Torture Unnecessary to Get Information
Last October I attended a reunion of World War II veterans who worked at a secret prisoner-of-war interrogation center at Fort Hunt, Va., near Washington, where many of the top Nazi scientists were interrogated. Some 20 of us, all in our 80s and 90s, came together, many for the first time in more than 60 years, for two days of reconnecting and recollecting.
The camp at Fort Hunt, which was devoted entirely to the interrogation of high-level prisoners of war was one of the most secret projects of the war and was codenamed “PO Box 1142.” Many of us on the PO Box 1142’s small staff, myself included, were refugees from Germany or Austria, since fluency in German was a requirement for the assignment.
At our reunion it was difficult to avoid reflecting on the contrast between the methods of interrogation we had used and those in vogue at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, not to mention the CIA’s “dark sites” in various unnamed countries. One of my fellow veterans said that he got more information from those he interrogated by playing chess or ping pong with them than he would ever have gotten through torture. Another said that we did not commit torture because when you torture you lose your humanity. In truth, some kind of pain-inflicting physical contact would never have occurred to us.
Geneva Conventions
On the second day of our reunion, a retired Army general, an Air Force reserve colonel and a recently retired Defense Intelligence Agency official all commented on the results we were able to obtain at PO Box 1142 by complying with the Geneva Conventions. They also condemned the “aggressive” techniques the Bush administration has put into use as immoral, illegal and of doubtful validity.
Since that reunion in October I have asked myself what could account for this contrast in interrogation techniques. Could it be that the detainees at Fort Hunt had less important information to offer than those at Abu Ghraib? No, the German prisoners provided confirmation about the Nazis’ V-2 rocket work at Peenemuende and their later-abandoned efforts to develop nuclear weapons.
Could it be that the Fort Hunt detainees were more willing to talk because they knew Germany was about to lose the war? No, because some of the most valuable intelligence was obtained by 1142 interrogators in the early years of the war from captured U-boat officers.
Could it have been that “they” were not doing it to our people? No, because the whole notion of officially sanctioned “heightened aggressiveness” techniques originated with the Nazis.
What is it, then, that makes torture, for the first time in decades, a legitimate subject of pro and con discourse? What is it that allows President Bush to say “We do not torture” while refusing to admit that waterboarding, perhaps the cruelest form or torture since the days of the inquisition, constitutes torture? I can only come to one conclusion - that somehow the notion of humanity as the ultimate defense against torture must have fallen off the table.
Peter Weiss is a retired intellectual property lawyer in New York; he wrote this for Human Rights Watch, New York, N.Y.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services
(c) 2008 Vindy.com
My mom was an army nurse and officer during WWII. She put herself through nursing school. Her brother was a crooked prosecuting county attorney in Kentucky.
I say this to establish that she had a lot of real world experience and was very difficult to fool.
When I asked about torture at age eight or nine, she said “Some people like to hurt other people. People will go to great lengths to get a job doing what they like to do. People who like to make things go into construction, ladies who like to boss people around even if it is only little kids, become elementary school teachers.
People who like to hurt people have only three obvious choices, they can become cops, soldiers or prison guards. In theory the discipline keeps them from rogue use of their natural need to hurt.”
That’s the theory anyway. Doesn’t work very well in practice.
Rush said essentially the same thing. Said the US troops were just blowing off steam. Having some fun.
Big sexual subtext there too.
“[S]omehow the notion of humanity as the ultimate defense against torture must have fallen off the table.”
Relying, as it must, on any humanity being found within the ‘leadership’ of USA Incorporated, or in any other corporate leadership for that matter, that notion didn’t fall. It was pushed, hurled, spat upon, violently cast aside and trampled into the surrounding mire and ooze long ago.
Remember, ‘the business of America is business’ and ‘winning is everything’. Humanity! What’s that? Sounds a lot like ‘business ethics’, or ‘good corporate citizenship’, or some other quaint and obsolete notion like the ’supreme law’ of the US Constituion. Utter nonsense!
it has been absolutely appalling to hear “hate radio” and cable propagandists defend this administration and its use of torture.
a total lack of morality. i cannot understand how so called “christians” suck into the diatribe and promote this crap in defense of their “leader” george……..a total lack of morality…
But scientists do use torture to get information. Research scientists do it all the time.
Case in point from a Common Dreams article: tasering pigs to tell people something they already know about taser guns.
Science does things to members of non human species that would be considered an indicator of serial killer and sociopathic tendencies if done outside of a lab.
In Medical Apartheid we learn about Dr Sims, the 19th century head of the AMA who surgically removed the jaws of black slaves(while conscious). New York has a statue in his honour.
Furthermore, what about the doctors and nurses who worked in the Nazi camps? Or for that matter, the doctors and nurses who worked in American hospitals and were giving unsuspecting patients placebo treatments for illnesses on government orders?
There was a reporter who uncovered this and she said what really surprised her was how NO ONE in the medical community came forward about it.
Humanity as the number one defense against torture is a very flimsy defense to begin with. Justice and fairness is a better one. Leave humanity and other terms used by childish supremacists to justify their sense of privilege to the dustbin of mythology and prejudice.
Not only is it unnecessary, it is counter-productive. After getting hammered at places like Guadalcanal early on in the war, both the US Army and Marines, decided to take a different tack and seek to build relationships with any Japanese prisoners they might be able to captrure.
This was not easy as the Japanese were indoctrinated that their duty was to die for the Emporer and told that if captured by the Americans they would be otrtured to death anyway. So what the Army and Marines did was scrounge up whatever speakers of Japanese they could find and sought to reach out and build a relationship with their prisoners.(sadly, all Japanese-Americans were excluded because they were all being interred at racist detention facilities in California)
They clothed, fed, and allowed their prisoners to wash and clean themselves. They talked with them in their own language and sought to make them feel safe. They also bugged their personal quarters and transcribed their personal comments and conversations among themselves.
As a result, the American armed forces obtained a lot of actionable intelligence that helped them in planning operations and waging future battles. They also indoctrinated a group of goodwill ambassadors who could testify by personal experinece that their conquerers were honorable and decent human beings and not the evil monsters that the Japanese had been indoctrinated to believe them to be.
Not only is this torture policy counter-productive, it is the kind of mule-headed stupidity that has no excuse for existence.
In 2001 the Bush administration was rushing the so called Patriot Act through Congress. Two leading Senators, Leahy and Daschel were blocking the passage of the bill due to civil liberty and other concerns. Then anthrax was sent to both their offices. Five people died and Congress was shut down for the first time in the history of the Republic. The Ames strain of bioweapons anthrax was identified, which could only have come from a U.S. Army lab. The investigation was terminated. The corporate media dropped the story.
9/11 is an unsolved crime. Torture was used to extract confessions from a few unlikely Middle Eastern men. The puppet 9/11 commission was “not allowed” to interview the supposed perpetrators of 9/11. The tapes of their confessions have been destroyed.
Over a million people have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan over greed for oil in wars of aggression.
Sadly, the majority of Americans are eerily like the Germans who later said, “We didn’t know.”
Torture was used to get confessions from people who did not commit the crimes so that they could help cover up the crimes of the actual perpetrators of 9/11 much like the Nazis did when they executed a mentally disabled Dutchman they claimed was a Communist after they themselves burned the Reichstag so they could frighten the German legislators into passing the “Reorganization Act of 1933.” Incidentally, when the Patriot Act was first introduced it wasn’t called the Patriot Act. It was called the Governmental Reorganization Act of 2001.
Here is a link to some detailed information regarding the anthrax attacks and subsequent investigation that led to the U.S. Army bioweapons lab.
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/24273
The primary reason for torture in the modern world is to spread terror of the regime doing the torturing. Releasing broken men and women back to the their communities is a way of saying, “Mess with the powers that be, and this will happen to you.” A secondary purpose is to punish someone without the bother of putting him on trial. A tertiary purpose is to get accurate information, but that’s only icing on the cake.
Information gathering is only an excuse. The real reasons have already been mentioned. This nation will never again be able to claim any moral high ground.
That very fact may be the only good thing to come of having a bunch of sick sadists control foreign policy.
Steroids are unnecessary to play baseball and are bad for your health. But America is about winning at any cost, so torture will be used even if it doesn’t work because you gotta try everything and anything if you want to win. America,America, God shed his blood for thee…And crown thy good with a black hood…from sea to shining sea.
“And crown thy good with a black hood…”
Wow, lizard, that captures it with unnerving elegance. Sadly, Jack Bauer, a character we should find disturbingly misguided, is instead granted hero status.
“…the whole notion of officially sanctioned “heightened aggressiveness” techniques originated with the Nazis.”
Eh? I believe that the Church used torture extensively during the Inquisition to force a false confession from people before they were killed and their property confisgated.
This was done for the good of somehow ’saving’ unbeliving souls.
Now we use torture for the good of somehow ’saving’ lives by taking lives and property.
Great to have more examples of the depth of reason behind the Geneva Conventions’ ban on torture. There is similar depth of reason supporting all of the progressive principles.
The US legal system, until possibly now, routinely excluded confessions that were the result of torture as being inherently untrustworthy. That hasn’t stopped a lot of police forces from committing torture, but it does say something about the longstanding awareness of the “value” of torture with respect to the truth.
Who said they were serving Christ, then supported wars and torture? Who said these things following?
“Do good, pray for those who despitefully use you.”
“Forgive not seven times, but seven times seventy times.”
“Whatsoever ye have done to these, the least of my brethren, even so ye have done it also unto me.”
“Peter, put away your sword…those who live by the sword will die by the sword.”
“And if thy neighbor smite thee upon thy cheek, then turn to him thine other cheek.”
“My kingdom is not of this world.”
“Be in the world, but not of it.”
And who did NOT SAY the following?
“Line up, shut up, pay up, sign up, and fight for the Worldly Empire.”
Hurting people is wrong. When did we let anything else become acceptable?
I thought torture was a crime that only greedy power-hungry villains carried out against the good guys.
Are the good guys now torturing the bad guys?
Iwfrey summed up the commands , not suggestions of Jesus very well . Jesus also included the following caveats:
Every person who calls himself a ” Christian ” is not necessarily one.
You will know his/her beliefs by his/her behavior.
Beware of false prophets . If a person calls himself-herself a “Christian” and is disobeying the commands then he/she is a false prophet and a liar.
The ultimate punishment for false prophets and liars like Mike Huckabee are far more severe than for his erring but duped parishioner-sheep. ( Not my prediction but Jesus’himself ).
Shalom
The Russians could tell you that torture does not work. Someone might tell you anything that you want to hear under those circumstances. But this is what this so called administration wants, to hear what they want to hear. They want to extract false “information” to give the illusion of reason for their preconceived plans and illegal activities.