The Bush administration's approach to torture

CBL4

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From the rabidly left wing conservative magazine the Economist:
The Bush administration's approach to torture beggars belief

THERE are many difficult trade-offs for any president when it comes to diplomacy and the fight against terrorism. Should you, for instance, support an ugly foreign regime because it is the enemy of a still uglier one? Should a superpower submit to the United Nations when it is not in its interests to do so? Amid this fog, you would imagine that George Bush would welcome an issue where America's position should be luminously clear—namely an amendment passed by Congress to ban American soldiers and spies from torturing prisoners. Indeed, after the disastrous stories of prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo Bay and Afghanistan, you might imagine that a shrewd president would have sponsored such a law himself to set the record straight.

But you would be wrong. This week saw the sad spectacle of an American president lamely trying to explain to the citizens of Panama that, yes, he would veto any such bill but, no, “We do not torture.” Meanwhile, Mr Bush's increasingly error-prone vice-president, Dick Cheney, has been across on Capitol Hill trying to bully senators to exclude America's spies from any torture ban. To add a note of farce to the tragedy, the administration has had to explain that the CIA is not torturing prisoners at its secret prisons in Asia and Eastern Europe—though of course it cannot confirm that such prisons exist.

The nub of the torture debate is an amendment sponsored by John McCain, a Republican senator who was himself tortured by the Vietnamese. The amendment, based on the American army's own field manual and passed in the Senate by 90 votes to nine, states that “no individual in the custody or under the physical control of the United States government, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” Mr McCain's aim was simple enough: to clear up any doubt that could possibly exist about America's standards.

That doubt does, alas, exist—and has been amplified by the administration's heavy-handed efforts to stifle the McCain amendment. This, after all, is a White House that has steadfastly tried to keep “enemy combatants” beyond the purview of American courts, whose defence secretary has publicly declared that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to the battle against al-Qaeda and whose Justice Department once produced an infamous memorandum explaining how torture was part of the president's war powers. The revelation in the Washington Post that the CIA maintains a string of jails, where it can keep people indefinitely and in secret, only heightens the suspicion that Mr Cheney wants the agency to keep using “enhanced interrogation techniques”. These include “waterboarding”, or making a man think he is drowning.
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http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5139141

CBL
 
I agree that the President is doing an atrocious job of managing this issue. I belive that it should be legal to engage in psychologically degrading tactics on non-POW illegal combatants, but the President should do a better job of defining just what we can and can't do (i.e., physical torture is verboten) and he should welcome legislation which codifies it.
 
manny said:
I agree that the President is doing an atrocious job of managing this issue. I belive that it should be legal to engage in psychologically degrading tactics on non-POW illegal combatants, but the President should do a better job of defining just what we can and can't do (i.e., physical torture is verboten) and he should welcome legislation which codifies it.
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Unfortunately a public law that codifies individual techniques would also serve as a fine counter-interrogation manual. I agree in principle that techniques should be regulated but these regulations must be classified and subject to the Personnel Reliability Program. I think it was a huge mistake and very short-sighted for the DOD to respond to these criticisms in a public manner in the first place.
 
In principle I agree with you on both points, and I'm still willing to be sold on the first. On the second, once the Abu Ghraib photos broke the Pentagon was over one. 10 years from now I think people will look back on this and judge it the cleanest war in history in terms of overall treatment of non-POWs, but for right now the propaganda battle is lost to the US on this issue.And it's not a battle which we could afford to lose with some of the most sanctmonious yet still influential voices in diplomacy on the defensive following their failed fealty to Saddam. The Pentagon should have confronted it in bigger terms and it definitely should have done more on drawing the distinction between POWs and non-POWs, particularly for those persons picked up in Iraq where thousands might reasonably have fit in either category.
 
The goal isn't to be the "cleanest war in history". If the goal is to turn Iraq into a tolerant, Western-thinking progressive state that sees the US as a role model, the administration has failed miserably. And if their position is to be taken at face value, The Administration seems to want to fail miserably.
 
manny said:
In principle I agree with you on both points, and I'm still willing to be sold on the first. On the second, once the Abu Ghraib photos broke the Pentagon was over one. 10 years from now I think people will look back on this and judge it the cleanest war in history in terms of overall treatment of non-POWs, but for right now the propaganda battle is lost to the US on this issue.And it's not a battle which we could afford to lose with some of the most sanctmonious yet still influential voices in diplomacy on the defensive following their failed fealty to Saddam.
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And to make the propaganda defeat total, the president said he'd veto the McCain amendment - interpreted by 50% of the US population and 100% of the rest of the world as "I don't want to restrict torturing", instead of saying "OK, we don't need one more law saying the same as the old ones, but if it makes you girlie-men POW-huggers feel better ...."
 
Hey, I'm not crazy about it any more than you are. But we've probably got at least one more country to liberate by force of arms here, maybe two. And that'll be helped by making it clear to conscripted and volunteer-but-not-fanatic soldiers that the happiest, most confortable day of their lives will be the day after they surrender. That doesn't strike me as likely right now. We lost a propaganda battle here. We're in a hole. The Bush adminstration is ignoring the first rule of holes.
 
manny said:
In principle I agree with you on both points, and I'm still willing to be sold on the first. On the second, once the Abu Ghraib photos broke the Pentagon was over one. 10 years from now I think people will look back on this and judge it the cleanest war in history in terms of overall treatment of non-POWs, but for right now the propaganda battle is lost to the US on this issue. ...
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If I'm not mistaken, all of the Abu Ghraib photos have not been released. There's supposed to be some pretty nasty ones in the ones we haven't seen. I think people might not judge this the "cleanest war in history" after they are released.
 
manny said:
Hey, I'm not crazy about it any more than you are. But we've probably got at least one more country to liberate by force of arms here, maybe two. And that'll be helped by making it clear to conscripted and volunteer-but-not-fanatic soldiers that the happiest, most confortable day of their lives will be the day after they surrender. That doesn't strike me as likely right now. We lost a propaganda battle here. We're in a hole. The Bush adminstration is ignoring the first rule of holes.
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Like trying to get out of it? "Keep on diggin' guys, there must be a way out of this hole" ...
 
manny said:
But we've probably got at least one more country to liberate by force of arms here
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bush_roughrider.jpg


You, sir, are in violation of the Smith Act.
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manny said:
In principle I agree with you on both points, and I'm still willing to be sold on the first. On the second, once the Abu Ghraib photos broke the Pentagon was over one. 10 years from now I think people will look back on this and judge it the cleanest war in history in terms of overall treatment of non-POWs, but for right now the propaganda battle is lost to the US on this issue.
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Secret prisons and torture are appropriate for prisoners, now? When did this happen?
 
Aside from the "we are civilized and need to take the high road as a shining example for others" reasoning for outlawaing torture, it seems that a lot of people ignore McCain's biggest argument against it: it doesn't work.

All it gives is unreliable information, because someone being tortured will say anything to stop the pain.
 
pgwenthold said:
Aside from the "we are civilized and need to take the high road as a shining example for others" reasoning for outlawaing torture, it seems that a lot of people ignore McCain's biggest argument against it: it doesn't work.

All it gives is unreliable information, because someone being tortured will say anything to stop the pain.
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Information retrieval is not necessarily the main goal of torture It is and has been regularly used as a mean of intimidation, humiliation and terror (I'm thinking France in Algeria), as, unless I'm badly misunderstanding Manny, illustrated here:


Hey, I'm not crazy about it any more than you are. But we've probably got at least one more country to liberate by force of arms here, maybe two. And that'll be helped by making it clear to conscripted and volunteer-but-not-fanatic soldiers that the happiest, most confortable day of their lives will be the day after they surrender.
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Flo said:
unless I'm badly misunderstanding Manny, illustrated here:
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Not sure what your understanding was; I was opining that for legitimate POWs we should go far beyond the minimums of the convention and that the lot of soldiers who surrender should be significantly better after they surrender than before. That'll incentivize them to surrender.

Melendwyr said:
Secret prisons and torture are appropriate for prisoners, now? When did this happen?
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My response to this depends on whether you ignored or simply overlooked the word "overall."

rhoadp said:
Do you believe it should be legal to use these tactics on POWs or legal combatants?
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No, see above. Moreover, I recognize that US law on this subject is superceded by our membership in the Geneva Conventions. POWs are already protected from pretty much everything except being held prisioner for the duration of the conflict.
 
manny said:
No, see above.
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What I infer from this is that you believe it is ethically okay to treat illegal combatants differently. Why do you believe that it should be legal to perform these tactics on illegal combatants and not legals? What is the ethical difference?
 
manny said:
10 years from now I think people will look back on this and judge it the cleanest war in history in terms of overall treatment of non-POWs, but for right now the propaganda battle is lost to the US on this issue.
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The Anglo-Zanzibar War was cleaner (and the reasons given were more honest too).

The Three Hundred and Thirty Five Years' War resulted in no casulties of any sort so I supose that would be cleaner still.
 
rhoadp said:
What I infer from this is that you believe it is ethically okay to treat illegal combatants differently. Why do you believe that it should be legal to perform these tactics on illegal combatants and not legals? What is the ethical difference?
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There is no ethical difference, as far as manny is concerned. With legal combatants, though, we're not permitted to treat them as he would prefer. Illegal combatants have no such protection.
 
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