Orin Kerr at the Volokhs has a link to an ABC News piece on CIA interrogation techniques . Apparently these methods are “not torture”:
4. Long Time Standing: This technique is described as among the most effective. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding confessions.
5. The Cold Cell: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water.
6. Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner’s face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.
Why? I’m not sure I want to defend those techniques, but all of them seem to be aimed at the “psychological breaking without actual damage” bullseye.
I guess it still comes down to “How vigorously should the extraction of information be pursued?” I think the underlying premise is pretty shakey (that getting information from folks is significantly impacting potential terrorism threats), but if you object to this as torture because “torture is wrong” then the premise isn’t important. If we had indisputable evidence that there was going to be a virulent bio-agent released (let’s say ebola), you would still have to object to these techniques when applied to try and extract information about that release, yes?
So, where does interrogation end and torture begin for you folks, then? Should we just ask “Hey, know anything about terrorist plots? No? Well, okay then, back to your sell with you.” What about yelling at them? That causes some amount of psychological distress, no? Yelling at them under hot lights? Physical elements there.
Seriously, where do you guys think the line between interrogation and torture ends? Discomfort? Pain? Mild short term damage? Mild long term damage? Mutilation/dismemeberment/death?
Standing 40 hours sucks. Being cold sucks. Having your body send signals that something is happen despite your brain knowing it can’t sucks. But why are they torture?
I think a good guideline is “if you have to think about it, it’s torture.” Seriously, go try standing naked in a 50 degree room for a day while people douse you with cold water and get back to me. And waterboarding is fucking ridiculous.
That’s not a guideline and you know it. Who is the “you” we’re referring to? I get where your emotional reaction is coming from, but, seriously, why is it torture? Because it’s extremely uncomfortable? People willingly swim in water colder than that. Homeless people routinely face temperatures colder than that, to such a point that the net effective temperature is roughly the same. 50 isn’t warm, but it’s not hideously, death-inducingly cold.
People have their cocks and balls electrocuted for fun. I don’t think what people happily assent to has any bearing whatsoever on whether a given act can or can’t be considered torture.
There’s also the argument that these people will be so psychologically scarred by the time they’re released it would be a miracle if they didn’t become even more radical and desensitized to human suffering. And yes, most will be released. If they weren’t terrorists or combatants before, they will be.
That’s very hard to judge though, which is my point. Is being forced to stand more mentally harmful than being locked in Solitary for 30 days? It’s not in any way clear to me that this is the case. But I don’t see continual wailing and gnashing of teeth about solitary confinement.
I would tend to couch my definition in terms of persistent damage, mental or physical. And I’m not particularly sure how easy it is to make the case that any of these techniques lead to persistent damage. Unless you want to claim that having unpleasant memories is persistent damage. But if it is, again, prison is torture in and of itself.
Is that due to these techniques, or the simple fact that they don’t know how/when/if they’ll be released or whether or not something bad will happen to them? Isn’t the innate nature of incarceration a tremendous mental stress to begin with, and the one which generaly is most instrumental in leading to long term psychological trauma? Should we practice catch and release techniques for enemy combatants?
(Yeah, non-combatants shouldn’t be there. 100% agreed. But that’s not where the outrage is coming from here, either. It’s because there’s a subset of actions which are “not okay” that are being perpetrated. But I’m still not finding any convincing arguments for why one subset is “not okay” and another is, and nobody is providing much in the way of hard and fast definitions, rather than relative ones with fuzzy qualifiers as to what should/should not constitute torture.)
Why, because standing in 50 degrees being doused with cold water over and over again can kill you.
Why, psychological pressure and repeated threats to kill are also considered torture, and waterboarding is meant to put the victim in fear of their life while his captors demonstrate how easy it is for them to kill him.
Why, sleep deprivation can kill you, and people die from it not too many hours beyond 40.
You know, why is electricity torture?
What’s wrong with a little bone breaking?
Can’t I suffocate him, just a little?
Those are all forms of torture, regardless of what the Presidency says, because they are cruel. Would you support the use of these techniques in traffic cases? Do you think exigent circumstances justify human rights violations? Justify? Because if you support these techniques, you support using these technique on innocent people.
Each form obviously violates the Geneva Convention on employing doctors in the assistance of torture. (Who do you think helped them decide on 50 degrees?)
And when he says “you,” he means you, you fucking nut. He is asking you if you would like to volunteer for these tortures to prove that they are in fact, just like hugs.
There are no valid excuses for torture that allow a person to escape punishment. If you find it necessary to torture a person to save lives, torture them, admit it, and begin your sentence.
You fail to comprehend that these practices violate both the letter and the spirit of a higher law. There is no legalese here, there is good and evil, there is right and wrong.
I guess you can fudge it, like the upstanding gentelmen in North Korea.
From Amnesty International…
Torture does not stop terror. Torture is terror.(Emphasis mine.)
Yes, I was. Because, you know, it’s not clear to me why this is torture. Jesus christ, I love the reactionary vibe around here; I come in searching for information to try and understand others’ viewpoints because they don’t match mine, and get berated because I don’t have the exact same viewpoints of someone else. Hey, how the fuck else do you learn without asking questions?
Why, because standing in 50 degrees being doused with cold water over and over again can kill you.
How? Shock to the system leading to a compromised immune system? Hypothermia? (In either case, if that’s true, then yeah, risk of death is clearly torture. But that’s why I was asking, because 50 degrees to me, even if wet, simply isn’t cold enough to worry me. But then, I’ve not done it for hours on end. However, that was the reason I asked.)
Why, psychological pressure and repeated threats to kill are also considered torture, and waterboarding is meant to put the victim in fear of their life while his captors demonstrate how easy it is for them to kill him.
Okay… so what amount of power demonstration does not constitute torture? If I’m a cop and am doing my best to convince a suspect that I can make sure he gets put in jail for the rest of his natural life, is that torture? Or is it only torture if I’m demonstrating the certainty that he will get the death penalty? Or is it always different because the power rests in the hands of someone other than the immediate interrogator?
Why, sleep deprivation can kill you, and people die from it not too many hours beyond 40.
People die from shellfish too, but I’m pretty sure giving prisoners lobster for dinner wouldn’t be considered inhumane. 40 hours of continual wakefulness isn’t all that nonstandard for people to do voluntarily. Is there more chance of death from sleep deprivation under stressful situations? Because most college students don’t keel over dead when cramming for finals, so I have trouble buying the pure sleep deprivation justification.
You know, why is electricity torture?
Because both high amperage and high voltage bear a disproportionate risk of stopping crucial parts of the central nervous system. Not to mention frying/boiling fluids in your body in place with enough amperage.
What’s wrong with a little bone breaking?
You mean aside from complications dealing with blood clots and the fact that the body is undergoing severe physical trauma?
Can’t I suffocate him, just a little?
Well, see, the human body is pretty dependant on oxygen, and there aren’t particularly great guidelines for when you’ve not had enough.
That’s the whole reason I asked; I understand why the gross attacks you flippantly tossed off above are torture. I can see the effects just fine. But I also know that there are techniques that incorporate the whole mental anguish area that are accepted on a regular basis. So the ones that tend to focus on mental anguish or lower scale discomfort/trauma are the ones that are hard to judge. Is only one meal a day torture? What about only allowing bathroom breaks at prescribed times?
Those are all forms of torture, regardless of what the Presidency says, because they are cruel. Would you support the use of these techniques in traffic cases?
I don’t support these techniques particularly in the case they’re being used for. (Though I’m all for torturing people convicted of DUIs, but I’m sure that’s just my particular bias.) But just because I don’t support them doesn’t mean I believe or understand why they are torture. There’s still a bit of a gap between distasteful and torture in my mind.
Counter question: You know your prisoner knows the details of the release plans for Ebola into the New York (or London or Paris) subways. Is torture now okay? (Ebola, IIRC, is reasonably highly contagious and exceedingly fatal.)
Do you think exigent circumstances justify human rights violations? Justify? Because if you support these techniques, you support using these technique on innocent people.
I don’t know. I know I’m a lesser human for it, but given the above example I’d be tempted to be all for torture. Which means to me that the question isn’t whether exigent circumstances justify human rights violations, but instead how exigent the circumstances have to be before they are justified.
And when he says “you,” he means you, you fucking nut. He is asking you if you would like to volunteer for these tortures to prove that they are in fact, just like hugs.
You can make your points without being a dick. I’m sure it’s possible; there’s plenty of cogent information and discussion elsewhere in here. I’m sorry my worldview intersects your comfort zone a bit. Maybe I’m wrong. But calling me names isn’t particularly helpful in actually demonstrating to me how I might be wrong; reasonable discourse is far more useful. Try to control the knee-jerk assumption that everyone’s either with you or against you. Some folks, as it turns out, are simply uninformed and honestly trying to become moreso.
There are no valid excuses for torture that allow a person to escape punishment. If you find it necessary to torture a person to save lives, torture them, admit it, and begin your sentence.
Now see, that’s what I’m talking about. I can 100% understand that viewpoint. If it’s important enough to someone that they think violating someone’s rights is justified, be up front about it, make their case, and suffer the consequences. I’d certainly be willing to do all of the above in my hypothetical Ebola case. (Well, theoretically; I’m sure I don’t have the stomache to actually perform torture.)
You fail to comprehend that these practices violate both the letter and the spirit of a higher law. There is no legalese here, there is good and evil, there is right and wrong.
This is utter bullshit. There is no firmly dilineated line between right and wrong. Your higher law may not be mine, and almost certainly isn’t universal. Unless in addition to criticizing the war efforts you also believe that all life no matter the quality is sacred, that life begins at conception, and the perople in a persistent vegetative state ought to be continuously kept alive by machinery. Even then, you’re only roughly synchronized with 51% of the country.
For everyone there are different shades of right and wrong, and where the shading begins tends to vary by individual. So while you can find actions that any arbitrary percentage of people will likely find “right” or “wrong” the degree and “clearness” of such is always going to be up in the air. Good and evil are even more useless concepts. There are people who believe everything we’re doing related to this stupid war is good, and people who believe it’s evil, on both sides. If there was actually an objective good or evil, you could make a conclusive point and be done. But you can’t, and we both know it, so quit pretending that there’s a right and wrong answer here. There’s only a right and wrong answer for your worldview.
Mouse, “solitary confinement is not cruel and unusual punishment” is a well-established and agreed on principle. People aren’t complaining about it because most people agree it’s not.
By contrast, nearly drowning someone, or keeping them right on the edge of freezing to death, is a pretty new tactic in the american legal system.
The “higher law” I refer to is International Human Rights Law, and because it is subscribed to by so many nations, acquires enforceability ala Jus Cogens. That means indvidual national definitions and reservations are not sufficient to vary obligations under the law.
Personally, I’m less concerned about calling the above techniques torture as I am about calling them likely to result in bad intel, specifically the type that’s causing young soldiers to be put in harm’s way.
Sleep deprivation, okay, it’s not a bad addition to good interrogation skills when used properly. But 40 hours of it? You’re as likely to get bad data from a prisoner who’s “remembering” things that may or may not be actually real.
Temperature changes? Sure, they work. But tossing cold water on a naked prisoner who’s been standing in a 50 degree F cell for a day is entirely too much for what you’re actually trying to get, which is solid intel.
And that waterboarding crap is way over the line.
After reading through “techniques” like this, is it any surprise that the CIA has had so many incidents of public embarrassment over bad intel?
