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Title: Why We NEED Torture To Keep Us Safe
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URL Source: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/06/why-we-need-torture.html
Published: Jun 10, 2009
Author: GW
Post Date: 2009-06-10 20:07:50 by Horse
Keywords: None
Views: 155
Comments: 10
You've heard people say that we should end all torture. But do you want to hear why all of those naive and pampered idiots are wrong when they say we don't need torture? And why - in the real world in which we live - Dick Cheney is right? Do you want to know the cold, hard facts about why we need torture? There are none. None of the top military or defense experts think we need to torture. See for yourself ... All of the Experts Say that Torture Doesn't Work. The top interrogation experts all say torture that doesn't work: The military agency which actually provided advice on harsh interrogation techniques for use against terrorism suspects warned the Pentagon in 2002 that those techniques would produce "unreliable information." Army Field Manual 34-52 Chapter 1 says: "Experience indicates that the use of force is not necessary to gain the cooperation of sources for interrogation. Therefore, the use of force is a poor technique, as it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear." A declassified FBI e-mail dated May 10, 2004, regarding interrogation at Guantanamo states "[we] explained to [the Department of Defense], FBI has been successful for many years obtaining confessions via non-confrontational interviewing techniques." (see also this) Brigadier General David R. Irvine, retired Army Reserve strategic intelligence officer who taught prisoner interrogation and military law for 18 years with the Sixth Army Intelligence School, says torture doesn't work The CIA's own Inspector General wrote that waterboarding was not "efficacious" in producing information A former FBI interrogator -- who interrogated Al Qaeda suspects -- says categorically that torture does not help collect intelligence. On the other hand he says that torture actually turns people into terrorists A 30-year veteran of CIA’s operations directorate who rose to the most senior managerial ranks, says: “The administration’s claims of having ‘saved thousands of Americans’ can be dismissed out of hand because credible evidence has never been offered — not even an authoritative leak of any major terrorist operation interdicted based on information gathered from these interrogations in the past seven years. … It is irresponsible for any administration not to tell a credible story that would convince critics at home and abroad that this torture has served some useful purpose. This is not just because the old hands overwhelmingly believe that torture doesn’t work — it doesn’t — but also because they know that torture creates more terrorists and fosters more acts of terror than it could possibly neutralize.” The FBI interrogators who actually interviewed some of the 9/11 suspects say torture didn't work A former US Air Force interrogator said that information obtained from torture is unreliable, and that torture just creates more terrorists The number 2 terrorism expert for the State Department says torture doesn't work, and just creates more terrorists The Senate Armed Services Committee unanimously found that torture doesn't work. A former CIA station chief in Pakistan who served at the agency for three decades doubts that torture saved any lives Still don't believe it? These people also say torture doesn't produce usable intelligence: Former high-level CIA official Bob Baer said "And torture -- I just don't think it really works ... you don't get the truth. What happens when you torture people is, they figure out what you want to hear and they tell you." Rear Admiral (ret.) John Hutson, former Judge Advocate General for the Navy, said "Another objection is that torture doesn't work. All the literature and experts say that if we really want usable information, we should go exactly the opposite way and try to gain the trust and confidence of the prisoners." Michael Scheuer, formerly a senior CIA official in the Counter-Terrorism Center, said "I personally think that any information gotten through extreme methods of torture would probably be pretty useless because it would be someone telling you what you wanted to hear." Dan Coleman, one of the FBI agents assigned to the 9/11 suspects held at Guantanamo said "Brutalization doesn't work. We know that. " Many other professional interrogators say the same thing (see this, this, and this). In fact, one of the top interrogators in Iraq got information from a high-level Al Qaeda suspect not through torture, but by giving him cookies. And top American World War 2 interrogators got more information using chess or Ping-Pong instead of torture than those who use torture are getting today. And the head of Britain's wartime interrogation center in London said: “Violence is taboo. Not only does it produce answers to please, but it lowers the standard of information.” Indeed, one of the top military interrogators said that torture does not work, that it has resulted in hundreds or thousands of deaths of U.S. soldiers, and that torture by Americans of innocent Iraqis is the main reason that foreign fighters started fighting against Americans in Iraq in the first place (in fact, the experts agree that torture reduces national security). And - according to the experts - torture is unnecessary even to prevent "ticking time bombs" from exploding (see this, this and this). Indeed, a top expert says that torture would fail in a real 'ticking time-bomb' situation And Dick Cheney's claim that waterboarding Khalid Shaikh Mohammed stopped a terror attack on L.A.? As the Chicago Tribune notes: The Bush administration claimed that the waterboarding of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed helped foil a planned 2002 attack on Los Angeles -- forgetting that he wasn't captured until 2003. (see this confirmation from the BBC: "Khalid Sheikh Mohammed ... was captured in Pakistan in 2003"). Indeed, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed himself said: During the harshest period of my interrogation I gave a lot of false information in order to satisfy what I believed the interrogators wished to hear in order to make the ill-treatment stop. I later told the interrogators that their methods were stupid and counterproductive. I'm sure that the false information I was forced to invent in order to make the ill-treatment stop wasted a lot of their time and led to several false red-alerts being placed in the U.S. And "the CIA inspector general in 2004 found that there was no conclusive proof that waterboarding or other harsh interrogation techniques helped the Bush administration thwart any 'specific imminent attacks,' according to recently declassified Justice Department memos." And when long-time FBI director Mueller was asked whether any attacks on America been disrupted thanks to intelligence obtained through “enhanced techniques”, he responded “I don’t believe that has been the case.” And see this. And if you believe that the military was pushing for "enhanced interrogation", think again (and see this). All of the Top Experts say Torture HURTS National Security Torture REDUCES, rather than protects, American national security: The head of all U.S. intelligence said: "The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world," [Director of National Intelligence Dennis] Blair said in the statement. "The damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security." A top counter-terrorism expert says torture increases the risk of terrorism (and see this). One of the top military interrogators said that torture by Americans of innocent Iraqis is the main reason that foreign fighters started fighting against Americans in Iraq in the first place (and see this). Former counter-terrorism czar Richard A. Clarke says that America's indefinite detention without trial and abuse of prisoners is a leading Al Qaeda recruiting tool A former FBI interrogator -- who interrogated Al Qaeda suspects -- says categorically that torture actually turns people into terrorists A 30-year veteran of CIA’s operations directorate who rose to the most senior managerial ranks, says: "This is not just because the old hands overwhelmingly believe that torture doesn’t work — it doesn’t — but also because they know that torture creates more terrorists and fosters more acts of terror than it could possibly neutralize.” A former US Air Force interrogator said that torture just creates more terrorists A former U.S. interrogator and counterintelligence agent, and Afghanistan veteran said, “Torture puts our troops in danger, torture makes our troops less safe, torture creates terrorists. It’s used so widely as a propaganda tool now in Afghanistan. All too often, detainees have pamphlets on them, depicting what happened at Guantanamo.” The Senate Armed Services Committee unanimously stated: "The administration’s policies concerning [torture] and the resulting controversies ... strengthened the hand of our enemies." Two professors of political science have demonstrated that torture increases, rather than decreases, terrorism The reporter who broke Iran-Contra and other stories says that torture actually helped Al Qaeda, by giving false leads to the U.S. which diverted its military, intelligence and economic resources into wild goose chases Raw Story says that torture might have resulted in false terror alerts Hundreds of other experts have said the same things As Andrew Sullivan writes: We have expended enormous resources in fighting threats that are not there, while failing to expend the necessary resources and time to figure out accurately what exact threats we do face. When you hear of the intelligence extracted by torture, remember that it was the intelligence that "proved" that Saddam and WMDs and links to al Qaeda. And remember, our military and intelligence leaders say that the economic crisis is now the biggest threat to America's national security. Guess what one of the major causes of the economic crisis was? According to a Nobel prize-winning economist, the head of JP Morgan and others, the Iraq war and the war on terror in general were huge factors in destroying our economy. The Senate Armed Services Committee concluded that creating a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq was one of the main purposes of the torture program. And the fake connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq was - in fact - one of the main justifications for the Iraq war. And see this. So it is indisputable that torture has reduced our national security in numerous ways. Most of Those Torture Were INNOCENT One of the main justifications for torture is that the people being tortured were bloodthirsty terrorists, who would do far worse to us if we didn't stop them. Is that true? Judge for yourself: The number two man at the State Department under Colin Powell, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, says that many of those being held at Guantanamo Bay were innocent, and that top Bush administration officials knew that they were innocent. Moreover, he said: "This philosophy held that it did not matter if a detainee were innocent. Indeed, because he lived in Afghanistan and was captured on or near the battle area, he must know something of importance (this general philosophy, in an even cruder form, prevailed in Iraq as well, helping to produce the nightmare at Abu Ghraib). All that was necessary was to extract everything possible from him and others like him, assemble it all in a computer program, and then look for cross-connections and serendipitous incidentals--in short, to have sufficient information about a village, a region, or a group of individuals, that dots could be connected and terrorists or their plots could be identified. Thus, as many people as possible had to be kept in detention for as long as possible to allow this philosophy of intelligence gathering to work. The detainees' innocence was inconsequential. After all, they were ignorant peasants for the most part and mostly Muslim to boot." (see this and this). Many others also state that those tortured were mainly innocent farmers, villagers, or those against whom neighbors held a grudge. Indeed, people received a nice cash reward from the U.S. government for turning people in as "suspected terrorists" (and see this movie) The commander of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, Janis Karpinski, estimates that 90% of detainees in the prison were innocent Children were allegedly tortured (and see this and this) Note: This essay is more appropriately titled something like "Send This to Everyone Who Still Believes that We Need Torture to Keep Us Safe". But if I used that title, no one who supports torture would read it.
Poster Comment: We need torture to keep the townsfolk with pitchforks from chasing bankers. We need torure to get false confessions from innocent men to justify invasions and the war on terror.
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#1. To: Horse (#0)
Just so - thank you. Water-board me enough, and I'll say whatever it is that I think that you want me to say.
...how and when can the U.S. regain respect and admiration from countries around the globe? Once a reputation is sullied, it usually remains so. My country screwed up - bad.
"The 'uniter' has brought the entire world together - to despise and deride us." lodwick
It's not bad enough that torture is a hallmark of the "bad guys", there's another part of the equation that is even worse. Torture is a tool of those who are out of control, unable to control others and unable to control themselves. Torture damages both the victim and the perpetrator. Ultimately, any nation or empire that lowers itself to using torture is doomed to eventually fail. Its days are numbered. And the anger kindled by its actions will live on for a long, long time. It's hard to imagine any worse damage that could have been done to the U.S. than what was accomplished by the policies of the George W. Bush administration. America is now a pariah among the nations of the world, a monster to be feared and despised.
We need torture to keep the townsfolk with pitchforks from chasing bankers. We need torture to get false confessions from innocent men to justify invasions and the war on terror.
#2. To: lodwick (#1)
#3. To: lodwick (#1)
 | Gold and silver are REAL money, paper is but a promise. |
#4. To: Elliott Jackalope (#3)
now, the question is. can it be undone? what is your feeling about that?
America is now a pariah among the nations of the world, a monster to be feared and despised.
The smooth criminal transition from Bush/Cheney to Obama
#5. To: christine (#4) (Edited)
In short, no, I don't believe it can be undone. We're an empire now, and history simply has to run its course. Eventually this empire will fail, and hopefully new nations will arise from the wreckage. I'm of the opinion that no nation can grow much beyond a size of twenty million, give or take, before it becomes too large and unwieldy to actually represent the opinions and desires of its population. As a result, nations that grow much larger than this limit eventually become more and more despotic, spending ever increasing resources on dominating and controlling its populace to conform to the opinions and desires of the oligarchs who run it. This is why all empires eventually fail: There's nothing organic or intrinsic about them. They're wholly artificial constructs, designed to serve the interests of the few at the expense of the many. The majority are continually imposed upon, taxed and browbeaten and intimidated and coerced into "behaving" so that the oligarchs can do as they please without fear of confrontation or dissent. This works just dandy in the short term, but over the long term it becomes increasingly unstable, for a very simple reason: The empire draws its strength from that part of the population that it continually undermines.
now, the question is. can it be undone? what is your feeling about that?
| Gold and silver are REAL money, paper is but a promise. |
#6. To: Elliott Jackalope (#5)
i agree with your assessment. at this point, it's basically about our individual survival.
This works just dandy in the short term, but over the long term it becomes increasingly unstable, for a very simple reason: The empire draws its strength from that part of the population that it continually undermines.
The smooth criminal transition from Bush/Cheney to Obama
#7. To: christine (#6) (Edited)
I'd go one step further, and suggest that before we can hope for something better to arise on the ashes of this empire we first need to agree upon what that would be. And now we begin to understand why our schools do such an abysmal job of teaching history and philosophy while doing such a marvelous job of indoctrinating our children with propaganda: It's to keep people from ever thinking about what could possibly be better than the current oligarchic despotism. How can people ever demand anything better if they cannot conceive of anything better? Worse yet, how can people even talk about what some of the fundamental issues are regarding nationhood and social cohesiveness when we've been so mercilessly indoctrinated with pro-"diversity" and pro- "multiculturalism" propaganda? The concept of nationhood has been under intense attack for many decades now, the fundamental components of what constitute a nation have all been maligned and subverted in order to facilitate the creation of empire. But empires always fall in the long term, and nations eventually emerge from the wreckage, because empires are fundamentally artificial and nations are fundamentally organic. My ultimate dream is to live on a world composed of several hundred, perhaps even a thousand independent nations, with every color and creed having a place to call their own, where no-one will infringe upon their inalienable human rights. A world where there are no dominant super-powers, either military, political or economic, to impinge upon the right of every human being to live a life free of coercion and injustice, where each individual nation can find their own path to creating the best possible society for their own people. Just as every person deserves a family to call their own, every person also deserves a nation, a real nation, to call their own. Until that day arrives, injustice and conflict will reign supreme on Earth. Will there still be conflict and injustice on a world composed of hundreds of independent nations? Yes. But it will be minimized, localized, and much more able to be remedied and made right in the long run.
| Gold and silver are REAL money, paper is but a promise. |
#8. To: Elliott Jackalope (#7)
that's a wonderful dream and the description of the kind of world i, too, would like to live in. let's be realistic though. it's a fantasy. i don't know of a time or a place on this earth that this utopia ever existed.
My ultimate dream is to live on a world composed of several hundred, perhaps even a thousand independent nations, with every color and creed having a place to call their own, where no-one will infringe upon their inalienable human rights. A world where there are no dominant super-powers, either military, political or economic, to impinge upon the right of every human being to live a life free of coercion and injustice, where each individual nation can find their own path to creating the best possible society for their own people.
The smooth criminal transition from Bush/Cheney to Obama
#9. To: christine (#8)
It's called the "bulls-eye" theory of utopia. Like an archer shooting at a target, you do your best to hit dead center, while acknowledging that you might never achieve that goal. Yet one still tries. You're never truly defeated until you quit trying.
| Gold and silver are REAL money, paper is but a promise. |
#10. To: christine (#8)
We Humans are contrary clannish and clever selfish peoples. It explains why we have achieved so much than our fellow animals - and why our inclinations are a curse to us. Humility is a hard learned lesson, alien to our race.
"Satan / Cheney in "08" 
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