The patron saint of 21st century torture, Rumsfeld has a reputation for ugly acts and ugly tongue-twisters. But in the same way a broken clock is right twice a day, Don Rumsfeld may be right too.
Five years and six million CIA documents later, the US Senate has made its findings public. A mere ‘executive summary’ — the actual document is 6,700 pages long — has made its readers physically sick. What’s surprising is we continue to be surprised.
Because the hints were already there; the sounds of screams in the distance, well before the report: pyramids of live bodies at Abu Ghraib. Coroners at Bagram describing trauma to dead prisoners’ legs as comparable to “being run over by a bus”. Logbooks from Guantanamo telling us a suspect was blasted with Christina Aguilera music, given enemas, and made to act like a dog.
That was the score to these terror wars; the sights and sounds we grew up with. Of ‘extraordinary renditions’, of General Musharraf telling us about the bounty money. It was all on record.
Then the Senate report happened.
It so turns out, what we feared was true. And what we couldn’t even begin to imagine fearing — that was true too. The Senate torture report reads like a de Sade novel, but the free world’s descent into the torture chamber isn’t fiction. It is documented reality.
It’s the ballad of “enhanced interrogation”, a phrase Justice Department lawyers dressed up torture with, while stripping their victims of the Geneva Conventions in simultaneity. And as with most things intelligence, everyone was lying.
Detainees (“enemy combatants” according to the Justice Department, and “terrorists” according to Dick Cheney) were slammed into walls. They were made to stand on broken feet. They were “rehydrated”, a practice that involved injecting food paste into their rectums. Officers threatened to rape and kill their mothers. Some were waterboarded, “sensory deprived”, and made to wear diapers and wet themselves.
Many were innocent. Many begged their torturers to kill them, and sometimes they did: Afghanistan’s Rahman Gul was stripped of his pants and shackled to a wall, in a secret prison called the Salt Pit. He was found frozen to death the next morning.
No one was charged.
Which is the next horror we come to grips with: if the pattern holds, no one’s getting charged anytime soon. Investigations into over 100 cases of severe abuse — including Rahman Gul’s — have been closed, kudos the same Obama Administration that opened them in the first place in 2009. However, the Bush days beckon us, Mr Obama prayed “we look forward” instead.
The president is following an executive trend burned into Washington since Watergate: investigate not your predecessor, lest ye be investigated into. That may be the one enduring legacy of the all-pardoning Ford presidency — that, and the early days of Messrs Rumsfeld and Cheney.
Not that 40 years have made a difference: Cheney’s emerged from his throne in hell, calling the report “a bunch of crap”. Ever the folksy old zombie, Rumsfeld guffaws away his torture permissions, “My goodness, that’s a bunch of stuff!” And George W stays holed up in Crawford, Texas, allowing the press to fill in the blanks.
And what a press it is. While the Republicans wash blood off their hands, America’s right wing commentariat is bouncing back. Over at Fox News, anchor Andrea Tantaros won the network’s weekly lunatic award, “The Bush administration did what the American public wanted, and that was do whatever it takes to keep us safe.”
Known for her brand of eyeball-melting stupidity, Ms Tantaros continued, “The United States of America is awesome, we are awesome. We’ve closed the book on (torture), and we’ve stopped doing it. And the reason they want to have this discussion is not to show how awesome we are. This administration wants to have this discussion to show us how we’re not awesome.”
Not-awesome are America’s powers of introspection. But while the debate over depravity widens to the moral and the legal, the good and the evil, security vs liberty, here’s the core truth: torture doesn’t work.
The interrogation programme was the brainchild of two psychologists with zero experience of interrogation: James Mitchell and Bruce Jenssen reversed the same resistance techniques taught to American service personnel in case of capture, by communists during the Korean War.
But ‘50s commie regimes require false confessions — for propaganda purposes. How and why the Bush boys thought ‘actionable intelligence’ could be gleaned from the kind of tactics that make only for terrified lies, is beyond our understanding. The report attests as much: the effectiveness of the torture programme was nil; the best intelligence almost always gathered via other means.
And in a recent study by Charles Sturt University’s Jane Goodman-Delahunty, it was noted that “disclosure was 14 times more likely to occur early in an interrogation when a rapport-building approach was used” while “confessions were four times more likely when interrogators struck a neutral and respectful stance”.
Which is what these torture wars may yet teach us: beyond torture as a moral nightmare, it’s bad strategy besides.
High time then that Pakistan, the ‘frontline state’ in the wider war, learnt that lesson. The US makes empty howls in lieu of criminal convictions; Pakistan affords its victims neither. Torture at the official level is both acceptable and prevalent. And while Article 14 of the Constitution does much to prohibit torture, Pakistan’s penal code lacks both adequate definition and criminalisation.
That may change with the proposed Torture, Custodial Death and Custodial Rape (Prevention and Punishment) Act. Moved by Maiza Hameed in the Assembly and Farhatullah Babar in the Senate (Mr Babar’s legislative priorities are growing increasingly impressive), the bill goes a long way towards plugging the gaps in Pakistan’s legal regimen. Torture becomes an extraditable offence, evidence so gleaned is inadmissible, and protections for victims are put in place.
But the Muslim League’s legislative record — ranging from zero to Pakistan Protection Act back to zero again — leaves much to be desired. Best to dump the Cheney-era detention laws, and focus on convicting those arrested instead.
The psychologist Carl Jung once wrote, “The healthy man does not torture others — generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.” For a generation defined by the diseased heart of Dick Cheney, it is wisdom learned the hard way.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 16th, 2014.
Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.
COMMENTS (10)
Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.
For more information, please see our Comments FAQ
"Many were innocent. Many begged their torturers to kill them, and sometimes they did -"
How many makes "many"? The Senate report is 500 pages, but the number of people actually subjected to "enhanced interrogation" appears to be small. For example, the report describes three prisoners who were waterboarded and fails to add that any more than that.
@Rajesh:
you have said it all most accurately but the mother of all Evils and destability started after George W and his advisers tried to fix the world with quick fixes.
Rex Minor
We, the brown people are the most hypocrite people on the planet. We judge around everyone except ourselves. Our expectation of the impeccable record from the white race is significantly higher than that of ours. There is far more heinous human right violations which take place in the sub-continent and the middle-east, but we chose to conveniently ignore it. The torture under Saddam's regime, Khomeini's Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt under military rule never comes to the print because no one knows except the regime the extent of its brutality. The writer needs to take a look at what happened in 1971 with the Bangladeshis. The less said the better about the atrocities at Balochistan. And I would personally not go out to make a judgement on the Americans considering that Indian army's human right record is less than impeccable in spite of the fact that the army's job being very hard on being constantly engaged with a proxy war sponsored by everyone knows who. There is a saying that people living in glass houses shouldn't throw stone at others and writer needs to really look under the sleeves of his own country before raising finger at others.
ET mod. Please all the reply @Critical: You may delude yourself about the wall and the guns, but the time of reckoning is coming nearer. The good news is which the author has not referred to that there is a real possibility for Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld and Rice to face the law for the tortures on their watchto ensure that he would protect him demands the UNO. infact George W is so much worried that he is now promoting the image of Jeff Bush for the presidency to ensure that the next President does not force him to face the trial by ICC at Hague.
Rex Minor,
@Critical: Dear Critical, You have obviously watched too many Hollywood movies, and appear to believe the nonsense they espouse. Your missive would indicate that you torture people and that you use empty words such as honor, code, loyalty, to justify your brutality. People such as you have been indulging in criminal acts and people like me do give a damn about the dreadful mischief military/intelligence torturers have been indulging in for much too long. You may never be tried as a war criminal, but do not rely on it.
@Critical: When these dumb stupid Americans loose the next war the rest of the world will not torture We will however use the Nuremberg precedents to take the torturers and show them the noose by which they will be hanged by the neck until dead! Torture does not get actionable information it has been show over thousands of years to be completely useless. Supporters of torture such as Critical gives us a clear view of the depravity these low life,s have sunk to. We know children as young as twelve were tortured in front of their parents by the American scum. however the day of revenge is now in full flow for these pathetic sic rats referred to as YANKS!
t is obvious that there are many brutal, uncaring people such as Rumsfeld and Cheney, who somehow inveigle their way into high places in Washington, but America also has many caring people. The big problem for the world is that caring Americans do not get elected.
He does not have a diseased heart anymore. He got a transplant. last year. Wonder how many people he jumped in the line. Including young boys, girls men and women, who were denied so this 80 year old devil's spawn Cheney, could get a heart. Young people who had years and years to contribute.
Reposting my comment from another blog which is a modification of the famous quote from "A Few Good Men"
You can't handle the truth! Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Asad Rahim Khan I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for these terrorists and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know, that torture, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives! You don't want the truth, because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall. You need me on that wall. We use words like "honor", "code", "loyalty". We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it! I would rather you just said "thank you", and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to!
What is so surprising? Sounds like Noora League's Pakistan!