I recently re-watched some Daily Show segments from 2007 rebutting the arguments offered Rivkin-Bybee arguments. Unsurprisingly, the segments are very good, but I was struck by how long we've been discussing this, how despicable it is that any torture apologists dare still offer this argument, and how pathetic it is that mainstream media accounts don't challenge this argument forcefully when it's spewed out once again.
Here's three segments from The Daily Show of November 1st, 2007:
The Strife Aquatic:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | M - Th 11p / 10c | |||
| The Strife Aquatic | ||||
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Shock the Conscience:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | M - Th 11p / 10c | |||
| Riggle - Shock the Conscience | ||||
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Moment of Zen:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | M - Th 11p / 10c | |||
| Moment of Zen - Torture | ||||
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From 2007, here's the Current TV segment showing what waterboarding entails:
Alan Dershowitz is the opposite of a moral authority on torture, but I'll leave it to Scott Horton to give a quick overview there.
Here's Christopher Hitchens being waterboarded in August 2008:
Hitchens described the experience in more detail in "Believe Me, It’s Torture."
Here's a brief, striking video from Amnesty International:
How many times has this been testified to? Waterboarding is torture. One of the more remarkable examples is that of senior Justice Department official Daniel Levin, who in 2004 doubted that waterboarding could be lawful. He arranged to be waterboarded, concluded that waterboarding was torture, said so, and was fired by the Bush administration. This story came out in 2007, and Marty Lederman, Think Progress and ABC (video at the link) wrote on it at the time. Meanwhile, Keith Olbermann delivered a special comment on the subject:
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As we've covered in some detail before, SERE training is not torture, and most of the more high-profile torture apologists must be aware of this. It is not a good faith argument. Malcolm Nance, Charles Swift, Matthew Alexander and others have explained this distinction many times, and can do so far more authoritatively, but the key differences between the brief waterboarding in SERE training and the torture technique waterboarding are duration, volition, purpose and trust. I'll link Malcolm Nance once again, but waterboarding is controlled drowning. An American serviceperson consents to it, it's done by SERE instructors versus enemy captors, and he or she is subjected to it for a limited number of seconds. For all that, it's by all accounts terrifying, but it also stops, and the serviceperson knows this. On top of all this, the SERE schools screen instructors for sadism or lack of restraint because of the potential for abuse. The purpose of all this is to prepare certain military personnel for what they may face if captured by an enemy who does not observe the Geneva Conventions.
As we've observed before, claiming SERE training is the same as torture is like insisting that all consensual sex is rape or vice versa, and is quite the slur against the American military. Or, for another metaphor, claiming SERE training means torture is legal is a bit like claiming that inoculating children against diseases means releasing bubonic plague in a major city is legal. Preventative measures against something harmful or evil is not an endorsement of that evil. In fact, it's pretty diabolical to argue that it is.
Nor does the relatively benign picture painted by torture apologists square at all with the reality of what was actually done. In addition to the Red Cross Report, it's been recently reported that waterboarding was used at least 266 times on two prisoners. What possibly justifies that frequency? Is it now the torture apologist position that torture works, but only produces a tiny bit of information each time? Or did these prisoners telepathically receive new information about terrorist plots in between torture sessions? As Dan Froomkin notes (see the previous two links):
Now Scott Shane writes in Saturday's New York Times that the Bush administration's decision to ratchet up the brutality inflicted upon Zubaida, including repeated waterboarding, came "despite the belief of interrogators that the prisoner had already told them all he knew, according to former intelligence officials and a footnote in a newly released legal memorandum.
"The escalation to especially brutal interrogation tactics against the prisoner, Abu Zubaydah, including confining him in boxes and slamming him against the wall, was ordered by officials at C.I.A. headquarters based on a highly inflated assessment of his importance, interviews and a review of newly released documents show...
"[S]enior agency officials, still persuaded, as they had told President George W. Bush and his staff, that he was an important Qaeda leader, insisted that he must know more.
"'You get a ton of information, but headquarters says, "There must be more,"' recalled one intelligence officer who was involved in the case. As described in the footnote to the memo, the use of repeated waterboarding against Abu Zubaydah was ordered 'at the direction of C.I.A. headquarters,' and officials were dispatched from headquarters 'to watch the last waterboard session.'...
"'He pleaded for his life,' the official said. 'But he gave up no new information. He had no more information to give.'...
"Instead, watching his torment caused great distress to his captors, the official said."
I'll quote John Cole again: "There better be a pretty damned long fuse on that ticking time bomb. And yes, this is nothing but pure sadism."
As we've covered extensively, torture does not work for obtaining reliable intelligence, but is splendid for extracting false confessions. It endangers American troops abroad, and is immoral and illegal. As Malcolm Nance points out, torturing is "not a fair trade for America’s honor."
Earlier, we linked Hilzoy's post, "The Obvious Comparison," comparing the Bybee torture memo with a Room 101 passage in George Orwell's 1984. Scott Horton has more on the Orwell connection, and also provides a clip from the underrated film adaptation starring John Hurt:
Whether you view the abuses of the Bush administration as the banality of evil, the delusions of evil, or the audacity of evil, they are undoubtedly evil. These people are on the wrong side of Nuremberg. As the Edmund Burke line goes, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Our national honor demands that there's a full investigation into all of this, and that power not be a shield against justice.
Here's the ACLU petition to AG Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor, the Firedoglake petition to do the same, and a California petition to impeach Jay Bybee.
(Cross-posted at Blue Herald)
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