The most difficult aspect of engaging serious debate about the presidents pushing of Geneva conventions is that very few people know what a proper interrogation looks like and what methods work. All most of us know is good cop -bad cop, and we only get theat from television.
Pattericos' lengthy interview with Stashiu illustrates that techniques that the layman wouldn't expect to be successful with hardned terrorists actually do make them more forthcoming.
A couple of recent pieces in the media have suggested that some of the detainees actually enjoy their interrogations. For example, in a passage that reminded me of Monty Python’s “Comfy Chair” sketch (from the show about the Spanish Inquisition), Rich Lowry said this:
Interrogators rely on the soft sell. Detainees sit in a La-Z-Boy chair during interrogations, and beverages and movies are available to put them at ease. The most effective interrogator is said to be an older woman who adopts a nurturing attitude.
(All emphasis in this post is mine.)
Balkin writer Stephen Griffin puts forward an example of the ticking time bomb 'TTB' torture scenario and says:
In a democracy, I do not think we should ask our fellow citizens to sacrifice themselves or their principles for the public good unless we are, at least in principle, prepared to do the same. We may not be capable of serving in the military, but we should understand what that means before we ask our fellow citizens to fight for us. One of the signal characteristics of the TTB is that it treats the interrogators and their agency, their principles, as a black box. Who they are is unknown. But we should not assume �democracy for us, dictatorship for the interrogators.� The interrogators are our fellow citizens, part of our democracy, and it would be wrong to ask them to do something we were not prepared to do ourselves. Thus the democratic implication of the TTB is that we must steel ourselves to do something that is very unpleasant, but necessary.
All of the moral revulsion to torture, and especially all of that in the TTB scenario which involves the purposeful torture of one individual assumes that torture is a fate worse than death.
Is it?
I think that despite the appeal or the non-appeal of torture, I think we all understand the moral equivocation of total and limited war. That is to say we more readily accept in these political times the real death of non-combatants as collateral damage, or as accepted damage.
My memory may be faulty, but I cannot recall such moral outrage over the battle known as Second Fallujah in which certainly innocents remaining in town were killed after recieving orders to leave the city. The moral outrage of Abu Graibh was much more pronounced.
And we clearly know that perfidious combatants encountered on the field of battle can be shot on sight. Mercenaries, under Geneva, are not afforded the protections of soldiers in uniform. If there are conditions which a life can be taken in the moral context of war, how can it be that torture categorically cannot?
The answer, it seems to me, is that there are 1000 ways in which that which goes by the name of torture can be preferable to death, and likely another 1000 worse than death. If there is ever a case in which torture in the context of war is not a fate worse than death, this is a question of enumeration, so long as killing is acceptable in the context of war. TTB as exemplified gratuitously is not. The problem is not solved completely.
Marathon Interrogations
According to the authors of The Interrogators, the Geneva Conventions on the matter of sleep deprivation cannot 'tag-team' interrogators while keeping detainees awake. The principle involved is that you cannot subject the detainee to a greater sleep deprivation than you would subject your own interrogators. So they stayed up the 27 hours for their key detainees, not only the interrogator, but his supervisor as well.
The point these officers make is that while they were very conscientious about remaining within the legal framework of interrogations set by Geneva, and were appalled by the reports coming out of Abu Graibh, they consistently found that each time they got creative and pushed the envelope of what was allowable, they got better results. In other words, more harsh interrogations yeilded better results.
This is precisely the kind of testimony I expected to find as GWBush asked, on behalf of the CIA, to push the envelope of the US interpretation of Geneva up to the threshold of physical damage.
Waterboarding
Stuart Buck has some interesting comments on these matters as well. And in his investigations he has found one of the sort of individuals we are fortunate to see. Somebody who knows what's going on and walks right in to demonstrate some facts about harsh interrogation. There is nothing so starkly demonstrative that torture is not a fate worse than death, than the fact that for the sake of proving the point, a man will volunteer to show us.
Similarly, Buck says that as with sleep deprivation, this is something that our own troops go through. Thus conforming to one of the provisions of Geneva.
Dershowitz' comments during the Current TV video are worth noting. He argues, and I agree, that the President should say in writing, that these are the techniques that we will authorize. The US interpretation of our obligation to civilization will document what's legal for us to do and what is not. And this is indeed what the President has done, albeit with some tricks vis a vis legal recourse. The point is, however, that interrogators will be trained, the effectiveness and proper implementation of the more coercive techniques will be known, and it won't go unaccounted for.
The leash remains on the Monster.
Recent Comments