The point of all this torturing that Torquemada Cheney and his acolyte Little Georgie are so passionate about is supposed to be that the “intelligence” rendered from it will be useful in interdiction of terrorist attacks and other militarily useful information. That is, beyond the entertainment value of looking the other way while some of the troops force some people who even scream in a different language to perform obscene acts for the camera, soil themselves and otherwise be subjected to things that make sadists feel powerful. [1] (Gee, remember when Bob Hope used to entertain the troops?) Then there is getting a little “payback” for 9-11 on anyone with even a faint swarthiness to Mohammad Atta wherever you can find them.
Throughout history torture has never been out of fashion, but I never understood how it could remain in fashion [2] as any more than pure sadism because there was always this built in contradiction: people would tell you the truth or lie to you when they weren’t under duress; but when you turned the thumb screws you had only than a twenty-five percent chance that you wouldn’t get the truth from them. That is, they knew the information you want and, to stop the pain, they divulge it truthfully then torture is an effective intelligence strategy. But, they might know the truth and give you false information; or, they don’t know it but make something up to get you to stop; or, they let you torture them until they die without saying anything. Those are bad odds.
Torture is especially bad odds when you are a bunch brutal dimwits like Bush and his pals. The point of all of this is that we are supposed to be fighting terrorism and doing something to make Americans safer. Uhhuh, did you see the reaction around the world when the Abu Ghraib photos were made public? Talk about a bunch of recruiting posters for Al Qaeda! Paid for by the American taxpayer, who no longer needs the money to travel safely in many areas of the world because there are going to be more people out there who would like to attach electrodes to our tender parts. Then there is the shock that people who used to admire America received that the great defender of freedom and democracy has established secret detention centers to circumvent its own rules for detainees and POWs. The Geneva Conventions, and secretly ships of those it singles out for special treatment to torturers on brutal regimes.
Put yourself in the position of the torture victim. What happens when you do ”spill your guts”? You get really your guts spilled, that’s what. You are not longer of use and now your tormentors can have some fun with you. Remember the Inquisition? Talk about a losing proposition for the victim. If you don’t admit that you had sex with the devil (or with “that woman”), or whatever the inquisitors want you to admit to, they just move you over from the thumb screws, to the strappado, to the rack, to the red hot pincers . . . well, you get the idea. Deny having sex with that woman, and they just keep it up; they know the answer they want: it’s the answer that will justify taking you out to the town square, tie you to a pole and turn you into a tiki torch to the amusement of the slavering crowd. They often did this even if you didn’t confess, but their tribunal judged you guilty anyway. [3] (“Yes, yes, I did have sex with that woman! Now would you please remove those wires from my testicles?”)
I tried to torture my own child one time. I was convinced that daughter Lisa, then about 4 years old I think, had been playing with her mother’s ring and dropped it and chipped the opal stone. Lisa liked to play with that ring. We just wanted the truth, but Lisa just wouldn’t fess up to breaking the stone. I figured that she feared the punishment because she had been instructed not to play with the ring; so she figured what was the point in telling the truth, better to do the torture. We pleaded, I threatened, to no avail. We tried to assure her that if she told us the truth nothing would happen to her, but she had been baptized a Roman Catholic.
Torture was the only way to get the truth, I was sure of it. I thought of ordering her to play with, Sondra, the girl next door, two-years older and a bona fide sadist and bicycle thief. Sondra made the Gestapo look like Teletubbies. No, we might never see Lisa again. I settled on bedroom detention without the company of favorite stuffed animal; at certain ages this can be considered “cruel and unusual punishment.” After two days she was released because now Laura was torturing us because she didn’t have a sister to play with. A week or so later Lisa was helping her mother baking cookies and she just casually said, “Mom, I’m sorry I broke your ring. I’ll buy you a new one.” See?
So what does this all mean about torture? I don’t know! I just got this far and wondered the same thing myself. At least it means that for every suspected terrorist from which we might get the location of a bomb (which has probably long been exploded anyway) our pictures and torture policies for detainees probably get us a dozen new terrorists. Does that mean we should let them all go? Of course not. But give them some due process, the kind we’re always saying we use and want Iraq to have; don’t ship tem off in the night to a former Soviet gulag or some Egyptian chamber of horrors. Oh, and all this might mean is that, if we really want some truthful information from these detainees, we might try baking some cookies with them. Cheney already looks like the Pillsbury Dough Boy.
___________________________________
©2005, James A. Clapp (UrbisMedia Ltd. Pub. 11.26.2005)
[1] See also essays on or related to torture, nos. 16.2, and 16.9
[2] While it might seem that torture by the American military is an issue that has arisen with our preemptive war in Iraq we have been teaching torture for many years to South American dictators through our School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia.
[3] Ya gotta love those Inquisitors. This was called an auto da fe (literally an “act of faith”; not a “barbeque”). Not that they couldn’t be merciful; if you were willing to confess before the flames roasted you to death they would let you kiss a crucifix and then someone would garrote you to death (quicker that being roasted). But they still burned your body. The Inquisitors would be proud of their work; they would have “saved a soul” and provided some local entertainment.