In two separate legal opinions written in 2005, the Justice Department authorized the C.I.A. to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.
The memorandums were written just months after a Justice Department opinion in December 2004 declared torture "abhorrent."
Administration officials have confirmed the existence of the classified opinions, but will not make them public, saying only that they approved techniques that were "tough, safe, necessary and lawful."
NYTimes, 10/05/07
In this new war, which is an unprecedented war, facing an enemy unlike we've ever faced before, sometimes -- oftentimes the best information that you get is from the terrorists themselves. They know where the other terrorists are hiding and what the other terrorists are planning. And to win the war on terror we must be able to detain them, interrogate them, question them, and when appropriate, prosecute them -- in America -- when we capture them here in America and on battlefields around the world. The policy of the United States is not to torture. The President has not authorized it, he will not authorize it.
Dana Perino, 10/04/2007
The movie "The Lives of Others", which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2006, is about the Stasi, the secret police of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the former East Germany, and the vast network of citizens they coerced to spy and inform on one another. They primarily monitored people who they suspected might be disloyal to, were plotting against or were trying to leave the GDR. The film deals in part with how the Stasi blackmailed and forced people into turning against their loved ones and friends. What it doesn't get into is that many people also gave false information to save themselves or to simply to discredit enemies. People weren't necessarily tortured: sometimes just the prospect of detention or imprisonment alone is enough to frighten some of us. It's hard to imagine what any of us would do if we were actually threatened with actual physical torture or with death.
For me the prospect is frightening and I can't imagine that I would be especially courageous. I would probably be so terrified I would sell out my best friends and admit to anything true or not. I would probably say whatever I thought would save me. The idea that the average human would be able to withhold any information under the threat of torture is absurd and something that happens more often in Hollywood movies: the superhuman hero who can withstand torture and courageously not give up his country or fellow soldiers. In real life even the most courageous crack. John McCain admitted to twice providing information to the Vietnamese after being tortured.
During the Spanish Inquisition (15th to 19th century) torture was not only a means to get information but also a means of intimidation. If one person was tortured for having the "wrong" religion others would be frighten into renouncing that religion and adopting the one that wouldn't get them tortured. And in the GDR one of the functions of the Stasi was to frighten and intimidate people into following the policies of the state; the persecution of individuals was in part a means to that end.
That the U.S. is naive enough to think that any information that they are getting as a result of torture is more important than the extreme amount of bad faith that they are generating in the Islamic world is pathetic. Or could it be that the U.S. is intentionally using torture to intimidate the Islamic world? Our government hasn't exactly gone out of their way to convince the Iraqis that the torture at Abu Ghraib, the misdeeds of Blackwater and what amounts to home invasions by U.S. soldiers have been especially abhorrent to them. These are the type of tactics used to scare and intimidate people into following the rules of an oppressive state. Unfortunately (or fortunately), it is not a tactic that always works. In fact, I think it is only a tactic that works if there is a large, well-entrenched and organized military force oppressing a weak and mostly unarmed populace. And even then it isn't a particularly effective long term tactic. Whenever a group of people is oppressed there is a huge danger of creating an enemy that will remember the injustice for generations.
If I remember correctly, some of the most successful conquerors of the ancient past, for instance in South America, absorbed the people they conquered into their empire through intermarriage and commerce using economic and cultural incentives to gain the favor and goodwill of former enemies. And one reason that in the past the U.S. has been so well thought of around the world is that immigrants from around the world have come here and found success and peace that was not possible in their country of origin. You do not make friends by bombing and torturing a person's family. You do not gain favor by being as much of a tyrant as the regime you depose.
The CIA has utilized and researched torture for decades. Why it is only becoming really controversial now is due to a large extent to the unpopularity of the war in Iraq and because of the abusive treatment of innocent prisoners in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. If the U.S. government had managed to restrict the use of torture to known terrorists like al Qaeda leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed most of us might have turned a blind eye, but there has clearly been a pattern of abusive treatment of prisoners after 9/11 starting in Afghanistan. The Bush administration seems to have a blood lust that they don't comprehend is not shared by the majority of us. In the past the CIA has simply lied about their use of torture. However in this digital age, when pictures and videos can be easily and widely distributed, the CIA is having much more difficulty keeping their activities secret.
I was watching CNN this morning while I was writing this and they ran a piece on lynching narrated by Rick Sanchez. It included a brief history and the great Billy Holiday song about lynching, "Strange Fruit". It had very graphic pictures, mostly from the early 20th Century, of African-Americans who had been hung by the neck until they were dead. Anyone who didn't understand the significance of the nooses found recently on high school and college campuses should after seeing this. Like torture, lynching, in part because it was often done very publicly, had a far-reaching effect as a form of intimidation not to mention terror.
Bush has said many times since 9/11, that his actions are necessary to "save innocent lives" and to prevent another attack on the "homeland". This reference to 9/11 still strikes a chord with many people and many are still so fearful of the terrorist threat, that they don't stop to think that killing and torturing innocent Iraqis and Afghanis to save innocent American lives isn't right and is certainly not the Christian thing to do. And they also don't stop to think that there might be a racial or religious basis for our lack of interest in their innocent lives.
