No One Could Have Predicted...
...that if you adopt a torture regimen originally designed to extract false confessions from American soldiers, you might end up getting false information that confirms all your erroneous preconceptions and leads you to commit a catastrophic foreign policy blunder.
The years immediately following 9/11 really were a perfect storm of incompetence, ignorance, and moral degeneracy in the White House. History will not be kind to George Bush and Dick Cheney. How is it possible that a torture regime this detailed and systematic could have been implemented without anyone understanding the history of the techniques being employed? How is it that no one chimed in and said 'hold on a damn minute' when this was being discussed? (Yes, I'm looking at you, Nancy Pelosi). How is it that no one recognized that these techniques were likely to lead to misinformation that confirmed what the interrogators already believed? Or did they just not care?
This entire debate has progressed in an almost surreal way. For a long time, the Bush administration and its right wing apologists were in pure denial mode, claiming that the U.S. did not torture and conceding that torture was a bad thing ("what's a Code Red?"). After Abu Ghraib, the official line was that torture is against the law and these acts were the work of a few bad apples disobeying clear orders from above ("the men were specifically told that Private Santiago was not to be touched"). Eventually as the extent of the torture began to be reported, the Administration's apologists began to defend the concept of torturing terrorists in the abstract, while still not admitting to any specific conduct ("Private Santiago is dead and that is a tragedy, but he is dead because he had no code. He is dead because he had no honor, and God was watching.") With the release of the torture memos, however, we've now reached a whole new stage. Dick Cheney and his defenders are now in full on Jack Nicholson meltdown mode ("You have the luxury of not knowing what I know, that Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. . . .you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall!"). I just hope we eventually get to the frog march stage ("You fuckin' people, you have no idea how to defend a nation. All you did was weaken a country today.")
Okay, that's enough A Few Good Men for the day. Honestly, though, when I see Cheney defending this transparently illegal torture regime, the image of Nicholson's reddening face and increasingly angry meltdown instantly comes to mind. Cheney, like the fictional Colonel Jessep, has clearly managed to convince himself that everything he did in office was necessary and saved lives and that he's now being second guessed by a bunch of ivy-league pantywaists who have no idea what it takes to defend a nation. He's defiant and enraged that anyone would have the temerity to question what he did or to (gasp) point out that it violates a number of very clear laws ("I'm being charged with a crime?! This is funny.")
Unfortunately, because this isn't a movie, it's unlikely that the culprits will ever truly be held accountable for their actions.
The years immediately following 9/11 really were a perfect storm of incompetence, ignorance, and moral degeneracy in the White House. History will not be kind to George Bush and Dick Cheney. How is it possible that a torture regime this detailed and systematic could have been implemented without anyone understanding the history of the techniques being employed? How is it that no one chimed in and said 'hold on a damn minute' when this was being discussed? (Yes, I'm looking at you, Nancy Pelosi). How is it that no one recognized that these techniques were likely to lead to misinformation that confirmed what the interrogators already believed? Or did they just not care?
This entire debate has progressed in an almost surreal way. For a long time, the Bush administration and its right wing apologists were in pure denial mode, claiming that the U.S. did not torture and conceding that torture was a bad thing ("what's a Code Red?"). After Abu Ghraib, the official line was that torture is against the law and these acts were the work of a few bad apples disobeying clear orders from above ("the men were specifically told that Private Santiago was not to be touched"). Eventually as the extent of the torture began to be reported, the Administration's apologists began to defend the concept of torturing terrorists in the abstract, while still not admitting to any specific conduct ("Private Santiago is dead and that is a tragedy, but he is dead because he had no code. He is dead because he had no honor, and God was watching.") With the release of the torture memos, however, we've now reached a whole new stage. Dick Cheney and his defenders are now in full on Jack Nicholson meltdown mode ("You have the luxury of not knowing what I know, that Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. . . .you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall!"). I just hope we eventually get to the frog march stage ("You fuckin' people, you have no idea how to defend a nation. All you did was weaken a country today.")
Okay, that's enough A Few Good Men for the day. Honestly, though, when I see Cheney defending this transparently illegal torture regime, the image of Nicholson's reddening face and increasingly angry meltdown instantly comes to mind. Cheney, like the fictional Colonel Jessep, has clearly managed to convince himself that everything he did in office was necessary and saved lives and that he's now being second guessed by a bunch of ivy-league pantywaists who have no idea what it takes to defend a nation. He's defiant and enraged that anyone would have the temerity to question what he did or to (gasp) point out that it violates a number of very clear laws ("I'm being charged with a crime?! This is funny.")
Unfortunately, because this isn't a movie, it's unlikely that the culprits will ever truly be held accountable for their actions.
posted by A.L. at 10:39 AM
10 Comments:
How is it possible that a torture regime this detailed and systematic could have been implemented without anyone understanding the history of the techniques being employed? Probably because all the people who had any real power to decide about that regime were draft-dodgers.
How is it that no one recognized that these techniques were likely to lead to misinformation that confirmed what the interrogators already believed? Or did they just not care?They didn't care. They knew that Saddam and bin Laden had been in cahoots. Therefore, even if the tortured confessions pointing to that "fact" had no basis in anything like facts, they were sure that they'd be justified in the end when they found the documents verifying the connection stored next to the WMDs.
Please see Mr Orwell for why people torture: the torture itself is their goal. It creates fear and turns people into sheep. Easy to control. Heck, the term "enhanced interrogation" was predicted by him in his newspeak and doublespeak repertoire.
The answer is obvious and has always been the same. The story is SPUN as incompetence and coincidence... this is true every time we see crimes committed by the government. Its the oldest and most used excuse.
I will offer another hypothesis which I believe is the absolute truth. THEY KNEW THEY WOULD GET FALSE CONFESSIONS... and that is PRECISELY WHAT THEY WERE LOOKING FOR. I do not accept that we continue to believe in OUTLANDISHLY STUPID INCOMPETENCE everytime something like this is exposed. Look at the perfect storm of MULTIPLE INCOMPETENT BEHAVIORS AND COINCIDENCES OF 9/11 and every other huge national security debacle.
They knew all along... AND THAT WAS THE PURPOSE... to gain false confessions and keep it in the arsenal of misleading and outright lies to lead us to war in Iraq. How else could they justify this war??? We wanted the oil and we wanted permanent military presence in the Middle East. To me, this is just part of a multi-pronged approach that was used to provide justification.
"They knew that Saddam and bin Laden had been in cahoots. Therefore, even if the tortured confessions pointing to that "fact" had no basis in anything like facts, they were sure that they'd be justified in the end when they found the documents verifying the connection stored next to the WMDs."
While I agree this part of the Bush Administration's calculation, I think it was just that. A calculation. As Bush has said, even if he knew in 2002 what he knows now about Saddam's non-existent WMD program, he'd have still ordered the invasion. The politically useful irreducible rationalizations for this are 'spreading democracy,' or 'Saddam was a tyrant.' I think the real motive was to simply teach the 'Muslim world' a lesson -- primarily to show our allies in Saudia Arabia and Egypt that we 'get it' and know how to deal with Islamists.
The bottom line here is that the Bush Administration needed evidence to garner political support for its war in Iraq, and used torture techniques proven to elicit false confessions as a means to acquire it. The only question is whether they intended to get false confessions, or were too incompetent to realize that the techniques wouldn't work in uncovering actual evidence.
Personally, I think the distinction is irrelevant. But I'm not a prosecutor trying to make a case.
This is where i get frustrated and irritated with Obama. It is necessary to move forward but in order to move forward we must not sweep these horrible things under the proverbial rug but rather hold people accountable so others inclined to do this in the future know that there are consequences! Being a peacemaker does not mean you allow people to get away with crimes.
It's like my religious, fundamentalist Christian right mother telling me she has laid everything at the foot of the cross of Jesus and is doing what Paul tells us - to put things behind us and move forward. HOGWASH! We have to DEAL with things before moving forward!
Thanks for a very thoughtful post! LOVE your blog and so glad i found it recently!
Warmest Regards,
Existential Punk
Existential Punk - I think Obama is doing this exactly right. It appears frustrating because it moves at a snail's pace. But the outcome will be much better as a result, and ultimately more satisfying to all of us.
This whole process is - and should be - more like a chess game than a blitzkrieg. Anyone who plays chess knows that you do NOT immediately deploy your most powerful pieces. Instead you slowly maneuver for control of the center, and the pawns - the weakest links - are the most important.
Instead of immediately releasing memos and demanding prosecutions, he's having the courts make rulings (which establishes precedent and diverts direct counter-attacks). He's allowing the evidence to emerge and be gathered (note interesting news stories keep emerging), consolidating support (and an extra Senator or two).
Case in point, this recent release of documents happened in SPITE of official Administration resistance. This makes it harder for him or anyone else to withhold similar documents in the future. I think this was intentional (otherwise he would have been much more aggressive about fighting the release). One pawn in place.
As president, Obama MUST use the rhetoric of 'putting it behind us'. We can get emotional and angry about it, but he can't. Going on the offensive personally would at best generate more effective resistance while opening the door to decades of appeals and tit-for-tat litigation. At worst every president would be primed to investigate and prosecute the previous one, no matter the party, as a matter of tradition.
Did anybody else notice that when Cheney left office, he cleaned out all the boxes of memos and records? That's why he was in a wheelchair at Obama's inauguration. He hurt his back. The question is; where did all those files go? Can we still get them? Has he finished shredding them? Or is he like Nixon, and too proud & flawed to destroy all the evidence?
I have a question, realy just curiosity, but before I ask it, let me insist I agree 100% with your position on torture and the Bush Administration. I feel like I am finally getting a bath to rid myself of the slime that our president immersed me in.
But, just out of curiosity -- and I asked "Sir Charles" of COGITAMUS the same question:
If a participant in the torture, not a 'low-level functionary' but someone high on the decision chain, came to you and asked you to defend them in a prosecution for torture, would you
a) refuse the commission on the grounds of the public (if anonymous) statements you have made,
b) refuse the commission on the grounds that you knew, because of your strong feelings on the subject, you could not give them the whole-hearted defense any defendant deserves,
c) accept the commission -- but only if your clients were willing to plead guilty and provide information on those above them,
d) accept the commission, even if the clients insisted on pleading 'not guilty' and defending the Bush program?
And, if, d, how would you go about this?
(No, it's not a trick or a trap, nor do I know how I would answer it were I a lawyer. I just enjoy legal reasoning on something like this.)
I love your A Few Good Men analogy. When Hayden ran his article arguing (in effect) that any attempt to impose any sort of constraints on what the CIA could do would cripple our intelligence by driving them into paralyzing caution and that only a completely rogue agency could protect us, I could almost hear him say, "You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!" That's how they think.
As to torture victims confessing to what the torturers ask them to: I recall a couple of years ago when the administration proudly announced that a suspected Arab terrorist had confessed to "everything from A to Z" regarding some terrorist act. Immediately the question arose: If there is no "A" and no "Z" in Arabic, how would it occur to this man to use that expression in his confession?
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