Contortions

This fail blog video seems like the right way to start this torture thread:


Yglesias: Accountability for Torture is Less Important than Building Political Consensus

I’m strongly inclined, in many respects, to agree with Glenn Greenwald and Michael O’Hare that the Obama administration’s unwillingness to really hold anyone accountable for illegal torture during the Bush years is setting a very bad precedent. I won’t restate the argument, because I think it’s pretty clear how it works, but read Greenwald & O’Hare if you want to see it well-stated.

I think the counter-evidence comes from post-communist Eastern and Central Europe. But especially from “central” Europe—the former Soviet satellite states that are now pretty successful liberal democracies. Places like the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, etc. If you look at these countries you’ll see that in many instances there’s been shockingly little accountability for Communist-era crimes. The general pattern is that opposition governments were elected in 1989 or 90, and then in the mid-nineties members of the old regime came back into power with their parties rebranded as social democratic parties. In Romania the pattern was different in that the former regime people came to power right away then lost power in the mid-nineties and then came back in in 2000.

But in no case did you have a really thorough investigation and punishment for past misdeeds. And that hasn’t led to a comeback of totalitarianism.

What you did have, though, was the establishment of a clear national political consensus about certain things. People largely agreed that Russian domination was bad, that Communism was bad, that joining the West was good, that elections were good and that whatever might have happened in the past there was no going back. This was different from the situation in Russia, where there was always the sense that the end of Communism was tied up with the idea of Russia “losing” a geopolitical struggle. And it’s also different from what’s emerging in the United States where there’s a continuing sense of partisanship—Democrats say torture is wrong, Republicans say torture is good, so the media talks about “contorversial” “interrogation tactics” and everyone knows that in the event of a new terrorist attack conservative politicians will run, aggressively, on an assertive pro-torture platform.

That’s a very grave problem. But that is the real problem that needs a solution. We need to find ways to politically delegitimize torture, to help build bridges to people who may disagree with us about tax rates or abortion or even the wisdom of bombing North Korea about the point that torture is wrong, shouldn’t have been done in the past, and shouldn’t be done in the future. And, importantly, about the point that torture actually shouldn’t be done—that you shouldn’t be looking for loopholes in anti-torture rules and seeing legal prohibitions on torture as a big hassle.

Sully: The Contortions Of The Torture Defenders

A reader writes:

The comments by your dissenting reader and Abe Greenwald both contain a typical point made by the pro- "coercive interrogation" crowd. Namely, that the techniques used in the interrogations are not only not torture, but that they are barely mild annoyances, and that it's ludicrous to be making a fuss about them. Some have even gone so far as to apply that characterization to waterboarding, calling it merely a "splash in the face" or a "dunk in the water".

What bothers me about this viewpoint is that if these techniques are so harmless, then how do they even work?

If a face slap is not big deal, then how does it result in information? If putting an insect in a cage with a prisoner is something to laugh about, why are they insisting that it works? Do they really imagine that enemy prisoners with incredible, ticking time-bomb information fold so easily?

Or might it take an extra slap or two? Maybe a bit harder to get to a level that is tougher to withstand? Maybe a few days with no sleep? Still nothing? Ok, then perhaps a stress position as well? Hey, are we getting some weeping? Good, now we're getting somewhere.

Step by step, pushing harder ever more slightly. Until the prisoner breaks, and we get some information. And if the prisoner doesn't break? Then we simply push even harder. After all, our country is at stake, right?

And this leads me to my second point. In the Hayden and Mukasey article today, they make a point that these interrogations are about getting information, not confessions. But what if the captive doesn't have the intelligence we want or has already told us all he knows? If he says he has no further information, do we believe him? Or do we start pushing a little, to see what else might be there? And when that yields nothing, what then? If we truly believe this person has critical intelligence, can we stop?

The soviets used these techniques to elicit false confessions. That is what they were designed for.

• Think Progress: Limbaugh’s Proof That Torture Works: McCain Was ‘Broken By The North Vietnamese’
  

  On his radio show yesterday, Rush Limbaugh responded to the Obama administration’s release of four of the OLC torture memos with a full-throated defense of of torture and its effectiveness for gathering useful intelligence. As evidence of the effectiveness of torture, Limbaugh noted that — in his speech to the Republican National Convention last summer — Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said the North Vietnamese “broke” him while he was a POW. Limbaugh suggested that in saying the North Vietnamese “broke” him, McCain was saying that torture worked:

  LIMBAUGH: The idea that torture doesn’t work– that’s been put out from John McCain on down– You know, for the longest time McCain said torture doesn’t work then he admitted in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention last summer that he was broken by North Vietnamese. So what are we to think here?

  Watch it:

  This is not the first time Limbaugh has claimed that McCain’s remarks about his experience with torture proves its effectiveness. But just like the last time, Limbaugh is wrong.

  With regard to his speech to the RNC, McCain explained that after refusing an offer of early release, North Vietnamese soldiers “worked me over harder than they ever had before. For a long time. And they broke me.” While McCain did not go in to detail during his speech, he explained in his memoir Faith of my Fathers that the information he gave the Vietnamese after being “broken” was out of date, fabricated, or of little use to his captors:

  Eventually, I gave them my ship’s name and squadron number, and confirmed that my target had been the power plant. Pressed for more useful information, I gave the names of the Green Bay Packers’ offensive line, and said they were members of my squadron. When asked to identify future targets, I simply recited the names of a number of North Vietnamese cities that had already been bombed.

  Elsewhere in his memoir, McCain recalled providing false information to his captors on multiple occasions in order to “suspend the abuse.” Further, McCain explained in a 2005 Newsweek column that he believed torture would yield little actionable intelligence. “In my experience, abuse of prisoners often produces bad intelligence because under torture a person will say anything he thinks his captors want to hear — whether it is true or false — if he believes it will relieve his suffering,” McCain wrote.

  McCain was right. As the Washington Post reported last month, the torture of Abu Zubaida — who was once thought to be a high-level AQI operative — did not foil “a single significant plot” and provided the CIA with a number of “false leads.” “We spent millions of dollars chasing false alarms,” one former intelligence official told the Post. Further, “most of the useful information from Abu Zubaida — chiefly names of al-Qaeda members and associates — was obtained before waterboarding was introduced.”

  Update: Media Matters notes that a another point during his program today, Limbaugh began slapping himself to mock anyone who believed slapping detainees in U.S. custody qualified as mistreatment. "I just slapped myself. I'm torturing myself right now. That's torture according to these people," Limbaugh said.

Yglesias: The Uselessness of Torture

Scott Shane for The New York Times reports on the non-existent value of torturing Abu Zubayda:

The first use of waterboarding and other rough treatment against a prisoner from Al Qaeda was ordered by senior Central Intelligence Agency officials despite the belief of interrogators that the prisoner had already told them all he knew, according to former intelligence officials and a footnote in a newly released legal memorandum. [...] Abu Zubaydah had provided much valuable information under less severe treatment, and the harsher handling produced no breakthroughs, according to one former intelligence official with direct knowledge of the case. Instead, watching his torment caused great distress to his captors, the official said.

The specific information is good to have. But one doesn’t really need to peer too deeply into a specific case to know that institutionalized torture is not an effective investigative method.

In abstract terms, trained interrogators already have decent methods for getting accurate information out of prisoners. Subjecting the prisoner to coercion, physical suffer, and mental torment can certain get someone to say more things but the very fact that the “things” were coerced out of the captive by torture limits their value. You’ll almost certainly get him to say some accurate stuff. He might, for example, correctly insist that he doesn’t know anything more. But he’ll also say all kinds of inaccurate stuff. He’ll say whatever he thinks will get you to stop torturing him.

In historical terms, you don’t look back on the Spanish Inquisition or on Stalin’s Russia and say man, those guys had some crack investigators! Rather, you see that historically the function of torture has been to extract false confessions and to inspire a general climate of fear.

• More from Shane's: Divisions Arose on Rough Tactics for Qaeda Figure
  

  His interrogation, according to multiple accounts, began in Pakistan and continued at the secret C.I.A. site in Thailand, with a traditional, rapport-building approach led by two F.B.I. agents, who even helped care for him as his gunshot wounds healed.

  Abu Zubaydah gave up perhaps his single most valuable piece of information early, naming Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, whom he knew as Mukhtar, as the main organizer of the 9/11 plot.

  A C.I.A. interrogation team that arrived a week or two later, which included former military psychologists, did not change the approach to questioning, but began to keep him awake night and day with blasting rock music, have his clothes removed and keep his cell cold.

  The legal basis for this treatment is uncertain, but lawyers at C.I.A. headquarters were in constant touch with interrogators, as well as with Mr. Bybee’s subordinate in the Office of Legal Counsel, John C. Yoo, who was drafting memos on the legal limits of interrogation.

  Through the summer of 2002, Abu Zubaydah continued to provide valuable information. Interrogators began to surmise that he was not a leader, but rather a helpful training camp personnel clerk who would arrange false documents and travel for jihadists, including Qaeda members.

  He knew enough to give interrogators “a road map of Al Qaeda operatives,” an agency officer said. He also repeated talk he had heard about possible plots or targets in the United States, though when F.B.I. agents followed up, most of it turned out to be idle discussion or preliminary brainstorming.

  At the time, former C.I.A. officials say, his tips were extremely useful, helping to track several other important terrorists, including Mr. Mohammed.

  But senior agency officials, still persuaded, as they had told President George W. Bush and his staff, that he was an important Qaeda leader, insisted that he must know more.

  “You get a ton of information, but headquarters says, ‘There must be more,’ ” recalled one intelligence officer who was involved in the case. As described in the footnote to the memo, the use of repeated waterboarding against Abu Zubaydah was ordered “at the direction of C.I.A. headquarters,” and officials were dispatched from headquarters “to watch the last waterboard session.”

  The memo, written in 2005 and signed by Steven G. Bradbury, who worked in the Office of Legal Counsel, concluded that the waterboarding was justified even if the prisoner turned out not to know as much as officials had thought.

  And he did not, according to the former intelligence officer involved in the Abu Zubaydah case. “He pleaded for his life,” the official said. “But he gave up no new information. He had no more information to give.”

  Abu Zubaydah’s own account, given in 2006 to the International Committee of the Red Cross, corroborates that what he called “the real torturing,” including waterboarding, began only “about two and a half or three months” after he arrived at the secret site, according to the group’s 2007 report.

Sully: Zubaydah: First Blood

His story is well known by now. Wiki's entry on him is here. if you have not read Ron Suskind's "One Percent Solution", it's time you did. The significant Washington Post piece is here. The critical thing to remember is that the first person to be subjected to the torture program was not the person Bush and Cheney thought he was, gave up lots of useful (and accurate) information under traditional interrogation techniques, had no information that came close to the "ticking time bomb" criterion used to justify the torture program ... and was brutally tortured anyway. More to the point, the idea that CIA officers were begging to use these torture methods is nonsense. They were forced to do so by higher ups. And all of this took place before they had even instructed Bybee and Yoo to construct patently bad faith legal defenses for all of it. Money quote:

[T]he harsher handling produced no breakthroughs, according to one former intelligence official with direct knowledge of the case. Instead, watching his torment caused great distress to his captors, the official said. Even for those who believed that brutal treatment could produce results, the official said, “seeing these depths of human misery and degradation has a traumatic effect.”

And what was the effect of this very dramatic and clear first foray into the dark side? It was not to reassess and pull back, given the horror and failure of the first act of torture; it was to press on, get legal cover, and set up a program to finesse and intensify torture. Part of the problem is that the president had already bragged in public that Zubaydah was a central figure, and Ron Suskind has argued that the torture was ordered in part to save Bush's face. Tenet denies that strongly. If it's true, then president Bush, if he still has a conscience, must have a hard time sleeping at night.

Torture, you come to realize, was the tip of the spear of the Bush-Cheney war on terror. After first blood, they sharpened it.

John Cole: The Newest Line of Bullshit

Fran Townsend is on CNN trotting out a new line of bullshit, and that is releasing the memos was bad because now the CIA will no longer be trusted by our allies because we can’t keep a secret. These people have no shame.

Also, I will note that for whatever reason, the libertarians over at Reason have multiple hissy fits up about the DHS report from the other day, several stories up about pirates, a couple about pot, and the only mention of the real issue of the day (one would think) for libertarians, the OLC memos detailing how we tortured people, is in a link round-up.

Because you have to have priorities, you know. They do manage to execute a near flawless Cavuto Mark in their current top story, though: “Obama on Warrantless Surveillance: As Bad As Bush? Worse?”

Remember- they aren’t saying he is as bad as Bush or worse, they are just asking! I can’t believe I read Reason for all those years. What a joke.

I will defend them on one account- if you consider the number of people tortured because of those memos and the number of people impinged upon by our immoral and insane drug laws, there is a much larger net loss of liberty (if you could neatly quantify liberty) by our marijuana laws. It isn’t even close. So I do give those guys credit for never wavering on that front. But jeeebus. Torture. No thoughts in the past 48 hours on the memos?

*** Update ***

Can someone come up with an angle on how the OLC memos prove Obama is worse than Bush? Then maybe we can get the folks at Reason to notice the memos.

Response ability April 17: Former Bush administration officials are criticizing the Obama administration for releasing top-secret 'torture memos.' Four former CIA directors even lobbied Obama not to release them. What do they say that is so incriminating? Rachel Maddow is joined by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-FL.

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