Do you think waterboarding is torture?

[Chris OConnor]

Excellent post, Mary. Very legitimate points.

I believe we ought to practice what we preach and hold ourselves to higher standards. But you're right about heroes being scrutinized more closely.

[Gem]

As far as I am concerned, torture is causing pain or discomfort against someones wishes to cause extreme distress. Causing someone to fear that they are drowning seems to fit pretty clearly into the category of torture.

But as Chris says - is waterboarding ever justifyable?

I would like to answer no to this question. To cause distress to someone that is completely under your control is, of course, morally wrong. As someone from a democtratic country, I would not like to say that it is my country's policy to use immoral methods to achieve any end. It would be quite easy to simply condemn it as wrong and not something that ever should be done.

But a government has a responsibility for a much larger amount of people than I do. What if they captured a man who knew of the whereabouts of a bomb set to go off in a major city. Would they be right to condemn who knows how many people to death or excrutiating injury rather than waterboard one person? To put it at an emotional level, what if your sister or child were killed or injured by that bomb, would you still think a government should not have tried to find out vital information about it by any means?

On the other hand what damage would it do to a country to know that it's government condones unethical methods in its treatment of prisoners? Would its people become less moral - after all if the government can abuse people why should the public not be allowed to? Or would there be a more subtle change, a lack of faith in your own country which could cause more subtle breakdowns in people's values. At the moment wars are being fought largely upon the premise of bringing down dictators and dictatorships such as Suddam Hussein and the Taliban. If a country loses faith in it's own ethical standing, how would it justify attacking others?

I am lucky not to be in government, not to be in the army and not to have to answer any of these questions. But I am aware that for the people that are, the issue is not as black and white as it is for someone like myself who can sit safely at home in a democratic country with responsibility to noone other than myself and say simply that it waterboarding is morally wrong. Society needs ethichal rules that we all generally believe and follow. But should these change in wartime? It is wrong to kill another person. Yet we are happy for our government to fund an army and equipment to kill people in other countries. Do we need a new set of ethical rules for wartime? Do we need to use them differently - to have different rules for different situations?

[DWill]

The damage with torture (apart fromt the permanent change to the mind of the tortured) is a loss of moral standing - a loss of reputation. The United States is held to a higher standard. I agree. People do that with heroes. And that status is critically important. The reputation that the US has had for not going so far is a large part of its real world power. Military might will not keep us safe if we lose that edge. I mean what if the next time the Taleban dropped a nuke instead of flying planes.
The US has been insulated for a long time. I rather suspect that it was the reputation the US had as a place that wasn't like all the rest that provided that buffer so rudely ripped on 9/11.

My view (and it is only that, a reflection of my vantage point and what I tend to see as I look out), is that the U.S. made a mistake in deciding to "work the dark side" after 9/11, for the basic reasons you state. I also find that, while I tend to downplay slippery slope arguments in other situations, saying we are going to be able to use so-called harsh interrogation only in certain cases of a certain magnitude wories me. Once we let this genie out, I think there could be trouble. For instance, what good rationale would we have for not also authorizing domestic law enforcement to use such techniques, which now are strictly illegal? Couldn't a citizen suspect be said to possess such critical, life-saving information as easily as could a suspected foreign terrorist? It surprises me a little, further, that so many people are wanting to use an emotional argument to direct our national policy. I refer to the "what would you decide if you could save the life of your child?" argument. Well, we don't make national policy on this personal basis, do we? This is also an artificial, hypothetical situation of little real-world value.

As Hitchens said in his article, the difference between our soldiers being waterboarded by fellow soldiers in order to know what waterboarding is like if done to them by adversaries, vs. applying these techniques to enemies in imitation of those enemies--is a significant and chilling one.

[Frank 013]

I will say this about waterboarding… people do not voluntarily go to get tortured as several of the American media have in the case of waterboarding. Some even asked to go a second time…

You do not see the media asking to have electrodes attached to their testicles, or to have their finger nails torn off with pliers, or to have holes drilled into their eyeballs…

While waterboarding does fit the current description of torture it only applies because of the word “discomfort”. And most of the people we fight against find it only mildly inconvenient. It only works on these people when combined with sleep deprivation and it requires repeated attempts. In fact most of the Muslim world sees it as one of our biggest weaknesses and only complain about being “tortured” by Americans to sully our reputation both at home and abroad.

The sad part is that it seems to be working…

They do this while committing the worst of atrocities including (real) torture, purposeful murder of innocents and public beheadings.

The Geneva Convention does not protect groups that do not adhere to it.

We can take the high road as president Obama plans, but it does weaken our information gathering ability and put our citizens at greater risk… how much risk is unknown, but like Gem said, attitudes change when it’s your loved ones that live in the city that is targeted next.

So in my opinion waterboarding is torture by our weak American standards, but it is an acceptable level of discomfort to apply to high level detainees who are likely to have good Intel that can be confirmed once revealed.

Later

[DWill]

I think that is a very well presented view. I wonder, though, Frank, if as someone who works in domestic law enforcement, whether you could comment on the possible use of waterboarding or other "harsh" techniques by police, FBI, etc. on American citizens. Is it a logical extension, at least, of allowing it on the international side? And would you favor that extension? I'm thinking that it would be pretty unusual to find examples of countries who restrict less-humane interrogation methods to foreign combatants. It woulbe likely that such techniques would be used in both spheres if used at all.

[Frank 013]

DWill
I think that is a very well presented view. I wonder, though, Frank, if as someone who works in domestic law enforcement, whether you could comment on the possible use of waterboarding or other "harsh" techniques by police, FBI, etc. on American citizens. Is it a logical extension, at least, of allowing it on the international side? And would you favor that extension? I'm thinking that it would be pretty unusual to find examples of countries who restrict less-humane interrogation methods to foreign combatants. It would be likely that such techniques would be used in both spheres if used at all.

Well we have been waderboarding international terrorists for years now and those techniques (as far as I know) have not reached into the domestic arena, allowing its use on American citizens.

Nor do I think our citizens would allow such methods… look at all the fuss being made over the discomfort being applied to some very evil individuals, people who planned and carried out mass murder on thousands of innocent Americans.

We have separate laws for captured foreigners who plan to, or have committed violence against our nation; and we have domestic laws for citizens of the US.

Many of the international laws (including those regarding the treatment of prisoners) are laid out in the Geneva Convention, which as I mentioned before does not protect those who actively violate it.

I think it possible to keep international law and domestic law separate, and I think we should keep them separate.

Later

[johnson1010]

This is a behavioral study.

If you are being tortured and your jailers want to know the whereabouts of your friends and allies to do the same to them, I'm sure you would hold out as long as you could against them to try to spare your friends from the very fiends who are torturing you.

How long you hold out may be a different question. Maybe ten seconds, maybe to your death. But you will fight them. fight them with all you have. and your hatred of them would grow with every second. Your friends and allies, knowing the horrible use they put your body to, would hate them as well. They would rally others to your common cause and seek to destroy these people who value your life so little.

The tale of your capture and torture would be used to incite further outrage within those who previously had no quarrel with your enemies, and the nightmares it sowed in your children would be the coal that fires their loathing.

And what if you really dont know anything? What if you have no one to protect? You would admit to anything they demanded to know from you at once to stop further abuse. of course this might mean they think you know more than you are letting on, and put you through worse to get more from you. You might confess to being Lorena Bobbit if they would just stop.

On the other hand, there is dissent and subversion. This is a much better tactic to gain lintel from captives. Befriend them. Make them believe you are working to help them, and through helping them, you are able to help your friends. Tell them how they have been so cruelly used by their superiors, and how valuable they would really be if they were used to their potential.

Tell them of the atrocities their employers had caused. Show them how the lives of their generation have been wasted over petty squabbles. tell them that they will be granted protection for their co-operation, and that the people they rat out will be given the same lee-way, as it is the guys higher up, the ones who never strap on a dynamite vest, or aim an AK-47 that are the ultimate goals. Tell them you are their best friend in the world. the only one who cares about them now that they are trapped in this prison, and the only one who can undo the knots that bind them.

Like training a dog, you reward them with small meaningless treats. They want to believe you. They want to be free. You aren't going to hurt those that they turn over to you, after all, they were all just being used by the big wigs.

If you do that you get them to WANT to help you. To WANT to bring down their former employers.

[Frank 013]

First of all the befriending thing simply does not work with people who view you as less than dog poop. And they often take far too much time if and when they do work. Captives often pretend to go along with interrogators for a while to give their real friends time to relocate and begin killing our forces anew.

Much of the information we gain from harsh interrogation is time sensitive and confirmable… we do not have time to make friends and we do not ask leading questions or ask for information that cannot be confirmed. That is wasted effort because as you said when enough pain is introduced a person will confess to anything.

Besides there is a simple answer to the torture problem… if the participants in a war don’t want to have their people tortured they can honor the Geneva Convention. That’s all it takes and that’s the way it is supposed to work… the incentive to honor the rules of war is that no one else has to if you don’t.

By giving credit to those without honor we weaken the contract… the world should be saying "if the terrorists will not honor the agreement then they have no reason to bitch when it is not honored in their favor."

Stop targeting civilians, stop torturing and killing captives, stop throwing grenades into buildings filled with hostages when abandoning a position, stop using schools and hospitals and children as shields… the list goes on.

Like it or not many lives have been saved by those harsher techniques, it is a matter of record that they work.

The morality of the effort can still be questioned though, but in my opinion innocent lives trump the discomfort of a small number of evil men.

Later

[Frank 013]

One more thing… before 9-11 we had the smallest contingent of military forces in the Arab world in decades… it would have continued to dwindle had the unprovoked attack on the towers not happened. It is clear that many of the most violent extremists in that part of the world hate us no matter what we do.

In fact from what I know of those people (and I have met many in Desert Storm) they consider us weak and actually have less respect for us because we will often times not resort to their tactics.

They laugh at our interrogation techniques (yes even the “harsh” ones) and tell us that we can never win a war or earn respect in their world without “getting some balls and doing what needs to be done”.

The extremists consider us lower than dogs and want to kill us plain and simple, they will not become our friends but they will use that angle to get a better position for themselves to trick or attack us.

The methods you speak of above do work on people within a similar culture where a certain level of equality is standard, but the people we are currently dealing with do not consider us equals.

Later

[DWill]

When you go looking for information and opinion on these harsh techniques, it seems there is relative clarity on what techniques are used and that they are used in a carefully controlled way. There is somewhat less clarity on how often we have used them during the post-9/11 period. There is no clarity at all on whether cruel techniques are compatible with our values or whether they yield good information and valid confessions. It's not hard to find CIA and military who line up opposed to harsh interrogation, which shows that it is not just naive civilians wanting to avoid unpleasantness who believe we shouldn't go along with harsh interrogation. The opinions are all over the place. One thing that seems clear, though, is that official sanction for waterboarding or other harsh techniques didn't exist before 9/11. The use represents a sharp turn in U.S policy.

Here is a description of the methods that have been appproved for use by the CIA or military.

1.The Attention Grab: The interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt front of the prisoner and shakes him.

2. Attention Slap: An open-handed slap aimed at causing pain and triggering fear.

3. The Belly Slap: A hard open-handed slap to the stomach. The aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury. Doctors consulted advised against using a punch, which could cause lasting internal damage.

4. Long Time Standing: This technique is described as among the most effective. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding confessions.

5. The Cold Cell: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water. (One prisoner is noted to have died of hypothermia resulting from cold treatment used by an inexperienced officer.)


6. Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation ... id=1322866