Photographs
If you haven’t already, go read Jane Mayer’s article on our methods of torture. The short version: we’re using psychological methods to impose "learned helplessness" and dependency, and as a result, we’re getting some intelligence, a whole lot of garbage, and we’re turning our own interrogators into moral zombies.
I wanted to focus on one aspect of the calculated humiliation she describes:
A former member of a C.I.A. transport team has described the “takeoutâ€of prisoners as a carefully choreographed twenty-minute routine, duringwhich a suspect was hog-tied, stripped naked, photographed, hooded,sedated with anal suppositories, placed in diapers, and transported byplane to a secret location.
[snip]
The interrogation became a process not just of getting information butof utterly subordinating the detainee through humiliation.†The formerC.I.A. officer confirmed that the agency frequently photographed theprisoners naked, “because it’s demoralizing.†The person involved inthe Council of Europe inquiry said that photos were also part of theC.I.A.’s quality-control process. They were passed back to caseofficers for review. [my emphasis]
Part of the very calculating treatment we give these detainees is photographing them, both to humiliate them and for "quality-control." (Quality control of what? Is this like glorified meat inspection?)
I wanted to call attention to these passages because of the dust-up between the Administration and the ACLU last December. Here’s a series of posts I did tracking the dust-up:
- The Administration tries to force the ACLU to return a classified document pertaining to torture
- The Administration wants the document back because it shows how its torture policy changed in December 2005
- The Administration declassifies the document rather than risking a court decision against it on classified issues;the document describes a change in the official policy on photographing detainees
Click through to the last link for a history of our changing official policy on photographing detainees.
I raise this dust-up for two reasons. First, to show how the calculating process of using photos (and other humiliation) to dehumanize detainees has a parallel in the calculating process of legally codifying that practice. But also to call attention to the way this exacting process of photographing detainees for "quality-control" purposes can backfire.
BushCo’s attempts to get its photographing policy returned closely followed the ACLU’s attempts to get photographs of the detainees it was representing. Somewhere, there’s a a collection of photos of the ways and people we’ve dehumanized.
The photos from Abu Ghraib showed how out-of-control our interrogations in Iraq were. Somewhere there’s an equally shocking catalog of photos showing how inhumane our more formalized practices are, too.
Yep. And in that somewhere, in that undisclosed bunker with walk in safes for the normal day’s work product, there resides proof to yet another Administration lie. â€We don’t torture.†They are all a bunch of Dicks.
It wouldn’t be Ideology without de-humanizing and utterly humiliating the Evil ’enemy.’
These are the ’spectacles’ that Tyrants and Dictators have looked through since time immemorial.
It says, ’I have the power over you.’
That’s Bush’s â€Iâ€-deology.
It is also said that Hitler watched, repeatedly with glee, films of the piano-wire and meat-hook hangings of the Bomb Plot Generals.
Ideology is a disease that consumes the heart of humanity.
If you’re human – it can consume you, too. Think about it, Friends on the Right.
Torture as state policy is beyond the pale – specially for us who preach â€human rights†to the Chinese, Russians and others.
If the Dems in Congress are unwilling to get to the bottom of it are any of the Dem presidential candidates on record that they would expose all the shenanigans if elected and issue an executive order prohibiting such treatment of any detainee? Or are they also part of the problem why we have stooped to such a base level?
I still say the most important reason not to torture is so we don’t make our sons and daughters and brothers and sisters torturers.
Imagine you had a bright son or daughter who took a good job with the CIA after graduating from college.
Late one night they tell you â€I know I shouldn’t talk to this, even to my own parents, but I’m in the most amazing intelligence-gathering program! They have it down to a science!†And he or she proceeds to tell you the particulars, as outlined in Ms. Mayer’s article.
How do you feel about your child now?
SteveLG – That is a warm and cuddly thought about why we should not torture. I have a wealth of knowledge and experience on the subject of coerced confessions and have worked with literally several of the leading experts in the world on the subject. The best reason not to torture is that it does not produce reliable, consistent or useable information. Simply put, as to the goal intended, it just doesn’t work. Secondarily, it is immoral. Any other discussion is a sideshow.
They are not a bunch of â€dicks†they are a bunch of sociopaths and anti socials. It’s just too nice to say â€dicksâ€. Torture is a short term solution that makes it’s users feel powerful and more comfortable. It is not a long term intelligent solution.
re: â€The Administration declassifies the document rather than risking a court decision against it on classified issues;the document describes a change in the official policy on photographing detaineesâ€
It got me thinking. What prevents the US Supreme Court from speaking out against this administration’s overstepping of the Constitution? (aside from BuschCo’s handpicked justices).
Is this reticence on the part of the US Supreme Court derived from tradition or part of the law? They are a coequal branch of the Government afterall. Why to We the People have to suffer the consequences of BushCo’s illegal behavior until or unless someone â€with standing†successfully races up the US Supreme Court steps with a case against BushCo?
@bmaz: Could you dial it back just a bit, please?
There are any number of reasons why torture is wrong: moral (including the effect on the torturer as well as the tortured), pragmatic (ineffective at getting information, inevitability of victimization of innocents , and strategic (loss of high ground that enables U.S. to be any kind of force for rule of law, human rights).
To me, that torture is morally wrong is fundamental. I oppose its use unconditionally, and regardless of the â€guilt†of the victim. It’s also clear to me that historically its use, regardless of how it is originally initiated and/or justified, has very little to do with gathering information and more to do with instilling terror in the untortured.
However, I don’t criticize or even look askance at those who use pragmatic/tactical arguments against torture. I’m perfectly willing to use a variety of approaches in the political struggle to roll back our country’s legitimization of torture, and we need all the allies we can get.
No one is entitled to dictate what reasons are primary for anyone else.
Neil – Didn’t mean to offend, and I don’t presume to speak or dictate to others. I do believe that everything that you, I and SteveLG have discussed are covered in by the categories of pragmatism and moralism. Every now and then i get a bit testy, and I have been in one of those moods for just over a week now since the FISA debacle. For that, I apologize. I do find the constant debate over the torture issue mind numbing. Ticking time bombers on one side and principled moralists on the other. That is an inherently flawed discussion framework when the simple fact is that it does not produce reliable, consistent and usable information. Granted, there are different levels of conduct in the discussion, but as to the extreme modalities that are really at issue, both here and in the public discourse, and that Cheney et. al. are so fond of, there are decades of evidence and data and the conclusion is consistent. It is not effective for producing usable information.
And is torture on the agenda for Gonzales’ trip to Baghdad? As he advises the Iraqis on developing a legal system? God help us all…
there are decades of evidence and data and the conclusion is consistent. [Torture] is not effective for producing usable information.
And no one in this thread has said or implied that it is. I understand how past discussions may have made you jumpy; I’ve been through too many of those myself.
But there are more realities to take into account than the well-established fact of torture’s ineffectiveness as a technique of interrogation, and they aren’t sideshows.
Namely, as I said above, the extensive state use of torture as a means of repression and social control. Undemocratic governments facing resistance — nonviolent or armed — use it to frighten citizens from activism, to create divisions within organizations, to generate â€confessions†that can be used against others, etc.
Hammering solely on torture’s ineffectiveness as a source of accurate information is probably the most effective way to meet our ruling regime’s arguments for why torture is necessary, when addressing those who take their arguments as made in good faith.
But, due to relatively weak popular understanding of national security states that have been actively supported by our government, most Americans find it difficult to understand why the administration insists on the ability to torture if it’s not effective.
You’ve worked with experts in forced confessions. I’ve worked with torture survivors. And I’m familiar with the extent to which the U.S. was involved with and promoting torture long before the Cheney-Bush regime.
We both have something valuable to contribute to the discussion.
Neil – Agreed and, again, If I offended you or anyone else (and clearly I did), I honestly apologize. If you will look closely at my original comment, which was admittedly unduly prickly, I said that moral considerations were valid. I think your statements are quite valid and are powerful reasoning in a moral consideration. And yes, the US does have a long history in the use of all kinds of torture modalities; which begets the fascinating question of why Cheney and his ilk are so determined to institutionalize the practice into the announced fabric and ethos of our country.
There was One less female military translator in 2006.
Then last week 1500 newly unredacted words in the CAN study of a computer technical person’s mistaken arrest appears to be a three stooges tale of an Afghan truck driver whose personal Torquemada elicited a fabricated story in which the computer tech was depicted as a partner in crime, anything to end the Torquemadifaction. So, where did the extraordinarily renditionized computer tech receive cell time, a country in the middle east, where the US president decried the House Speaker’s outreach four months ago; yet, the congressman who visited the same middle east country right after Mme Speaker, received no such rebuke from the leadership of the US administration.
This means that there are torture victims who may have been tortured based solely on this illegal evidence? yes?? I think there are many more to come. What about the us citizen who was arrested for the bombing in Bali?? These folks may not know how or why they were targeted.
1) it makes it clear to the U.S people that the method is not exact and may not be worth the risk.
2) it means innocent people were tortured. (maybe even innocent american citizens.)
am I reading this right?
When I read photos â€as quality control passed back to case officers for review†I immediately thought that the review is about evaluating the appetite of the soldiers administering the torture. It is important when laws are broken and moral lines crossed, that everyone participating, every individual in the gang of thugs, can trust each other. The photos document the deed done so it will be done again & again. Those pictures are more than evidence; the pictures are the bond between crimminals, the security against betrayal.
I’m with SteveLG, during this war of Mai Lais after Mi Lais and institutionalized torture there may be good reason to distrust returning Iraqi veterans. Will they go back to the farm after they’ve seen Paree?
The director of Military Religious Freedom foundation points out the rise of religious fervor, even Dominionism, in the voluntary military and the fact that there are now as many,and better equipped, private contractors as American soldiers in Iraq. This is a deliberate unjust war. And no one even pretends it is â€the war to end all wars.â€
Katie Jensen: it means innocent people were tortured. (maybe even innocent american citizens)
Yes. People tortured name others, who are then bundled off to be tortured themselves. As John L. says above, this is what happened to Maher Arar, the Canadian who was kidnaped by U.S. operatives during a layover at JFK on his flight home and flown to Syria, imprisoned, and tortured. It was the â€testimony†of another Syrian-Canadian, under torture in Syria that formed the basis for his detention.
Still closer to home, the information used to arrest U.S. citizen Jose Padilla was provided by Binyam Muhammad, a prisoner at Guantanamo and later in Morocco, who was tortured in both locations; and by Abu Zubayda, an al Qaeda functionary who was drugged and tortured after his capture in Pakistan at a â€secret overseas location†(a CIA black site).
Padilla was held in solitary confinement in a South Carolina Navy brig and tortured for almost two years before being given access to a lawyer. The videotapes of statements he made while held were declared classified, and although his lawyers had the security clearance to view them, they were barred from discussing Padilla’s statements with Padilla himself.
This is what happens when there is no due process: total secrecy and total control, and impunity. Without the check of lawyers and judges able to question the information being used to kidnap, hold and â€interrogate†people, a cascading chain of paranoia, prejudgement, and arrogance results almost inevitably in the torture and abuse of people innocent of any crime, or certainly innocent of anything warranting such punishment.
The process becomes totally circular: the government declares â€terrorists†those with some link to someone who links to someone who said something under torture; then it kidnaps, holds, and abuses them with no meaningful opportunity to determine the basis of their detention (the meaning of habeas corpus), so that no one can dispute the government’s characterization. The lack of access to lawyers and courts also means that no one learns of what is being done to them until it’s too late to prevent it.
@Palli Davis Holubar: At the CIA black sites, the subject of Jane Mayer’s report, the torture is being conducted not by members of the armed forces but by CIA employees.
There has been torture, some of it systematic, conducted by U.S. military in Iraq, particularly on the part of the shadowy ’Task Forces’.
Soldiers and marines have committed atrocities. The loose rules of engagement have favored force protection over the lives of Iraqi civilians.
The â€flying blind†realities of operating with almost no real local allies, no command of the language, virtually no understanding of the culture or the local politics, with no rear guard area, in the middle of a complex, multi-factioned civil war and insurgency, on the basis of whatever the political lie of the moment is… all have made for a war that shreds and hardens the participants, even those lucky enough not to be killed or wounded.
But I’d caution heavily against lumping vets together. They’re individuals — even while they’re still in, but particularly after they’re home and out of the service. They deserve to be considered as individuals.
@bmaz: We’re cool. I get prickly myself; feel free to call me on it! I’ve valued and learned from almost all of your comments here.
@Neil Yes, I need to remember not to lump all vets together; to be prepared to know them as individuals and reinforce their better angels so the war experience can be processed through their lives. I know that, sadly, but… my father was a war resister before WWII, a young 4th grade teacher in Iowa; his mother was Quaker. In good conscience he would not declare religious CO because he wasn’t religious. He hitchhiked to the Omaha draft office to turn in his draft card. He was arrested and jailed. After some time in jail, he finally consented to enlist and became an Army (Air Force) engineer. No one told he about alternatives. On his 16th mission, his plan was shot down and he was one of the first 120 American POWS. He said he learned to be a human in the camps: he watched the guards and his fellow prisoners, he learned to measure life through the activity of thinking and its sustenance against boredom. He grew to respect both the human generosity and the greed of giving or taking what another man needs to survive. Unlike many other babyboomers, I grew up with those stories; they made me imagine, laugh, proud, cringe, and cry. Without saying it directly, his family and friends knew that the stalag saved him from the shame and sadness of his own acts dropping bombs from thousands of feet overhead. Imprisonment gave him the chance, over and over again, to learn the daily acts of human redemption. He knew men whose physical bodies would not let them survive. He knew men whose mental capacities would not keep them alive. He knew men who succumbed to their basest instincts. He knew men who grew their full measure.
All of this personal history is to say this: he died two years ago knowing this nation was a torturing nation, a torture different than he suffered, different even, from the extreme Imperial Japanese torture or the Hanoi Hilton version. It was the Geneva Conventions that protected him and his fellow GIs in Germany . The Geneva Conventions that prevented the institutionalized depravity that some people, torturer or tortured, fall into when given circumstances that allow, encourage or require it. We are now the nation that does allow, encourage, require and, pay for torture. How am I to know these vets’ stories? How am I to tell the torturer from the voyeur… the Swiftboat denier from the innocent soldier?
I met Dr. Stephan Miles, the author of Oath Betrayed. He said what we don’t see is the worst. We are a nation that covers things up, says what we believe and does what we want-seldom the same thing.
I hate the dilemma this malicious administration has given us…and I am relieved I have no children. I’m sorry, Neil, it’s hard to grasp the human ramifications of our nations actions… thanks for trying to help. Palli