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Torture doesn't make us safer

This Web only Speakout has not been edited.

Ernest Duff

Published March 23, 2008 at 6 a.m.

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President Bush announced during his radio address to the nation today that he has vetoed the Intelligence Authorization Act, which had passed both the House and the Senate, because he feels that it would deny the CIA the ‘tools’ it needs to effectively combat terrorism. This is, hopefully, the last, sad chapter in the erosion of American global, moral leadership that this Administration is responsible for in its misguided interrogation policies.

At issue are so called ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ that only the CIA is currently allowed to use, while the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 limits military interrogators to the techniques specified in the Army Field Manual. The President argues that the CIA has managed to get critically needed information from terrorist suspects and that our country has remained ‘safe’ because they are not required to adhere to the Field Manual’s standards.

But the public doesn’t really know if we are safer because of all this. What we do know is that sophisticated interrogators have been coming forth and testifying that techniques of ‘duress’ are amateur at best, and that the real information that is needed is garnered through the gradual increase of rapport with the terrorists. In other words, they are not prepared to be befriended and treated with respect as human beings, and are therefore caught off guard.

Witness the work of the ‘Clean Team’ that went into Guantanamo recently and got critically needed information from suspects by the use of rapport. Or the former CIA interrogator who has come forward and said that waterboarding was used in the recent past, and that they had some success with the method, but that we still shouldn’t use it because we are American and we are better than that!

At the Rocky Mountain Survivors Center, which I direct, we constantly hear the results of torture, ill treatment and abuse, and we know that people who are hardened by commitment to a cause are ready to be tortured, and if we torture them, they are ready to torture us back. We also know that, for those with no cause, studies show that torture is ineffective in garnering information that is accurate, since the person being tortured will say, anything, anything to stop the pain, and most of this information is just not reliable.

So, this veto only serves to deepen our vulnerability to reprisals of a similar nature in the ongoing war, putting our soldiers in the position of being tortured if captured. This is not a war unlike any other. It is a war, and there are rules that we should observe if we are truly to win the peace. Anything short of this is simply more of the same reprehensible and shadowy policy that continues to reduce our overall stature as a nation.

As a torture treatment professional, a veteran, and an American patriot, I call on this Administration and whoever follows later, to unequivocally condemn ‘enhanced interrrogation’ as the torture that it is, and to bring the United States back into line with its cherished principles of due process, civil liberty — and if war is to continue — strict adherence to the rules of engagement, particular with prisoners, no matter how heinous we may think they are. We become them if we torture, plain and simple.

Ernest Duff, executive director of Rocky Mountain Survivors Center, writes from Denver.

Comments

  • March 26, 2008

    9:49 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    CosmicSurfer writes:

    LOVE the description of "on the board getting water splashed on his face"....makes it so gentle...Like a child's bath.
    When actually it IS drowning and if you have EVER come close to drowning and knowing that there is someone holding you down so that you cannot get out. Feeling the strenth of arms holding you as the water continues to fill your throat...sheer terror filling your every cell knowing that the person holding you not only has NO respect for life but has made it very clear that he could care less if you die and he is going to make it as painful as possible. Not knowing that it will stop (and often it doesn't before its too late). That is torture and you, sir have no idea what it feels like. I DO and that is no way to treat any creature on this earth from planeria worms to a human beings.
    IT IS inhumane, illegal and morally contemptable. And if you want to become worse than the lowest scum-sucking sleezebag, then go right ahead...I hope you sleep well knowing that once you crossed that line and lower your standards to that level, you have no right complaining when someone comes in and does it to you or your family. You have made it acceptable behavior on all sides and openly stated that it is OK with you

  • March 27, 2008

    12:08 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    p_myers661 writes:

    Torture is inefficient in use and most efficient when available. Torture is the use of pain to create fear and results. Without the possibility of torture, many would refuse to admit what they know.

    We know of several plans that were thwarted by intelligence gained from prisoners.

    Touchy feely liberalism finds torture horrible if we have it available and nothing to worry about it it's in others' hands.

    Practical interrogators find torture almost useless when used and powerful when threatened.

    Let the threat remain.

    Let those with the responsibility for intelligence gathering make the decisions on what methods to use. If we are attacked again, there will be sobs and whining that we should have known. Let's work against the terrorists and keep all tools on the shelf.