waterboarding | PROBABLE CAUSE

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.

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.