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Busting the Torture Myths
President Obama and his advisers have reacted to these disclosures through a series of unconvincing gyrations. It is clear that Obama’s principal concern throughout this process has been that the controversy surrounding torture will prove a distraction that might encumber his efforts to push through an ambitious agenda including financial-industry reform, bailouts, health-care reform, and an array of foreign-policy initiatives. His steps have been ham-handed. On the question of possible prosecutions, Obama went to the CIA to deliver public assurances that no intelligence officers who relied on government legal opinions would be investigated or prosecuted for what they did. Shortly thereafter, his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel and press secretary, Robert Gibbs, announced that there would be no prosecution of legal memo writers or policymakers either—steps violating clear-cut rules about the involvement of White House political figures in criminal-justice matters. The White House was forced to pull back the next day, insisting that the Justice Department would handle these questions.
Obama insists America must “look forward.” He views the torture question as resolved by a series of orders he issued coming into office. But Cheney and Rove suggest another idea. It’s clear that in their view America is just one more 9/11 attack away from a transformation in which their use of the “dark arts” will again carry popular endorsement and provide a powerful wedge issue to use against Obama. Obama’s optimism about closure on the torture issue may therefore be seriously misplaced.
Scott Horton is a law professor and writer on legal and national-security affairs for Harper's magazine and The American Lawyer, among other publications.
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Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
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Martin Jacques is the cofounder of the UK think tank Demos, writes a regular column for The Guardian, and is a visiting research fellow at the London School of Economics Asia Research Centre. His new book, When China Rules the World, is available now.
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Christopher Buckley's books include Supreme Courtship, The White House Mess, Thank You for Smoking, Little Green Men, and Florence of Arabia. He was chief speechwriter for Vice President George H.W. Bush, and is editor-at-large of ForbesLife magazine. His new book is Losing Mum and Pup, a memoir. Buckley's Daily Beast column is the winner of an Online Journalism Award in the category of Online Commentary.
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Scott Horton is a law professor and writer on legal and national security affairs for Harper's Magazine and The American Lawyer, among other publications.
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Scott Horton is a law professor and writer on legal and national security affairs for Harper's Magazine and The American Lawyer, among other publications.
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Scott Horton is a law professor and writer on legal and national security affairs for Harper's Magazine and The American Lawyer, among other publications.
The reality is what was done was torture. The other reality is the Bush Administration (including George and Dick) are a bunch of criminals.
MimiG1945...In Reality...unless your community or family is in the BULLS EYE...YOU will never understand the responsibility and tough decisions that need to be made IN THE BIG PICTURE.
You would have a complete different perception.
I won't worry about you and all those who would want me to do nothing to those ready to KILL you . Got it.
lovefreedom?
Really? PROVE ONE terrorist attack that was thwarted because of torture......
What makes a country GREAT is how it reacts in its most serious time of crisis, we failed BIG. Torture is ILLEGAL, IMORAL and UN AMERICAN, do you understand this?
Save the romantic BULLS^&%T about how Bush had to make "Tough" decisions, like the one to invade Iraq?. When we took our eye off the country that ACTUALLY protected those who ACTUALLY attacked us?. Now the Taliban have regrouped in Pakistan and Afganistan, how safe does that make you feel?. How many more "Terrorists" have we created by pissing off MORE PEOPLE?.
Your party made a mess, now steps aside and let someone else try to clean it up:
How many inocent people have we turtured that now want to kill us? ( and rightfully so).
The tough decision is to take the moral high ground. By torturing these people and detaining them without charge, some of whom were innocent at least one of whom was a child who has grown into an adult, we have simply created more terrorists.
Not only has this been a requirement tool for our enemies, but now there are people in Gitmo who may have been ambivalent before they were captured and are now enraged at the US for the years they've lost and the horrors they've been put through.
The big picture fact is that by doing these things there are now more people in the world who want to kill us than there were before. If you have family in the service then that means there are more people with guns shooting at them.
Love Freedom?
Ah yes, the freedom to lay waste to the constitution, the freedom to wage an illegal war. The freedom to question the patriotism of anyone who disagrees with out. The freedom to deny science, the freedom to open a terrorist school in Cuba. It's good to be an American.
Oh, Please!!!
muddog, can you prove that it did not prevent a terrorist attack. I mean, we have not had any here since 9/11, but please prove to us that none have been conceived, planned, or attempted since then.
My guess is you may also argue that the atomic bomb did not need to be dropped on Japan.. How can anyone prove something based on what they think would have happened in an alternative universe.
Apparently there were plenty of people that hated us to have 9/11 occur in the first place, and Bill Clinton had been our illustreous leader for the eight years prior.
So, muddog, how would you have made our country safer in your alternative universe? Please do tell. Oh, and make sure you can PROVE IT.
I really don't feel bad for the guys that got tortured. If you are in the business of killing innocent people, getting tortured should be considered a cost of doing business. I'm sure some of these guys got caught up in this and were actually innocent, but hey, nobodies perfect, especially the Federal Government. GET EM!
theoPitt: It's very clear that the burden of proof is actually on you, as you are the one making up facts. There is no evidence that torture prevented any attacks or saved a single life. The past administration would leak information quite regularly when it served its interests (and sometimes not), so if there was any evidence of torture being useful, which according to this article they were trying very hard to find, it would be out in the open.
You would have proof, if proof existed. It's becoming more and more apparent that torture achieved nothing and hurt us gravely.
Abu Ghraib caused massive, sometimes violent protests in Iraq, and now it's clear that it wasn't the result of a few bad apples but rather the result of orders from Cheney's office. If people in Iraq were willing to go to the streets and risk being blown up by IED's to protest, imagine how pissed off they were in private, and how many of them went on to join clandestine organizations that killed our troops and other innocent people.
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The reality is that YOU are the one living in a dream world. I can't wait for a "Truth Commission" so we can hear EVERYTHING about the interrogations, and not just selective bits and pieces; e.g., the fact that Democrats were on board for harsh methods, including Pelosi.
It is so easy to look back now after 9/11 and say, "Keep to the high moral ground." I'll guarantee you that if there is another attack that kills any of my loved ones, I won't just blame terrorists, I'll blame people like YOU. Pompous ass.
rsbsailm, you idiot! if we have another attack that kills your loved ones, you can blame our baseless invasion of Iraq and torture of detainees. Understand?
---and you can also blame Benjamin Franklin (remember him?). He said that whoever gives up civil freedoms to gain a little security deserves neither.
The possibility of our nation being attacked again does NOT mean that the United States of America should abandon its moral platform. Yes, there are a number of morally expedient types out there, but they are not "real" Americans.
rsbsail: I'm opposed to all torture. There is never a justification for it. And if there is another 9/11 attack and _all_ your loved ones are killed, you can go right ahead and blame me. In fact, you can blame _only_ me. And I too may be a pompous ass, but you're simply an ass.
I believe the major point that is not getting much attention is not whether or not torture was OK but was torture to produce false results to justify an unjust war OK. It is my guess that even the most extreme of cheney / bush supporters couldn't go along with this...
The Peggy Noonan approach (just walk on by and avert your eyes) has some appeal, but the enduring problem is that the oath of office of virtually every official in government is " ... to faithfully execute the law ..." It doesn't say obey and prosecute the laws that are convenient or the law du jour. The oath is to execute the law.
It may be politically inconvenient. One may disagree with the law. One may think that there is an asymmetry to our loyalty to the rule of law and the approach of other regimes, but until someone can tell me how we can square our claim that we are governed by "the rule of law" with the concept of ignoring what seems to be a clear and systematic violation of the law by our top officials, we have to suffer the consequences of prosecuting the Bush administration officials who brought about this approach.
This is a litmus test for Obama and for the country as a whole. It would have been convenient to ignore Watergate, and despite a valiant effort by the Washington establishment, including the press corps, to ignore the event during the '72 election, eventually we did determine what happened and prosecuted the guilty parties. How can we do any less now?
Prosecution is the only way to clear our name. We are a country defined law and morality. The law has been broken through a series of shady and conniving attempts to make the amoral appear just and our national soul has been tarnished in the process.
By stooping to these means we have turned the villains into martyrs and have taken the role of the oppressive and evil power they would have us appear to be. We have played into their hands. We must find the truth, we must set a precedent, we must prosecute.
Uberjeff...I am Happy you or I were probably not around during WWII...As an avid reader of History...many things were done and had to be done that would upset your sensibilities.
Give me those that would have needed to make those gut wrenching decisions then. At that TIME we had a more visible enemy,easier to defeat in some ways. Today, they are covert guerrilla terrorists wether you want to deaL WITH IT OR NOT...ITS REALITY. And like they say Reality Bites.
I have MORE TRUST in those willing to do what it takes with these kind of people....but of course to you, they are as evil as the true EVIL ONES.
One of the thingss that was done around WWII was the United States prosecuting and convciting Japanese for torture, namely waterboarding. If you believe we can prosecute others for doing the same things we do, you are a hypocrite.
Lovefreedom,
Are you honestly suggesting that morals in WWII are sufficient for today's standards? Society develops. Thank god. Otherwise, we would still have segregated schools (and if you're okay with that, then you really aren't worth anyone here's time anyway)
Here's some history for you. When the Japanese water-boarded Americans in WWII we had them executed.
When we held Japanese American citizen, US citizens by all rights, in detention centers without cause it tarnished our image and took us decades to formally apologize and remove the stain.
In Vietnam when a group of US soldiers were found to have water-boarded what could be called enemy combatants by todays ambiguous standards, those soldiers were court-marshaled.
The US, despite moments of short sighted weakness, has always set an official policy against torture and unlawful detention for a number of reasons. Chief among them is that it makes countries like North Korea and Iran feel they now have the moral authority to do the same. i.e. 3 US citizens, 1 in Iran and 2 in North Korea, being held on trumped up espionage charges. When probed, North Korea cited Gitmo as an excuse to hold them without charge.
The idea that this is more effective than alternative methods is also a joke, although any efficacy is outweighed by the corruption of our morality and image it causes. Piles of experts warned ahead of time and have come out now warning that these techniques can sometimes offer tidbits of knowledge up front but that prolonged use offers nothing but junk as they say whatever they think will make the torture stop. In the meantime, any rapport based interrogation methods have been completely broken off as any sense of trust is destroyed.
People like KSM have given up their human rights by way of the things they've done and deserve life imprisonment or execution. However, what Bush and Cheney have created wasn't justice and it wasn't an effective means of gathering intel. It was revenge, catharsis, cold hearted and illegal.
lovefreedom.
I suggest you enlist, go abroad, torture, kill etc, if you are too old to enlist then head over to Black Water International, they torture, get paid big bucks ( thanks to US Tax payers) and you can see 1st hand how well your view holds up. They are under investigation for lots of REALLY bad things, so they sound like your type of organization.
I ask AGAIN, show me ONE TERRORIST attack that has been thwarted because of torture....
WW11 is why we have the Geneva Convention you fool... What history books are reading?. Undoubtedly revisionist history..
Oh, Please!!!
American Torture has been Al Queda's greatest recruitment gift. Who knows how many american servicemen and women have died because Chaney/Rumsfelt et all wanted to look tough.
Keep dreaming Dreamer, you must be insane. Comments like yours, with no back up whatsoever, adds to the idoit-crowd in the far left. I"ll let the 10,000 people saved by info taken from "torture" that busted the Brooklyen Bridge blow torch terrorist, given up by the infamous 911 conspirator. I wonder how many people would die in a world where your logic ruled?
If you actually read these memos and the reports on the so-called "attacks" that were prevented you would find two important things:
1: Most of the useful information from guys like KSM was gathered before the torture began and most of the information gathered after the torture was junk and resulted in wasted resources as they attempted to tracked them down.
2: These "plots" or "attacks" that were supposedly averted were so pathetically planned they couldn't have succeeded anyway.
torure was so effective they did it 138 times, and still didn't get the whereabouts of Osam Bin Laden.
!Duhooo!
That must have been the one question they forgot to ask............
Why is it that republicans believe what ever they are told, even after they are told the information they were given was a lie?
Rico192... you want back-up on Dreamer's comments? Here you go:
"It's unacceptable. It's unacceptable. One is too much. Waterboarding is torture, period. I can ensure you that once enough physical pain is inflicted on someone, they will tell that interrogator whatever they think they want to hear. And most importantly, it serves as a great propaganda tool for those who recruit people to fight against us... The image of the United States of America throughout the world is a recruiting tool for Islamic extremists."
- John McCain, April 20, 2009.
Now if you don't mind, I think I'll take Senator McCain's word for it over yours.
And how about
This one-
"... there is no place for abuse in what must be considered the family of man. There is no place for torture and arbitrary detention. There is no place for forced confessions.
The roots of American rule of law go back more than 700 years, to the signing of the Magna Carta. The foundation of American values, therefore, is not a passing priority or a temporary trend."
Newt Gingrich OCTOBER 30, 1997
Everyone is so tied up in using 'torture' as a political battering ram that they ignore the obvious nonsense in their assertions which essentially come down to this: "concern for human rights consumes radical Muslims' every thought and action, and is manifested by their willingness to join Al Quaeda".
Uhhh, what?
We certainly know that the following doesn't motivate them, right?:
1. equal rights for women
2. a belief that Jesus was the true prophet
3. BLTs
4. editorial cartoons
5. the existence of Israel
But it's no surprise that a bunch of self-centered narcissists conflate their esoteric and euphemistic drivel with what 'the world' thinks. 'New Age Colonialists' is probably the most apt description I can come up with.
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Lets hope Mr Norton's family is never caught in an OBL style attack that could have been prevented !!
I seem to remember 3,000 innocents getting caught in an OBL attack that the Bush Administration failed to prevent, so I'm not really sure I'm getting whatever in the hell point you were trying to make.
Not hard to understand, but you probably voted for obama !!
Oh wow you sure got him Dave, he voted for one of the two viable candidates, and apparently made the wrong choice in your eyes. That invalidates everything he says... in the eyes of a die-hard minority within less than 49% of the country.
Rove and Cheney are clearly counting on some sort of attack to vindicate their poor decisions. The far right in general is hoping for an epic failure of some sort for the Obama administration to justify their continued existence. All seem to be depravedly indifferent to the fact any failure on this administrations part or attack on the country will undoubtedly cost American lives. The very lives they purport to cherish and claimed to have saved through their twisted actions. Rove, Cheney and their disciples are nothing more than self-serving supporters of an arcane cast society bent on maintaining "their" way of life.
Thanks for this article.
If you want to have an honest debate about what torture is fine, but this BS.
the administration had intel that would have prevented 9-11, but chose to ignore that.
But they wanted to manufacture a link between 9-11 and Iraq, as they had long before decided they "needed" to go there.
Love freedom ---
Do you suggest anything goes in wartime? Would you approve of threats to a man's wife, parents, children to make him talk?
The Nazi Party used this tactic. In fact did more than threatened.
Torture is abhorent period. Only a 'sick' person would do it, or support it.
I agree with Michelle Bachman.
She wanted investigations of Congress to find out who was Anti-American.
Let's do it.
It seems as though some in the Congress and a former Vice President of America believe it is ok to torture prisoners.
That is one of the most Anti-American things I have ever heard of.
I find this chilling. You must be too young to remember McCarthy and the House UnAmerican Activities Committee and the many hundreds of lives they ruined. Investigations of illegal activities is one thing; interrogating people to see if they fit someone's definition of American is about as anti-American as you can get.
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This comment has been removed by The Daily Beast's editors.
Primercord and all those Americans that have commented on this article and my opinions....might be interested to know...I am a PROUD American CITIZEN who was born in CUBA. My Father was a POLITICAL PRISONER, I can tell you, no one taught me better about what the- HIGH MORAL GROUND IS -and what sacrifices Freedom engenders.
Eisenhower said " I have one yardstick by which I test every major problem- and that yardstick is:Is it good for America"
You sir are a hypocrite.... Your father was a political prisoner and you SUPPORT TOTURE?. Truly SICK....
muddog...Why would you assume I am a Man...I am a Lady, a TRAUMA SURGEON for a HUSBAND who trained where they train the Medical UNITS that go to Iraq and Afghanistan and further more ,the Mother of two sons in College and with 2 Marines for Brothers in Law...who would call YOU SIR the HYPOCRITE.
I won't you sick but IGNORANT.
Oh, Please!!!
You see LoveFreedom, what we have is a bunch that measures everything by how it makes THEM feel, how it aligns with THEIR esoteric and lofty ideals, and how it reflects on THEM when they vacation in Tuscany, Majorca, etc., and have to endure the ubiquitous finger-wag and clucking tongue from one of our so-called 'allies'
They never ask the simple question that matters: What did we get from the 'world' when we were good little lapdogs?I've asked that question for years, here and abroad, and have yet to have anyone offer a SINGLE, TANGIBLE benefit that our so-called "good" behavior (assumedly including Clinton-era renditions) has brought us.
So they lecture and hector about how they are the true defenders of freedom, evidenced of course by the sheer number of posts they can generate on TDB.
These myths are not claims I've seen made. They are embellished to make the author's point.
The issue that will be determined is whether we are a banana republic that supports madmen in government or one that would impeach Nixon if he did not resign.
Stay tuned, the real America must stand up for us to see which it is:
http://blogdredd.blogspot.com/2009/04/torturing-of-america.html
This is not about the rule of law, this is about the suppression of opinion. Shout down any reasonable discussion with words like Nazi and Fascist and everyone that disagrees with our side should go to jail. This is getting very scary, people. If this is really about the rule of law, I want FDR and Lincoln put on trial also. Their crimes during war were much, much more serious.
Perhaps Obama, ever the poker player, knew that when he played this card, events would take their course regardless of his stated desire to "move on". Maybe he knew before he released the memos that their content would make it impossible not to pursue the law. An added bonus: Cheney, Rove, and their ilk go on the air and make a public spectacle of themselves.
I really can't believe that the president thought you could reveal illegality which pales Watergate -- and then expect the organs of government charged with maintaining the law to do nothing.
Another brilliant ploy.
I think you've got it.
I bet he's pretty good at chess, too. He's always a few moves ahead of the competition -- a genius politician.
Check mate, kids. And political capital still in the bank. Nice.
The most chilling aspect of this is the idea that the clock is ticking, another 9/11 attack is in the wings, and that when it occurs, the GOP will cry "We told you so," and bury the torture issue and the Democratic party. Run down the president, advertise US "weakness" to embolden terrorists...then sit and wait. This is moving out of the GOP strategy universe into ...the treason universe.
Why is it that Dick Cheney cannot take responsibility for his beliefs, since he seems so all-fired sure they are right? I never hear people like him state that they are prepared to suffer any consequences for their actions. If they are so morally pure they should be prepared to back up their beliefs.
Bob Baer ( Ex CIA ) author of " The Devil you know " was tortured & has studied it for years.He claims it never works.No information gained by torture saved lives, or they would have released the information to back up their excuse for using torture.
The CIA destroyed approx 90 files ( I wonder why? )
All this does is give the extremists the propaganda to recruit.
I told my skeptical friends during the Abu Gharib expositions that it appeared to me that Bush/Cheney was using torture to get enemy combatants to lie about the non-existent connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein to justify the Iraq invasion since WMD has been exposed as bogus. That Guantanamo was a key and Rumsfeld was ass deep in the construction and the approval of tourture methods. The same goes for the OLC lawyers.
I rest my case.
Despite all reasons to refrain, we must go forward at the truth and never, never rule out prosecution. Our very constitutional system is at stake. If a law is broken, it is broken and as Powell says, you own it. It does not matter which citizen broke the law. The idea that justice is blind must prevail.
I leave with one question for critics of seeing this through: If you are convinced that 'advanced interrogation techniques' are lawful, why all the cries to stop investigating?
Thank you.
Who's crying to stop the investigation? Regardless, the real issue here is that when the laws were written to outlaw water boarding, the authors could not have envisioned the unconventional methods our enemies would be using to realize their goal of seeing American blood flowing in our streets. We aren't dealing with your parent's or grandparent's enemies here however these laws were written by their contemporaries. Does anyone now really agree that pouring water on a hostile combatant to effectively obtain critical, life-saving information should be the same legal verb used in the beheading of a living captured journalist? By our outdated laws, they are both pegged as torture. (I've seen entertainers pay professionals to perform water boarding on them multiple times to prove that it is real torture, something I find funny because when I want to evoke the instinctual feeling of immanent death but fully knowing that I'll suffer no physical pain or long term psychological distress, I hop aboard a roller coaster). I understand that the law's the law but sometimes you need to do what's not legally amended YET to achieve the best results for the people if our goal is to keep our society safe and alive.Any informed citizen at the time would have undoubtedly volunteered to "break" the law and perhaps sacrifice their freedoms, serving time in prison or whatever, to do the right thing. E.G. Rosa Parks. We didn't have the luxury of time to change the law.Today looking back, as a society, we need to evaluate what to do with those who did the right thing, should we punish them for breaking the broken law or write this one off as an unforeseen anomaly and amend the laws to allow room for doing the right thing legally next time? I think Rosa would know.
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Who cares! One American is worth a million rag heads! Even the liberal ones.
The Ugly American speaks.
Thank you.
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