Does Torture Work?

Or, as the Washington Post frames it, Effectiveness of Harsh Questioning is Unclear. Framing words is just a way of slanting the view of something. I call it torture, WaPo calls it harsh questioning. The Post begins with:

During his first days in detention, senior al-Qaeda operative Khalid Sheik Mohammed was stripped of his clothes, beaten, given a forced enema and shackled with his arms chained above his head, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. It was then, a Red Cross report says, that his American captors told him to prepare for "a hard time."

One needs to resist the temptation to torture just because he is rather ugly, maybe even mean looking. The real questions for me are (1) should the United States use torture as a policy; (2) does torture produce relevant reliable evidence; and (3) is it moral?

Over the next 25 days, beginning on March 6, 2003, Mohammed was put through a routine in which he was deprived of sleep, doused with cold water and had his head repeatedly slammed into a plywood wall, according to the report. The interrogation also included days of extensive waterboarding, a technique that simulates drowning.

Somewhere along the line the Post says Mohammad began talking. Former vice-president Cheney says the information Mohammad resulted in the takedown of al-Qaeda plots.

Cheney, to me, is about as credible as Mohammad. “Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times during his first four weeks in a CIA secret prison.” I may well have started singing within an hour of my captivity. I don’t handle pain all that well. I’d cop a confession to first degree murder to keep my fingernails in my fingers.

At the time, there was little or no dissent, including from congressional Democrats who were briefed on the program, according to former intelligence officials. Doesn’t speak well for those Democrats.

“Two former high-ranking officials with access to secret information said the interrogations yielded details of al-Qaeda’s operations that resulted in the identification of previously unknown suspects, preventing future attacks.” So, in police talk, Mohammad rolled over onto some of his colleagues. He sang like a pigeon.

However, the fact of the matter is there has been specific information or evidence that has been presented as to the truth inherent in whatever Mohammad said. The statement by those “two former high-ranking officials” conclusion that some unknown “suspects” were divulged which prevented future attacks is simply their conclusion or opinion. Whomever Mohammad rolled over on are even termed “suspects” by those two officials.

There is a glaring lack of recitation of compelling concrete evidence of anything that would permit a jury, under American jurisprudence, to return a guilty of verdict based on evidence that proves guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty.

That evidence may well exist, but I’ve not seen any of it presented in a public forum. Unless Mohammad’s statement is somehow corroborated by independent evidence it is difficult for me to accept it on face value presented by hearsay declarants.

One of the primary arguments against the techniques used by the Bush Administration is whether traditional interrogation techniques would have revealed the same information without the use of torture. No one knows, because apparently, no traditional techniques were tried. We’re likely never to know.

"The systematic, calculated infliction of this scale of prolonged torment is immoral, debasing the perpetrators and the captives," said Philip D. Zelikow, a political counselor to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who reviewed secret Bush administration reports about the program in 2005. "Second, forfeiting our high ground, the practices also alienate needed allies in the common fight, even allies within our own government. Third, the gains are dubious when the alternatives are searchingly compared. And then, after all, there is still the law."

Zelikow seems to agree with my conclusion. Torture is immoral. For the United States to have used it means the United States acted immorally. How can a so-called Christian nation do that? One might compare what the Bush Administration did with the torturous crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Wonder how the religious evangelical right views all this? Does Pat Robertson condone it? Who knows?

It is unclear from unclassified reports whether the information gained was critical in foiling actual plots.

says the Post. So we don’t even know for sure whether anything valuable was actually gained from the torture of Mohammad.

Mohammed later told outside interviewers that he was "forced to invent in order to make the ill-treatment stop" and that he "wasted a lot of their time [with] several false red-alerts being placed in the U.S.," according to the Red Cross, whose officials interviewed Mohammed and other detainees after they were transferred to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in September 2006.

Maybe it is because of my own training in Constitutional Law and my 28 years in criminal law as a prosecutor and then defense attorney that I cannot condone torture. I have always hoped that Americans are more moral.

I still think that those that promulgated the torture should be criminally charged and tried in a court of law, national or internationally. I think the people of the world ought to see the evidence of guilt.

Related posts:

1. The Great Torture Cover-up?
2. Senator Ensign on Torture
3. Cheney defends torture policy
4. Cheney protecting the “little guys” from torture investigation
5. Kristoff independent commission to look into torture