Torture

[theaustinescorts]

So far the War On Terror has been the most one-sided war the U.S. has ever fought. The U.S. and it's allies have invaded two countries, killing hundreds of thousands. On the other side, those alleged to wish the U.S. harm have succeeded at only one attack, on 9-11, in which less than three thousand Americans died. Other attacks in Europe killed smaller numbers, and no attack there has happened in years.

Yet despite this lack of real threat, public opinion has responded with such alarm that the highest levels of government and acedemics have had to address a single issue which was never raised in other more genuine wars - should the U.S. use torture on captives?

If you gain your opinions from television fiction then you will be offerred two extremes, both inaccurate. On "24" Kefer Southerland, a government officer, must break the laws of society in order to save it from the evil of those who seek it's demise. Of course Kefer tortures, and often, because he's an individualist who knows best what to do. On the other end, on "Burn Notice," the hero Michael Westen proclaims, "torture never works" because "under torture people will say anything and you never get the truth."

Unfortunately both these maxims are inaccurate.

It's true that under torture people will give false information if they have nothing else to offer, but that only applies in situations where those doing the torturing have no way of verifying the information provided.

The one situation where torture absolutely works is when you have the ability to verify what's dervied from it, and the victim knows that. For example, if you capture a rebel soldier and coerce from him the location of his unit's encampment. With that information you can go to the place and see what's there - rebels or no rebels.

Questions where it doesn't work are like, "what people in this country are secretly rebels? Is the Minister of the Interior secretly a rebel?" and so forth. If a rebel tells you under torture that he saw the Minister of the Interior at a meeting of rebels months ago you have no way of verifying that. It's merely an unverifiable allegation.

So Michael Westen is wrong, but is Kefer Southerland also wrong? He is, and the reason is this - although torture works, for governments to permit it will do more harm than good.

The reason for this is because governments are not honest enough or competent enough to use such a serious tool which is only useful very rarely but has an enormous risk of misuse.

Speaking as someone formerly involved in government work I can testify that most of what the military and intelligence and law enforcement does is not purposeful. They are very much prone to error, misjudgement, incompetence, etc. There are very few super heros like Kefer Southerland who are always right, and very large numbers of dumbasses who think they're Kefer Southerland when they're really more like Barney Fife.

Torture is a very serious and extreme tool which our government, or any government in my experience, is not competent enough to use in cases where it might really be necessary. They would only misuse it like they misuse every tool they're given.

[Sensei]

Originally Posted by theaustinescorts

------Cut for brevity------

Torture is a very serious and extreme tool which our government, or any government in my experience, is not competent enough to use in cases where it might really be necessary. They would only misuse it like they misuse every tool they're given.

That depends on your definition of torture. I can assure you that the methods used by the professionals work and each of us have to endure the methods ourselves in our training (SERE). We are not talking of the old pull out the fingernails trick of the movies but the mental/physical manipulations that cool-aid pumping liberals would classify as "torture". Hell, deny them their morning espresso and they call THAT torture.

[mj2749]

AustinEscorts, I find myself agreeing with your premise on Torture as to when it works and when it does not. I also believe that it's a slippery slope that can have harmful consequences to our intended goals.
I think though that the reason the issue of torture was not raised in more "genuine" wars, has less to do with whether torture was used and more to do with the lack of access that the media had to information in those wars. Torture seems to have been used in almost every war our country has fought. We simply used to be better at keeping those kind of activities from leaking out. Can you imagine a Private in WW2 releasing thousands of pages of classified information as to how we were conducting the war? Those kinds of things just didn't happen back then and if they did, the consequences were swift and severe.
There's been an on going debate in Soldier of Fortune magazine about the torture issue. It's been picked up by several more mainstream news organizations as well. Dr. Martin Bass who opposes torture and documents why he feels it doesn't work and a General Aussaresses who served as a Captain with the French Special Service in Algiers during that war, who lists the reason he felt torture is sometimes necessary and effective. Here's the link to one of those articles but there's been many more since then, including several this year.
http://www.military.com/NewContent/0...ture%2C00.html

[theaustinescorts]

You're right that in other wars torture sometimes occured. In WWII American soldiers sometimes killed captured POWs even when doing so wasn't necessary, and also tortured captives to gain information. In Vietnam Americans would simply hand a captive over to their South Vietnamese partners, and then torture was a certainty. However in these situations it was not a matter of policy or procedure. Americans who participated in torture did so on their own, unauthorized by higher authority. The debate today involves whether torture should be prescribed and official. In the Bush Administration some officials openly argued that it should be permissable to torture a captive by crushing the testicles of the captive's child while he watched. I think that's torture by anyone's definition.

In the 1990s I worked in Africa, mostly in Sierra Leone during the war, and for about nine years of that war Soldier of Fortune
was the only publication that offered any coverage at all. It goes without saying that torture was used in that affair rather liberally, and often just for the sadistic amusement of those involved.

During the Sierra Leone rebel war there were several articles featuring the single Mi-24 helicopter the Freetown government possessed. That helicopter was purchased by the Minister of Defense in 1994 just before he fled the country [having deposited the Ministry's budget into his Swiss accounts] and moved with me to Austin. In 2007 when the "Blood Diamond" film became slated for release the ICE [fearing publicity from the film] finally moved to deport him for being a war criminal. If it were not for the potential pubicity of that film he would still be living off Oak Knoll and pretending to be just another hard-working employee of the LCRA. Hoorah for Hollywood.

What I miss are the essays that David Hackworth used to contribute before his death. When his post was taken over by Oliver North that to me spelled a decline in their standards. I've had my share of scrapes with the publisher also. His knowledge of history is fanciful at best.

btw - There were cases where American OSS operatives with the French resistance killed Germans they had captured in order to save them from the savage torture the French resistance always gave to captured Germans. A lot has been written about the torture used by the Germans in France, but the more brutal torture used by the resistance [who to a man were all communists] has been conveniently overlooked.

[mj2749]

I'd have to disagree with you about our use of torture in Vietnam. It was not isolated to troop level interrogations but was instead systematically carried out by our intelligence services, both military and civilian. Although at times our intelligence agents may have let the South Vietnamese do the "dirty work", it was always monitored and supervised by our agents. We trained them (South Vietnamese Intelligence), supervised and monitored them and usually had at least one agent watching the actual sessions take place. Then of course we had the infamous "Phoenix" assassination program that was carried out by our forces exclusively. Certain high level targets that were captured during this program were "handled" exclusively by our C.I.A. whom the Phoenix program fell under. All interrogations/torture carried out may have been done by "contractors" but they were under direct C.I.A. supervision at the time.

[theaustinescorts]

This is news to me. Can you please provide sources? The person usually cited on this topic is Frank Snepp.

[mj2749]

The the first source was actually one of my college professors who had worked in Vietnam. For quite a few years he was known as one of the top polygraph examiners in the USA and well known throughout many countries. Besides the C.I.A. he was used by the D.E.A. as late as the 1980's in Central America. He was also involved in the Bay of Pigs. He relayed to me some of the sessions he had been involved in....From what he told me, his side of things were on the softer interrogation side but he of course was very aware of and worked with some of the Intelligence Agents that used "other" methods.
The second source is a book titled: "The Phoenix Program" by Douglas Valentine.
In it there are numerous interviews and writings from participants in the Phoenix program. The book leaves little doubt and actually dispels the myth of who was running the Phoenix program and that was the C.I.A.
This is backed up by several books on Special Operations Forces in Vietnam, most are authored by actual SF operators and relate their personal and unit experiences. Quite a few of these make mention of the Phoenix program and the C.I.A.'s involvement.
I'm currently overseas and don't have access to them, but I'll be home in a few weeks and can go through them again for you. In the meantime, check out "The Phoenix Program" if you get a chance. It's an informative read.

[mj2749]

I forgot to mention, there were Congressional hearings held, I believe in '71 or '72 in regards to the Phoenix program. Some of the material should be available in regards to these hearings.

[theaustinescorts]

PHOENIX was a CIA program of assassination carried out by US servicemen, ARVAN personnel, mercenaries from Korea, criminals from the Vietnamese penal system, etc. However as far as I know none of the American personnel ever engaged in programmatic torture. The targets were NLF [VietCong] and lists often included unverified names obtained by torture from the South Vietnamese. For every 10 people killed they might have gotten two or three real communists, but even at that rate the program was effective in suppressing overt
expressions of support among S. Vietnamese. The reason why such measures ultimately failed is that although this terror further suppressed outward expressions of communist sympathy, it only further hardened opinion against the US and Saigon and led to more and more people joining the NLF secretly.

A similar thing happened in Iraq and Afghanistan because of US-caused deaths and injustices. In Iraq today the security services routinely torture pretty much anyone they run across, and the US is blamed for that. The human rights situation there today is as bad or worse than when Saddam Hussein was there. So much for "democracy."

It's possible that I don't know all the facts on this but everyone I know who was in Vietnam, and from what I've read, is that there was no approved torture by the US there as a matter of policy.

[mj2749]

You ask for sources, I provide them, you still disagree.
It is impossible to have a debate with you, however, I am no longer interested in even trying. Now that you've stated who your idol is...it all makes sense. Noam Chomsky? A self proclaimed anarchist and America hating liberal? Well it all makes perfect sense now. I'm afraid we'll never find common ground so I will stop trying. I'll leave it at...you believe what you want to your hearts content (which seems to be that America is inherently "bad") while you continue to enjoy the many benefits this country has bestowed on you. From your MIT education, to the freedom to pursue any work or hobby that you want, those freedoms were all made possible in and by the very country that you are so outspoken against.
I wish you all the best.

"Avram Noam Chomsky (pronounced /ˈnoʊm/ or /ˌnoʊ.əm ˈtʃɒmski/; born December 7, 1928).Since the 1960s, he has become known more widely as a political dissident and an anarchist,[8] referring to himself as a libertarian socialist.
In February 1967, Chomsky became one of the leading opponents of the Vietnam War with the publication of his essay, "The Responsibility of Intellectuals",[30] in The New York Review of Books. This was followed by his 1969 book, American Power and the New Mandarins, a collection of essays that established him at the forefront of American dissent. His far-reaching criticisms of U.S. foreign policy and the legitimacy of U.S. power have made him a controversial figure: largely shunned by the mainstream media in the United States"

[theaustinescorts]

Idol?

I took one course from Chomsky and that makes him my idol?

When I did government work my case officer was Walt Rostow, who was a very hawkish neocon. Does that make me a neocon?

The instant conclusions you are drawing are without foundation. Life is a little more complicated in reality than the instant conclusions you are drawing based on such associations.

My only reference to Chomsky is that he was a Zionist Youth Leader in the 1930s who was then opposed to statehood. Zionism used to be about sending Jews to Palestine to be farmers - not to agitate and terrorize so they could declare themeselves a new country in which everyone else would be made a second-class citizens because they weren't Jewish.

I'm willing to debate you but we need to stick to facts and evidence, sources and the like, not personal accusations about who hates or loves America.

As for sources maybe I missed something but I have no idea who your poligrapher teacher was who claims that torture was policy in Vietnam. Frankly I know a lot about Vietnam, and torture was never official US policy or procedure there anymore than it was anywhere else. The US has never included torture in its official policies and procedures until the last eight years. Since 9-11 torture by anyone's definition has definitely [and for the first time] been official policy. Anyone who claims otherwise should have their sources ready because it's unambiguous in government documents and court pleadings over the last eight years.

[mj2749]

I notice that you continue to use the same tactic. You mention the polygraph examiner yet fail to mention the book and author that I provided you who interviewed actual participants in the Phoenix program. It's ludicrous to say that the U.S. had no official torture policy prior to 9/11. So let me get this straight. We had an official assassination policy, allowing the CIA to carry out covert assassinations all the way up until President Ford. So it was o.k. for the C.I.A. to kill people, just not torture them? LOL, that's ridiculous. It's well known that the CIA participated in and helped in the assassination of many officials including the assassination during the Vietnam War of President Diem.
"What the American public did not realize in the fall of 1963 was just how much the Kennedy administration knew of the coup and of the Central Intelligence Agency's covert role in the background plotting that went on in the weeks prior to the event" (Assassination of Diem and his brother).
"Vietnam, 73 According to Defense Dept official 26,369 South Vietnamese civilians killed under Phoenix while op under direct U.S. control (Jan 68 thru Aug 72 ). By same source, another 33,358 detained without trial. Colby in 73 admitted 20,587 deaths thru end 71 , 28,978 captured, and 17,717 "rallied" to Saigon gvt. Thus approx 30% targeted individuals killed. All Phoenix stats fail to reflect U.S. Activity after "official" U.S. Control of op abandoned."
Read the above again...."while under direct U.S. Control".
"Vietnam, 65-70 details re Vietnam. From 65-68 U.S. and Saigon intel services maintained an active list of VC cadre marked for assassination. Phoenix Program for 69 called for "neutralizing" 1800 a month. About one third of VC targeted for arrest had been summarily killed. Security committees established in provincial interrogation centers to determine fate of VC suspects, outside of judicial controls."
So what you're saying AustinEscorts...is even though torture was official CIA policy during Vietnam, in regards to Phoenix and other programs run by them, somehow it was not official U.S. Government Policy?
I'm not even sure why I commented, I pointed out to you in the first post that I happen to think torture in most cases is a slippery slope. I simply don't appreciate the way you mislead readers by stating your opinions as facts simply because you throw out a few sources. As I've pointed out to you, there are many sources that completely contradict what you're saying, both about 9/11 and about Torture.
When the C.I.A. re-instituted torture after 9/11....they didn't INVENT it. They simply dusted off the old books and returned to the craft that they had practiced for many years. Torture fell by the wayside once more Congressional oversight came into play during the 1970's. Until then, torture and assassinations were common tools used by the C.I.A., a very large governmental organization run by an Appointee of the President of the United States. That pretty much makes it policy in my book.

[harkontume]

OK OK>>> I' Talk... just stop this torture!

[Codybeast]

Originally Posted by harkontume

OK OK>>> I' Talk... just stop this torture!

My head hurts...lol

[theaustinescorts]

I am painfully aware that US personnel participated in torture in the past. In particular I used to work with people who tortured suspected communist spies from Displaced Persons Camps in Germany in the 1950s, so I know it went on.

But this is very different than writing in a manual distributed for all officers to use that, "this is the way we instruct you to do it."

It's very different when an attorney representing the US government in court reads the judge a finding from the Attorney General of the United States finding that all the laws and statutes, including the Constitution, preventing torture all now are deemed irrelavant.

The war on terror is the only time since the Civil War that I know of that this debate has occured. It did not occur in previous wars because it was not official policy, condoned by higher authority, etc. regardless of how many authors venture their opinion that "...that's policy to me."

What happened in interrogations in Vietnam was conducted by the Vietnamese in the same manner that the US regularly renders suspects to other governments for maltreatment so that we won't have to have such an unsavory debate.