What Is Torture?

Greg Djerejian versus Tom Maguire on whether induced hypothermia, sleep deprivation, and waterboarding constitute terrorism. Count me as standing with Djerejian in the view that if you can read accounts of the KGB using the technique that clearly paint it as torture, that it's probably torture when the CIA does it, too.

And, to repeat an old-time theme around these parts, it's always worth recalling that it's not a coincidence that torture is associated with authoritarian regimes; these aren't really investigative methods, they're efforts to terrorize a population. Menachim Begin, recalling the use of the "long time standing" method in the USSR, states: "I came across prisoners who signed what they were ordered to sign, only to get what the interrogator promised them." False confessions were, of course, an integral element of the Stalinist system and torture is an excellent way to generate them. They're not, however, actually useful in fighting terrorism.

Comments

"What Is Torture?"

I'd say listening to your Ultimate Nineties Alt-Rock Playlist would qualify.

I'd sign a false endorsement of HIllary to make it stop.

Posted by Petey | May 22, 2007 12:19 AM

"Greg Djerejian versus Tom Maguire on whether induced hypothermia, sleep deprivation, and waterboarding constitute terrorism. Count me as standing with Djerejian in the view that if you can read accounts of the KGB using the technique..."

And on the substance, pretty much anything that induces severe discomfort qualifies as torture. You don't need the KGB imprimatur to make it official.

Of the above techniques, I'd say that some mild sleep deprivation to induce disorientation, but not discomfort, would not be torture. But everything else on the list is clearly torture by any non-tortuous definition.

Posted by Petey | May 22, 2007 12:23 AM

Let me propose a definition of what is not torture: anything legal to do to an enlistee in the U.S. Army or Marine Corps. That would include, btw, stress positions (e.g.,"front-leaning rest position", for any of you Army vets) and some sleep deprivation among other pleasantries.

Posted by Dave | May 22, 2007 12:34 AM

In many ways Torture is the defining issue of our time. While there is plenty of horrible shit going on, a society that can't condemn torture is a society doomed for failure. For all his faults, Sullivan is the only blogo-pundit who seems to really realize the significance this.

Posted by Brian | May 22, 2007 12:37 AM

For those of us who don't follow the right-wing blogosphere, who is Tom Maguire? How prominent is he?

Posted by Ragout | May 22, 2007 12:43 AM

Damn. This is right.

Posted by Russell L. Carter | May 22, 2007 12:46 AM

Tom Maguire is Mickey Kaus, except he doesn't pretend to be a Democrat.

Posted by JP | May 22, 2007 1:01 AM

I still remember reading the passage in Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago when I was a teenager (1990's), where he discusses how the Soviets found that sleep deprivation was really effective in producing confessions to pretty much anything and that, given this fact, other methods of torture were sort of an unnecessary waste of resources. I never thought that one of our major parties (or at best very large segments of it) would embrace such depravity. But here we are. How sad!

Posted by ikl | May 22, 2007 1:04 AM

George Tenet being interviewed: "We do not torture. We do not torture. We do not torture..." and he repeats this ad infinitum. With these guys, stating something makes it so. We've seen the triumph of rhetoric over any empirical, factual basis for understanding reality. When wild-eyed lefties claim the Bush administraion borders on the fascistic, this is the core of the argument. Basic rules of evidence don't apply. That's okay for a religion, but it's very scary for a society and a politik.

Posted by Warren | May 22, 2007 1:09 AM

Dave: "Let me propose a definition of what is not torture: anything legal to do to an enlistee in the U.S. Army or Marine Corps. That would include, btw, stress positions (e.g.,'front-leaning rest position', for any of you Army vets) and some sleep deprivation among other pleasantries."

Do the stress positions and sleep deprivation include "Long Time Standing"? This is described by CIA witnesses in that ABC report that Djerejian quotes, and Maguire giggles about, as:
"Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding confessions."

No? I rather thought not.

As for waterboarding, Maguire has for quite some time been giggling -- that's the literal description -- that it's no worse than "a frat-house prank", and that it can't be torture because US soldiers undergo it in their training exercises. How odd, since it was explicitly described as torture by US war crimes tribunals and regulations during WW II -- and, as Djerejian points out, during the Vietnam War and even during the brutal campaign against Aguinaldo a century ago.

Apparently my attempt to get the word out via E-mail on Maguire's latest pleasantries has gotten results; Matt and Mark Kleiman have both responded. It is long past time that this particular two-legged cockroach was stepped on. Let me quote one of his recent jokes:

"Sort of in the 'Note to Self' file: At some point in a discussion of 'torture' versus 'enhanced interogation techniques', someone ought to quote Nietszche's 'That which does not kill me makes me stronger'. Don't think of it as torture -- think of it as character development."

Posted by Bruce Moomaw | May 22, 2007 1:18 AM

Good work Bruce! Torture apologists need to be named and shamed.

Posted by ikl | May 22, 2007 1:20 AM

it's not a coincidence that torture is associated with authoritarian regimes; these aren't really investigative methods, they're efforts to terrorize a population.

OH yes. Anything arbitrary is extremely scary. The Death Penalty is another arrow in the quiver of the authoritarian - also necessarily arbitrary.

Posted by jonnybutter | May 22, 2007 1:32 AM

Since you don't have an open thread thing here:
another def. of torture might be trying to seriously engage, or even simply read, G. Franke-Ruta's ongoing blather about raising the age at which young women may safely expose their nipples to public inspection. You, Matt, are called out by name there (as you no doubt know); we, the faithful readership, semi-anxiously await your inimitably withering dismissal of the non-issue.

Posted by larve | May 22, 2007 2:07 AM

It is long past time that this particular two-legged cockroach was stepped on.

That Tom Maguire is considered a 'good righty' by some people continues to stagger me. He's just a nasty little shit whose stock in trade is pseudo-vindication of every atrocious thing BushCo has done with a thin veneer of respectability.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | May 22, 2007 2:22 AM

A VERY thin veneer. How long are we going to let this kind of thing slop frequently around American public discourse without attacking it as furiously as it deserves? As is traditionally the case with cockroaches, it will poison the country if it continues to breed.

Posted by Bruce Moomaw | May 22, 2007 2:45 AM

As a recent graduate of Paradise Island, S.C., I'll just say that at no point during Recruit Training was I ever waterboarded, or even anything close to this. I never stayed in any "stress position" for any longer than maybe 10-15 minutes, tops, nor did I ever witness or hear about anything longer than that --- and the vast majority of this type of treatment was not done as punishment but rather for PT purposes.

Posted by tequila | May 22, 2007 3:15 AM

Let me propose a definition of what is not torture: anything legal to do to an enlistee in the U.S. Army or Marine Corps. That would include, btw, stress positions (e.g.,"front-leaning rest position", for any of you Army vets) and some sleep deprivation among other pleasantries.

What the hell would be the point of doing that, excepting e.g situations in which the detainee is offering physical resistance? What's the point of institutional petty meanness?

Posted by BP | May 22, 2007 3:26 AM

He's just a nasty little shit whose stock in trade is pseudo-vindication of every atrocious thing BushCo has done with a thin veneer of respectability.

Spot on. Everything, everything nasty the Bush administration does is just fine by him, from torture to the Plame affair. The only people who really get his moral blood pressure up are types like Pelosi and Moore, for the heinous and unforgivable sins of mildly opposing the current administration. I really do feel he's just a wordier, better educated version of the typical LGF commentator. A slightly less bipolar version of Tacitus.

Posted by BP | May 22, 2007 3:32 AM

Let me add from a European perspective, that despite the death penalty, Vietnam, the KKK and other transgressions the vast majority of Europeans have always had the underlying feeling that at heart the US were the good guys, one of us, part of the civilized world that doesn't engage in such things as torture. Needless to say this trust, justified or not, has now largely evaporated.

Posted by novakant | May 22, 2007 4:47 AM

The administration is fighting terrorism? Hmmm, I thought it was mainly concerned with winning elections. All that torture is to prove to John and Mary Doe pulling the lever for a Republican keeps Junior and Princess safe. Clear?

Posted by steve duncan | May 22, 2007 6:17 AM

I wonder if there's anything more distinctively American than dreaming up ways to inflict pain that can be rationalized as "not torture".

Posted by Gary Sugar | May 22, 2007 7:33 AM

Politicians having a public discussion about which specific interrogation methods should be allowed is decidedly unhelpful. This discussion should be held behind closed doors. If a detainee knows what is and isn't permitted, he knows he has nothing to fear from not cooperating. As experienced interrogators have explained, the uncertainty in the detainee's mind that the interrogator is unconstrained in his interrogation techniques is often more effective in gaining the detainee's compliance than the actual use of any particular technique.

Posted by Dave | May 22, 2007 7:57 AM

"If a detainee knows what is and isn't permitted, he knows he has nothing to fear from not cooperating."
Posted by Dave | May 22, 2007 7:57 AM
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Nothing to fear except being consigned to a life of solitary confinement in the hot sun of GITMO or some other hellhole. A life lived out in a veritable dog kennel with no legal prospect of freedom, no human contact except with sadistic or at best dismissive, abusive guards. Torture doesn't have to be a singular act. It can be inflicted slowly over many years until finally the detainee ties a few bedsheets together and ends it. Jefferson, Madison and Monroe would be so proud.

Posted by steve duncan | May 22, 2007 8:27 AM

This discussion should be held behind closed doors.

Yes, government secrecy and the threat of torture are the two most fundamental ingredients for tyranny.

Posted by Gary Sugar | May 22, 2007 8:41 AM

If a detainee knows what is and isn't permitted, he knows he has nothing to fear from not cooperating.

Time was, enemy soliders were willing to surrender to Aemricans, and even cooperate, because they knew that the Americans wouldn't mistreat them.

Posted by rea | May 22, 2007 8:41 AM

I fail to see how "inducing disorientation" by any means, even "mild" sleep deprivation, will produce a confession that is accurate and clear.

As another commenter posted, institutionalized meanness in any form serves no purpose whatsoever in a free society. I suspect thinking about institutionalized meanness gives some of our friends on the right a big hard-on, though.

Posted by 14All | May 22, 2007 8:48 AM

People nostalgic for an America which has not existed since about 1968 keep looking for decent, intelligent conservatives to have dialogue with. There aren't any any more. Maguire is a somewhat-literate, semi-bright guy who's distinguishable from the generic wingers, but he has a nastiness kink that ruins everything he does.

At some point sleep deprivation is as bad as anything. Interrogators work in shifts preventing sleep. As I understand, no one lasts longer than about 2 or three days before breaking down.

"Sleep deprivation" does not mean forcing people to stay awake for 40 hours, or forcing them to get by on 4 hours of sleep a night,. It's zero hours.

Posted by John Emerson | May 22, 2007 8:50 AM

To express the same idea differently, John Kerry was, by default, the conservative candidate in the 2004 election, and whatever decent conservatives there were knew that.

Posted by John Emerson | May 22, 2007 8:53 AM

Let me propose a definition of what is not torture: anything legal to do to an enlistee in the U.S. Army or Marine Corps.

Some torture proponents don't seem to recognize that there's a difference between being subjected to some treatment by one's own side and being subjected to the same treatment by one's enemies or captors. "Tom, you've agreed to receive a 'pink belly' treatment as a demonstration. Our producers have decided to make things more interesting by sending you on an all-expenses-paid trip to Afghanistan, where the treatment will be performed by Afgani rebels. (They've promised to release you afterwards.) When you get back, here are the prizes you'll receive!"

Posted by RSA | May 22, 2007 9:02 AM

"If a detainee knows what is and isn't permitted, he knows he has nothing to fear from not cooperating."

Tell you what, Dave: I intend to detain you and not let you sleep until you tell me about any illegal acts you might have knowledge of. Since you know in advance what I'm going to do, you have "nothing to fear," right?

I'm struck by the naivete of pro-torture posters, here and elsewhere, who just don't understand that this is some brutal shit. The amount of physical discomfort applied here is FAR beyond anything any modern American can ever expect to undergo, and it's applied *for an indefinite duration.*

Posted by James Gary | May 22, 2007 9:05 AM

Torture's Long Shadow By Vladimir Bukovsky.

An excerpt on interrogation methods from Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago

Posted by abb1 | May 22, 2007 9:06 AM

Politicians having a public discussion about which specific interrogation methods should be allowed is decidedly unhelpful.

I hope you noticed that there wasn't the slightest inclination on anyone's part to have a debate on permissible interrogation methods, right up until the time when this administration decided that torture was manly and vote-generating.

If the administration is going to stick by the "we do not torture" line, while permitting acts that are in fact torture (like waterboarding), then yeah, we're going to have to make an issue out of which techniques constitute torture.

In any event, I do not think there's a net benefit to people feeling like the Americans may torture them. In fact, just the opposite.

Posted by Steve | May 22, 2007 9:07 AM

"In any event, I do not think there's a net benefit to people feeling like the Americans may torture them."

Don't you worry your pretty little head about that: Islamist terrorists generally aren't worried that Americans may torture them. That's why interrogators frequently have to go through the ruse of pretending to turn the detainees over to folks like the Saudis to trick the detainees into thinking they may be tortured if they don't talk.

Posted by Fred | May 22, 2007 9:31 AM

Why don't we snatch Tom McGuire and render him over to the women of some Iraqi city that's been bombed to rubble. Along with a box of straight razors and a bag of salt. See how long he giggles then.

A hegamon will be accepted by the world if it is benign. Teddie Roosevelt was careful to say "speak softly". But a psychopathic hegamon is a threat to everyone.

Bin Laden's greatest victory, with George Bush's help, has been to show the world that the US government is not benign.

I don't worry about an Al Qaeda nuke. I do worry about a nuke in our cities labeled "Made in EU", "Made in Russia" or "Made in China". Just look at how Putin was describing the US government a month ago, before Condi got him to shush.

Posted by Don Williams | May 22, 2007 9:49 AM

Great Solzhenitsyn link, abb1 -- I hadn't seen that before.

Posted by Anderson | May 22, 2007 9:54 AM

Don't you worry your pretty little head about that: Islamist terrorists generally aren't worried that Americans may torture them.

Your mind-reading abilities are impressive.

To be clear, are you a member of the "we don't torture" camp, the "thank God we torture" camp, or, as with most of the wingnutosphere, both?

Posted by Steve | May 22, 2007 9:57 AM

History Channel recently ran a several part series on the Spanish Inquisition. A good refresher course: it should be shown to all new interrogators.

Even if one admits at the start to whatever they want you to admit too, the torture will continue because there must be more 'truth' to reveal, or because information wasn't the object. The object was terrorized conformity. The Soviets were pikers.

Posted by JimPortlandOR | May 22, 2007 12:29 PM

This stuff makes my blood boil. Of course it's torture! If it wasn't torture, we wouldn't be doing it. What the hell is the point of waterboarding if it's not torture? Is it a very involved face-cleaning technique?

I mean, in the fantasies of right wing nutjobs, all these detainees are guilty, right? So they're a bunch of committed jihadis who believe that America is a force of such evil that God will literally reward them for any action that injures America/Americans. They are fanatics. And somehow, in these rightwing fantasies, waterboarding or whatever gets these committed ideologue terrorists to give up their buddies/allow us to foil their plots. Even if we grant all the aforementioned craziness, isn't it obvious that that means that these people are willing to do anything, betray their deeply held principles, to avoid being treated this way again?

Would you betray your deepest principles to avoid a little bit of playful hazing? Of course not!

There may be some people out there who really aren't fazed by any given technique. Maybe some people don't mind being waterboarded. But, news flash, we aren't doing it to them. If somebody's like, "Eh, that's kind of mildly unpleasant, but not really intolerable," then it's not like we keep it up. The only people that it'd ever be profitable to do this to are the people who find it so awful that they'll do anything to avoid having it happen to them.

And. That's. Fucking. Torture.

(All this is not to buy into the concept that torture produces reliable evidence. That's inane, too. But the concept that it's "not torture" relies on a particularly pathetic brand of doublethink.)

Posted by Michael B Sullivan | May 22, 2007 12:44 PM

novakant writes, "Let me add from a European perspective, that despite the death penalty, Vietnam, the KKK and other transgressions the vast majority of Europeans have always had the underlying feeling that at heart the US were the good guys, one of us, part of the civilized world that doesn't engage in such things as torture. Needless to say this trust, justified or not, has now largely evaporated."

I'm American, and that's exactly the awful transition I went through. From thinking of my own country as, you know, flawed, certainly capable of evil, but basically trying to do good, to openly embracing depraved, heinous acts.

Posted by Michael B Sullivan | May 22, 2007 12:54 PM

Posted by Ragout: "For those of us who don't follow the right-wing blogosphere, who is Tom Maguire? How prominent is he?"

To give you an idea, he was a staunch GOP water-carrier on the Plame affair. He spent a long time slowly walking backwards, eagerly awaiting the arrest of Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame on charges of High Treason, Truth Speak and Bush Oppositionism.

Bruce Moomaw: "It is long past time that this particular two-legged cockroach was stepped on."

Pseudonymous: "That Tom Maguire is considered a 'good righty' by some people continues to stagger me. He's just a nasty little shit whose stock in trade is pseudo-vindication of every atrocious thing BushCo has done with a thin veneer of respectability."

It's like Kaus in that way, also - once you're 'in' with a certain set of alleged writers, you're in forever, no matter what lies you spew. Look at Hitchens, for an even more extreme example.

Posted by Barry | May 22, 2007 1:51 PM

Time was, enemy soliders were willing to surrender to Aemricans, and even cooperate, because they knew that the Americans wouldn't mistreat them.

Remember at the end of Gulf War 1, when the land invasion began, there was literally over 100,000 Iraqi soldiers who ran up to American troops to surrender. It made for some of the most memorable videos of that war.

The Iraqis had been blanketed with flyers telling them how to surrender -- and they did, en masse.

And they were treated in strict accordance with the Geneva Conventions -- every article, even the lesser points.

That was in 1991. Now, in 2007 no one could imagine a scene like that to day. The same Iraqis would fight to the death rather than surrender to Americans.

And it's all because of Bush's torture policy.

Posted by anony | May 22, 2007 2:09 PM

Thanks to "Anony" for a useful reminder of how we acted in the Kuwait War compared to now. Granted that the nature of the conflict is radically different, but I still have great difficulty seeing Bush Senior acting as destructively idiotically as his dimwitted (and Oedipal) son.

Posted by BruceMoomaw | May 22, 2007 3:31 PM

This is another reason why we need more smart young lefties like Matt Yglesias in the officer corps. Matt wouldn't have to resort to such crude techniques as water-boarding to get terrorist detainees to spill the beans. He would make them drink Budweiser, force them to listen to bad music from the '90's, tell them they are as clueless about Islam as Bernard Lewis, etc. They would break in no time.

Posted by Fred | May 22, 2007 3:37 PM

Yep, and he'd get about as much valid intelligence that way as we have been doing:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_11/007504.php

Posted by Bruce Moomaw | May 22, 2007 3:42 PM

The rationalizations for torture, or 'harsh treatment', 'enhanced interrogation', or other terms apologists like to call it, always strike me as transparently thin. It's clear that the modern conservative psyche just gets off on this stuff--along with the Dershowitzes and other right-wing torture proponents who think they're liberals. Look at the last Republican debate. It's about sadism, folks. I don't think conservatives even try very hard to hide it. Observe all the woops and hollers Romney got about doubling Gitmo. The half-baked, lazy quality of the torture rationales underscore that the coded public appeal is to mean-ness and simply the desire to do harm to others.

Posted by Warren | May 22, 2007 3:59 PM

For some reason (probably length), Greg's site ate my attempt to post this earlier today -- so I'm trying yet again, this time as a 2-part item. It's important.

(1) While taking my mother for a medical exam this morning, I ran by pure chance across the March 2007 issue of "Details" and its interview with Mohammed el-Masri, which is also available at
http://men.style.com/details/features/full?id=content_5345&pageNum=1 . It's VERY interesting, especially given the evidence it explicitly provides that a good many other people besides el-Masri may have been atrociously abused (and he WAS atrociously abused, as you'll see, although they never quite got around to waterboarding or Long Time Standing him) entirely because of mistaken identity. To quote ex-operatives Robert Baer and Vince Cannistraro, the CIA at that point were acting like "imbeciles" on orders from the Bush Administration, and the article leaves no doubt that Honest George Tenet was right in the middle of it (unsurprisingly). At that time the Germans were cooperating, but they (and the rest of Europe) got over it fast after they realized that they were dealing with a bunch of arrogant fools -- as have most of our Arab Ext. Rend. partners, according to Baer, after "we turned Saddam Hussein over to a Shia lynch mob."

Posted by Bruce Moomaw | May 22, 2007 8:50 PM

(2) The strongest moral outrage in this whole affair stems from the fact that we are unquestionably STILL holding (and doing God knows what to) not just a few prisoners, but a large number of them, on the basis of mistaken identity -- apparently just to make Rummy and his superiors look as though they were doing more to apprehend genuine terrorists than they actually are. See:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_02/008230.php
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_02/008244.php

Yes, yes, you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. However, it's perfectly possible to break eggs without making an omelet, which seems to be a specialty of this administration.

It'll be interesting to see how many jokes Maguire can squeeze out of these articles.

Posted by Bruce Moomaw | May 22, 2007 8:52 PM

Bruce: one of the more gruesome ironies of Guantanamo was that it wasn't even used for high-level suspects: they were safely hidden in CIA black sites until last year.

It has been a site with an almost entirely symbolic function, designed to scare Americans, abrogate their liberties and satisfy the Jack Bauer fantasies of Republican presidential candidates.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | May 22, 2007 9:34 PM

I think some of this criticism of the administration for "indefinite detentions" at Gitmo is unwarranted, for a few reasons.

First, when the administration has been willing to release detainees their countries of origin, in some cases those countries didn't want to take them, or there were concerns the detainees would suffer real maltreatment and/or execution there.

Second, the administration agreed to give the detainees legal hearings via military tribunals. I think they were right not to let foreign combatants get circus trials of the sort that the "20th hijacker" got, but their plan for military tribunals got held up for years on legal challenges.

Third, on more than one occasion, released detainees ended up taking up arms with Al Qaeda again and killing people. If the administration summarily released all Gitmo detainees, and this sort of thing happened on a wider scale, the same partisans screaming about how awful Gitmo is would be blaming Bush for letting all the enemy combatants go.

Posted by Fred | May 22, 2007 11:08 PM

Objection one and three would seem to get cleared up fairly quickly, by either holding them as POW's or trying them for a crime.

Your "20th hijacker" is obviously off the shelf and no one had to try and offload a few centuries of basic human right to do it, so I don't see the problem with #2.

Posted by Ed Marshall | May 22, 2007 11:55 PM

Nor is anyone -- and I mean anyone -- talking about "summarily releasing all Gitmo detainees", or even casually releasing ANY of them. Read Kevin Drum's pieces that I linked to, for God's sake.

Posted by Bruce Moomaw | May 23, 2007 3:26 AM