Kicking Rumsfeld to the curb wasn't enough

Now the Center for Constitutional Rights is asking German authorities to sue the former Defense Secretary over Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

The group of international lawyers alleges that Mr Rumsfeld personally approved the use of torture to extract information from the prisoners.

Wolfgang Kaleck, the lawyer leading the attempt to bring the case, said former US Army Brig-Gen Janis Karpinski would be the "star witness".

Ms Karpinski was commander of US prisons in Iraq when several prisoners were abused by US soldiers at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib facility.

Mr Rumsfeld resigned on Wednesday following Republican losses to the Democrats in the US mid-term elections.

The US denies any torture has taken place at Guantanamo Bay and has defended its interrogation techniques.

When torture is permitted

Charles Krauthammer discusses when and how torture should be used and makes the case against "the moral absolutism" of the McCain Amendment. A must read.

Torture revisited

Jeff Goldstein gets to the heart of the matter on the subject of torture:

[M]y argument with regard to coercive interrogation is that we should not take anything off the table, if only so that our enemies can’t get comfortable knowing that there is a limit to what we are prepared to do to protect our country and its citizens.

Goldstein brings up two interesting points. One is was Stephen Green calls "defining torture down."

Even now, we hear that “humiliation” is torture—or at the very least, “mistreatment.” Is wrapping an Israeli flag around an Islamist “torture”? Why or why not?

The point of all this being, that until we can more clearly define “suffering” or “anguish”—or distinguish between “suffering” and “discomfort”—we are forced to take positions that we might not otherwise take.

The Abu Ghraib incidents and the bogus Koran toilet flushing story, illustrate this point nicely. Is taking humiliating photos of prisoners torture? Is disrespecting the Koran a form of prisoner abuse?
Second, if we state unequivocally and openly that we will not torture, we are already giving our enemies too much information. Here he quotes Thomas Sowell:

Even in less extreme circumstances, and even if we don’t intend to torture the captured terrorist, does that mean that we need to reduce our leverage by informing all terrorists around the world in advance that they can stonewall indefinitely when captured, without fear of that fate?

The McCain Amendment would limit interrogation techniques to those described in the Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation. I don't know about you, but I'm uncomfortable with the idea of giving terrorists a blueprint as to what they can expect should they be captured.

As I pointed out earlier, deliberately inflicting physical pain may not always produce reliable results. But broadcasting our interrogation techniques will eliminate one of the most effective tools of the interrogator: Fear of the unknown.

Why the McCain amendment is wrong

This editorial pretty much sums up my feelings about the anti-torture McCain amendment.

Sen. John McCain says that allowing torture would ruin our image. Is that worse than terrorists ruining our landscape? We want them to fear being tortured, not know they have the right to an attorney.

...

We do question his attempt to pass legislation banning the torture of prisoners of war and detainees captured on foreign battlefields. It's not because we advocate torture, but because the benefits gained by telling the world we have a law that bans it are outweighed by terrorists' and enemies' knowing we have such a law.

I don't advocate torture either. But I do object to opening up our interrogation techniques for the world to see. In Mark Bowden's October 2003 article for the Atlantic, "The Dark Art of Interrogation" (subscription req'd), he suggests that fear is the most effective interrogation technique.

Fear works. It is more effective than any drug, tactic, or torture device. According to unnamed scientific studies cited by the Kubark Manual (it is frightening to think what these experiments might have been), most people cope with pain better than they think they will. As people become more familiar with pain, they become conditioned to it. Those who have suffered more physical pain than others from being beaten frequently as a child, for example, or suffering a painful illness may adapt to it and come to fear it less. So once interrogators resort to actual torture, they are apt to lose ground.

"The threat of coercion usually weakens or destroys resistance more effectively than coercion itself," the manual says.

The threat to inflict pain, for example, can trigger fears more damaging than the immediate sensation of pain ... Sustained long enough, a strong fear of anything vague or unknown induces regression, whereas the materialization of the fear, the infliction of some form of punishment, is likely to come as a relief. The subject finds that he can hold out, and his resistances are strengthened.

That fear is bolstered by uncertainty, according to Michael Koubi, the former chief interrogator for Israel's General Security Services, whom Bowden interviews in the article.

"People change when they get to prison," Koubi says. "They may be heroes outside, but inside they change. The conditions are different. People are afraid of the unknown. They are afraid of being tortured, of being held for a long time. Try to see what it is like to sit with a hood over your head for four hours, when you are hungry and tired and afraid, when you are isolated from everything and have no clue what is going on." When the captive believes that anything could happen--torture, execution, indefinite imprisonment, even the persecution of his loved ones--the interrogator can go to work.

I have no objection to Congress and the President setting limits on what interrogators can do, though as Bowden points out even techniques such as sleep deprivation are forbidden under the Geneva convention. I do have a problem with broadcasting those limits to the greater world. And I don't believe we should unnecessarily tie the hands of interrogators: Too much is at stake.

What he said

Wretchard on the anti-torture McCain amendment:

What the McCain Amendment will do is change the bean-counting rules. It will not create a framework in which real torture can be limited and stopped. That would require accepting moral responsibility for affirming practices which may be proscribed under the Geneva Conventions but fall short of real torture. That would mean explaining to the public that we are correspondingly determined to outlaw real, barbaric torture, even when by foreswearing it, public losses must be endured. Instead politicians will want to have it both ways and promise the public that they will neither soil their hands nor let the sleeping populace come to harm. No one who desires re-election can promise the voters only "blood, sweat and tears". The time is long since past when politicians could say to a nation at war "death and sorrow will be the companion of our journey; hardship our garment; constancy and valor our only shield." That's too much of a drag. Today even our conflicts, like our food, must be untouched by human hands.

It will effectively rule out the use of drugs, sleep deprivation and threat, which arguably should not be classed as torture and make these methods unavailable for interrogation. When taken together with the public clamor to provide nearly 100% protection against terrorist attack, it will create a heightened demand for information which cannot be met, even partially, by practices which fall short of real torture but which exceed the restrictions of international conventions. That need will be filled instead by a black market for coercion organized by a variety of non-American entities for whom the rules do not apply, nor were ever expected to apply, for "we are better than our enemies"; and one might add, better than our friends.

Newark v. Gitmo: No comparison

I had a more unpleasant experience trying to extricate myself from an arrest warrant sworn against me in Newark, NJ after someone stole my license plates.

Really. Well, no one played Christina Aguilera music. That would have been torture.

I'd say the tone and content of this reaction is about right.