(For previous posts on torture, see here.)

Let’s continue with our look at the other excuses on the list put out by apologists.

Excuse 3: These actions did not violate any laws or treaties binding on the US.

Yes they do. That crazy, soft-on-terror ideologue Ronald Reagan signed the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment in 1984, and such international treaties have the power of law. In a signing statement, Reagan said the following: “Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today. The core provisions of the Convention establish a regime for international cooperation in the criminal prosecution of torturers relying on so-called “universal jurisdiction.” Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution.”

Some have argued that these treaties only apply to prisoners of war, uniformed soldiers of another country captured on the battlefield, and that the so-called ‘enemy combatants’ do not warrant such protections. Charles Krauthammer who, like fellow-torture advocate Alan Dershowitz, starts from the ends he wants (the freedom for the US to torture others but not allow others to torture US citizens) and argues back to the premises, says that a captured terrorist “is by profession, indeed by definition, an unlawful combatant: He lives outside the laws of war because he does not wear a uniform, he hides among civilians, and he deliberately targets innocents. He is entitled to no protections whatsoever.” (my italics)

Apart from the incredibly barbaric nature of the assertion that anyone who is detained by security forces for whatever reason has no protection whatsoever against any brutality inflicted on them merely because someone claims that he is a terrorist, this argument is not even legally sustainable. The above-mentioned Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment says that protection against torture applies to all persons, not just those formally designated as prisoners of war.

We also need to distinguish between the third Geneva Convention which refers to prisoners of war and the fourth Geneva Convention which deals with other people involved in conflicts. Article 3 of Geneva Convention IV says:

(1) Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat [i.e., out of the battle] by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.

To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:
(a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;
(b) taking of hostages;
(c) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment;
(d) the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples. (my italics)

This idea that there can be a whole class of people who have no rights whatsoever and to whom we can freely apply torture is a bizarre new invention, created for the purpose of excusing the acts of torture authorized and condoned by the US government.

[Retired Brigadier General John Adams] made clear that during all his years of service and training, including his tenure as a professor at West Point, what he learned and what he taught was consistent: the United States military always acts under the rule of law, in accordance with the Geneva Convention, and upholds the Constitution. What was not taught, or even discussed, were terms like harsh or enhanced interrogation techniques (“I never heard those terms used”), or arguments concerning what constitutes a so-called unique enemy (“In all my training, the current discussions are the first time I ever heard that argument used”). Said Adams: “I have never known anyone in a leadership position in the military who would condone torture. They would never do it. It would go against all the training we had, and against what we were trained to do, which is to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law.”

It may be possible that legal ‘brains’ similar to the infamous John Yoo and Jay Bybee in the Bush Justice administration may be able to find some tortured interpretation of the law and treaties that allow a tiny legal loophole in these treaty obligations. But it is truly disgusting to watch people who do not hesitate to apply broad sweeping moral judgments when torture is done by others suddenly retreat into nitpicking legalistic defenses when torture is done by the US. They seem to then think that if everything is ‘legal’ then it is acceptable. Some people argue that the real ‘mistake’ that the Bush administration made was in not going to Congress and getting a law passed that would have made all these practices legal, rather than depend on internal memos by the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department.

That misses the point. A country cannot make torture legal by changing its internal laws. Torture is considered a crime so vile and inexcusable that it is beyond the pale of civilized behavior and thus cannot take refuge within national boundaries or jurisdictions. It is a crime against humanity and anyone anywhere can take action against any suspected perpetrators.

POST SCRIPT: Ventura ventures into the torture debate

Former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura was once a Navy SEAL and underwent waterboarding as part of the SERE training. He says that waterboarding is undoubtedly torture and that torture produces worthless information. He tells Larry King, “I’ll put it to you this way, you give me a waterboard, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I’ll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders.”

He further says, “I will criticize President Obama on this level; it’s a good thing I’m not president because I would prosecute every person that was involved in that torture. I would prosecute the people that did it. I would prosecute the people that ordered it. Because torture is against the law.”

Watch:

(For previous posts on torture, see here.)

Let’s continue with our look at the other excuses on the list put out by apologists.

Excuse 2: Even if it was torture, it was justified because it worked to prevent another attack and thus saved lives.

Once you accept this argument, then you are truly a barbarian, because you can use it to justify any action at all. If torture is justified to save the lives of others, why have any limits at all? Why not drive hot spikes through people? Why not cut off their limbs? Why not bring back the rack and other devices of the Inquisition? Why not torture the families and children of detainees? Why not torture and terrorize entire communities?
[Read more…]

(For previous posts on torture, see here.)

These arguments that have been made to excuse the torture practices of the US have taken many shifting forms. In the next few posts, I list the top excuses for torture practices, followed by my responses.

Excuse 1: What was done by the US is not torture.

Excuse 2: Even if it was torture, it was justified because it worked to prevent another attack and thus saved lives.

Excuse 3: These actions did not violate any laws.

Excuse 4: Even if it did violate binding laws, it was justified because it worked to prevent another attack and thus saved lives.

Excuse 5: The people who committed torture should not be prosecuted because they were told it was legal and thus they were merely following orders.

Excuse 6: If we prosecute those who committed torture, then in future they will be “always looking over their shoulders” when conducting interrogations and hesitant to take strong actions for fear of prosecution.

Excuse 7: The people who told the torturers that it was acceptable to torture were acting in good faith and trying to protect the country, so they should not be prosecuted.

Excuse 8: If we prosecute those who authorized torture, then this would be for purely partisan reasons for retribution by Democrats against Republicans.

Excuse 9: Top Democrats were told what was going on and approved of it so that makes it ok.

Excuse 10: We need to focus on solving urgent problems like the financial and housing crisis and torture investigations will be divisive and distract us.

Excuse 11: Finally, the emotional appeal that takes various forms but one of the strongest is to invoke the extreme hypothetical: If your child was being held hostage by terrorists, wouldn’t you want any suspects to be tortured if they had information that could save your child?

Excuse 1: What was done by the US is not torture.

This argument has been put forward in two ways. One is to suggest that what was done to the detainees was mild, even routine. Sleep deprivation? Who of us haven’t had sleepless nights? Forced to stand for hours one end? Donald Rumsfeld used to wonder why the detainees were getting off so easy by being made to stand for only four hours when he often stands for 8-10 hours per day. And so on. The other is to suggest that since these torture techniques were used as part of the SERE program to train US personnel to resist torture, they cannot be torture since we wouldn’t torture our own people, would we?

Do I really need to point out why these arguments cannot be taken seriously? There is a world of difference between experiencing something voluntarily or at the hands of people you know are on your side and do not want to harm you, and having the same thing done to you by your enemies who may want to kill you. To argue otherwise is like saying that since some people voluntarily participate in S&M sexual practices, then assault or rape cannot be crimes.

Torture apologist Charles Krauthammer actually put forward the argument that the above practices could not be torture because they were used to train US troops, to which an officer in the National Guard replied:

I have friends who have been to SERE and instructed SERE students and acted as interrogators. All agree that waterboarding and other such ‘enhanced’ techniques are good for training (in a strictly controlled environment) our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines on what to expect in captivity. They also agree that it is torture to anyone outside that training environment. Finally, they all agree that torture rarely results in actionable intelligence, as the victim is willing to say most anything to end the torture.

But even beyond that, many people have been quite unequivocal about calling these practices torture. As John McCain asserted during the election campaign, the US executed Japanese soldiers in World War II for the same kinds of things that were done by the US interrogators, because they were considered torture and thus war crimes. McCain said “[F]ollowing World War II war crime trials were convened. The Japanese were tried and convicted and hung for war crimes committed against American POWs. Among those charges for which they were convicted was waterboarding,”

Gen. Barry McCaffrey has called what was done by the US torture.

Gen Antonio Taguba, who was assigned to investigate the activities following the revelations at Abu Ghraib, has said that what was done by the Bush administrations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanmo constituted war crimes “when the Commander-in-Chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture.”

Brigadier General James Cullen (Ret.), former chief judge of the U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals said that giving these practices euphemisms such as “enhanced interrogation techniques” does not make it not torture. What was done was unequivocally torture. “We hear a lot of arguments to try to justify ‘enhanced interrogation techniques,’ but we know exactly what we’re talking about. It’s torture in different packaging.”

In fact, the Senate Armed Services Committee said that the whole point of the SERE training that led to the abuses was to resist what was clearly identified as torture.

During the resistance phase of SERE training, US military personnel are exposed to physical and psychological pressures…designed to simulate conditions to which they might be subject if taken prisoner by enemies that did not abide by the Geneva Conventions. As one JPRA instructor explained, SERE training is “based on illegal exploitation (under the rules listed in the 1949 Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War) of prisoners over the last 50 years.”

It is really quite simple. At the very minimum, if something is torture when done by others to you involuntarily, then it is still torture when done by you to others.

Next: More excuses

POST SCRIPT: Jon Stewart talks with a torture apologist

Clifford May comes out with the usual pathetic excuses for why torture is ok if done by the US. May is the president of something called the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and nothing says that you love democracy more than advocating torture practices.

The full and unedited interview is shown below in three parts.

Part 1:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M – Th 11p / 10c
Cliff May Unedited Interview Pt. 1
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis First 100 Days

Part 2

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M – Th 11p / 10c
Cliff May Unedited Interview Pt. 2
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis First 100 Days

Part 3:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M – Th 11p / 10c
Cliff May Unedited Interview Pt. 3
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis First 100 Days

(For previous posts on torture, see here.)

An article by Mark Danner in the April 30, 2009 issue of the New York Review of Books accompanied his release of the February 2007 confidential report of the International Committee of the Red Cross on what was done to detainees in US custody. It is truly horrifying. These are the methods that were used by the US on its detainees:

• Suffocation by water poured over a cloth placed over the nose and mouth…[i.e., ‘waterboarding’]
• Prolonged stress standing position, naked, held with the arms extended and chained above the head…
• Beatings by use of a collar held around the detainees’ neck and used to forcefully bang the head and body against the wall…
• Beating and kicking, including slapping, punching, kicking to the body and face…
• Confinement in a box to severely restrict movement…
• Prolonged nudity…this enforced nudity lasted for periods ranging from several weeks to several months…
• Sleep deprivation…through use of forced stress positions (standing or sitting), cold water and use of repetitive loud noises or music…
• Exposure to cold temperature…especially via cold cells and interrogation rooms, and…use of cold water poured over the body or…held around the body by means of a plastic sheet to create an immersion bath with just the head out of water.
• Prolonged shackling of hands and/or feet…
• Threats of ill-treatment, to the detainee and/or his family…
• Forced shaving of the head and beard…
• Deprivation/restricted provision of solid food from 3 days to 1 month after arrest…

How did the US torturers even come up with the ideas for these methods? They were developed as part of the SERE (“Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape”) counter-resistance program developed by the US military, to train their own people to resist what they themselves called torture when it was done to them by others. Danner quotes a Senate Armed Services Committee report that says:

The techniques used in SERE school, based, in part, on Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean war to elicit false confessions, include stripping students of their clothing, placing them in stress positions, putting hoods over their heads, disrupting their sleep, treating them like animals, subjecting them to loud music and flashing lights, and exposing them to extreme temperatures. It can also include face and body slaps and until recently, for some who attended the Navy’s SERE school, it included waterboarding.

The progression is chilling. When done by the Chinese against US prisoners, these actions were unequivocally condemned as torture. These torture techniques were then used to train US personnel to resist torture in the event they were captured by countries that did not abide by the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions or the Treaty Against Torture. And then they were used as a how-to manual by the US to torture others.

There is no doubt that the US has tortured people in violation of the law. The question now is what should be done about it.

As Danner says:

One fact, seemingly incontrovertible, after the descriptions contained and the judgments made in the ICRC report, is that officials of the United States, in interrogating prisoners in the “War on Terror,” have tortured and done so systematically. From many other sources, including the former president himself, we know that the decision to do so was taken at the highest level of the American government and carried out with the full knowledge and support of its most senior officials.

Once this is accepted as a fact, certain consequences might be expected to follow. First, that these policies, violating as they do domestic and international law, must be changed—which, as noted, President Obama began to accomplish on his first full day in office. Second, that they should be explicitly repudiated—a more complicated political process, which has, perhaps, begun, but only begun. Third, that those who ordered, designed, and applied them must be brought before the public in some societally sanctioned proceeding, made to explain what they did and how, and suffer some appropriate consequence.

And fourth, and crucially, that some judgment must be made, based on the most credible of information compiled and analyzed and weighed by the most credible of bodies, about what these policies actually accomplished: how they advanced the interests of the country, if indeed they did advance them, and how they hurt them.

But rather than following through on the logic that those who commit torture should face investigation and prosecution, what has been disgusting are the efforts to excuse and justify these actions in response to these revelations, simply because they were done by ‘our’ side.

Next: The parade of excuses for the torture committed by the US

POST SCRIPT: Hypocrisy

The Daily Show on the difference between the way Japanese torturers were treated compared to the US torturers for doing the same things.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M – Th 11p / 10c
A Brief History of Torture
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

(For previous posts on torture, see here.)

In the previous post in this series, I invented a hypothetical example of two American journalists tortured by North Korea to argue that the reaction in the US is quite different when torture is done by other counties, in order to illustrate the hypocrisy of condemning those actions by others that we excuse in ourselves. It now turns out that this kind of scenario actually happened. Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al-Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates, who is closely related to the ruling family of that country, was caught on videotape torturing people.

Particularly damaging was the apparent involvement of a policeman in the torture and the impunity with which Sheikh Issa could act, even after the tape emerged. He is a senior prince related to powerful members of the ruling family in Abu Dhabi.
…
Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al-Nahyan is now under investigation in the United Arab Emirates after the shocking tape showed him beating a man with a nailed plank, setting him on fire, attacking him with a cattle prod and running him over.
…
The UAE at first said that the matter had been privately settled between Sheikh Issa and his victim. They also added that UAE police had followed all their rules and regulations properly.
…
The fresh revelations about Issa’s actions will add further doubt to a pending nuclear energy deal between the UAE and the US. The deal, signed in the final days of George W Bush, is seen as vital for the UAE. It will see the US share nuclear energy expertise, fuel and technology in return for a promise to abide by non-proliferation agreements. But the deal needs to be recertified by the Obama administration and there is growing outrage in America over the tapes. Congressman James McGovern, a senior Democrat, has demanded that Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, investigate the matter and find out why US officials initially appeared to play down its significance. (my italics)

Unlike the CIA, which earlier this year revealed as a result of a lawsuit that it had destroyed 92 videotapes of its so-called “enhanced interrogations”, the prince was not savvy enough to do the same and it appears that there are over two hours of tape showing him torturing over 25 people. Now there are calls for investigations and prosecutions because of fears that otherwise his actions will create public relations problems in the US.

I don’t know why the UAE is worried. If there is any country that should understand and sympathize with the prince and seek to excuse his actions and need to torture, it is the US. Aren’t we the country that detains people indefinitely without trial, without access to lawyers, courts, and family, and subjects them to all manner of treatments that violate all norms of acceptable behavior and has led to death, permanent injury, and insanity?

As Glenn Greenwald, who has been one of the strongest voices for the investigation and prosecution of torture wherever it occurs says sarcastically:

But anyway, enough about all that divisive partisan unpleasantness — back to this brutal, criminal UAE prince: let’s watch more of those videotapes, express our outrage on behalf of international human rights standards, and threaten the UAE that their relationship with us will suffer severely unless there is a real investigation — not the whitewash they tried to get away with — along with real accountability. We simply cannot, in good conscience, maintain productive relations with a country that fails to take “torture” seriously. We are, after all, the United States.

A recent obituary in the New York Times of a US soldier who had been captured by the Chinese during the Korean war casually labels his treatment by the Chinese as torture. The obituary reads:

Col. Harold E. Fischer Jr., an American fighter pilot who was routinely tortured in a Chinese prison during and after the Korean War… From April 1953 through May 1955, Colonel Fischer — then an Air Force captain — was held at a prison outside Mukden, Manchuria. For most of that time, he was kept in a dark, damp cell with no bed and no opening except a slot in the door through which a bowl of food could be pushed. Much of the time he was handcuffed. Hour after hour, a high-frequency whistle pierced the air.

But when it comes to what the US has done to the prisoners it controls, the same paper gets all coy about using that harsh word and resorts to euphemisms. As Andrew Sullivan comments:

The NYT’s incoherence and double standards, equally, are self-evident. But I would like to know if [NYT editor] Bill Keller will remove the t-word from this obit and replace it with “harsh interrogations” as he does when referring to the US government’s use of identical techniques. If not, why not? Remember: these people won’t even use the word torture to describe a technique displayed in the Cambodian museum of torture to commemmorate [sic] the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge – as long as Americans do the torturing.

Some apologists for US torture try to trivialize it by characterizing what was done as little more than the kinds of hi-jinks done by fraternities. Glenn Greenwald applies that same logic to what was done to Fischer:

So that’s torture now? To use the prevailing American mindset: a room that doesn’t meet the standards of a Hilton and some whistling in the background is torture? My neighbor whistles all the time; does that mean he’s torturing me? It’s not as though Fischer had his eyes poked out by hot irons or was placed in a coffin-like box with bugs or was handcuffed to the ceiling.

The new Obama administration seems to have joined the chorus of people are anxious to put all this ‘nasty’ business of our own torture behind us, to ignore all the acts of torture that have been committed and to “look forward and not behind” so that we can then lecture other countries on the evils of torture.

The hypocrisy on this issue is so widespread and reaches all levels that people seem to be blinded by it, as this Tom Tomorrow cartoon indicates.

Next: What exactly did the US do to its detainees?

POST SCRIPT: Please don’t tell us about the bad stuff we do

The Daily Show says that what seems to really upset some people is not the fact that the US government tortures people but that the torture practices were revealed.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M – Th 11p / 10c
We Don’t Torture
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

(For previous posts on torture, see here.)

Some of you might have heard of the case of two American journalists who are to stand trial in North Korea for having entered the country illegally on March 17, 2009. They are accused of committing acts that were hostile to that country.

It was revealed that the two had confessed to being spies for the US and had entered North Korea in order to gain information to aid a military attack on that country. The confessions came after the two journalists had been subjected to solitary confinement, waterboarded repeatedly, kept in sleep-deprived and stress positions for days on end, confined naked in a small box with insects allowed to crawl all over them, and repeatedly slammed against walls, a process known as ‘walling’.

When the US protested against this treatment of its citizens, arguing that such acts constituted torture and were a gross violation of international laws and treaties and that the confessions thus obtained were inadmissible as evidence, the North Korean government stated that President Kim Jong Il had personally authorized the actions and their Justice Department has said that all these methods had been deemed to be legal, especially in light of the imminent threat to the nation’s security because of the hostile attitude of the US towards North Korea.
[Read more…]