Torture, and what it is
Dec. 5th, 2006 10:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumI see people all the time who talk about torture as though it were only a valid charge if people's fingernails are pulled out, who cavil when I say I agree with the Geneva Conventions' description (any physical, or mental, coercion).
Read the NYT piece on Padilla, and try to imagine it.
No human contact, unless he was being interrogated.
No light.
Nothing to read.
Nothing to sleep on but a metal slab.
The only person in a naval brig; locked into a 10' cell.
For three years.
He was given food, adequate to his needs (and I've seen people say that his captors seeing to it that it was Halal, and so met with his religious needs was "too good for him,"; who opined that he ought to be getting a BLT for breakfast, and crabcakes for lunch), allowed enough sleep (often touted as not something we need to do, after all "what's it hurt to keep 'people like him' a little tired. I've gone for weeks on only four hours of sleep, and I wasn't driven crazy. Heck it wasn't even that bad."), doctors checked up on him and when he was ill, he was treated.
As a description it sounds like the care given a catatonic, or a person who's so brain-damaged we think of them as vegetables. It's not acceptable treatment for a human being.
It's certainly not acceptable treatment for someone who hadn't been charged with anything. Someone who enjoys a presumption of innocence. It wouldn't be acceptable for two-weeks, let alone for three years.
I've been inside a brig, as a prisoner. It was on an excercise to train Marine Interogators. I don't know if his brig is on a ship, but I recall the fear/disorientation of being led, with a white, but opaque, bag over my head, down endless ladders, my feet lifted over the sills of the bulkhead hatchways, and the slow shifting of the ship getting less.
There was light in the cell, but I'd been deprived of my glasses. I had a jumpsuit, and nothing else. The rack was bare steel, and without the jumpsuit I've have been more miserable. I was moved to another cell, with a foam pad on the the bed. I was fed (which was the first food I'd had in about 18 hours. I managed to get about three hours sleep (which made up for some of the lack I'd had, not havig been allowed/able to sleep the night before. It was cold, I was without blanket, or clothes adequate to the weather. I stayed warm by walking in circles. When the sun came up, I lay on the ground and got about two hours sleep in the sun, before they took us to the ship).
That was bad. But it was bad in a survivable way. I knew I was going to get out. I knew I wasn't going to be beaten. I knew I could choose to "give in" and it would all be over.
I can't really imagine what it would be like to live in my own head, except for the time I was being questioned. If it was to be questioned about things I couldn't answer (and the changes in Padilla's charges makes me pretty certain he didn't know what they wanted him to know)... Angels and ministers of Grace.
That's torture.
Those who don't think so, are wrong.
Those who don't care (because they were told was going to use a "dirty bomb", and I use told because that's all we have... some reports from the DoJ saying they thought he planned to build a dirty bomb, and set it off. They've not charged him with that. It was a way to pump up hysteria); are in favor of torture.
They are complicit in torture.
They don't care that they are in support of stripping away the civil rights discussed in the Constitution (they may be endowed by "Nature, and Nature's God" but they are kept alive by the unflagging efforts of those who defend them... A strongman may take them, or a lazy populace give them up. They are not inalienable, no matter how pretty that sounds).
Padilla's treatment is an outrage. Not just that it happened (secret prisons aren't really that hard to make, nor even to keep secret) but that when the details come out, no one seems to care.
Read the NYT piece on Padilla, and try to imagine it.
No human contact, unless he was being interrogated.
No light.
Nothing to read.
Nothing to sleep on but a metal slab.
The only person in a naval brig; locked into a 10' cell.
For three years.
He was given food, adequate to his needs (and I've seen people say that his captors seeing to it that it was Halal, and so met with his religious needs was "too good for him,"; who opined that he ought to be getting a BLT for breakfast, and crabcakes for lunch), allowed enough sleep (often touted as not something we need to do, after all "what's it hurt to keep 'people like him' a little tired. I've gone for weeks on only four hours of sleep, and I wasn't driven crazy. Heck it wasn't even that bad."), doctors checked up on him and when he was ill, he was treated.
As a description it sounds like the care given a catatonic, or a person who's so brain-damaged we think of them as vegetables. It's not acceptable treatment for a human being.
It's certainly not acceptable treatment for someone who hadn't been charged with anything. Someone who enjoys a presumption of innocence. It wouldn't be acceptable for two-weeks, let alone for three years.
I've been inside a brig, as a prisoner. It was on an excercise to train Marine Interogators. I don't know if his brig is on a ship, but I recall the fear/disorientation of being led, with a white, but opaque, bag over my head, down endless ladders, my feet lifted over the sills of the bulkhead hatchways, and the slow shifting of the ship getting less.
There was light in the cell, but I'd been deprived of my glasses. I had a jumpsuit, and nothing else. The rack was bare steel, and without the jumpsuit I've have been more miserable. I was moved to another cell, with a foam pad on the the bed. I was fed (which was the first food I'd had in about 18 hours. I managed to get about three hours sleep (which made up for some of the lack I'd had, not havig been allowed/able to sleep the night before. It was cold, I was without blanket, or clothes adequate to the weather. I stayed warm by walking in circles. When the sun came up, I lay on the ground and got about two hours sleep in the sun, before they took us to the ship).
That was bad. But it was bad in a survivable way. I knew I was going to get out. I knew I wasn't going to be beaten. I knew I could choose to "give in" and it would all be over.
I can't really imagine what it would be like to live in my own head, except for the time I was being questioned. If it was to be questioned about things I couldn't answer (and the changes in Padilla's charges makes me pretty certain he didn't know what they wanted him to know)... Angels and ministers of Grace.
That's torture.
Those who don't think so, are wrong.
Those who don't care (because they were told was going to use a "dirty bomb", and I use told because that's all we have... some reports from the DoJ saying they thought he planned to build a dirty bomb, and set it off. They've not charged him with that. It was a way to pump up hysteria); are in favor of torture.
They are complicit in torture.
They don't care that they are in support of stripping away the civil rights discussed in the Constitution (they may be endowed by "Nature, and Nature's God" but they are kept alive by the unflagging efforts of those who defend them... A strongman may take them, or a lazy populace give them up. They are not inalienable, no matter how pretty that sounds).
Padilla's treatment is an outrage. Not just that it happened (secret prisons aren't really that hard to make, nor even to keep secret) but that when the details come out, no one seems to care.
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no subject
Date: 2006-12-05 07:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-05 07:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 05:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 05:56 pm (UTC)The problem with things like this is that silence=death. People who don't hear other people up in arms will assume they are alone, that everyone else is ok with it (whatever it is).
It's the same thing that makes not responding to hate crimes a sin. It convinces the people doing it that they can get away with it, because no-one cares, or they agree.
Right now the people who agree are making the waves.
TK
no subject
Date: 2006-12-13 06:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-05 07:50 pm (UTC)Padilla is in Group A; this has to stop because who knows who may be in Group B? Enlightened self-interest alone should make us all stand on our hind legs and scream, if nothing else about Padilla's case can do so.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-05 07:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-05 11:41 pm (UTC)My only request is that you don't merely quote, but link. This lets people see it in context, and tell me what they think.
TK
no subject
Date: 2006-12-05 09:10 pm (UTC)word
Date: 2006-12-05 09:56 pm (UTC)I very much agree, and have since i saw links several years ago from
Folks have been protesting, have been screaming about it, and the media hasn't been giving it anything like the attention it truly deserves.
But that's been true on so many issues that it's taken the population itself to force the news to address it.
I don't know what to say about the stories that Bush has had a whole series of secret prisons set upa nd there may be as many as 30,000 people locked up like this, or worse.
It's far beyond an outrage.
I'd vote it deserves hearings in the Hague, no question.
Re: word
Date: 2006-12-06 11:09 pm (UTC)Absolutely. These are war crimes.
Re: word
Date: 2006-12-06 11:21 pm (UTC)TK
Here by way of Matociquala
Date: 2006-12-05 10:40 pm (UTC)Re: Here by way of Matociquala
Date: 2006-12-06 12:12 am (UTC)Re: Here by way of Matociquala
Date: 2006-12-06 12:27 am (UTC)Re: Here by way of Matociquala
Date: 2006-12-06 12:36 am (UTC)Padilla's treatment is indicative of this. Every time the courts were about to look at something which hinged on that interpretation, the administration moved to have it either not heard, or took it out of jurisdiction.
This is why Padilla's case was added to an existing case in Florida, if they didn't move him to a civil case, and charge him, the Supreme Court was going to hear argument on the matter of indefinite detention. The White House was going to lose.
So they played a shell game, which let them declare the case before the Supremes a dead letter, and the Supremes agreed.
It's not the first time. Add in the, uprecedented, number of "national secrets" cases, which were declared void, unheard, and the reasonable man is, pretty much, forced to conclude the people spouting this crap don't believe it.
Until, and unless, the President is, actually, invested with the power to rule by fiat, the Courts will have the ability to review the application of the law. Until that happens, the things being done are in limbo, at best, and illegal (at best is from the POV of the person committing the violations of present law, not, necessarily, from the POV of those opposed to those laws being trammelled).
TK
Re: Here by way of Matociquala
Date: 2006-12-06 02:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 01:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 01:42 am (UTC)TK
no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 01:24 am (UTC)Any rights which you think are guaranteed you by the Constitution are so much tissue paper.
Welcome to the "land of the free."
no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 09:17 am (UTC)Probably only happened because the Supreme Court was about to examine the legality of his detainment, and the charges laid didn't bear much resemblance to the 'dirty bomb' story originally offered to justify the circumstances of that detainment... but technically, he has now been charged.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 06:47 pm (UTC)I think our President needs to go back and study the causes of that little dustup we had with King George. The English King George, I mean.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 07:20 pm (UTC)It isn't just Bush who has been doing this kind of stuff. He's just a lot more open and honest about it.
Politicians suck.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-07 12:48 am (UTC)Even if Padilla is guilty of every single thing the government thinks he is, he is still entitled to every right the Constitution offers. That's what "equal protection under the law" means.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-07 01:30 am (UTC)His year in solitary was wrong (mostly because someone ought to have looked into the things which caused it... i.e. he could hack into systems with nothing more than a telephone receiever), but guess what, the four years of pre-trial confinement were credited to his total sentence.
He's free right now, working in computer security.
The parallels aren't really there.
TK
no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 03:05 am (UTC)I've said it before on my own lj, civilised people do not torture. We have decided that part of what we regard as being civilised is not torturing people for whatever reason. No ends justify those means. If we torture we are not civilised.
It really is as simple as that.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 04:30 am (UTC)I read that it was never in doubt that he was affiliated with al Qaeda. So if that's the case, they should have charged him with treason and let him see his lawyers so the case could go to trial. He wasn't allowed to see his lawyers for 21 months. ::shakes head:: I just don't get it. What did the government hope to gain from him that they couldn't gain by following the proper arrest procedures?
no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 05:59 am (UTC)The gov't, who haven't really made a case much larger than he was associated with al Qaeda.
The reason not to go to trial seems to be 1: they didn't really have a case. 2: I heard a member of the Administration admit the announcement was made for political effect, 3: they had a theory they wanted to test (the right to detain, indefinitely, an american citizen; this is speculation on my part, but not inconsistent with other behaviors of this administration).
As for treason, they can't make it stick. The requirements are simple, and the bar is high.
Honestly, John Walker Lindh couldn't have been convicted of treason, in a fair trial, so Padilla surely couldn't, the moreso now that we see what a weak case they have for the charges they did bring.
TK
no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 09:28 am (UTC)It's pretty hard to see what Padilla could know that would still be useful to those hypothetical accomplices after more than three years in solitary, but then excuses don't need to last forever. Just long enough for people to lose interest, or until you come up with a new one.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 11:49 am (UTC)As a side note, I think it's a damned good idea to let interrogators-in-training see exactly what it's like, why all those things that 'don't sound too bad' really do add up. (Anyone who thinks sleep deprivation is minor doesn't know any new parents.) It's related to a point someone made to me last weekend: things might be a little different if those making top-level decisions had much direct experience of the devastation of war on their own soil. Then again, that discussion happened in Germany and the point was made by a German, so the series of Franco-Prussian War/WWI/WWII says possibly not.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 05:29 pm (UTC)I've been an interrogator since 1994. I have said, since before I went to the school, that I was glad torture doesn't work, because if it did, I'd have some very difficult decisions to make. Because if it worked, if it could be used to get reliable information; on a regular basis, then the "ticking bomb/buried victim" scenario would be valid, and I would have to choose between torturing someone, and letting people die.
Right now, the stated policy is 1: we don't torture. 2: The more severe techniques are only used in special circumstances, by experieneced interrogators, and under close supervision.
So they aren't 1-level tasks to teach to everyone.
But, for the sake of argument, lets assume they were.
I'd not be an interrogator. My research, before I took the job, said torture was counterproductive. Fourteen years of doing the job have only reinforced this.
By making the teaching of torture a basic task, those who are unwilling to do it are self-selected out of the pool, and torture will become a commonplace. Right now, there are people who, when faced with demands that they torture (or are told that something isn't torture) balk. They have turned in their fellows (or at least been willing to testify, see Dilawar).
If they took recruits (aged between 18-21) and told them this sort of thing was not only legal, but effective, things would get a lot worse than they are now.
But right now, I can still stand in front of a class and tell them, categorically, that torture doesn't work; and I can use the (legally worthless) McCain Amendment, to tell them it's also illegal; pointing to the Geneva Conventions, and the War Crimes Act of 1998.
And most of them will internalise that, and resist committing torture.
TK
Long-time reader, first time responder
Date: 2006-12-11 10:58 pm (UTC)I disagree with you on this. Even if torture did work, the "ticking bomb/buried victim" scenario is still not valid. It is never valid. Here's the argument against the use of torture, as presented by Michael Ignatieff in The Lesser Evil (pg 140):
"Legalization of physical force in interrogation will hasten the process by which it becomes routine. The problem with torture is not just that it gets out of control, not just that it becomes lawless. What is wrong with torture is that it inflicts irremediable harm on both the torturer and the prisoner. It violates basic commitments to human dignity, and this is the core value that a war on terror, waged by a democratic state, should not sacrifice, even under the threat of imminent attack."
Another argument from Ignatieff, this time from his NY Times Magazine Op-ed (http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/news/opeds/2004/ignatieff_less_evils_nytm_050204.htm):
"And how can we forget what everyone who has ever been tortured always tells us: those who are tortured stay tortured forever. If you want to create terrorists, torture is a pretty sure way to do so."
Why shouldn't we use torture ever, even in the ticking time bomb case?
1) It doesn't work
2) It violates the very principles we stand on
3) It leads to more torture
4) It creates more enemies.
~AN
Re: Long-time reader, first time responder
Date: 2006-12-13 04:17 am (UTC)Even if torture did work, the "ticking bomb/buried victim" scenario is still not valid. It is never valid.
If we accept that torture does work (which you postulate in this hypothetical) than the rest is questionable.
If torture works, then one the principles you are defending in the second case have to be weighed, one against the other. We value life, but on occaision we decide to kill people (capital punishment, war; collateral damage in war), so that's not absolute.
What value the lack of coercion, when there are lives at stake?
So the questions aren't so cut and dried, if we accept that torture works.
I don't accept it, but but if one does, than it becomes something which can be debated.
TK
no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 08:15 pm (UTC)...
But, Mr. Patel said in his affidavit, his client is nonetheless mistrustful. “Mr. Padilla remains unsure if I and the other attorneys working on his case are actually his attorneys or another component of the government’s interrogation scheme,” Mr. Patel said.
I found this heartbreaking. I can't even begin to imagine what it must be like to have one's reality turned upside down like that.
Do you have any suggestions for action for non-US citizens? Are there particular people or organizations it would be useful for us to write to?
no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 11:13 pm (UTC)Mr. Padilla’s lawyers say they have had a difficult time persuading him that they are on his side. ...
But, Mr. Patel said in his affidavit, his client is nonetheless mistrustful. “Mr. Padilla remains unsure if I and the other attorneys working on his case are actually his attorneys or another component of the government’s interrogation scheme,” Mr. Patel said.
this reminds me of the way dogs will behaved after chronic abuse. they learned to react to abuse in certain ways (fight or flight, freezing). one site (http://www.wonderpuppy.net/canwehelp/abuse1.htm#dax) describes the abused dog's mental state as follows: "Fearful, untrusting dogs cannot think of anything except escaping what is frightening them. Some will try to run away at any opportunity, or create opportunities to run." another (http://www.pet-abuse.com/pages/animal_cruelty.php) describes the different forms abuse can take. animal abuse/cruelty on this scale is a felony in 31 states. I find these acts intolerable, and when I talk with others about it they agree. it inflames people. yet people in the U.S., people in power, are sanguine about the abuse they inflict on humans, such as in Padilla's case. this is devastating. terrifying. and it may not stop because while people feel bad when it is mentioned, many are made uncomfortable by this and hide it away, dismissed as "something I would never do".
does silence equal complicity? I agree with what you said, that "silence=death. People who don't hear other people up in arms will assume they are alone, that everyone else is ok with it (whatever it is)." it is easy to be passive and hope for the best. that isn't enough.
(sorry for the html errors!)
no subject
Date: 2006-12-07 02:14 am (UTC)But I've always wsaid that those who advocate torture should have to experience it first-hand before doling it out.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-07 04:33 am (UTC)I suppose I'm in the minority in one espect. While I do not advocate using torture, I am not morally opposed to the idea of torture or to most forms of torture. I do hold to a few guidelines though - that whole speedy trial thing - yeah, that's non-negotiable. And torture after trial, fine; torture before trial, Bad. Not too difficult, really.
I'm not outraged, mainly because I knew about the Stanford Prison Experiment before 9/11, and felt secret prisons and toture were inevitable. However, like the majority of responders, I am still unsure how to do anything that would actually change the situation or prevent a similar one.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-07 04:41 am (UTC)Torture as punishment?
For what crimes?
And how shall the torturer be selected?
TK
no subject
Date: 2006-12-09 12:26 am (UTC)I'm looking more for solid solutions, besides contacting my governmental representatives, that armchair activists such as myself can do to prevent reoccurance of these types of situations. I'm just not sure what those solutions could be, and from the comments on this thread, neither are other people.
If you'd like to challenge me on my views on torture, I'm not opposed, but as it isn't pertinent to the rest of the discussion, I suggest we either move it to an email exchange (or something similar) out of respect for those reading the original discussion.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-10 07:15 am (UTC)"I'm an interrogator, for the U.S. Army. I convince people to betray their friends, so my friends can kill their friends. And that's OK with me. I sleep well at night (mostly, but that's not what wakes me up and haunts my dreams)."
( http://pecunium.livejournal.com/2005/11/17/ )
When I read that, my gut response was _Isn't this in and of itself torture?_
I am not trying to pull up a strawman so that I can say that your whole stance is wrong-headed; I just don't understand how getting someone to betray their 'cause' is not coercion.
Thanks
ETR
no subject
Date: 2006-12-13 04:10 am (UTC)That's not torture. It may lead, should it occur to him what might be done with that sort of knowledge, to feelings of guilt, that's not my fault.
Because I don't torture people (that is force them to answer questions) the decision to answer is his to make.
Do I engage in mind games to make it seem to be in his best interest to talk to me, but if he doesn't want to, I can't make him.
To answer the specific question you ask at the end of your post, coercion is the mean, not the end. My end is to get the info, my means are simple questions, patience, and knowledge of the quirks of the human psyche.
TK
no subject
Date: 2008-08-01 03:13 am (UTC)