Long before Abu Ghraib, the short-lived ABC TV series “Threat Matrix” had an episode that went directly to the issue of interrogation techniques. Considered an enemy combatant, a French-Algerian man is detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Because the female FBI agent refuses to allow him to see a doctor while she is interrogating him, even after he tells her three times that he needs to see one, the man suffers a heart attack and dies.
I thought at the time that the episode was thought provoking and was dealing with questions that needed to be answered. The techniques used on the prisoner; sleep deprivation, extended interrogation sessions, making the prisoner stand for very long periods of time, cutting food rations, and the like are at the heart of the debate today on “torture” of detainees at Gitmo. Remember, this was aired months before Abu Ghraib became a cause celebre . It turns out that the FBI agent is arrested and charged with second degree murder. The jury acquits her after information gleaned from the interrogation heads off an assassination attempt that prevents war in the middle east.
In her summation, the defense attorney tells the jury that “this is the price we’re paying to be safe.” The acquittal, to me, seemed logical. And this brings us to the Gonzalez confirmation hearings, definitions of torture, and abuses of prisoners in the hands of the military.
Why must these techniques be used? Do they violate the Geneva Convention? Are terrorists POW’s? Why did the Administration seek to change the rules on how prisoners are treated?
Only the most partisan amongst us would dismiss these questions and simply say that the Bush Administration is evil and has committed war crimes. This is nuts. Leaving aside the frat house antics of the ill-disciplined rabble who were in charge at Abu Ghraib, what we have here is something that’s never happened before in the history of warfare; combatants with no allegiance to any country that we’re at war with who seek to do the US massive injury. And let’s not forget that these same combatants used our forbearance in interrogation techniques against us. This from City Journal:
Some of the al-Qaida fighters had received resistance training, which taught that Americans were strictly limited in how they could question prisoners. Failure to cooperate, the al-Qaida manuals revealed, carried no penalties and certainly no risk of torture—a sign, gloated the manuals, of American weakness.
Even if a prisoner had not previously studied American detention policies before arriving at Kandahar, he soon figured them out. “It became very clear very early on to the detainees that the Americans were just going to have them sit there,” recalls interrogator Joe Martin (a pseudonym). “They realized: ‘The Americans will give us our Holy Book, they’ll draw lines on the floor showing us where to pray, we’ll get three meals a day with fresh fruit, do Jazzercise with the guards, . . . we can wait them out.’ ” (HT: Instapundit)
In the meantime, our guys are at risk in the field. This is when the administration began looking at the problem in a new way. The “Gonzalez Memos” that have taken center stage at the confirmation hearings, if read closely, lead one to the conclusion that the Administration was groping in the dark, wrestling with the problem by looking at what was going on in real time on the ground in Afghanistan; not beholden to any prescribed or nebulous strictures listed in a nearly 100 year-old document with little relevance to fighting a war against murderous, stateless criminals. Especially since traditional interrogation methods simply weren’t working:
“Love of family” often had little purchase among the terrorists, however—as did love of life. “The jihadists would tell you, ‘I’ve divorced this life, I don’t care about my family,’ ” recalls an interrogator at Guantáname. “You couldn’t shame them.” The fierce hatred that the captives bore their captors heightened their resistance. The U.S. ambassador to Pakistan reported in January 2002 that prisoners in Kandahar would “shout epithets at their captors, including threats against the female relatives of the soldiers guarding them, knee marines in the groin, and say that they will escape and kill ‘more Americans and Jews.’ ” Such animosity continued in Guantánamo.
The “stress techniques” the Army came up with, were the least radical alternative available.
Many of the interrogators argued for a calibrated use of “stress techniques”—long interrogations that would cut into the detainees’ sleep schedules, for example, or making a prisoner kneel or stand, or aggressive questioning that would put a detainee on edge.
Joe Martin—a crack interrogator who discovered that a top al-Qaida leader, whom Pakistan claimed to have in custody, was still at large and directing the Afghani resistance—explains the psychological effect of stress: “LetÂ’s say a detainee comes into the interrogation booth and heÂ’s had resistance training. He knows that IÂ’m completely handcuffed and that I canÂ’t do anything to him. If I throw a temper tantrum, lift him onto his knees, and walk out, you can feel his uncertainty level rise dramatically. HeÂ’s been told: ‘They wonÂ’t physically touch you,Â’ and now you have. The point is not to beat him up but to introduce the reality into his mind that he doesnÂ’t know where your limit is.”
But is it torture?
Clearly, what happened at Abu Ghraib and perhaps to some extent at Gitmo, was an unforeseen consequence of higher-ups in the military chain of command putting pressure on interrogators to increase the flow of information that could be used on the battlefield. Did they specifically ask for or condone more extreme methods like electric shock or humiliating or degrading treatment of Muslims? This goes back to the stress techniques. Did they work?
Did the stress techniques work? Yes. “The harsher methods we used . . . the better information we got and the sooner we got it,” writes Mackey, who emphasizes that the methods never contravened the conventions or crossed over into torture…”
In effect, the interrogators were victims of their own success. The more information they got using these “harsher methods” the more the higher ups put pressure on them. It was, perhaps predictable (though not inevitable) that the entire interrogation process would get out of hand; especially when less disciplined National Guard troops became involved at Abu Ghraib.
So, how much blame should actually be assessed the Administration? Unhappily, the entire question has now been placed squarely in the sphere of partisan politics which makes any rational discussion of these very important issues impossible. It’s become a “gotcha” game where Democrats seek to undermine the war effort and the President’s authority by trying to pin the Abu Ghraib hijinks on the Administration. What appears to be a good faith, thoughtful effort on the part of lawyers at the White House and the Justice Department to come to grips with issues never faced by any civilized nation in history is being attacked as planning to torture the poor, hapless terrorists. This has become known as the “torture narrative:”
A master narrative—call it the “torture narrative”—sprang up: the government’s 2002 decision to deny Geneva-convention status to al-Qaida fighters, it held, “led directly to the abuse of detainees in Afghanistan and Iraq,” to quote the Washington Post. In particular, torturous interrogation methods, developed at Guantánamo Bay and Afghanistan in illegal disregard of Geneva protections, migrated to Abu Ghraib and were manifest in the abuse photos.
This storyÂ’s success depends on the readerÂ’s remaining ignorant of the actual interrogation techniques promulgated in the war on terror. Not only were they light years from real torture and hedged around with bureaucratic safeguards, but they had nothing to do with the Abu Ghraib anarchy. Moreover, the decision on the Geneva conventions was irrelevant to interrogation practices in Iraq.
According to sources, the Army has abandoned all stress techniques in favor of more traditional interrogation methods. As a consequence, we’re getting much less intelligence of an inferior quality. And when the next terrorist attack occurs on American soil?
The very same people screaming about “torture” will take the administration to task for poor intelligence. Bet on it.
UPDATE: DOES TORTURE ALWAYS PRODUCE “LIES?”
Ace has a unique take on the issue:
Isn’t it the case that our own military expects our soldiers to break eventually under torture, but tries to get them to at least hold off on spilling anything important for 48 hours or so, after which point, hopefully, their information will now be stale and operationally useless (or at least less useful)?
Furthermore, the fact that coercion may produce a lot of lies is hardly a reason to say it’s useless. All interrogations, including non-coercive police interrogations of common criminals, produce 90% lies.
The problem, of course, is the question of American values and how torture relates to an image we’ve created for ourselves.
The “harm,” I suppose, is that we diminish ourselves by sanctioning such brutal methods.
But this is really not a “fact” that can be proven; this is a gut-level judgment call that each of us have to make. I personally don’t feel diminished or barbaric for supporting a bit of, let us say, non-permanent inflicting of pain upon known terrorists who know the names and meeting places of other terrorists. If “waterboarding” can save a few lives, then, as a practical matter, it is all for the utilitarian good.
As for absolute morality– I don’t know if I buy that, especially in wartime, and especially against such monstrous animals as we’re fighting.
Spot on. Democrats always appear to forget that we’re fighting a war; a war, as I say in the post, against “murderous, stateless criminals.” The idea of extending Geneva Convention protections to people who, at the drop of a hat, would shoot us in the back with less compunction than you or I would step on a roach is mindless moral posturing. Does this mean we should immediately take every terrorist in our custody, attatch electrodes to his nether regions, and turn on the juice? Of course not. But to hear the Democrats posturing at the Gonzalez confirmation hearings yesterday, you’d probably think so.
UPDATE II: WELCOME ACE OF SPADES READERS!
Thanks to Ace for the link…the second time in a month that I’ve been so blessed. While you’re here, check out my post on “Headlines You Won’t See in 2005.”
Spoiler…”Michael Moore Explodes“…
