful) out of anyone we choose to imprison. you will not be allowed anymore to torture anyone in my name. we do not need that kind of protection, because it’s not really a protection at all.

Comparing the rough interrogation of a handful of indisputably guilty terrorists to the massive and systematic depravity of Saddam’s Republic of Fear, you demonstrate just how dangerously nonsensical argument by phony moral absolutes can be in the real world.

the torturers made the comparison realistic. i’m terribly ashamed of this. you should be too. as for systematic torture, read zelikow if you only trust bona fide cons.

sesquipedalian on April 22, 2009 at 11:57 AM

CK MacLeod on April 22, 2009 at 1:47 PM

A seasoned interrogator would understand that certain admissions made under duress, or the fear of duress, are questionable. Likewise, a seasoned interrogator would also understand that any admissions made at all to the interrogator are questionable.

I used a lot of paper and a few maps now and then, to ascertain the basics. One day one, the subject would admit that he worked at a particular location, doing something like, say, building nuclear warheads in Sana, Yemen.

Feigning interest, I’d ask him to go on, and then put a blank piece of paper and a pencil in front of him. Ask him to simply draw a map of where he lived. This done, I’d ask him how he got to work. Again, draw me a map, I’m slow. If on foot, I’d ask for certain details. If by bus, I’d ask which bus line or route number. If by car, I’d ask him to describe the car, the things he saw on the way to work. After a while I’d have a pile of information in front of me…all of it checkable…which I did before the next session. I’d ask a lot of mox-nix details that had nothing to do with nukes or other technical subjects…just basic lifestyle and daily interactino questions.

A new or unseasoned interrogator would focus in on the sexy nuke stuff…and take it all in…and then try to check the uncheckable somehow.

After a few sessions we’d get into his actual workplace…and the blank sheets of paper and pencil would appear…and I’d ask simple questions. From where you get off the bus, out of your car, how do you get to your workplace? On the way in, where is the flag pole or main sentry point where you show your pass…what color qwere the buildings, stone or brick or stucco, maybe wood, and as we went along it would prove that either the guy was fabricating everything…hoping that by saying he had access to nuke info he’d get a better ride to the States, or that he was actually involved in something that had something more to it than the subject even realized.

The guys who handled the interrogations of KSM and company, were seasoned interrogators, not fresh out of school kids.

And, the reason for multiple sessions getting KSM’s face wet was because he most likely gave erroneous information at first, hoping to trick his American friends, or bluster trying to show them he had bigger stones.

But, after a session or two or more, when faced with an interrogator who appears to know more than you do about a subject, and can ascertain lies or inconsistencies in your oral presentations…one either clams up completely and has a very clean face at the end of the day…looking forward to other clean face days….or one caves and starts at the beginning, hoping that his interrogators will not be p’d off enough to do him more or possibly permanent harm.

coldwarrior on April 22, 2009 at 4:52 PM

CK MacLeod on April 22, 2009 at 1:47 PM

1. the effectiveness of torture. that is the side of the issue that, like you, i’m not really interested in. so far, it has not been made clear what the value of the information was that they gained by making prisoners go through a regimen of abusive treatment. there’s no evidence that any major plots were foiled, with the liberty tower story apparently discredited.

2. “If, in an emergency situation, it’s justifiable to apply true torture to someone honestly believed to have critical information, failing to extract the information in time wouldn’t remove the justification.”

i take this to be your jolly joker pro-torture argument. “honestly believed?” by whom? is that a generally accepted standard in law? even if they do know, we have absolutely no reason to give them the decision whether to torture or not.

taking the long-term view, it is not justifiable to torture anyone, even if there’s an impending attack (the ‘ticking bomb scenario’ phrase is so ‘24′ it’s a parody). does it mean that i do not expect one to do it when there’s grave danger? if you’re an interrogator and you know for sure that the person has the key info while a bomb is about to go off, of course you’ll go rougher as the situation gets hotter, to the point of probably even killing the guy if the bomb actually explodes. on the other hand, even if you get the key info in time, it is fair that you have to face the consequences of your actions, however repellent it sounds. it is a tough call, because we at the same time feel grateful to you for protecting us, nonetheless the laws are laws, and our sympathy and debt to you is overridden by the need to uphold the laws that provide basic protection against cruel and inhumane treatment that any human being deserves. the need to eliminate torture from our repertoire is therefore greater than the need to stop an impending attack. a nuke goes off? we should have stopped it long ago. if it’s already hot, it’s not too late only if you’re jack bauer (macgyver!).

if people are found to have broken the law – and i’m looking forward to finding out and reaching as nearly a consensus as possible on this as a legal issue – it is fair that they have to face a trial and receive a proper sentence for their actions. it is not the job of the interrogator to decide whether the situation warrants going beyond the legal confines. it is the job his superiors. they have produced very clear, internationally accepted guidelines for what they can or cannot do, no matter what the gravity of the case. i’m not happy about this, and i’m certainly not smug and self-satisfied. in fact, the reason i addressed you so rudely was because of your convenient assumption that opposition to torture can only be mere moral posturing.

if an event could have been stopped by torturing someone, it’s a catastrophe, but the responsibility belongs to the perpetrators, not to those who chose not to torture.

in case of an impending attack, i’d of course hope that they would do whatever to stop it, but if they break the law, i’d see their punishment afterward as sad but proper. by torturing terrorists to stop an attack, they’d make themselves tragic heroes who compromised themselves for doing “the right thing,” that is, defending the country. immediately afterward, bizarre as it may sound, our priority becomes that they are brought to justice.in those extremely rare cases, if indeed it has ever even gotten close to that, there really is a bomb ticking somewhere, as a human being i’d expect them to go beyond the limit, but i’d consider it one of the great tragedies of life, when someone compromises himself to save something greater. he becomes corrupted by his act.

a fair analogy would the case of a father whose daughter gets raped, and he stalks down the rapist and kills him. if you’re in the jury, your heart breaks for the guy – but you’re sending him away for life. what you do is uphold the law because ultimately laws bind the society together. even if you consider the father was a perfectly normal person whose reaction to a horrible event is understandable, your and society’s long term interests demand that he be dealt with the full force of the law.

3. torture is wrong to begin with. right now, i feel for the interrogators who followed orders and were pushed from above for results, and i hope they won’t have to suffer consequences. i’m abhorred at those who planned out this system of interrogation that have for long been viewed around the world as torture, and therefore illegal, and one that goes way beyond what the US has ever been known to have done. i’m also disgusted by those who continue to build arguments why we should be allowed to inflict these techniques on people.

let us, if you will, treat these prisoners as human beings. and when i’m talking about these people, i don’t just mean KSM or zubaydah, but the hundreds of others in gitmo, bagram, and all the secret sites wherever they are. we know there have been many hundreds interrogated, some of them innocent bystanders who in now way deserved to be treated that way even if it somehow, in a microscopic way, served our interests. i do not see how collecting “mosaic” information, small, often completely irrelevant details that may one day give us a clue to a larger picture, is worth systematically torturing people and sullying our reputation.

i think rejecting torture in all cases is a tough moral choice, especially if an attack indeed happens. but i believe that a nation with a defense budget that surpasses the cumulative total of the next 19 out of the 20 most powerful nations ought to be able to ensure its security, even in this age, without resorting to sadistic interrogation techniques. rough interrogation techniques are fine – as outlined by the army field manual. but if we have to be pushed beyond the acceptable techniques, it means that we failed elsewhere.

sesquipedalian on April 22, 2009 at 7:46 PM

I don’t have enough time to give a fully organized, systematic, point by point rebuttal to your two posts, sesquipedalian. I’m going to have to ramble a bit.

First, on the Manzi article, I consider it poorly conceived, since, as far as I know, no one of significance is calling for “conducting systematic torture as a matter of policy.” What is under discussion is exigent application of minimal necessary physical compulsion. The current discussion of EITs also is different from the larger subject of detainee treatment, and tends to confuse incidents “in the field” (or literally in connection to a battlefield) with incidents in controlled situations under monitoring and review by higher officials.

2. “If, in an emergency situation, it’s justifiable to apply true torture to someone honestly believed to have critical information, failing to extract the information in time wouldn’t remove the justification.”

i take this to be your jolly joker pro-torture argument. “honestly believed?” by whom? is that a generally accepted standard in law? even if they do know, we have absolutely no reason to give them the decision whether to torture or not.

It’s a moral standard, not a legal one.

Perhaps you’ll be able to absorb it more easily if you remove the issue of torture and just move to everyday “sin”: If I attempt to mislead you, I’m still a liar even if the information I give you turns out to be true: The old “he went thataway” where the fleeing thief turns around without his accomplice’s knowledge and really does go “thataway.”

Stating the moral problem requires that we assume someone, somewhere, with responsibility. We should probably just drop the pretense and use George W Bush as the imaginary actor, since he in the end has executive responsibility over everyone concerned. Therefore, I could say: If George W Bush had a good faith, reasonable belief that plucking the eyes from KSM’s eye sockets was the only way to save 1 million American lives, and so personally plucked out those offending eyes, whether his decision was morally correct is a different question from whether his action was effective.

That does not mean that I’m “uninterested,” as you seem to presume in your #1, in the effectiveness of whatever methods are under discussion. It may be crucial in several ways, including the question of whether the responsible individuals or individual can be thought to have had a good faith basis, at the time, for the decision to apply physical force.

I’m happy to await the full story, if it’s ever to be forthcoming, on what was or wasn’t learned by way of the interrogations. Until we know the facts, efforts like Mr. Noah’s are a waste of time, and serve mainly, on either side, to feed the prejudices of whoever is conducting or assessing them.

Additionally, the definition of “torture” remains critical. Under too broad a definition – i.e., infliction of humiliation, use of threats, creation of severe discomfort, etc., in exchange for cooperation – then much of the penal system in the US relies on torture. If threatening to place someone in a situation of grave discomfort and danger in order to extract information or confession is “torture,” then a large percentage of successful criminal prosecutions in the United States would have to be overturned.

(By the way, I’m strongly in favor of penal reform, and am much more disturbed by accepted standards of inmate treatment and conditions in the US than I am by the waterboarding of KSM.)

in case of an impending attack, i’d of course hope that they would do whatever to stop it, but if they break the law, i’d see their punishment afterward as sad but proper. by torturing terrorists to stop an attack, they’d make themselves tragic heroes who compromised themselves for doing “the right thing,” that is, defending the country. immediately afterward, bizarre as it may sound, our priority becomes that they are brought to justice.in those extremely rare cases, if indeed it has ever even gotten close to that, there really is a bomb ticking somewhere, as a human being i’d expect them to go beyond the limit, but i’d consider it one of the great tragedies of life, when someone compromises himself to save something greater. he becomes corrupted by his act.

It’s amusing that you throw out a shot against 24 earlier, since what you describe is the predicament the writers came up with for Jack Bauer – Mr. Ticking Time Bomb – at the beginning of this season, willingly facing the music.

Otherwise, we differ about how the world works and how it should work, and how a policy of the sort you describe – to the extent it isn’t in effect the current policy – would play out. Majority opinion need not be controlling, especially in the absence of a fair political decisionmaking effort, but you may wish to keep in mind that most polls, including ones taken long after 9/11, show significant majorities in America in favor of preserving the option of “torture” at least in “rare instances.” I’ve seen some contrary results that strike me as outliers – a lot, as ever, has to do with how and when the questoion is asked.

Finally, if Ticking Time Bomb is too cliche for you, try to imaging the pages of a calendar fluttering away as in an old movie, and an interrogation team whose members don’t know, but have strong reason to believe, that a range of world-historal acts of mass murder are in train – they could occur at any moment, they could be in critical late stages, they could be in their “boost” phase… Meanwhile, there’s a miserable murderer being held like a dangerous animal (in keeping with international standards) looking forward to a life of misery until he’s finally executed, who probably can help save hundreds, if not thousands of lives directly, and possibly keep the nation from heading off a cliff of political panic and overreaction, resulting in countless further deaths, immeasurable destruction, and putting the fate of the republic as a republic in jeopardy… Giving him a few seriously uncomfortable days, as coldwarrior described could make a major difference.

If they hadn’t acted, and major attacks had taken place, arguably as a result of information never having been collected and dots never connected, one wonders how many people would blithely say “Oh well, it wasn’t really the fault of the authorities that they didn’t try anything else. They had to play strictly by the rules. Never mind.”

To address the rest of your arguments, I would end up having to repeat things I have already explored in prior posts, at length, in particular at http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2009/04/18/obamas-never-again-on-torture-means-lots-more-soon/

CK MacLeod on April 22, 2009 at 9:44 PM

I believe that the Bush Administration – in my understanding to this point of what took place – did the right thing. They consulted precedent and the law, they relied on expert request aiming for the the least harmful sufficient and timely compulsive measures, they consulted with top members of both parties, they maintained complete records. Rather than focus on particular methods or highly abstract and imprecise standards like “shocks the conscience,” I think we may need to look at something like the Alan Dershowitz “torture warrant” proposal – before the next crisis forces us to start looking for heroes and volunteers.

I wouldn’t draw a specific line against specific acts, or play a numbers game. I have no reason to believe that gouging an eyeball or drilling a kneecap would be arrived at by the minimum necessary compulsive force standard I outlined above. This isn’t a SAW sequel, and, no offense, I believe that a lot of anti-torture people are obsessed with the lurid details and tend to lose their sense of balance.

CK MacLeod on April 23, 2009 at 9:23 AM

If a subject (terrorist) is outside the bounds of the protections of Geneva…and is specifically held by Geneva to be a pirate, brigand, bandit, saboteur, then why this shadow puppet play about how they are treated?

They are outlaws. Parse that word. Outlaw.

That we chose, as an affirmative stance, to provide for these detainees far in excess of what is required by Geneva…summary execution at the local commander’s determination…does not mean that we, as an affirmative stance, have accorded them ANY protections of Geneva.

We can interrogate them any way we choose to do.

If one follows the letter of the Law.

Now, if you wish to argue morality vis-a-vis law…plenty of fora for that sort of thing, but not germane to the subject at hand.

coldwarrior on April 23, 2009 at 12:22 PM

they are no different than other prisoners of war.

sesquipedalian on April 23, 2009 at 1:27 PM

But, as a matter of law, and treaty, they are different. Very different.

Read Geneva, and also read the several USSC cases that stem from Geneva, to keep it in a US context, particularly Johnson v. Eisentrager, as it relates to the present detainee situation, and then tell me your supportable reasons under law and treaty that make brigands, bandits, saboteurs on par with prisoners of war.

coldwarrior on April 23, 2009 at 1:34 PM

So, and this is not a regurgitation of talking points by any means, if we “feel’ that we must do a, b, or c, then we do it and the law catches up later?

If we afforded, granted or provided Geneva protections to bandits, brigands, saboteurs, and yes, terrorists, the result among all signatories to Geneva would be?

I asked for a supportable reason under law or treaty that puts brigands, bandits and saboteurs on par with a prisoner of war. No response, other than deflection.

This is the overall problem with any debate on the actual issue of how to deal with a sensitive legal topic…the baseline is constantly moved by those involved.

My baseline is the law, and treaty to which we are a signator, and which has been ratified, under law, by Congress, and upheld by the USSC.

I believe that is a rational baseline from which to discuss the issue.

The so-called loopholes, well, they are there for an intended purpose. To grant pirates. brigands and bandits POW status under law, as one example, would gut a major portion of centuries-old Admiralty Law. And intercourse on the high seas would be imperiled as nations would seek to make it up as they went along to their own particular advantage, in the absence of a common law.

Don’t like the law? Change it.

But, ignoring the law in order to placate one’s feelings, might be a nice thing from a personal civil-disobedience standpoint a la Henry David Thoreau, but in the real world, as nations attempt to civilly settle differences…it simply gets in the way and complicates trifles into major international incidents and crises.

The law has made provisions to deal with non-uniformed non-state actors engaged in violence against nations.

Until we withdraw from Geneva, that law, as ratified, is the law of the land.

That we have chosen as an affirmative stance to grant the detainees the niceties that might be found among POW’s, does not translate into granting them POW status. It is simply humane treatment as deemed by our government ad hoc.

coldwarrior on April 23, 2009 at 2:58 PM

[In December 2004] an F.B.I. agent at Guantánamo Bay observed that “on a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18 to 24 hours or more.” In one case, he added, “the detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his own hair out throughout the night.”

sesquipedalian on April 23, 2009 at 5:18 PM

I am familiar with the UN Convention on Torture, and it has been a subject of discussion over at the old Captain’s Quarters and here at HotAir. Also arose from time to time in my past career. It is and was more than a mere academic exercise.

Bad law written for all the best of reasons is still bad law.

Take a careful look at Article One, Section 1:

See the inherent problem with that paragraph?

What qualifies as severe pain and suffering?

Then read the recently released AG memos, paying close attention to those portions that seek to define severe, among other things. Then take a look at the citations of current law.

Is putting a terrorist in a box with a caterpillar severe pain and suffering? Is sleep deprivation? Is force feeding a prisoner to maintain life torture? Can be severe and painfully discomforting. Torture?

Then, put all of this in context.

And, as for the detainees who urinated and defecated in their own cells, their own choice…self-inflicted. Not torture. As subsequent investigation demonstrated, such was part of a mass protest, designed to upset their handlers, and play into international sympathy for their cause.

As for the chaining, hand and foot, go visit some of our own prisons, and see how they deal with violent recalcitrant prisoners who threaten staff and other prisoners, and themselves with bodily harm.

Torture? Or securing a prisoner to prevent harm to others and harm to the prisoner?

With the exception of Abu Ghraib, and a small handful of incidents in Baghram, where all direct parties were prosecuted to the full extent of the law, and rightly so…because in those cases, each and every perpetrator did so for the sole purpose of inflicting pain, or arousing wanton fear, or to denigrate and debase the prisoner under their control.

Most got off too lightly. If I were the Courts Martial judge, I’d have given all of them a lot more.

Not so much for what they did, which was heinous enough, but that their actions caused the deaths of fellow soldiers after such treatment made it on the international news wires.

Lastly, let’s go through all the nations that are present signatories to this UN Convention on Torture…let’s look at the record.

You might be surprised that many of those nations who signed off on this thing still, to this day, as a matter of course, allow their law enforcement officials, local magistrates, and their military to engage in far more heinous torture than anything done by us, by the Agency, after consultations with the AG, and immense attention paid to the law, under US Code.

Lastly…how many detainees were subject to EIT’s? Out of a total population of all detainees ever held?

I’ll grant there is still an ongoing debate as to what constitutes torture and what does not in this nation, at levels far above my own pay grade. And this is a good thing.

Hindsight is twenty-twenty…but it is still hindsight.

Given what we had to operate at the time such transpired, under the conditions such transpired, and within the strictures provided…it is my fixed opinion that we did not engage in torture.

Therein, lies the problem with Article One, Section 1.

No definitive classification of what does or does not constitute torture, and what is merely inflicting discomfort. Thus, bad law. Poorly written law.

Having worked as an interrogator, I never had to even consider EIT’s…but at times came close to making life uncomfortable…nothing at all like EIT’s…just discomfort…as a matter of establishing control over a subject who wanted everything but would co-operate on nothing, and at times was prone to violent outbursts.

I appreciate your insights, honestly, in all sincerity.

I haven’t all the answers. I am merely drawing on an adult lifetime of having to deal directly with the subject matter at hand.

coldwarrior on April 23, 2009 at 6:11 PM

Institutional torture.
MY America does not practice that.

strangelet on April 23, 2009 at 7:18 PM

Is putting a terrorist in a box with a caterpillar severe pain and suffering?

yes, especially since zubaydah has a phobia of insects and he was told it was a stingy one. you know very well it can be a near-death experience. that was the point.

Is sleep deprivation? Is force feeding a prisoner to maintain life torture? Can be severe and painfully discomforting. Torture?

as part of a daily regimen of various methods, including near-death experiences, intense pain due to extended time in uncomfortable positions, and for the rest of the time, complete sensory deprivation, is indeed torture and should not be done to anyone.

consider this:

In a 2005 memo, Bush administration lawyers argued that it was okay for CIA interrogators to keep terror suspects awake for seven and a half days straight — because “even very extended sleep deprivation does not cause physical pain.” The attorneys backed up the claim by citing the work of a number of leading university researchers on sleep. Now, those professors are saying that their work was horribly misused.
…
In fact, the scientists say, the psychological stress caused by sleeplessness may be more dangerous than the physical impact – despite the lawyers’ conclusion that “extended sleep deprivation cannot be expected to cause ’severe mental pain or suffering.’”

After days and days of sleep deprivation, “the mental pain would be all too evident, and arguably worse than physical pain,” Dr. Horne notes. Dr. Kundermann adds, “It can result in psychosis.”

Sleep deprivation has been shown to have extreme effects in lab testing. One 1983 study on rats to find out the consequences of continued sleep deprivation pushed this to the limit: “stimulus presentations were timed to reduce sleep severely in experimental rats but not in controls. Experimental rats suffered severe pathology and death; control rats did not.” Researchers believe that the same effect will occur with humans.

sesquipedalian on April 23, 2009 at 10:10 PM

In talking with a couple former interrogators, some of whom were at Gitmo early on, this past winter, most of the detainees were very cooperative, and most were more than willing to answer in detail willingly and fully. Then, there was a population change, and more hard core detainees arrived, and despite attempts at segregation of the detainees, internal justice was threatened among all of the detainees, and we had a spate of self-soiling their cells, and other such things as spitting on guards, or fashioning small weapons to try to injure the guards.

These were/are not your run of the mill detainees.

The “good” ones have their own camp at Gitmo, and they have been afforded far more than the average POW, in any war, for their being cooperative. There are several camps at Gitmo, segregated by status and potential for harm…to us, to themselves or their compatriots. In the minimum or light (comparatively speaking) security camps, this is where most of those who have been repatriated, released, or allowed to go to third countries to start a new life, have drawn from.

We’ve also repatriated a number of hard core detainees, a number of whom have been captured or killed in other encounters after t heir release. This suggests that they were a danger well before their release and were a danger still until re-capture or being killed. Hell of a way to run a war.

As for the hard core detainees. What is your professional suggestion as to best a) obtain actionable or operational intelligence from them, and b) deal with them as they pose threats to the well-being of those men and women placed in Gitmo to protect them, protect other detainees from tribal justice, and c) to determine bona fides of them so a determination can be made for eventual repatriation or release?

Bearing in mind, that under Geneva, they could have/should have been executed summarily upon capture. This whole Gitmo imbroglio being based on our not following the letter of Geneva, as we sought to gather actionable or operational intelligence from those captured.

As for sleep deprivation, I have gone several days, four or five, without sleep, in order to fulfill a mission or task that involved real lives, real risks. SEAL training, of which I have not taken part, but have worked alongside those who have, has sleep deprivation as one of its training tools in the making of a SEAL. What is the Navy’s official doctrine as to this training methodology? Not in a lab, but with real live US Navy personnel in the toughest training program known to the Armed Forces?

Having spent a lot of time with lawyers over the years, I can easily amass a slate of “experts” who can testify convincingly as to anything a defense team or a prosecutuion team wishes to drive home to a judge or jury. And an equal number of “experts” to refute the first.

But, this is not a trial, this is reality. We have thousands of persons who will willingly die, willingly kill themselves, in order to kill others along the way. Other than Japanese soldiers and officers in the Pacific during WWII, we’ve never encountered anything similar.

These are not rational and reasonable suspects…they are dedicated and trained killers until proven otherwise. And few have proven otherwise, unless or until they are convinced otherwise, broken, in the lingo of interrogation.

As for our caterpillar friend…I loathe snakes…detest them. Irrational, according to a number of herpetologists I’ve known over the years. In training, I was placed in a trench, bound and blindfolded, at night, and had a snake tossed in the trench with me. Scared the bejeezus out of me. But, I was able to calm myself and control myself. What the purpose of that training exercise was designed to do.

Torture? No. Uncomfortable? Yes. Did I learn to love snakes afterward? Not a chance.

The point being…we’ve expanded the definition of torture to now include anything that might cause discomfort, might cause pain, might cause one to be scared out of their minds. Thanks to a growing number of “experts” on torture who never got near a real interrogation, never went through SERE let alone SEAL training, and only know what they read in the media, we’ve expanded the very serious definition of torture to our disadvantage and to our enemies’ gleeful observations.

You’ve offered some interesting citations, and I’ve gone through and have attempted to find the various sources for what you have presented.

I’ve no doubt you are sincere in your position, I am equally sincere in mine.

coldwarrior on April 23, 2009 at 10:43 PM

What is your professional suggestion as to best a) obtain actionable or operational intelligence from them,

well, first of all, use FBI interrogators experienced in organized crime. as far is i understand – you obviously have a more sophisticated view on this – interrogation whereby the interrogator works to earn the detainee’s trust, not to mentally-physically break them, have produced great results. including, according to ali soufan, almost all of the actionable info from zubaydah about KSM and padilla.

and b) deal with them as they pose threats to the well-being of those men and women placed in Gitmo to protect them, protect other detainees from tribal justice,

i’m not against solitary confinement if a detainee is dangerous. we already have tons of those in regular jails, and we don’t have to use controversial methods to restrain them. we have a long experience incarcerating organized crime figures, and have long dealt with prison gangs and the like.

and c) to determine bona fides of them so a determination can be made for eventual repatriation or release?

i think that burden is on us, to solve this problem without systematically torturing them…

sesquipedalian on April 24, 2009 at 6:49 AM

Colonel Karpinski has yet to provide details as to how many units of the 800th she visited or had direct contact with as Brigade Commander. Abu Ghraib? She never set foot in the place. For a brigade commander of any branch of the Army this is unforgiveable.

i’ve never been a fan of hers. but what she says about pressure from the top for increasingly rough treatment sounds more plausible today.

sesquipedalian on April 24, 2009 at 7:01 AM

By Malcolm Nance?

Nance has been discredited, thoroughly, by the SEAL’s.

Here at HotAir and over at the old Captain’s Quarters, and a few other sites, after he came out with his “pouring quarts of water into the lungs” explanation of what waterboarding was allegedly.

Those networks that initially had Nance on as an “expert” soon had their own producers pull Nance from any further coverage and punditry as other facts of his Navy career came to light.

Like a bad penny, Nance pops up now and then…heavy on the rhetoric, light on the facts.

coldwarrior on April 24, 2009 at 8:49 AM