The torture question
Torture
John McCain has spoken ex cathedra on the subject of torture on Fox News.
WALLACE: How would you fight the War on Terror differently than it’s being fought now?
J. MCCAIN: I would probably announce the closing of Guantanamo Bay. I would move those detainees to Fort Leavenworth. I would announce we will not torture anyone.
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We cannot torture people and maintain our moral superiority in the world.
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WALLACE: Senator, you talked about torture. Former CIA Director Tenet now says that the intelligence that they got from harsh interrogation techniques against some of these big Al Qaida types, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — the intelligence they got from them using, reportedly, things like water-boarding, extreme temperatures, was more valuable than all the other CIA and FBI programs.Were you wrong? I mean, this is the CIA, former CIA director, saying this. Were you wrong to limit what CIA interrogators could do?
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WALLACE: But when George Tenet says…J. MCCAIN: I don’t care what George Tenet says. I know what’s right. I know what’s morally right as far as America’s behavior.
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WALLACE: … when George Tenet says we saved live through some of these techniques…J. MCCAIN: I don’t accept it. I don’t accept that fundamental thesis, because it’s never worked throughout history…..
In other words, don’t confuse me with facts, I know I’m right.
This issue came to my attention a couple of years ago when someone called my attention to comments by one Terry Karney, an interrogator with the U.S. army. His thesis was that torture is always wrong, and furthermore, torture doesn’t work.
(now, those who read this regularly will know my stand on the use of torture… suffice it to say, because I can’t let it pass; and the energy to fulminate on this is taxing, and I slept poorly, my back hurts, the sun was in my eyes and I lost the ball in the lights, that I hate it, with a passion deep and abiding. With so strong, and visceral a reaction that I want to hurt people who say it’s useful much less those who try to argue needful),
(link)
He has other hysterical rants, including one in which he declares people who voted in favor of coercive interrogation to be “breaking faith” , and declaring Bill Clinton “damned” because he “bought into” the possibility that extreme methods might be needed in interrogations..
I can accept statements like “torture is so evil, no good we can obtain from it would redeem it”. I can accept that he considers torture so immoral that it’s a deal-breaker for an otherwise acceptable candidate.
What I can’t accept is the blanket doctrinal statement that “torture doesn’t work”. I’ve seen news pieces that show torture does, indeed, work. Bill O’Reilly interviewed Brian Ross of ABC News, and got him to admit that torture had, in fact, produced usable information from captured terrorists. Last week, there was an article in the New York Times about how Iraqi police were beating captured “insurgents” to obtain information, and this had led to the discovery of facilities where people were making IEDs.
If that’s not “working”, we need another definition of the term. Unfortunately, examples like this don’t seem to make any impact on those who claim “torture doesn’t work” as an article of faith.
One of the arguments presented by the “torture doesn’t work” acolytes is that under torture, a prisoner will tell the interrogator exactly what he wants to hear. Andy McCarthy addresses this at The Corner at National Review Online:
…it is just plain bluster to argue, as McCain continues to insist, that coercion never works and he doesn’t care what anyone else says. As his answer on the ticking-bomb demonstrates, even he doesn’t believe that.
Common sense tells us it is preposterous to claim that an interrogee will always just tell his interrogator whatever the latter wants to hear. That claim might have some validity if the purpose of interrogation was to wrangle a confession to be used in some sort of show-trial. But the point of interrogation for intelligence purposes is to find out what is going on, not to fix blame. Usually, the interrogator won’t know what he wants to hear, and will be asking open-ended questions. The interrogee will have no way of knowing the “right” answer; if he does not resist, his choice will be to provide true information or false information, and sorting that out is a matter of corroboration.
Sometimes the information will, indeed, be false — just as criminals who testify in exchange for leniency sometimes provide false information because they know the value of their cooperation to prosecutors (which determines how much leniency they get) calls for them to inculpate other people. But very often, the information from such criminals proves to be true. That, of course, is why we permit the government to offer incentives (like generous plea deals, money, relocation, etc.) to get people to cooperate. Our experience tells us that just because people have an incentive to lie — even a powerful one — does not mean the information they provide will be false. Often it is true. That is not an argument for widely permitting coercive interrogation; but it does underscore that McCain and others should stop making the silly claim that coercion never works.
Alas, it’s not a matter of common sense. It’s a matter of religious dogma. Those who oppose torture, or even coercive interrogation, no matter what, are not doing so because doesn’t work. That’s a convenient claim they make to bolster their case. Their opposition to coercive techniques is based entirely on their own sense of moral outrage, and anchored in their faith that they are on the side of good, right, justice, and morality.
The claim that “torture doesn’t work” is a red flag. True Believers will ignore any facts that get in the way of their absolutist moral statements.
Another red flag is that many of these True Believers only object to “torture” if it’s being carried out by the current administration. But that’s another topic.
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Stumble It!
Aggressive interrogation techniques do indead work just fine. Ask anybody who has been to any of the Military Service SERE (survival escape resistance evasion) schools.
Its well known that all of the Arab countries use the methodology effectively – and more to the point, the CIA would have never resorted to “extraordinary rendition” if the technique was useless.
In fact, back in the bad old days with the CIA was teaching torture at the School of the Americas – see Kubark interrogation – the primary argument against torture was that it could create A) lazy interrogators (that don’t get all the information) or B) Sadists. Nothing mentioned about lack of effectiveness.
I’ve seen McCain repeat what a number of opponents have said, in that if you torture somebody they will just tell you what you want to hear. That is a possible outcome, but any interrogator with decent training will eliminate this outcome by good use of repeat and control questions.
What I find the most ironic about the entire subject is the “morality” argument. You can maim people for life with explosives (overblast from explosives, ruptures eyeballs, lungs, ear drums – not including what shrapnel does), shoot people half a dozen times and not kill them (because 5.56mm is a really awful weapon, not known for having a lot of knock down power outside of targets bigger than squirrels), blow arms and legs off…etc, etc… and this is “morale” – but putting a pair of panties on somebody’s head is “immoral.”
War is an ugly, brutal business. It should never be resorted to lightly. However, if you are going to engage in war, then you need to do what needs to be done to kill the most enemy, and save as many of your own people as you can.