Tortured Logic

For those who defend the need to torture in certain circumstances, there is a presumption that it works.  Yes, it's bad, they may say, but if it's the lesser of two evils and necessary to protect our loved ones, then it can sometimes be justified. However, a recent report by the National Intelligence University states that there is no evidence that torture works in providing useful information.  Worse, it often leads subjects to provide misinformation.

Douglas Johnson is executive director of the Center for Victims of Torture in Minneapolis. He says, "We care for people who the rest of the community would consider innocent victims of torture, but all of those survivors would tell you that they would have said anything--anything at all that was wanted of them--to get the torture to stop. And so, they'll confess, they'll give the information that's fed to them, because the person who most needs a confession is the torturer. Without that confession, the torturer has no justification for what they've done. And the only way that torture states manage the morale and the minds of their torturers is that a confession emerges. And that's one of the key reasons why truth doesn't emerge from torture.  Anything could emerge. Sometimes it's a danger."

According to Dr. Steven Miles, a professor of medicine and author of the book "Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity, and the War on Terror," "One of the fascinating things about the ticking-time-bomb scenario is that it has elicited bad information, which has sent our troops on dangerous and fatal missions. The sole source for the information that bioweapons were being developed jointly by Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda came from a guy that we kidnapped in Sweden, took to Egypt and tortured, and that made it to the U.N. and was part of the authorization to go to war."

His views were echoed by Sen. Joseph Biden last month at a Democratic debate at Dartmouth College: "I met up here in New Hampshire with 17 three- and four-star generals, who said, 'Will you make a commitment you will never use torture?' It does not work, and it's part of the reason why we got the faulty information on Iraq in the first place, because it was engaged in by one person who gave whatever answer they thought there were going to give in order to stop being tortured.  It doesn't work. It should be no part of our policy ever.  Ever."

Earlier this month, according to The Washington Post, there was a reunion of about two dozen World War II veterans in Washington who participated in the interrogation of Nazi prisoners of war. "Many of the proud men lamented the chasm between the way they conducted interrogations during the war and the harsh measures used today in questioning terrorism suspects," the paper reported."  Henry Kolm, an MIT physicist whose interrogation of Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess, occurred over a chessboard, said, "We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or ping-pong than they do today, with their torture."

Alberto Mora is the former Navy general counsel who opposed the administration's policy on torture. In 2006, while accepting the  JFK Profiles in Courage Award, he said:  "We need to be clear.  Cruelty disfigures our national character. It is incompatible with our constitutional order, with our laws, and with our most prized values. Cruelty can be as effective as torture in destroying human dignity, and there is no moral distinction between one and the other. To adopt and apply a policy of cruelty anywhere within this world is to say that our forefathers were wrong about their belief in the rights of man, because there is no more fundamental right than to be safe from cruel and inhumane treatment. Where cruelty exists, law does not."