The Torture Administration

Scott Shane, David Johnston, and James Risen for The New York Times make this one of those days where I regret reading my key blogs before my morning newspaper by reporting a big story "Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations"

But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.

Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on “combined effects” over the objections of James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruising clashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as the opinion’s overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues at the department that they would all be “ashamed” when the world eventually learned of it.

You'd like to think they'll feel ashamed, but I really doubt it.

Comments

including head-slapping

Yup, slapping = torture.

According to the left-wing, there are millions of American parents who are torturing their children every day by slapping them. You can't make this stuff up.

Posted by Al | October 4, 2007 9:47 AM

Sociopaths don't experience shame.

Posted by steve duncan | October 4, 2007 9:48 AM

According to the left-wing, there are millions of American parents who are torturing their children every day by slapping them. You can't make this stuff up.

Yep--just like in Gitmo, millions of American parents keep their children locked up for indefinite periods and slap them regularly, and hard, and at length, during daily "parent-child interrogation sesions" until those kids tell the parents what the parents want to hear. According to those bleeding-heart left-wingers, though, this is "child abuse."

I light a candle to St. Fu in your honor, Al.

Posted by James Gary | October 4, 2007 9:58 AM

Al, do you have iPhone in your taxi that you post replies with? That would be cool.

Posted by Guy in Jersey | October 4, 2007 10:05 AM

I always thought, based on no particular evidence, that Gonzales was a truly, purely, evil person. Even though people who should know seemed to think he was just a loyal flunky. Maybe it was his demeanor, which reminded me of some movie villain. Anyway, this tends to confirm that simplistic view of mine.

Posted by cs | October 4, 2007 10:39 AM

cs, 'loyal flunky' turns into evil quite easily.

Posted by Barry | October 4, 2007 11:03 AM

11/07/2005

PANAMA CITY — President Bush strongly defended U.S. interrogation practices for detainees held in the war on terrorism Monday, insisting, "We do not torture."

On the final day of a three-nation Latin America trip, Bush said at a news conference that he will not relent in battling terrorists. "There's an enemy that lurks and plots and plans and wants to hurt America again," he said. "So you bet we will aggressively pursue them, but we will do so under the law."

Posted by Ethel-to-Tilly | October 4, 2007 11:15 AM

There's a scene in Le Petit Soldat (IIRC) where the young hero recounts his torture, the equivalent of waterboarding: his face was covered with a stocking while his torturers poured water over it. Air can't get through the skein of water and since the torturers jostle the subject around, the subject can't simply try to outlast the torturers by holding his breath. 2 minutes for the tortured would be an eternity. For the torturer, their eternity comes later. The tortured are panic stricken, terrified, and in terrible pain. You can't outlast it. You can't finesse it. And it's so easy to miscalculate: the capillaries in the lungs burst, cells die, and the lungs fill up with blood.

The character in Le Petit Soldat was pleased that he didn't shit himself.

We do torture. And we pay torturers. And we've got a whole raft of people like Al who don't think it's a big deal.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | October 4, 2007 11:52 AM

But Jeffrey, you didn't seem to get Al's argument. Let me lay it out for you: We don't care about foreigners, and anyway, the "Left" thinks smacking a child is torture. Don't you see? Those crazy leftists are the problem, why are you concentrating on the rule of law and "torture" when you could be raving about unnamed crazy leftists? You probably also get sucked into arguing about health insurance for kids instead of gay marriage. Gays want to marry! and all people like you care about is torture and heatlh insurance!

Posted by d | October 4, 2007 12:47 PM

Surely we can agree that if an interrogation technique was adopted by the Spanish inquisition, there's a prima facie case for it being torture. Such is the case with the toca, also called tortura del agua, which has been updated by the dark side and called waterboarding.

However, it's all academic, and, as I've said in other forums, there's no story here. The administration has been and is operating under the extremely constitutional Theory Of We Get To Do Whatever The F*** We Want (also known as the theory of the unitary executive or, in the original german, fuhrerprinzip), so it should come as a shock only to the tendentious and those whose sense of innocence is overly practiced to find out the the administration is, indeed, doing whatever the f*** it wants.

On the bright side, I counted eleven different euphemisms for torture in the Times article, so at least we will be able to decode the coming avalanche of disinformation.

Posted by lambert strether | October 4, 2007 1:01 PM

War is utterly outside the normal scheme of criminal justice and human rights.

In war, the enemy can kill us without "trial, lawyers, judges" weighing in on the matter. Human Rights NGOs can only exist within the safe, Western constructs they were created in. No "human rights crusader" accompanies the Chinese troops in Tibet, AQ forces in Iraq, cannibal child soldiers squads in the Congo to make sure they are playing "nice-nice".

When terrorists strike, liberals say that you can't sue the "aggrieved freedom fighter" - only your government from failing to have 100% perfect intelligence and from doing what was necessary to keep "people perfectly safe".

What stops us from killing or torturing captured enemy combatants without trial and instead according them rights, is a long history of civilization trying to erect humane rules of warfare, going back to the Treaty of Westphalia.

But those covenents were designed and always implemented with a requirement of reciprocity. "We will treat your people by these humane covenents like Hague - as long as you treat our soldiers and civilians similarly."

And we all know how AQ treats it's POWs.

Lefties who want to end reciprocity, along with misguided military leaders happy to sacrifice American civilians or low-ranking grunts in the field that could be saved with hard interrogation of captured enemy - so they look better when they go to Congress for another star on their uniform, sort of miss how critical reciprocity is.

Without reciprocity, you introduce perverse incentives for Jihadis, then maybe later down the road the Chicoms or revanchist Russians, to say nothing for African militias to flout all rules of war to gain advantage.

Reciprocity is something the Euroweenies are waking up to with the Jihadis....after years of multiculti having them bend their laws and culture to accomodate intolerant Muslims....now, even the French and Swedes are saying toleration requires reciprocity or it doesn't work. And if Euroweenies now understand how important reciprocity is in day-to-day peaceful life for two cultures to coexist alongside one another, maybe then they can understand that if enemy combatants on Jihad follow none of the neat rules Lefty activists helped create in perfect safety of 70s Europe, OUR side, to spare military and civilian casualties - may have to get tough.

Posted by Chris Ford | October 4, 2007 5:23 PM

There we have the crazy racist creep, Chris Ford, being crazily racist. Chris Ford, degenerate racist creep being true to degenerate creepdom everywhere.

Posted by Jennifer | October 4, 2007 5:45 PM

Cannibal Chris Ford, the degenerate racist eats again. No wretch is worse than degenerate Chris Ford.

Posted by Jennifer | October 4, 2007 5:47 PM

Degenerate Chris Ford, you're losing you rotten bastard. Bye, bye.

Posted by Jennifer | October 4, 2007 5:50 PM

i like that. it's kinda like a troll haiku.

Posted by southpaw | October 4, 2007 5:52 PM

No; creepy South North, it's kinda like racist garbage being pointed to as racist garbage but you're too much of a moron to understand.

Posted by Jennifer | October 4, 2007 7:34 PM

Jennifer appears to be a stupid cunt unable to get past one-line ranting insults.

Why not do something useful with your life, Jennifer, like sign up for conjugal visits with between 35-40 felon convicts. They'd appreciate you. And, God knows you need some appreciation.....

Posted by Chris Ford | October 4, 2007 8:15 PM

Chris made a funny...

I'm shitting myself.

Look, stupid, unlike some people, I have no objection to shooting an identified enemy in the head as soon as he's identified as such - regardless of the law anywhere in the world, or morality, or ethics. Compared to me, you're a pussy.

And I have no objection to THREATENING to shoot someone in the head if he doesn't tell me what I want to know. And I have no objection to actually killing him if he doesn't tell me, then repeating the process on the next guy in line. Not torture him - kill him.

This technique has been known to produce information. Torture is not death - people can resist torture. Almost nobody in history has ever resisted death. They may not have talked - but they did die.

But using torture - i.e., basically itself a euphemism for "beat somebody up", which most people fantasize doing at some point int heir lives - for interrogation purposes is just stupid. It's known not to work statistically in most cases where there is a real motivation to conceal the information. It's unreliable unless done by exceptional experts - which, by definition, most torturers aren't. It also works against the perception by your supporters that you're the "good guys". It also stiffens resistance against capture and makes capturing informants that much harder, and interrogating captured informants MUCH harder - no matter how vicious your torture methods are.

Most people are against torture because 1) they're afraid of it; 2) they think it makes them "morally superior" (the operative word here is "superior") to somebody else.

So they bitch about torture overseas by the CIA.

They don't bitch about mistreating US local, county, state and Federal inmates in the prison system - which is ongoing daily in this country. Maybe a few people who are into prison reform do, but that's about it.

Abu Ghraib and Quantanamo happened for a reason. The people in charge were able to find plenty of US National Guard types who were prison guards in their day jobs. The main enlisted guy - Graner - convicted in the Abu Ghraib case was just that.

This is no accident. The Iraqi prison system which is currently being used to torture inmates of whichever sect happens to control the Ministry was set up by US correctional officials with histories of major institutional problems of maltreatment.

Before you start sweating torturing Al Qaeda guys, start sweating torturing your neighbor down the street who got arrested for smoking pot.

Society needs to start learning how to deal with people who have an anti-social psychology other than by locking them up or beating them up or shooting them. Once this is learned within civil society, then it can try applying the same psychology to dealing with foreigners who happen to dislike you.

Here's a simple suggestion: it would be far cheaper and more reliable to simply bribe captured opponents to tell you what you want to know. How much can it cost? "Hey, Ahmad, we'll give you citizenship, $100,000 a year for ten years, a condo in Vegas, and three call girls daily for the same period. Just tell us when Osama is! Or if you don't know, tell us someone who does who would like the same deal!" Most so-called "Muslim fanatics" would jump at the deal - especially if they could see it was real based on past experience. So you spend a few million. How much is it costing you to maintain a torture regime?

Monkey morons. That's the problem.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | October 4, 2007 8:45 PM

I think that should be "of whichever sect doesn't happen to control the Ministry"...

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | October 4, 2007 8:54 PM

Mr. Richard Steven Hack writes:

"Hey, Ahmad, we'll give you citizenship, $100,000 a year for ten years, a condo in Vegas, and three call girls daily for the same period. Just tell us when Osama is! Or if you don't know, tell us someone who does who would like the same deal!" Most so-called "Muslim fanatics" would jump at the deal

Really? There's currently a $27 million reward on the table for handing over Osama. Muslim fanatics must be awful at math, because that's a hell of a lot more than $1,000,000 over ten years, a condo in the desert and VIP pass to the Bunny Ranch.

BTW, I asked on a another thread, but not sure you saw: are you by any chance this guy?

Posted by SoCalJustice | October 4, 2007 9:00 PM

One man's torture is another man's legitimate interrogation technique. We need an at least reasonably clear definition of "torture" if a ban on the practice is to be enforceable and just.

Posted by Mixner | October 4, 2007 9:14 PM

One man's torture is another man's legitimate interrogation technique. We need an at least reasonably clear definition of "torture" if a ban on the practice is to be enforceable and just.

I think there has been a pretty longstanding American taboo against torture, defined as:

"the deliberate, systematic, or wanton infliction of intense physical or mental suffering by one or more persons in an attempt to force another person to yield information or to make a confession or for any other reason."

It's only recently that this taboo has begun to erode in the US.

And, yes, it is impossible to produce a definition of torture that can't be lawyered to death . . . but--much like pornography--we know torture when we see it.

Posted by southpaw | October 4, 2007 9:24 PM

"the deliberate, systematic, or wanton infliction of intense physical or mental suffering by one or more persons in an attempt to force another person to yield information or to make a confession or for any other reason."

Under that vague definition, many routine and long-standing practises of the criminal justice systems of the U.S. and other nations could qualify as torture, including execution, life imprisonment, solitary confinement, and imprisonment under conditions that place the prisoner at risk of serious mental or physical harm (e.g. rape or physical assault by other prisoners).

but--much like pornography--we know torture when we see it.

And you really think that's a just and reasonable standard on which to base a law, do you? "I can't say what it is, but I know it when I see it."

Posted by Mixner | October 4, 2007 9:39 PM

Mixner,

Yeah, I do. At least far far far more just and reasonable than allowing torture because our lawyerly caste is too sophisticated to distinguish between (a) torture and (b) the confinement of criminals in prison. (I'd favor an abolition of the death penalty, but that's another discussion.)

Posted by southpaw | October 4, 2007 9:52 PM

Well, I think any criminal statute defined in such a vague and subjective way is absurd, whether it concerns pornography, torture or anything else. The deliberate vagueness of the language is an invitation to abuse. One of the reasons U.S. obscenity law is so widely mocked and so difficult to enforce is that it relies on similarly vague and subjective standards.

I did not say, and do not believe, that mere "confinement of criminals in prison" may not reasonably be distinguished from torture as you defined it. I referred to more specific features of our criminal justice system. Why is being forced to wait for years on death row, and then being systematically put to death in front of witnesses, not an example of the infliction of intense mental suffering? Or being confined for years in an institution in which you are knowingly at constant risk of being raped or assaulted?

Posted by Mixner | October 4, 2007 10:20 PM

Well, I think there's plenty of room for prison reform and getting rid of the death penalty.

But, okay, I'll take the bait. If we wanted to write a more rigorous torture law it would need to specify that the abusive acts are either perpetrated by or, in some way, at the direction of officers or employees of the government. (Random assaults by prisoners on other prisoners are crimes, but we're not concerned with them here) . . . And, further, we'd want a more limited understanding of the prohibited purposes--to force the prisoner to yield information or tender a confession. This would leave out ill treatment that's merely incidental to criminal punishment or security measures or the self defense of the guards.

A legislature, obviously, would be much better at crafting this language than I am. And even with the best minds working on the problem, we'd still have nits to pick with whatever they came up with. That doesn't mean we fundamentally disagree about what constitutes torture. And I'd submit that even a very flawed definition such as mine is less of an "invitation to abuse" than failing to prohibit torture at all.

Posted by southpaw | October 4, 2007 10:43 PM

Well, I think there's plenty of room for prison reform and getting rid of the death penalty.

The features of our criminal justice system I described could reasonably be held to be torture, as you defined it. Yet they not generally considered to be torture. Even you haven't said you think they qualify as torture. I think that suggests there's something seriously wrong with your definition.

But, okay, I'll take the bait. If we wanted to write a more rigorous torture law it would need to specify that the abusive acts are either perpetrated by or, in some way, at the direction of officers or employees of the government. (Random assaults by prisoners on other prisoners are crimes, but we're not concerned with them here)

Of course we are. First, the restriction you describe above makes no sense in terms of your definition. Why should the infliction of intense physical or mental suffering count as torture only if it is perpetrated by or under the direction of the government? But even if we accept that restriction, the government is obviously responsible in part for the rape and assault of prisoners by knowingly confining them in an environment in which they are at serious risk of that harm.

. . . And, further, we'd want a more limited understanding of the prohibited purposes--to force the prisoner to yield information or tender a confession. This would leave out ill treatment that's merely incidental to criminal punishment or security measures or the self defense of the guards.

Why? What is the justification for omitting intense suffering inflicted for those other purposes from the definition? It seems especially bizarre to prohibit the infliction of intense suffering for the purpose of extracting information that could (and perhaps is likely to) be used to save lives (as in the ticking time bomb scenario, for example), but not the same treatment inflicted for some other purpose.

And I'd submit that even a very flawed definition such as mine is less of an "invitation to abuse" than failing to prohibit torture at all.

I'd love to see your evidence for that claim. Of course, since those are not the only choices, it's a false dilemma anyway.

Posted by Mixner | October 4, 2007 11:10 PM