These days as one begins to learn more and more on the interrogation practices used by American officials to acquire intelligence from high value targets (HVT) and then compare these practices to those used in places such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE, it seems there are perhaps more commonalities in techniques used than one may have initially thought. But do “excessive” or “extreme” interrogation practices provide reliable results? The following videos will give one pause to reflect on that question.
Warning: The scenes in the abc news video clip are very graphic. This video shows actual footage on the use of torture in the UAE. If you are faint of heart it is recommended that you skip the abc news video completely.
http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=7407186
And this video featuring interviews with two former British expats in Saudi Arabia illustrates what one will say or do simply to have an “extreme” interrogation stop.
After watching these two videos, what are your views on the practices discussed and viewed in these videos as well as techniques practiced by US officials to include use of waterboarding, sleep deprivation or isolating an HVT in a small enclosed area with a rat? Do these techniques work and provide desired results of timely and actionable intelligence?
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I am sad the the US government has abandoned principles that have been long held. The Oklahoma City bombing was solved without torture. The US knew the source of the Sept 11th attacks before it had the chance to torture anyone. None of us can remember any US legal case, even difficult ones that were solved by confessions obtained through torture.
This is disgusting, and more so when it is a policy supported by a bunch of draft dodgers. (Cheyney had his deferments and Bush had a cushy reserve assignement). These men never served and do not care how this policy has put US soldiers in danger. It is our soldiers who server overseas in difficult and controversial missions. It is our soldiers most likely to become someone else ‘enemy alien’.
‘enemy alien’.
should be ‘unlawful combatant’
Torture has never reliably produced the truth or actionable intelligence. Most often people confess to whatever to end the torture, or give false information. Insurgent cells are structured so that no one can reveal much about the broader network and knowledge is time limited. The techniques (with technological refinements) are relatively unchanged through the ages and from one culture to the next.
Torture does serve as a tool to frighten a population into submission. In Morocco under Hassan II high school students were arrested from the classroom (for ??), tortured over days or weeks, then returned home. They returned to school visibly destroyed physically and mentally–a lesson to anyone else feeling rebellious against the regime.
Sleep deprivation is psychosis inducing, and waterboarding induces a sensation of death by drowning that is one of the worst forms of torture. Formerly tortured refugees report that long term the psychological abuse (including threats to family), and particularly mock executions are the hardest to recover from.
In Latin American rats were not only placed in proximity but inserted into orifices. The use of dogs in proximity to prisoners in Abu Ghraib was a dual threat–deliberately chosen by the psychologists consulted to disturb Muslims, and obviously a physical threat. The US techniques must be seen to include sending prisoners to “black sites” to be tortured by other countires (Canadian Maher Arar to Syria, on unfounded and flimsy suspicion of being a terrorist)/
The first video, shows the sadism inherent in torture, and the second is about an incident for which a dual Canadian-British citizen William Sampson was also arrested, and tortured. Since the Canadian diplomatic corps wasn’t astute enough to perceive that he was being tortured and unable to address it with his torturers present in his interview with the government official, the Brits finally got him out.
A psychiatrist, Frantz Fanon, working in Algeria during the Algerian War with both tortured and torturer has written insightfully on the psychological detriment to both. Gazan psychiatrist Dr El-Sarraj has also written insightfully on his experience of being tortured by the Israelis, and by the Palestinians (the latter having been tortured themselves by Israelis slipped into Hebrew during his “interrogatons”).
PS Ironically the side panel Saudi News has an article on Saudi-Canadian Mohamed Kohail’s complaint that he is being tortured in a Saudi jail (and confessed under torture) and the Canadian government is ignoring him despite receiving a written letter about it from him. William Sampson redux.
@Jerry–perfect, I completely agree. I just wish Cheney would shut up and go away because having to listen to and read his nasty ravings in the news daily is continuous torture.
Torture is an unforgivable offense. The Bush Administration has really damaged our sense of right and wrong with the detainment of and torture of suspected terrorists in the support of their ideological-imperialist conquest of the M.E. Dressing it up and calling it “enhanced interrogation” doesn’t make it sound better–in fact it sounds worse and even more diabolical. The Geneva Conventions are in place for exactly this reason and the Bushies spat on them and drafted their own laws to undermine the Conventions and provide legal cover for their activities. It’s shameful and worse, they failed to keep “America safe”.
As for the two videos, I’ve seen the whole UAE torture tape and it’s really f*cking hard to watch all of it. The British nationals in the second video are absolutely right that torture will make you confess to anything. It’s just ridiculous to think that governments and individuals to this day believe that torture will produce the information they are looking to get. It’s barbaric, ineffective, and it demeans the torturer as well as the tortured.
On the Hill last week the Senate Judiciary Committee had a witness from the FBI–the guy who was successful in interrogating Khalid Sheikh Mohammed did it by just TALKING to him and got valuable info from him. There was no need to torture the guy (183 waterboarding sessions) after he’d already been peaceably questioned about what he knew.
I won’t make this long so I’ll stop short here.
Before I got to bed, here are a two videos from The Daily Show when Jon Stewart interviewed Cliff May about America’s use of torture.
Part I
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=226121&title=cliff-may-unedited-interview
Part II
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=226122&title=cliff-may-unedited-interview
Keith Olbermann covered in segment #5 this conservative radio host who was voluntarily waterboarded to prove it wasnt torture and ended up asserting that it indeed IS torture: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/
(I’m done, I swear!)
@chiara
“Torture does serve as a tool to frighten a population into submission.”
Yes!
The first video shows torture as a sadistic punishment for a perceived offense, and as such, is unrelated to the second video, which establishes that the purpose of torture seems less about obtaining the truth than about establishing an untruth.
However, are any one of us readers and writers in a postition of knowing firsthand whether torture can, indeed, produce the kind of strategic information that could not have been obtained by other means? Not me.
@Marahm
Your point is valid. There is no way to prove that torture cannot succeed, but how does one discriminate between true testimony gained by torture and false testimony gained by torture?
@Jerry M
I don’t know, but that question surely has a place in the discussion. I would expect that intelligence officers have an excellent idea of how to evaluate such information, even before they decide to inflict discomfort, or torture, upon a reticent prisoner.
Marahm,
Torture is immoral, despicable and unjustified no matter what valid information you might get out of it PERIOD.
The US has always taken the high ground in regard to torture claiming this sort of thing just doesn’t happen in their territory and it can only happen in third world, and Arab countries. Of course during the Bush, Cheney era, this proved to be a big lie. Of course torture in the US didn’t just start during these two bozo’s era, and it involves much harsher means than waterboarding, and sleep deprivation.
Everyone should watch Mayor Jesse Ventura talk on Fox News (sorry I havent time to make the link just now). He really kicks ass when they are discussing waterboarding etc. Highly recommend everyone watch it. He has been tortured unlike others who comment on it so knows what hes talking about.
S*** ! This is too disgusting to continue…
It’s quite sickening to see how quickly humans can devolve to being the beastly animals they are under that skin disguise….no matter how “civilized” they claim or think they’ve reached.
each country and government has it’s own dark filthy despicable secrets and acts…it’s just a matter of who hide them best.
boy you weren’t kidding when you said you’re comparing KSA with the USA in ALL aspects ! <_<
I remember watching two men show how they did a crime here years ago on t.v. At the time, I wondered why those men would ever be stupid enough to re-enact such a terrible crime knowing that they would be put to death for it. And I wondered, were they really guilty?
It’s terrible to think that through torture, you would be forced to admit to something that you didn’t do.
Since the link is now blocked by censors in the UAE, would this be the video of the Sheikh in Abu Dhabi torturing a grain merchant? If so, that Sheikh he is not considered 1) mentally stable and 2) has been reportedly arrested.
I am seriously disappointed that you would put the UAE video in the context of interrogation. The video clearly shows it is NOT an interrogation and you might as well put up a video of any other violent crime committed anywhere else in the world by a mentally unstable person and used it instead. Civilian or not. Rich or poor.
@ Jeane,
mentally unstable!! laughable!! Its nothing but abuse of power!! He seems to derive some vicarious pleasure out of torture . Labelling him ‘insane’ would be the easiest way out of any ‘punishment’ and he can spend the rest of his life in a ‘palatial’ hospital and life goes on!!
Shameful!!!
@ A Saudi Man
“Torture is immoral, despicable and unjustified no matter what valid information you might get out of it PERIOD.”
In other words, you would condone the murder of 3,000 innocent people and the terrorization of an entire country rather than apply “immoral, despicable and unjustified” practices to a handful of men so as to prevent such a tragedy?
The question seems not to be of the immorality of torture but of the end justifying the means. Torture is indeed immoral in any context. However, when the choice is between several courses of immoral action, who decides which course is more immoral, and therefore more undesirable?
The situation then becomes one of the end justifying the means. In this scenario, I think the end would indeed justify the means.
This entire conversation, however, is hypothetical and therefore cannot be decided with confidence. Hindsight is always 20-20.
@ Chiara,
I am also tired of seeing Cheney on the news. I agree, seeing him is torture.
I am not a specialist in intelligence gathering but, torturing someone is not effective—PERIOD! The very sad issue here is common sense has declined, and the use of torture is something that was used by the OSS and then deemed ineffective when the CIA was born. The US is better than this and we should not behave on our emotions.
I believe that some of the countries, particularly in the Gulf are not bound to the Geneva Convention so it is likely easier for them to get away with these sadistic techniques.
I the last few months or so, I have stayed away from this issue of torture as it bothers me that we are less safe now—these sadistic techniques just adds to “fuel the fire”. and the “I told you so….”
….I hope there are some major changes for the better.
( Not the topic but I had to write my name and email address again here on this blog….it used to be there by default)
@Sirius: One of Cheney’s greatest faults is he will never admit if he is wrong.
Marahm,
No Madame I don’t condone the murder of 3000 people; I don’t know how in the world did you arrive at that conclusion. And No ends don’t justify the means. Could you tell me how many people have been killed by the American Army since the invasion of Iraq, and are you telling me all the prisoners who experienced the nightmare of Abu –ghraib were all Al-Qaida members. In your ends justify the means logic, were the action taken by the US soldiers in that prison justifiable. It was crystal clear that Iraq has nothing to do with Al-Qaida, but the Bush –Cheney war machine decided to invade it anyway.
Do you know the number of people who are completely innocent at Gitmo, who are being tortured on a daily basis, some of them just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Guilty by association, after 7 years or so they are let go, no trial, no apology no nothing. Since when is the US justice system based on the notion guilty until proven innocent. I clearly missed that in Civic class while in school.
I think it is important to note that Jesse Ventura is clear that he was not tortured, but waterboarded as part of SEARS training with the Navy Seals. He and others are clear that training is different than being tortured by an enemy though still horrific. He is also clear that as a competitive swimmer he was supposedly better able to handle this than most (better able to swallow water without panicking), and yet it is torture.
Inducing the sensation of drowning is an old technique (including part of the English medieval legal system–trial by water), and was used in Vietnam on paths in the jungle with a handkerchief and a canteen of water. The only thing new is the actual “new and improved” board, and the pseudo-legal justification for it from a country we had hoped would do better.
The FBI interrogator for Khaled Sheik Mohamed–the most touted justification for “enhanced interrogation”–is clear he had given all “useful” information prior to being waterboarded, whereupon he stopped revealing anything. Most probably by the time it was obtained his information was out of date.
Calling the enemy “unlawful combattants” or any other euphemism is a propagandist’s way around the Geneva Convention and the US judicial system, as is having torture sites off the mainland and in foreign countries. Robert Baer, former CIA based in the ME, is clear on what countries (Egypt or Syria or other) are useful for what types of torture (to get a “confession” to torture to death, etc) and how the CiA assigns detainees to those countries.
Torture routinely gets people to agree to anything and incriminate anyone. Sadly this is often the whole purpose–the truth being inconvenient or unnecessary, and the real purpose being to terrorize the populace, or propagandize the torturer’s position (we have to do this because there are enemies out there) or both.
One of the greatest successes of torture (dripping sarcasm here) is to convert protestors/insurgents into violent extremists (think Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Ayman al Zawahiri), and to serve as a recruitment tool. Former members of the IRA military wing, being interviewed in the light of current practices, are clear they lost recruits and motivation to fight when the English started negotiating.
If you read the accounts of those who have been tortured, they all admit to having given at some point more information than they were supposed to, whether real, fake, or out of date– and moreso if they were not professionally trained to handle torture, to making up and agreeing to whatever would end the pain. I have never read one yet from whatever culture in whatever language who didn’t admit to this and to being suicidal as the preferred option to continuing to live tortured.
As I stated above, years later the mock execution is the one that still gives the PTSD symptoms, the realistic fear of death being the most intransigent fear of all.
Marahm–I agree that the 1st and 2nd videos are disconnected except for methods, and perhaps instilling fear in others–the 1st being sadistic retribution in a private matter and the second being political use of torture.
Unfortunately intelligence officers aren’t as good at discriminating reliable information as they would like to be, and there is no proof that any information obtained by torture was preventive of anything, as opposed to information obtained by other means (interviews, bribery, hacked files, found manuals, cell phone signals, informants, undercover intelligence agents, plea argreements, etc).
The FireBrand–thanks for all the info and links.
Jeane and Rasputin–Sadism is abnormal but not a mental health defense against criminality.
Jerry M, A Saudi Man, Jacee–AGREED!!!
@Chiara – Puhleez…I would never cite Robert Baer as any kind of expert even though he’d like everyone to think that he was…
I don’t completely disagree with torture. Particularly in our current extreme circumstances post 9-11. I think that the conversation needs to change from investigating Pelosi, denigrating Cheney, and every other lawmaker, to figuring out how to keep us safe. There seems to be some validity to the argument that this extreme method worked to prevent L.A. from going the way of the Twin Towers with KSM.
I just want to know who it is that America needs to hold it’s reputation against.
Maybe it’s the Middle East whose dictators and royal families treatment of women and non-Muslims is something we should emulate.
Or perhaps it’s China whose done a great job being friends with every despot in the world from Iran to Sudan and back again. Let’s give a cheer for their fantastic job at quelling dissent by murdering Tibetans, Chinese Muslims, and their own citizens.
And maybe it’s Russia under Putin because his reign had no correlation with 180 human rights activists and journalists randomly being murdered. None at all. And he’s been a terrific friend to the Chechnyan’s hasn’t he? All of them are still breathing and thrilled that he maintains his KGB stranglehold on that country….
And what about Europe whose in a state of rapid decay and doing a fantastic job letting immigrants take over their countries? I just heard that the current unemployment rates everywhere except Britain stand at 50% or more. Interestingly enough, the former Soviet bloc countries will be members of the European Union before Turkey. That’s a club I’m dying to join….
Shocking, nothing can justify the actions of that corrupt prince, he should be punished if there was any justice in this world, I can imagine what can happen when such a Psychopath meets power, in this case absolute power… The society should take actions, we are all guilty, for just watching and knowing that such actions exist and not doing anything about it…Thank you for posting this video, I heard about it before, but watching this is frustrating, how helpless we are, we just live in a jungle, the strong eats the weak and everyone is minding their own business out of fear and helplessness….
American Bedu–Robert Baer is only one of many who are qualified to speak to the subject who say the same thing, and he says it in the most pithy memorable way, which is why his name came to mind (I’ve seen him interviewed and in the Doha debates). He is obviously on the outs with the CIA as he acknowledges, and makes a living with pithy expressions as a professional writer and commentator. It doesn’t make him wrong on this account.
Lisa–America needs to hold its reputation against its own values and history. It also needs to hold its reputation against its claim to bring a superior form of democracy, justice, and human rights to the world (backing off that now).
Most importantly, in my opinion, it needs to hold its reputation against its signing of the Geneva Convention, and the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, both of which it has ratified.
I hope I don’t seem overly harsh against the US. The concern comes from disappointment that it is not living up to its own ideals, and is risking further harm as a backlash from its foreign policy, and “rules of engagement”.
As far as KSM is concerned, it seems the information from a computer, captured at the same time he was, was the most reliable. Otherwise he confessed to various past acts and future plans that did not incude post 9-11 plans against LA. Unfortunately there is doubt about what parts of what he said are true, as he claims and the CIA admits to his providing information under torture. The forensic psychiatrist expert in false claims who was hired to review his “confessions” determined that the bits of truth were to mitigate his sentence, and that threats made about his family were the inducements to cooperate.
I leave aside the claim that 2 of his children age 6 and 8 were psychologically abused and physically deprived to induce them to reveal Khalid Sheik Mohamed’s whereabouts, as it came from a potentially unreliable source, the father of another high level detainee in a sworn affidavit.
@A Saudi Man
I never did believe that Iraq had anything to do with 911, and I never did support the torture and murder of innocents. I do not defend my country in those actions. I do not suggest that all of that was justified, necessary, or effective.
I still suggest that the end may justify the means when the prevention of terrorist attacks is at stake, and could be prevented by the judicious application of methods that fall into the category of torture. That’s all, and that’s in no way a blanket statement of support for torture willy-nilly, as we’ve seen
Marahm–I’d like to nominate you for Secretary of Homeland Security in place of Janet Napolitano, who seems to have such difficulty distinguishing between the Canadian and Mexican borders, and learning or remembering that the 9/11 hijackers didn’t arrive in the US via Canada, and therefore is at risk of perpetuating the myth that they were Iraqi.
I disagree that the ends justify the means though. The ends are debatable and the means usually backfire on the perpetrators sooner or later. The ticking bomb scenario has been well debunked as both unrealistic and unresolved by the unreliable information gathered in torture including by top military and intelligence officers. It originated in a French novel and lives on in the US television show 24.
Even the actor Keifer Sutherland* who plays Jack Bauer knows torture is wrong.
*Canadian, born into a left-wing (even for Canada) family, grandson of the father socialized medicine in Canada ,Tommy Douglas, who was the leader of the first socialist government in North America; and son of Donald Sutherland AKA Hawkeye Pierce (anti-war surgeon) AKA Norman Bethune (Canadian communist surgeon hero of the Maoist war of liberation in China) LOL
@Chiara – trust me….this time Chiara you do not know of what you speak. I am not mocking you but I do know of what I am speaking here. I would never ever cite him as a reputable source of information.
American Bedu–thank you for the reassurance about your tone, and of course I am aware that you have more sources of information on the topic of Robert Baer than I would.
In my comment to you I was simply trying to convey that the statement about torture practices in different countries was made by others as well as himself, but his name came to mind. I realize now that I my first statement reads as if I were insisting that he was qualified–I wasn’t intending to insist on that only to say that of the people I’ve read or heard on the topic his expression of it was most easily in memory. If it were sufficiently important I would spend the time looking for the exact references to other better placed sources, but it was a side point so I won’t.
Thank you for the warning about citing Robert Baer, in future if it is important I will look to the other sources to reference.
Regarding the UAE prince … I agree that he is not in his right mind. He has power but people in power are not necessarily abusers. It takes a certain bent mind to do such things. I can only think that God help his wife and children!! The fact that he has power enabled him to have assistance with his perverted acts.
Chiara,
I agree that we should have preserved the Geneva Convention. This is what we prided ourslves on Chiara. But, unfortunately after 9-11 desperate times called for desperate measures. We tried to maintain peace for most of the last century, with some exceptions, but that hasn’t really worked out in our favor.
I loved what you said about KSM, and I also wish we knew for sure whether torture failed or worked in his case. Sadly though, Uncle KSM and his relative Ramzi Yousef from WTC 1993 made their own bed and have to lie in it.
Lisa
Thanks for your comment. We probably agree on the culpability of KSM and his “colleagues”, and that they need to be brought to justice and held accountable for their acts. Torture as punishment is even more against American values than torture as “truth serum” (I know you aren’t suggesting this, just thinking through if I can find any place for torture in this instance).
Unfortunately, evidence obtained by torture is (rightfully) not permissible in a US court of law, so there is an infinite regress, or at a least a vicious cycle here of the US having to create new dubious practices to achieve its goals.
Since it seems there are better more reliable ways to obtain valid information than torture, it would still seem to me better to have not gone that route, which has so damaged the US, and provided recruitment materials for its enemies.
The problems created are difficult to undo, and the price (materially and otherwise) seems very high. Ironically, the criticism of US involvement in “regime change” during the 70′s and 80′s in numerous countries has lead to the use of alternate strategies which may prove to be as bad or worse.
Thank you for helping me think about this further.
@ Rasputin – So there is no such thing as a mentally unstable person with wealth and ‘power’? Wealth and power only magnify existing problems.