Making Hay

I’ve been giving a bit of thought to the “torture memo,” and how it relates to John Ashcroft’s Justice Department as a whole.

First off, let me get this out of the way – torture is morally reprehensible, and those who engage in it or condone it should be penalized to the harshest extent allowed by law (which, incidentally, falls somewhat short of torture). It’s repugnant how so many administration officials try to sidestep the issue, giving non-denial denials about whether torture was ordered in Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo. Rumsfeld characterizes the behavior at Abu Ghraib as “abuse,” which is designed to make it seem not so heinous an act. But the difference between torture and abuse isn’t one of severity – its one of intent. A prison guard at a domestic maximum-security prison could beat a prisoner to within an inch of his life – fracture his skull, take out an eye from the beating. This would be wrong, of course, and it would be abuse, assault, or any number of other crimes.

But it wouldn’t be torture. Not unless the beating was done in order to elicit information from the convict. Torture is abuse in the name of getting to information that might not be given up otherwise. Beat the crap out of someone, that’s assault. Beat the crap out of someone while an interrogator asks questions, it’s torture.

But as reprehensible – as flat-out morally wrong – as torture is, the problem goes deeper than that. Not only does it ignore the Geneva conventions, putting all of our own captured soldiers at risk of the same treatment or worse, but it just simply gets bad information. It’s common sense (although backed up by the intelligence community): if you’ve got electrodes attached to my privates, I’m very likely to tell you what I think you want to hear – whether or not it’s true. Your interests may be in getting to the truth. Mine are making sure I don’t get shocked, and to hell with the truth. You want a Saddam/Al Qaida link? Yeah, I hearda that. Are there weapons of mass destruction? Yeah, whatever. Could you unfasten these clips…?

So while torture may get someone who knows something to tell the truth – stranger things have happened – its also likely to get plenty of people who know nothing to tell lies. And who’s to sort the bad information from the good? Reasonable, normal interrogation can help with that, but when torture is on the table, let alone in use, there’s no way to get a credible corroboration. All the info gained from torture, the shreds of good along with the mountain of bad – is ultimately useless.

Which brings me back to Ashcroft. Mountains of useless information is his M.O. That’s what the Patriot Act is all about. It makes it easier to authorize wiretaps, it allows far greater surveillance on ordinary U.S. citizens, it even allows access to a list of books we’ve taken out of the library – all in the name of more, not better, information. There were signs of the 9/11 attacks available to both the FBI and the CIA, but they were never followed up on to the extent they should have been. Part of that was because of breakdowns in communication. None of the problems associated with 9/11 were because they couldn’t get access to Mohammed Atta’s library books.

I read that an intelligence officer said of the Patriot Act: “We’re trying to find needles in a haystack; this just gives us more hay.” Even if it weren’t abhorrent; even if it weren’t setting our own servicemen up for retaliation – all torture does is add another bale to the pile.

Rob