Tag Archives: torture

No Win For Torture

In the aftermath of the killing of Osama Bin Laden, supporters of enhanced interrogation techniques––better known as torture––are attempting to rewrite history. One of its most vocal proponents, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, claimed that an “enormous amount of valuable intelligence” was gained from torture techniques such as waterboarding. But let’s look at the facts.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Al-Qaida’s operations chief, was waterboarded 183 times in 2003. If he gave us all this “valuable information” why didn’t we capture or kill Osama Bin Laden sooner? Why would it take 183 times to force Mohammed to talk? And why, if these techniques were so effective, would we stop using them? The facts are that Mohammed gave interrogators false information about the courier after he was waterboarded repeatedly according to U.S. officials, and as reported by the Associated Press.

Former senior military interrogator Matthew Alexander (a pseudonym) conducted or supervised over 1300 interrogations without using torture. Treating prisoners with respect and building trusting relationships led to a 80% success rate, and to the capture of numerous Al-Qaida terrorists, and the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. As Alexander reported on MSNBC last night, the long-term consequences of torture far outweigh any benefits. Also, the torturing of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay was the number one recruiting tool used by Al-Qaida.

Article 1 of the Geneva Convention states that “torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.”

Article 2 states that each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture. An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.

And Article 4 clearly states that each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law. The same shall apply to an attempt to commit torture and to an act by any person, which constitutes complicity or participation in torture. Each State Party shall make these offences punishable by appropriate penalties, which take into account their grave nature.

Japanese soldiers were hanged for torturing American prisoners of war. On February 28, 2008, the European Court of Human Rights upheld the absolute nature of the torture ban by ruling that international law permits no exceptions to it. Instead of reframing the argument and debating whether or not torture was effective, we should be moving to charge those who knowingly participated in and/or authorized the use of torture. That we haven’t done so, tells us a great deal about the current values of our leaders and our country.

Unconstitutional Detention

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Abdullah al-Kidd was traveling to Saudi Arabia to work on a doctorate in Islamic studies in March 2003 when he was arrested at Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D.C. Suspected of being an al-Qaeda sympathizer, he was imprisoned for sixteen days as a material witness without being charged with a crime.

While in jail he was repeatedly striped searched, shackled for more than two weeks in a cell where lights were kept on 24/7, and interrogated without a lawyer present. After his release, his passport was seized, and he remained under restrictions for 14 months.

Al-Kidd was one of at least seventy people detained under then Attorney General John Ashcroft’s reinterpretation of the material witness law. The law is supposed to be used to hold anyone who knows about a crime or has observed one, but might flee before they could testify in court. Like most of those held by Ashcroft under this law, al-Kidd was never called to testify and was not charged with a crime. Also, the FBI persuaded a judge to issue a warrant for al-Kidd’s arrest by falsely claiming he had purchased a one-way, first class ticket, and failing to mention that he was an American citizen and had a wife and children in the U.S.

Born Lavoni T. Kidd in Kansas, and once a star running back for the University of Idaho, Kidd sued Ashcroft, saying his authorization of the detention made him personally liable for a violation of constitutional rights. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in Kidd’s favor. The Supreme Court agreed yesterday to hear the case.

What’s truly troubling about this case is not just that Ashcroft and the Bush administration knowingly violated the civil rights of a U.S. citizen under the Equal Protection clause of the 14^th amendment, which gives police the right to jail ONLY persons for whom there is probable cause to believe they committed a crime.

No, what’s even more troubling is that the Obama administration has appealed the Ninth Circuit Court’s ruling on Ashcroft’s behalf, claiming that if the attorney general can be held liable for abusing his authority, it would “severely damage law enforcement.”

When President Obama wonders why his poll numbers have plummeted, he can look to this case. Not only has his administration refused to investigate or prosecute those individuals who engaged in torture under the Bush administration. Now, his administration wants to shield those who knowingly ordered the illegal arrests. If the Supreme Court overturns the ruling––a very likely scenario given the court’s current leanings, and the fact that Elena Kagan will have to recuse herself––it will set a dangerous precedent that will almost certainly lead to future abuse.

This abuse of power is certainly not what the framers of the Constitution had in mind, nor is it the kind of change that those who voted for Obama believe in.

Metaphysics and the Vice President

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Metaphysics deals with the nature of reality. One of its most famous philosophical riddles poses the question, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” After listening to Vice President Dick Cheney’s responses during an ABC interview about our governments use of torture, I’d like to pose another metaphysical question. “If no one prosecutes you for committing a crime, did you actually commit one?”

On December 11, the Senate Armed Services Committee issued a report into the torture and abuse of prisoners in US custody based on a detailed analysis of how Chinese torture techniques, which are used in US military schools to train personnel to resist interrogation if captured, were reverse engineered and applied to prisoners captured during the Iraq war. The techniques, taught as part of the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape program or SERE, include sleep deprivation, the prolonged use of stress positions, forced nudity, hooding, exposure to extreme temperatures, subjecting prisoners to loud music and flashing lights, and waterboarding.

The authors of the reported concluded that the abuse of detainees in US custody could not simply be attributed to the actions of “a few bad apples” acting on their own. Rather, senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and then authorized their use against detainees.

While Cheney’s name was not mentioned specifically in the Senate report, (unlike President Bush for stripping prisoners of the protections of the Geneva Conventions in February 2002, and other administration officials, including the Vice President’s former legal counsel and current chief of staff David Addington) Cheney’s responses during the ABC interview clearly indicate he knew and approved of torture, particularly his admission that he was involved in approving the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the confessed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Cheney stated, “I felt very good about what we did. I think it was the right thing to do.”

The law is not in question. Legal precedence has been established. After World War II, we convicted several Japanese soldiers for waterboarding American and Allied prisoners of war. During the Tokyo War Crimes Trials, leading members of Japan’s military and government elite were charged with torturing Allied military personnel and civilians. U.S. military tribunals and U.S. judges have examined certain types of water-based interrogation and found that they constituted torture. The Geneva Convention is clear. Waterboarding is torture and is illegal.

Richard Nixon once famously stated, “If the President does it, it’s not a crime.” That is as illogical and indefensible as Cheney’s reasoning regarding torture, particularly as reports surface that it provides little useful information and many false leads. For the country to allow this administration’s crimes to go unpunished is as immoral as torture itself. Let’s stop the nuanced debate and revisionist history. Let’s create our own reality.