Torture doesn't work. Film at 11.

Remove all ads!

Chandos,
you underline the point I made earlier. To many torturing terrorists is seen as a lesser evil because of the conflation of torture in interrogations with punishment. Because he deserves it, after what he's done, it doesn't matter really whether he is put into the CIA's room 101 and subjected to horrors. Good riddance!

 

Of course.

I could not have said it better.

Oh, spare me....

 

I'm a little surprised at Chandos' comments, though to a large degree I come from the same emotional place. However much the dirtbags might deserve it, I wonder what the waterboarding did to the psyche's of the people actually performing the procedure. I have days where I say "I'd be one of the staff in a heartbeat -- make the <expletive> suffer!" but in more contemplative moments I consider the impact of doing something like that in cold blood to the torturer.

 

LKD, I think by the time you're actually doing such things the emotional impact is not so great. My understanding is that people are not ordered to be an inquisitor (for lack of a better name), they volunteer for it and are trained. Whatever part of the psyche that screams "THIS IS WRONG" has been long silent.

 

Much of the nuance in what I was trying to express was lost in the hysteria of the replies, which brought out a bit of contriteness in my remarks. As I remarked, I don't approve of torture and I don't believe that someone should be ordered to torture anyone who has committed a heinous crime - that would be "cruel and unusual punishment."

At the same time I have no sympathy for the guy because he was waterboarded 183 times - just to break even we still owe him another 1800 or so....

 

But the point of all this though, Chandos, was the guy who was waterboarded 183 times didn't plan 9/11, wasn't very high up in the al Qaida echelon, and didn't divulge any useful information from the waterboarding. In other words, no, this guy most certainly was not "owed" 1800 more waterboardings from us.

Subpoint: the argument used to be that waterboarding was so swift and immediately effective that it produces a confession in the first 1-3 attempts, which is true. In the case of Zabayda, he agreed to tell his interrogators "everything you want to know" after the first attempt. Problem is, what he actually knew wasn't what Bush's people "knew that he knew," and was therefore submitted to more waterboarding until he gave up the goods. 182 more times in a single month. And as it turned out, he wasn't the guy they thought he was, and he didn't know anything more than what he told them before his torture. He just told them a bunch of bulls**t to get them to stop waterboarding him.

Still think we owe him 1800 more?

 

I see that silencing of the conscience as being part of the detrimental effect of torture on the perpetrator. When he enters civilian life again, a major part of his persona has been damaged. I would say the trauma we're talking here would be similar to PTSD. If his conscience starts to return, he will be wracked by nightmares and guilt. If not, he will likely be forever marked as different from his peers. Whether or not the criminal deserves it, a country shouldn't subject said criminal's jailers to such a fate.

 

For me, this sums up the crux of the entire argument. From dmc:

This sentence is really all the justification any American needs to give for why Americans should not engage in torture. Period.

 

I was just checking to see how much more hystria was still out there...did you really think I was serious?

 

In that you said you have no sympathy for the guy, yes. I realize 1800 was hyperbole, but I would think you would find excessive and unnecessary torture of even a guilty man to be beneath us. If you do then I misunderstood, but the 'nuance' in your last few posts made that clear as mud.

 

Do you?

You might remember this, DR. I think you may have had a few comments about it at the time:

You have sympathy for him now?

 

As much as it pains me to say it, since he is in fact an al Qaeda member and in all likelyhood a scumbag, yes, in some small way I do. That's the tragedy of all this. The fact is he didn't do what he was accused of and didn't deserve to be tortured 183 times in a month. He deserved to be tried and convicted by a legitimate court. He still does. I have more regret for how low our country has stooped to engage in his torture than I do sympathy for his suffering that torture, but it is what it is. I feel sympathy for anyone unjustly punished for their crimes. Don't you?

EDIT: To your update...

I remember Daniel Pearl. First of all: KSM confessed to a lot of crap he couldn't possibly have done, to increase his hero status (and, again, quite possibly just to make the torture stop). I'm not at all convinced he was involved in the Daniel Pearl thing, despite his claims. But even if he was, as dmc so aptly put it, we are a nation of values and laws; if we stoop to their level, our values and laws mean nothing and we are no better than they are. We also have no claim to moral highground which, in the battle of hearts and minds, is paramount.

 

You may want to read a little bit more about this guy, DR. I provided a link.

 

I'm talking about Abu Zabayda, Chandos, not KSM. He was the guy tortured 183 times in a month, and knew nothing. KSM is a different story. I think the confusion is yours.

 

So now we owe him 1900 "dunks?"

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/03/ksm_i_beheaded_.html

Well, I'm not that impressed. First, although the death penalty is legal, it is often misapplied. There are numerous cases of where the wrong person has been on death row, and we discovered that we were about to "shoot" the wrong guy. So in this sense I'm not that impressed with the whole, "nation of laws" thing. IMO, we should not have a death penalty until we figure out how to give people a fair trial. On the other hand, we have people who commit the worst crimes and get off for various reasons - like OJ. I have no sympathy for that guy as well. It does not mean that they are "beneath" the law, only that if I don't feel any regard for what happens to him. The same with KSM.

I don't know a whole lot about the other guy, but I do understand that you are trying to present these jokers in the best possible light to support your notions of the misuse of torture. I don't envy your postion of having to state sympathy for him. For myself, I have no sympathy for him, because I believe he is as guilty as hell.

To DMC's point: There is a problem with making execution so "clean and painless." It can make us a bit reckless with its application. I think it should be "messy," so that we never lose the perspective of violence, that no matter how "neatly" applied, it is the least desirable remedy.

All this reminds me of a very good short story by Donald Barthelme. He was a writer who was in residence at UH while I was there. Tragically he passed away in 1989. I never got to meet or speak with him, because I entered the Creative Writing program after he passed away. But I saw him a few times on campus, and at the Roy Cullen Building. Anyway here is a piece of it:

Regarding our topic, you may find the story interesting. Don was a great writer in every sense of the word, IMHO. I'm sure he's still a legend at UH, and many other places where great writing is valued as well.

http://www.eskimo.com/~jessamyn/barth/colby.html

I'd also be curious to know what DMC thought about the somewhat controversial capture and execution of Adolf Eichmann, since he brought up the subject of Hilter. He's another guy for whom I have little sympathy -- sorry.

 

Thanks for the link. I do remember reading that a while back. It'd be nice if the article provided photos of these identifying marks to be conclusive. He may have killed Pearl, maybe not. But I think you'd agree that KSM has just as many reasons to lie about killing Pearl as Bush's people did to make the public – demanding results from the "war on terror" – think he really did; to exaggerate his importance, since he was really the only high-value capture they ever netted during the entire war. And I agree with you that this guy is the scum of the earth.

However - does that mean we were in the right to stoop to his level by torturing him? Like Zabaydah, KSM broke after the first waterboarding session. He was then subjected to over a hundred more when the intelligence he provided wasn't deemed sufficient by the Bush White House. And if you'll recall from the Wiki article, around the same time as he confessed to Pearl's murder, he also confessed to a slew of other crimes, all at once, according to a release from the Bush White House, right around the time Alberto Gonzales was getting into hot water. What a convenient time for the mother of all confessions, eh?

In KSM's case, sympathy is not the word I would use. But it's still not right. Point is, because of his torture, none of his confessions really hold up in any meaningful sense, so who knows what exactly he's really guilty of. He may actually have done all he confessed to. He may also have confessed to crimes others did and are now getting away with. And further he may have confessed to crimes he flat out made up. And why not? What has he got to lose? At this point, KSM only stands to gain by exaggerating his own importance, throwing our intelligence services off and martyring himself in the process. And he will likely never be brought to legitimate justice for ANY of these crimes because his confessions were all netted under duress.

Torturing KSM was the best thing we could have done for him.

 

PLEASE NOTE - I did an update on the previous post. Sorry it took so long...I would rather have done it as a different post, but it took a bit longer than I thought -- I have my 8 month-old son with me at the computer.

 

I am doing no such thing. I'm simply stating a fact that - just as you regret that non-guilty people are sometimes subjected to the death penalty - insignificant "terrorists" like Abu Zabayda have been tortured, excessively, without trial, and to no fruitful end. I'm not portraying anyone in the best possible light, facts are facts. Zabayda didn't deserve what he got, period. He's no innocent, but for torturing him, we sure as hell aren't either. As I stated, KSM is not the one I have sympathy for. But also again - by stating that the way KSM was handled by our government is not justice, I am in no way portraying him in any light at all, positive or otherwise. I'm human - I'd love to see KSM's nuts ripped out through his eye sockets, just like anyone else - but that's my anger talking. That is not justice, it is revenge. If we are ever to win this war of ideas – if that's even possible – we have to be better than that.