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Torture Amendment Thoughts

By Jeralyn, Section War on Terror
Posted on Wed Nov 09, 2005 at 11:26:44 AM EST
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Laura Rozen of War and Piece writes about why the Bush-Cheney proposal to exempt the CIA from the torture amendment should be rejected. Among her arguments:

I was in a torture chamber once, in the basement of a police station in Kosovo days after it was abandoned by Serb forces defeated by Nato. It was hideous as you would imagine. The British soldiers who were with me were equally shocked. A lot of the instruments and interrogation drugs I saw there also suggest they were not designed to cause organ failure or death in their victims, just pain and terror, as Mr. Cheney and his office mates suggest is what they are going for in terms of legal wiggle room. And like Mr. Cheney and his office mates, Mr. Milosevic and his Serb troops didn't seem to overly concern themselves with the Geneva conventions, until it was a bit late. Having laid my eyes on what such a scene looks like, I just associate such activities with the forces of not only the pathological and depraved, but those who are headed for defeat. If you've seen it, you realize in a way that's hard to explain, it's the tactics of the losers.

If Cheney and his office mates haven't had the experience, perhaps they should. And I really don't think it's inconceivable that the remote possibility of the Hague may lie in some of their futures. Things change fast when they do, as history shows, and they could find their current willing protectors eventually chucked from office, and a whole new climate at home and abroad.

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    • Torture Amendment Thoughts | 10 comments (10 topical)
    Re: Torture Amendment Thoughts (none / 0) (#1)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:53 PM EST
    And the question remains, how many of Milosevich's torturers now work for the CIA in Iraq and elsewhere? There are reports that USPNAC has hired death-squad thugs, politely called 'mercenaries,' from around the world. There are reports that racist Serbs are working in Iraq. The deployment of mercenaries into an occupation is illegal. When will we have a real investigation into these CRIMES.

    Re: Torture Amendment Thoughts (none / 0) (#2)
    by ShochuJohn on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:54 PM EST
    I have to say here that it is entirely to easy to be opposed to torture if you do not think it works. That way, you can oppose it purely on practical grounds. It is much more difficult to oppose torture if you think it has the potential to be very effective, but also think that it is not proper to use such a potentially effective tool because it is morally wrong. I am not saying that it is impossible to reasonably believe that torture is both wrong and ineffective, but an argument that torture is not effective because it has some sort of "loser" feel about it is not particularly compelling. I cannot help but wonder if, having concluded that torture is morally wrong (a conclusion I certainly agree with), there is a tendency on the part of many people to want to believe that it is ineffective regardless of the strength of the arguments supporting that position.

    Re: Torture Amendment Thoughts (none / 0) (#3)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:56 PM EST
    Strength of WHAT arguments. All sorts of experts have come forward to specify that torture produces nonsense tactically. TORTURE IS A STRATEGY, NOT A TACTIC. It is meant to terrorize the enemy. When combined with INVASION, it is not at all different from what Dr. Mengele did. Did Dr. Mengele get useful information? Yes he did. But it didn't come out of his victim's mouths. If you want to beat people to death in order to terrorize a RACE, then you are a LYNCH MOB. And look which usual suspects are bringing blankets to the picnic.

    Re: Torture Amendment Thoughts (none / 0) (#4)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:56 PM EST
    ‘Torture is prohibited by law throughout the United States. It is categorically denounced as a matter of policy and as a tool of state authority. Every act constituting torture under the Convention constitutes a criminal offense under the law of the United States. No official of the government, federal, state or local, civilian or military, is authorized to commit or to instruct anyone else to commit torture. Nor may any official condone or tolerate torture in any form. No exceptional circumstances may be invoked as a justification of torture. US law contains no provision permitting otherwise prohibited acts of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment to be employed on grounds of exigent circumstances (for example, during a ‘state of public emergency’) or on orders from a superior officer or public authority, and the protective mechanisms of an independent judiciary are not subject to suspension.’ (Report of the United States to the UN Committee against Torture, October 15, 1999, UN Doc. CAT/C/28/Add.5, February 9, 2000, para. 6.)
    link

    Re: Torture Amendment Thoughts (none / 0) (#5)
    by jen on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:56 PM EST
    I don't give a -wirtydird- if torture works or not. I just know that many of those fine americans who claimed they voted for Bush on 'moral' issues didn't. One can't use the morals argument with them, one needs practicality. The fact that torture doesn't work is icing.

    Re: Torture Amendment Thoughts (none / 0) (#6)
    by Edger on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:56 PM EST
    Jen:
    those fine americans who claimed they voted for Bush on 'moral' issues didn't. One can't use the morals argument with them, one needs practicality.
    Their view of practicality is severely twisted as well. They think that they will be able to instill fear, which they equate with "respect" by using tactics like torture. Like the insecure schoolyard bullies we are all familiar with from our youth, who thought they could "beat" some respect into others, they do not see, or they are unable to accept, that all they accomplish is that they become what they condemn, and instill hate. In a self-fulfilling prophecy, they create the hell they say they are out to defeat.

    Re: Torture Amendment Thoughts (none / 0) (#7)
    by scarshapedstar on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:56 PM EST
    an argument that torture is not effective because it has some sort of "loser" feel about it is not particularly compelling.
    Really? How many enthusiastic torturers are considered successful by history?

    Re: Torture Amendment Thoughts (none / 0) (#8)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:56 PM EST
    Paul in LA, Firstly, torture can be both a strategy and a tactic depending on how its used. It can also be neither a strategy nor a tactic, and an example of this would be, as you cited, Mengele, who put people through intense suffering neither to extract information from them nor to intimidate a population, but because it was part of his pseudo-scientific experimentation. Saddam used torture quite effectively to be feared and ergo to keep order, and he did quite a good job of keeping order in Iraq, a much better job than the US is doing, I may add. This gets into AM's question, "How many enthusiastic torturers are considered successful by history?" None, that I can think of, becuase torture is wrong and morally reprehensible. It does not follow that it is not also useful.

    Re: Torture Amendment Thoughts (none / 0) (#9)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:57 PM EST
    torture is republican viagra

    Re: Torture Amendment Thoughts (none / 0) (#10)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:57 PM EST
    Posted by Shochu John: "Firstly, torture can be both a strategy and a tactic depending on how its used." That's correct. I wasn't clear enough. For PNAC it is a strategy, part of their strategic terrorism and nation dismantlement which fits Kissinger's 2004 statement, reported as: "There is no more Iraq. There will be three territories." Filming the torture, and then arranging for that to be released, along with all the other 'leaks' of torture and false imprisonment is just like Bush's 'slip' of calling it a Crusade. These are not accidents, low-level failures of discipline, or tactics in the sense I meant -- that is, efforts to get information. "Mengele, who put people through intense suffering neither to extract information from them nor to intimidate a population, but because it was part of his pseudo-scientific experimentation." Correct, though pseudo-science is in the eye of the beholder. Area 731 in Manchuria 'studied' the effects of cold, of wounds, of germ warfare agents like plague. IS THE US INVOLVED IN SIMILAR STUDY? Yes it is. They are studying torture -- they are not merely practicing it as a tactic. And they are EXPOSING torture as a strategy to cause civil war and a terrorism backlash to justify FURTHER pogroms on innocent people. "Saddam used torture quite effectively to be feared and ergo to keep order, and he did quite a good job of keeping order in Iraq, a much better job than the US is doing, I may add." Again, a strategy, not a tactical failure. Fomenting civil war is not easy. It requires considerable bestiality and murder of political figures to build those kinds of hatreds. Torture is effective as a strategy, not as a tactic. Such a strategy is treason to the US (since it INCREASES terrorism); and part of a POLICY of genocide for the Iraqis.

    Torture Amendment Thoughts | 10 comments (10 topical)