Dec. 8th, 2005

amari_z: (lone tree)
Continued from post above.

ExpandDefining Torture In a New World War )


An interesting piece from early this year on the effectiveness of torture: ExpandThe Torture Myth )

And here's a link to a piece from the New Yorker published in February on rendition. Outsourcing Torture:
The secret history of America’s 'extraordinary rendition' program
. It is the source of the information and quote on Maher Arar.


amari_z: (lone tree)
Long rant. Quotes are from articles posted below.

I recently posted an article on a poll of Americans' views toward torture--here's the results of another:
According to the latest NEWSWEEK Poll, 44 percent of the public thinks torture is often or sometimes justified as a way to obtain important information, while 51 percent say it is rarely or never justified. A clear majority—58 percent—would support torture to thwart a terrorist attack, but asked if they would still support torture if that made it more likely enemies would use it against Americans, 57 percent said no. Some 73 percent agree that America's image abroad has been hurt by the torture allegations.
I’ve been thinking about this issue a lot recently and wondering how we've arrived at the point where we're seriously debating whether the U.S. should be torturing people.

On only a very few things in life am I an absolutist. Government sanctioned torture is one of those things. There are no circumstances in which a government should authorize itself to torture any human being. Period.

I've heard the argument many times now--"but what if it's to save lives?" (and always the question seems to end with "from a terrorist plot" as though it is somehow worse to die from a terrorist attack than at the hands of some regular murderer). But even so it's never going to be that simple. There is almost never going to be a way to actually know that the person you have before you really has information that will save lives (unless it's a tv show). And moreover, there are certain rules we follow in a civilized society that open the door for the potential loss of life. We follow these rules because we value the principles behind them highly enough to view them as something we will not sacrifice simply because it seems easier or better at the moment. For example, we do not authorize our domestic police to torture non-terrorists criminals to get information, even if it could be life saving. A person whom the police think has evidence about the whereabouts of a kidnapped child cannot have his fingernails pulled out by the police, even if the police think the child's life is imminent danger. (Not to say that police brutality doesn’t occur with appalling frequency in this country—but those acts are illegal and recourse exists under the law for the victim.)

In our legal system the ends are not supposed to justify the means--just look at the Fourth Amendment, which up until the Patriot Act was supposed to keep the police out of your business. Where evidence has been unlawfully seized by the police, our legal system demands (or used to) that even if the result is that a clearly guilty person (guilty of murder, rape, child molestation, it doesn't matter, nor does it matter if everyone thinks that the person will immediately go out and kill/rape/molest more people) goes free because that illegally obtained evidence may not be used to try them. No one is happy when a guilty criminal goes free (except the criminal), but our laws recognize that the principle behind the Fourth Amendment cannot be upheld if we allow it to be violated simply where the end result of that one particular situation seems better for us.

There's a lot more I could say here, but I'll just add two more points before moving on. First, even if the mere idea of a (potentially innocent—don’t tell me that our law enforcement authorities don’t make errors) person being tortured doesn't turn one's stomach for its own sake, I would point out that we’ve set our own law enforcement people down a dark path. Where are the limits? What kind of burden (and possible temptation) are you placing on people when:

Ordinary military policemen were told by intelligence officials to do things like "loosen this guy up for us" and "make sure this guy has a bad night" and "give him the treatment," according to Sgt. Javal Davis, one of the defendants in the Abu Ghraib scandal.
What are we doing to them, and by extension to our own society? There’s a reason that the UN convention on torture includes “inhumane” in its title—it’s not the victim that’s being referred to. And what does it say about our society that we allow such practices in the name of safeguarding our own “freedom.” We talk with disdainful superiority about the Romans torture practices (torture was permissible against slaves, but not to be committed against Roman citizens) and of those of the Church during the Inquisition, we condemn Alexander the Great for having one of his childhood friends tortured to uncover a supposed plot to murder him--but how are we better than this?

Second, most security experts and academic experts on the psychology of torture seem to agree that torture is not a particularly effective means of gaining information. When in pain a person will admit to anything in order to get the pain to STOP. An article published by the New Yorker early this year described how a Canadian man returning to Canada by way of the U.S. was taken into custody [in case it makes a difference (which it really shouldn't), the man was an engineer who had attended McGill University and whose family emigrated to Canada when he was a teenager]. After being questioned by U.S. officials, he was turned over to men in plainclothes and flown around the world in a jet:

Ten hours after landing in Jordan, [Maher] Arar said, he was driven to Syria, where interrogators, after a day of threats, “just began beating on me.” They whipped his hands repeatedly with two-inch-thick electrical cables, and kept him in a windowless underground cell that he likened to a grave. “Not even animals could withstand it,” he said. Although he initially tried to assert his innocence, he eventually confessed to anything his tormentors wanted him to say. “You just give up,” he said. “You become like an animal.”
The administration, most recently Condoleezza Rice, has insisted that they have obtained valuable information through their practices (Rice even going so far as to “chide” (characterization of the NY Times) Europeans for their ungrateful attitude). But there’s never been any real evidence to support that:
A career CIA official involved with interrogation policy cautioned NEWSWEEK not to put too much credence in such claims. "Whatever briefing they got was probably not truthful," said the official, who did not wish to be identified discussing sensitive matters. "And there's no way of knowing whether what good information they got could not have been obtained by more traditional means."
And now there’s the current fiasco over foreign detention centers. And what does it say about us as a country that we have to hold prisoners overseas because our own domestic laws would not allows us to either detain them or treat them in the fashion we do abroad? Of course, now the administration's story has changed on this as well:

Administration officials, including Ms. Rice on Monday, have repeatedly maintained since the reports about the secret prisons began that the government is abiding by American law and international agreements. "We are respecting U.S. law and U.S. treaty obligations," she said several times on Monday. "And we are respecting other nations' sovereignty."

That is a change in the position of the Bush administration, which has repeatedly maintained in recent years that American law does not apply to prisoners held abroad. That is one reason some terror suspects were taken to Guantánamo Bay in Cuba and to other foreign locations.
Personally, I don't see how any one who informs themselves even a little would buy the administration's current line. (But my life seems to one of constant amazement.) I've included an article below about a German citizen who was detained in Macedonia and Afghanistan for five months where he was beaten and injected with drugs and who has now brought a lawsuit in the U.S. The subject of Khaled el-Masri came up in Rice's recent meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has said that Rice admitted that Mr. Masri's five-month-long detention had been "mistake." His lawyer responded to Rice's recent claims that the U.S. does not transport people abroad for the purpose of interrogation using torture:

Mr. Romero took issue with a statement Ms. Rice made on Monday before leaving for Germany denying accusations of human rights violations and declaring that "the United States does not transport, and has not transported, detainees from one country to another for the purpose of interrogation using torture."

"Unfortunately, as our lawsuit shows today, those statements are patently false," Mr. Romero said.
I would also point out that “At one point, the Bush administration formally told the CIA it couldn't be prosecuted for any technique short of inflicting the kind of pain that accompanies ‘organ failure’ or ‘death’.”

Also, our lovely government's practice of handing over people to third parties, including private companies as well as foreign governments that do not have prohibitions against torture (the so-called “renditions”—a strange usage and a sinister sounding term--isn't the term "rendering" used in connection with slaughter houses the processing of animal by-products?), are not necessarily covered by Rice’s assertions (and who knows who, if anyone, is monitoring these “renders”).

ExpandThe Debate Over Torture  )
ExpandReports of Secret U.S. Prisons in Europe Draw Ire and Otherwise Red Faces  )
ExpandU.S. Interrogations Are Saving European Lives, Rice Says )
ExpandRice Chides Europeans on Detention Center Complaints )
ExpandGerman Sues Over Abduction Said to Be at Hands of C.I.A. )
ExpandRice Is Challenged in Europe Over Secret Prisons )

Continued in post below.

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