The Torturer's Theme Song

(hummed softly as blows fall and bones break)
Give me back my broken night
my mirrored room, my secret life
it's lonely here,
there's no one left to torture
Give me absolute control
over every living soul
And lie beside me, baby,
that's an order!
Give me crack and anal sex
Take the only tree that's left
and stuff it up the hole
in your culture
Give me back the Berlin wall
give me Stalin and St Paul
I've seen the future, brother:
it is murder.
Things are going to slide, slide in all directions
Won't be nothing
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
has crossed the threshold
and it has overturned the order of the soul
When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant
When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant
When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant
______
From Leonard Cohen's "The Future"
torture, human rights, terrorism

Torturing Nature

Francis Bacon, the same guy who coined the pugilistic "knowledge is power" slogan, was a 17th century cheerleader for the subjugation of nature in the service of humankind. Although not a particularly religious man, Bacon wasn't above doing some sloppy exegesis to press home the claim that God gave humans sovereignty over the natural order. But he also more brutally--and revealingly--insisted that nature was like an wilely, artificially coy trollop who promises pleasure but ultimately must be seized by the forelock, thrown on her back, and dealt with forcefully. Nature is perverse and insolent, and requires being "bound into service..., put in constraint, molded and made as it were new by art and the hand of man." Nature must learn to "take orders from man and work under his authority." (Carolyn Merchant's The Death of Nature is a brilliant study of the way that Bacon used gender domination images in reference to nature.)

Bacon's perverse declaration of war against nature, along with its misogynist tempo, became the standard metaphor through the Enlightenment period up to the present day. Science (what Bacon meant by the "art" that constrains, molds, and remakes nature) is the instrumental reason that properly objectifies, dissects, conquers, and utilizes the natural world. Minerals, plants, water, nonhuman animals, the elements and atmosphere themselves: all are subordinate to instrumental reason and the will of humans. It's the right and the duty of humanity to subdue nature.

All this sounds remarkably like the language of torture, doesn't it?

Some torture is spontaneous and ill-conceived, but effective torture is methodical, premeditated, and semi-scientific (after all, you don't want to kill the victim before you've achieved your goal). The purposes of torture are to derive something you want, to break the will of the victim, and to assert total dominion over her. An adversarial relationship in which the victim is totally passive and the torturer totally active is established from the get-go. Yet despite this belligerence, there can also be elements of a perverse eroticism in torture that usually displays as sexual sadism. The torture victim becomes the torturer's "bitch."

Torture survivors are marked for life by their ordeal. They tend to be disfunctional, ridden with anxieties and fears, unable to adapt themselves to social situations, uneasy with intimacy, prone to intense mood swings, alternately explosive and withdrawn. It can take years for them to begin to regain some sort of equilibrium, and even then they need the help of trained therapists and a loving, compassionate support network.

I know that the word "torture" is over-used these days (I recently ran across a blog post in which the author referred to the "Abu Ghraib-like" nature of his quarterly visit to his dentist!). But I wonder if "torture" might not be appropriate, or at least worth thinking about, when it comes to describing the on-going devastation of our environment. Our scientific hubris as well as our self-indulgent lifestyles have turned the planet into our bitch (there's a strange "misogaiaism" going on here). We're confident that the planet still has something of value to cough up for us if we only tighten the screws a bit more. We don't care how much we abuse and humiliate the ecosphere. In fact, abuse and humiliation only symbolize our dominion over the natural order and trumpet the breaking of its will. And if we're called on our torture, we trash both the whistle-blower--"tree-hugger! alarmist! Al Gore dumbass!" and the victim--"just a fucking snail darter!"--or we deny that the torture is going on--"science has yet to establish that human actions contribute to global warming." At the same time, there's a curious and creepy pseudo-eroticism running throughout our torture of Gaia. We drive our gas-guzzling SUVs out to national parks so that we can be sentimentally gush about how much we love nature and how close we feel to nature.

And the planet, our torture victim? Well, she's doing exactly what torture victims do. Because of her trauma, her wounds, her humiliation and degradation and fragmentation, she's exhibiting anxiety and downright panic attacks, erratic behavior, mood swings, and inability to cope. She's breaking down, and is badly in need of patient therapy and a support network.

Global warming isn't merely about "things getting hotter." Global warming is about the shattering of the delicate eco-balance such that climate change becomes violent and erratic. It's about the breaking of the ecosystem's will to such an extent that it spins out of control. And global warming is also about destruction. Just as the torturer destroys himself in tormenting his victim, so we're destroying ourselves in our torture of nature.

____

(Hat tip to a discussion at Father Jake Stops the World for inspiring this post.)

torture, human rights, terrorism

When Democracies Torture

The world expects notoriously repressive political regimes to torture. That's part of what makes them so infamous. Since the torture and murder are open secrets, it's not difficult for liberated citizens, once the repressive regimes have fallen, to publicly acknowledge that torture was committed, denounce it, bring the perpetrators to justice, and (sometimes) offer reparations of sorts to torture survivors and families of torture victims who have disappeared. This open and honest acknowledgment and denunciation of officially sanctioned torture is a necessary condition for the healing of a traumatized body politic. Without it, no reconciliation is possible.

The world doesn't expect democracies to torture. Their heritage of affirming basic human rights is precisely what makes democracies so admirable. Citizens of democratic nations are proud of their traditions of fairness, legal protection, and respect for human dignity which are the envy of those who suffer under repressive regimes.

But here's the rub: democracies do occasionally torture. In periods of crisis, democracies torture "the enemy": British torture Irish, Israelis torture Palestinians, Americans torture Iraqis. In normal times, criminal prisoners in many democracies are also physically and psychologically brutalized. As Amnesty International notes, most torture in the world is inflicted on criminal, not political, prisoners.

Since the self-image of a democratic society is so intimately bound up with respect for human rights and a sense of fairness, the torture perpetrated by democracies, unlike the torture perpetrated by repressive regimes, is stealthy. It's done secretly, or it's outsourced. Rumors of torture may circulate, but unless there's an indisputable public revelation (such as the April 2004 60 Minutes' story on Abu Ghraib), it's easy for political authorities to deny them and for citizens to disbelieve them.

Even after indisputable evidence of torture goes public, democracies have a difficult time admitting its truth or accepting responsibility for it. Citizens of a repressive regime can always (with a fair measure of justification) blame the government for torture. But citizens of a democracy are participants, at least theoretically, in their own governing. They share the burden of responsibility. And torture is a tough burden to shoulder.

So both citizens and elected officials in democracies caught torturing typically hem and haw and rationalize, not only to protect their image around the world but also--and perhaps more importantly--to protect their own self-perception. There generally isn't the public confession of torture one finds in nations liberated from repressive regimes. It's as if democracies just can't bring themselves to speak their shame before the world. Consequently, the national wounds inflicted by torturing aren't healed, because they don't get publicly or honestly acknowledged. The bad conscience continues to nag, the wounds to fester.

In his excellent book on torture, Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People, John Conroy suggests that the process of rationalization and denial democracies that torture go through has nine thematic (not necessarily chronological) stages. Please note that Conroy's book was published in 2000, well before the Abu Ghraib mess. I underscore this, because Conroy's nine stages so uncannily chart the course the U.S. has followed since Abu Ghraib and Gitmo.

• Stage 1. Absolute and complete denial.
• Stage 2. Admission that some abuse has gone down, but minimization of both its scope and intensity.
• Stage 3. Disparagement of the victims as dangerous thugs.
• Stage 4. Insistence that the abuse (what "little" there was of it) was effective or appropriate under the circumstances.
• Stage 5. Insistence that anyone taking up the cause of the tortured is aiding the enemies and undermining the security of the state.
• Stage 6. Insistence that torture isn't occuring any more anyway, and that there's no point in keeping on about it.
• Stage 7. If, however, the topic just won't go away, insistence that the torture wasn't official policy, but rather the shenanigans of a few bad apples.
• Stage 8. Insistence that whatever abuse might've taken place isn't at all as horrible as the abuse perpetrated by repressive regimes.
• Stage 9. Insistence that the victims of whatever abuse there might've been will get over it. All they suffered was a bit of temporary pain or humiliation.

Sounds all-too-familiar, doesn't it?

torture, human rights, terrorism

BIG-T TORTURE IS BAD, But little-t torture is good?!

Defenders of "enhanced interrogation techniques" like presidential hopeful Rudy Guiliani (not to mention the sitting President) are gun-shy when it comes to using the word "torture." They don't like to hear it or speak it. They of course deplore torture. They find it offensive and un-American. But in a crisis situation--the famous ticking bomb scenario--they would authorize their people to use any technique at their disposal--water-boarding, sleep deprivation, physical blows, starvation, threats, psych-ops, sexual humiliation, and so on--to extract intelligence that might save American lives.

Is it just me, or does this strike anyone else as a difference that makes no difference? Too frequently there seems to be a wink-wink, nudge-nudge game going on in this kind of rhetoric. "I don't approve of torture, but I do approve (*wink-wink*) of whatever it takes (*nudge-nudge*) to get the info we need to know (*snicker*)."

What's going on with euphemisms like "enhanced interrogation techniques" is, I think, a specious division of torture into two sorts: Torture (big T) and torture (little t). Big-T Torture is what the bad guys do. Little-t torture is what the good guys do. What distinguishes the two kinds is their gruesomeness. Acts such as eye-gouging and electric shock to the genitals are Torture, but water-boarding (at least according to the White House and Justice Department) and sleep deprivation are torture. This way of thinking is so honestly (and creepily) summed up in a recent comment on the excellent blog The Fire and the Rose that it's worth quoting. What I'm calling "little-t torture" and the White House calls "enhanced interrogation," the commentator calls "pro-torture."

Pro-torture means within certain limits strongly coercing intelligence out of criminals or those who know and protect them. It does not sadistically seek their permanent harm or death like the TORTURE of tyrants and despotic regimes. Can we have some nuance please...? No one wants to burn people alive and chuckle, ram hot iron up people rears, rape their wives in front of them, or drag their dead bodies through the streets in humiliation. We want info desperately bad. Once it is given the techniques terminate. Other torture victims are given no exit option. They are there to be tortured, disciplined. Different ends in view.

The Torture/torture distinction, which (unlike in the passage just quoted) usually goes unspoken, is both naive and downright dangerous for a number of reasons.

In the first place, it perpetuates the myth that the primary purpose of torture is to extract intelligence. But most torture performed throughout the world has no interrogatory purpose whatsoever. According to Amnesty International, already-incarcerated "criminals," not captured terrorist suspects, are the main victims of torture. Criminal prisoners are powerless, looked-down-upon, and reviled, all of which are open invitations to physical and psychological abuse. In the U.S., because of the scandals involving Abu Ghraib and Gitmo--not to mention pernicious television shows like "24"--torture is thought of almost exclusively as interrogatory. But in reality, it's a way of subduing dissent, exercising authority, and expressing contempt.

Another reason for doubting the distinction is that official sanctioning of some kinds of physical abuse opens the door to ever-escalating levels of physical abuse. It makes sense. Physical abuse of prisoners or captives is rarely good-blooded (forget all the B-movies you've seen). Torturers almost always work themselves up into intense anger and even rage; they need this volcanic energy to sustain them. The conceit that physical abuse can be controlled or managed simply isn't in keeping with everything we know about the pattern of torture.

Moreover, the Torture/torture distinction is dangerous is because it's irrelevant. Intelligence and military experts in interrogation concur: information gathered by physically and psychologically abusive interrogation, regardless of whether it's the T or t variety, is rarely reliable. Sooner or later, torture victims will say whatever their torturers want them to. Most victims of interrogatory torture don't know anything of value anyway. The tragedy is that their torturers continue the abuse in the false expectation that eventually they'll hit paydirt. But this isn't likely. Ask yourself this: if the Gitmo prisoners had actually given U.S. intelligence any useful information, would they still be sequestered in that God-forsaken camp?

But perhaps the most obvious reason why the Torture/torture distinction is crazy is that it falsely presumes that the presence or absence of "morally unacceptable" Torture is determined by the degree of brutality. Obviously some techniques used by torturers will be more brutal than others. But this doesn't mean that some abusive techniques are either not torturous or are "morally acceptable" forms of torture. Nobody wants to say that sleep deprivation is as horrible a technique as eye-gouging. But to deny that it's a form of torture? Incredible.

Torture is better defined in functional terms. Instead of toting up lists of acceptable vs unacceptable techniques, we'd be better off thinking of torture in terms of what it does to the person upon whom it's inflicted. Earlier posts have mentioned the all-too-predictable consequences of torture: fragmentation of identity, regression, amnesia, PTSD. Contrary to our quoted defender of little-t torture, the torment doesn't have a terminus. Even if they manage to walk out of their torture cells back into the normal world, torture victims remain torture victims for the rest of their lives. It takes only a passing familiarity with their memoirs to recognize this.

torture, human rights, terrorism

Good Soldier Powell Says Torture Sends the Wrong Message (Duh)

Given the pathetic fairy tale he spun to the United Nations about WMDs in Iraq, it's astounding that anyone pays any attention to anything Colin Powell has to say. But, apparently, some still do, preferring to think of him as the Good Soldier duped by the Evil President rather than a moron or a self-serving politician.
This morning, Good Soldier Powell was invited to speak on NBC's "Meet the Press," and decided to weigh in on the torture issue--albeit, as the blog And, yes, I DO take it personally (from which I learned this--hat tip!) noted, kinda late. GSP argued that Gitmo should be closed and that prisoners relocated to the United States and placed under federal jurisdiction. "[W]e have shaken the belief that the world had in America's justice system by keeping a place like Guantanamo open...We don't need it, and it's causing us far more damage than any good we get for it."
The final sentence is the heart of GSP's objection to unlawful detention, selective habeas corpus, and enhanced interrogation: they're bad PR, major problems for the American image.
Okay. Granted. But are there any other reasons to close down Gitmo? Like, it's an ethical abomination? Immoral? Wrong? Ungodly? Is the only criterion utility? If the US could torture human rights without getting caught, would GSP be playing the alarmed elder statesman on "Meet the Press"? Or would he sit tight and stay silent?
I dunno. But his remarks sound pretty familiar, because most of the the nation's leaders decrying Gitmo and everything it stands for are studiously avoiding moral or religious objections, and focusing instead on policy ones. It's as if they have a blindspot when it comes to old-fashioned decency. And it's shameful.
torture, human rights, terrorism

Shame on Them & Shame On Us Department: Rudy Guiliani & Mitt Romney Endorse Torture (Er, Um, "Enhanced Interrogation." Sorry)--To LOUD Applause

One more reason to put Kucinich in the White House

An April 2006 Statement:
How can a President say: "We do not torture" but reserve the right to do so? This type of deception and brutality is losing us essential and necessary friends all over the world. We are also losing our souls in exchange for an imaginary, short-term gain. In fact, some of the "intelligence" obtained by torture that there were WMDs in Iraq demonstrates that people who are being tormented will say anything to make the pain go away. We know of at least 28 prisoners that were killed during interrogation during our recent wars. One was a high-ranking Iraqi officer who, apparently, was not providing enough "actionable intelligence" on WMDs. While God may forgive us for our actions, others nations are not as generous.
The reality is that the United States has employed torture and has transported people to certain torture -- and perhaps death. Torture is not an American value, and the President's signing statement reserving the right to torture is a clear violation of international and U.S. law that makes all of us -- and especially our soldiers -- less safe. The dismissal of the Geneva Convention as "quaint" and the legal gymnastics performed by this administration to justify brutalizing another human should shock all of us.
The failure of Congress to confront the President over the lawless signing statement is another disturbing chapter in its failure to exercise oversight of an "out of control" administration.
For the head of the C.I.A. to testify in front of Congress that "water boarding" is a "professional interrogation technique" is horrifying. In essence, the American people are being told that Thomas de Torquemada and the rest of the Spanish Inquisitors were not torturers when they used the "aselli," the water torment; they were merely professional and forceful questioners. Let us be candid, water boarding is a war crime. And following the administration's legal analysis, the Spanish inquisitors were not guilty of torture because their goal was not to inflict pain, it was merely to save souls. The fact that people would suffer pain was just an unfortunate by-product of saving souls.
Nothing is more misleading -- or immoral -- than the use of the "ticking time bomb" scenario. Even if such a scenario existed -- which has yet to be documented -- does it justify wholesale torture and the brutalization of people we suspect could or might do something in the future? As we have learned, framing all threats as "imminent" is a convenient way to anaesthetize people's consciences to agree that the ends do justify the means.
The America that people around the world have come to love and admire is being destroyed by degrees by messianic militarists who believe that torture and force are the tools God has given them to use. Clearly, if they simply employ them to merely save lives, why not employ them to save immortal souls?
Torture degrades us as a people. History has shown that when torture is employed, interrogators become lazy and brutal, and many, many innocent people die or are destroyed for life. Our humanity is the first death in the process.
My reasons for opposing torture are not just the clear moral prohibition, but a more practical reason: What would you do if your child was tortured -- especially if they were innocent, as so many tortured people are?
Torture breeds torture and brutality. Torture is a slope no American should step onto.

Kucinich for President website

Trade Secrets

Question: "What happens to you when you are torturing?"
Answer: "You may not realize it but it is very tiring...It's true that we take it in turns, but the question is to know when to let the other chap have a go. Each one thinks he is going to get the information at any moment and takes care not to let the bird go to the next chap after he's softened him up nicely, when of course the other chap would get the honor and glory of it. So sometimes we let them go, and sometimes we don't."
________
Testimony of an unidentified torturer. Quoted in Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth
torture, human rights, terrorism

The Phenomenon of Torture

William F. Schulz (ed), The
Phenomenon of Torture: Readings and Commentary. University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2007. 389 pages. $34.95

One of the paradoxes of torture is that it plays hide-and-seek with us, a game we Americans are only too happy to go along with.

On the one hand, torture shrouds itself in fog and night, whispers, innuendo, secrecy. It thrives on the anxiety and fear that mystery cultivates. It conceals where the torture chambers are, what the torturers look like, who thinks up the techniques that torturers use on victims. We don't hear the screams or smell the blood, shit, and burned flesh. Torture is coy.

But on the other hand, torture needs to be a little public to be effective as a tool for discouraging social and political dissent. What's the use of having a weapon if you don't flourish it to intimidate the enemy? Granted, torture is rarely flourished, but it doesn't really need to be. All that's necessary is for the public to know that torture is done, even if its details are hidden for the most part. All that's necessary is that a few torture survivors walk among us as reminders.

Because so little is known about torture except that it's practiced somewhere on persons unknown by persons anonymous, it's not uncommon (especially given White House, Justice Department, and Department of Defense spin) for many Americans to think of it in abstract ways. This is dangerous, because abstraction breeds false conclusions: torture isn't all that bad, not much worse than a fraternity hazing; torturers are heroes, willing to do dirty jobs for the sake of the common good; torture is effective as a means of intelligence-gathering; torture makes us safer. These distortions don't totally deprive torture of its night-and-fog-mystery, but they do make it morally palatable during times of crisis--or at least the torture that our government, as opposed to theirs, authorizes.

That's why this brand-new anthology of readings, put together by a past Executive Director of Amnesty International USA, is so important. William Schulz collects texts from historians, theologians, psychologists, philosophers, literary critics, novelists, attorneys, torture survivors, human rights organizations, and actual torture manuals. Taken together, they go a long way toward disabusing us of our false abstractions about torture. Even a random dip into this excellent book gives the reader a strong taste of the concrete reality of torture.

The collection is divided into seven topic-centered sections: (1) Torture in Western History, (2)Being Tortured, (3) Who Are the Torturers, (4) The Dynamics of Torture, (5) The Social Context of Torture, (6) The Ethics of Torture, and (7) Healing the Victims, Stopping the Torture. An appendix provides excerpts from the UN Convention Against Torture, International Standards Against Torture, and the standard US Army field manual on interrogation. Authors include Michel Foucault, Voltaire, Molefe Pheto, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Jean Amery, Adam Hochschild, Stanley Milgram, Frantz Fanon, Jacobo Timerman, Kate Millett, Rhonda Copelon, Elaine Scarry, Hannah Arendt, John Conroy, Alan Dershowitz, and Henry Shue. William Schultz contributes an introduction as well as an excerpt from his earlier book Tainted Legacy: 9/11 and the Ruin of Human Rights. (Curiously, there's no selection from Sister Dianna Ortiz, the American nun who was kidnapped and tortured in 1989 in Guatemala.)

In his forward to the collection, Juan Mendez, a torture survivor and Special Advisor to the UN Secretary General on the Prevention of Genocide, writes: "Torture will be abolished when all of us make ourselves responsible for it; for abolishing it and for enforcing its prohibition." The material collected in this volume, bringing as it does torture into the light of day, will make us want to take responsibility for torture and its eradication. Buy yourself, and your kids, and your friends, and your relatives, copies of this book. Get informed. Get horrified. Get ashamed.

Then act.

torture, human rights, terrorism

Just Torture Doctrine: Reality Outparodies Parody

"To accept torture, even to approve of it and to impose it, is not ultimately difficult. It is sufficient to be convinced that the cause you espouse is just, that the action being undertaken is indispensable and that because of this the end justifies the means." Anonymous torturer in Jean-Pierre Vittori, Confessions d'un professional de la torture, p. 15.

Nearly 25 years ago, Jesuit peace activist Richard McSorley came up with a parody of just war doctrine that he called the "just adultery doctrine." The just war doctrine has been so hallowed by tradition, claimed McSorley, that few people recognize how inadequate it is. But if you substitute "adultery" for "war," the analogy makes obvious what's too frequently missed: that just war criteria are casuistries intended to make what's morally unjustifiable sound noble.
Some of the traditional criteria for a just war, for example, are (1) last resort (go to war only if all diplomatic alternatives have been exhausted); (2) good intention (to create peace, not create havoc); (3) discrimination (make sure that innocents aren't harmed); and (4) proportionality (the option of going to war must be carefully measured against its likely outcome).
Seem reasonable? Not if you push the adultery analogy: (1) last resort (every other means short of adultery--discussion, advice, reconciliation of spousal differences, etc--must be tried and exhausted); (2) good intention (not to cause pain to one's spouse or children; the adultery must be motivated by genuine affection, not by mere lust); (3) discrimination (every effort at secrecy and caution must be made so as not to harm spouses or children); and (4) proportionality (the foreseeable harm to absent partners and to living children must be weighed against the need of affection and love on the part of the adulterers).
McSorley concluded that if armed conflict which meets just war criteria is thereby moral, then adultery which meets just adultery criteria is likewise moral. But this is so counter-intuitive that just war doctrine needs to be radically rethought.
McSorley intended his parody of just war doctrine to cast doubt on its moral authority. What he couldn't have foreseen--what reasonable person could've?--is that the moral justification of torture typically appealed to by both governments and citizens in the street is itself just as laughable a parody of just war as McSorley's adultery analogy. The big difference, of course, is that defenders of torture don't get it. They take the parody seriously.
Here's the just torture doctrine. Torture as an interrogatory method is morally acceptable (and even morally obligatory, if the stakes are high enough) if it fulfills certain criteria. These include (1) last resort (every other kind of "non-enhanced" interrogation has been tried and found wanting); (2) good intention (the intention of the torturer and the government authorising torture mustn't be to hurt the tortured so much as to gain information from her. So a "double effect" standard is invoked here. Moreover, the primary intention of the torturer must be to protect the well-being of society); (3) discrimination (every effort must be made to guarantee that the person being tortured actually possesses the information the interrogator wants. Of course, this can never be known until after the torture begins); and (4) proportionality (the torture being considered must be weighed against the possible outcomes of the torture--for example, the death or mental/emotional/ spiritual/physical incapacitation of the tortured).
And there you have it. In this new world order in which reality outparodies parody, torture is morally just, up is down, left is right, and Elvis hasn't left the building.

torture, human rights, terrorism

Torture al Qaeda Style? Bullshit!

On May 24th, The Smoking Gun "broke" a story about the Pentagon releasing captured documents from an al Qaeda torture house in Iraq. The documents included "an assortment of crude drawings" depicting eye-gouging, flesh-drilling, and amputation with a cleaver. The documents also included photographs of torture weapons.

The story, penned by Matt Drudge, was well-nigh ignored everywhere else. Rightwing blogs (and, boy, do I mean rightwing!) such as The Belmont Club and Don Surber picked up the story and screamed that the failure of the mainstream media to cover it once again pointed to a liberal bias.

Now, before I go any farther, let me make one thing clear: I have no doubt that al Qaeda tortures. It is a brutal, criminal, murderous organization that ought to turn the stomach of all people who value human life even a little bit. Anyone who tries to whitewash al Qaeda is crazy.

Having said that, however, the al Qaeda "documents" in question are...well, questionable. The "torture instruments" look like household tools. And what bozo would go to the trouble of drawing how-to guides to eye-gouging and hand-drilling? Are al Qaeda torturers really so stupid that they need someone to draw them a picture?

What makes the whole story even fishier is that a search of the DOD website failed to turn up any mention of the documents.

In short, this story comes across as bullshit. If it is, shame on the clowns who dreamed it up. Torture is enough of an abomination without pimping it out of juvenile my-country-uber-alles motives.

torture, human rights, terrorism

Torture in Tibet

Tibetan monk Palden Gyatso was imprisoned by the Chinese for over thirty years before he was finally released in 1992. During those three decades, he was repeatedly tortured by his captors. The torture weapon of choice for the Chinese seems to be the electric cattle prod. Palden Gyatso lost twenty teeth after an electric baton was shoved down his throat during one torture session. Since his release, he's toured the world, displaying torture devices similar to those used on him and witnessing to the horrors of torture.

Nagawang Sangdrol, a Tibetan nun, was imprisoned when she was 13 years old, and released when she was in her mid-20s. Like Palden Gyatso, she was tortured with cattle prods. She was also beaten with sticks, pipes, canes, and belts, hung in midair with her arms tied behind her, forced to stand in extreme heat or cold, and held in solitary confinement. Her crime? Shouting "Independence for Tibet" and "Long Live the Dalai Lama."

Since China's invasion of Tibet in 1950, thousands of Tibetans have been imprisoned and tortured. The International Campaign for Tibet estimates that over 1 million Tibetans have died from violence, starvation, or imprisonment since the invasion (this figure has been disputed by Michael Parenti, who also argues that pre-1950 Tibet was an oppressively feudal society). Some 200 Tibetan political prisoners are currently held in Chinese prisons, 80% of them monks and nuns. Almost all political prisoners who have been released report torture.

This should surprise no one. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the UN regularly report human rights abuses in China, and one of the favored targets are the people of Tibet. Tibetans, who have a totally separate culture, language, and history, are viewed by the Chinese as backward aboriginals who stand in the way of economic development and progress. The strategy seems to be mass colonization of Tibet with Chinese nationals, with the inevitable marginalization of indigenous Tibetans. A few of the monastery-universities that were destroyed by the Peoples Liberation Army in earlier decades are currently being restored by the Chinese, but only in the interests of tourism. So far as the Chinese government's concerned, the Dalai Lama is still officially persona non grata. The Panchen Lama, second-highest ranking Tibetan lama after the Dalai Lama, has been a political prisoner of the Chinese since he was a child. His current whereabouts is unknown.

Despite China's continuing abuse of Tibetans (and others, such as Muslim Uighurs), the United States insists on granting it Most Favored Nation Trade status (this is a bipartisan decision, by the way). It's not difficult to see why. In China, labor is poorly paid, there are virtually no environmental protection laws, and consumer goods are produced cheaply by western standards. Every year, the United States purchases fully half of all Chinese exports, resulting in a trade deficit now standing at over $17 billion. And what this means is that the American consumer is helping to fund torture in Tibet.

Think of this the next time you go shopping.

________

-A couple of good video resources:

Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion

Voices in Exile

-A detailed Human Rights Watch report:

Trials of a Tibetan Monk: The Case of Tenzin Delek

torture, human rights, terrorism

Showdown at Fort Huachuca

Tomorrow begins the federal trial of two totally bad hombres who threatened Arizona's Fort Huachuca: Jesuit Father Steve Kelly(age 58) and Franciscan Father Louie Vitale (age 75).

Last November 19, the two priests, both longtime peace activists, participated in a witness against torture at Fort Huachuca, which houses the military's school of interrogation technique. Fathers Kelly and Vitale asked to speak to the school's supervisor or the Officer of the Day. When their request was refused, they began to pray for an end to torture and were arrested on charges of federal trespass.

Each of these desperados faces up to 10 months in the hooscow. Immediately after their arrest, the military prosecutor assigned to the case unsuccessfully petitioned that they be jailed without bond until their trial. Apparently he thought the two men, one of whom (Kelly) is a member of a Catholic Worker house in Redwood City and the other (Vitale) a member of Pace e Bene, a threat to the community.

It seems that Fathers Kelly and Vitale were misguided. Army spokesperson Tanya Linton insists that Fort Huachuca doesn't teach torture.

"We train in accordance with DOD (Department of Defense) policies and law," she said.

Linton also noted that the school at Fort Huachuca can't be held responsible for what its graduates do once they arrive in Afghanistan or Iraq.

torture, human rights, terrorism

Amazing Coincidence!!

The White House continues to maintain that mavericks, lone wolves, or bad apples, not official policy, are responsible for any "abuse" of prisoners at Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere. "We do not torture," says President Bush. Apparently, most Americans buy this (although whether they really believe it or choose to believe it for expediency's sake isn't clear), but at the same time are okay if the government does torture in "crisis" situations.

The curious thing is that the torture techniques used in Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere by mavericks, lone wolves, and bad apples remarkably resemble the interrogatory techniques taught in the notorious, officially sanctioned KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation manual, a how-to-torture instruction book issued by the CIA in July 1963. The manual, intended for interrogators in Vietnam (KUBARK was the code name for CIA involvement in Vietnam), gives "basic information about coercive techniques available for use in the interrogation situation." (In 1963, the euphemism for torture was "coercive techniques." Today, it's "enhanced interrogation.") These techniques include isolation, stress positions, hooding, plunging prisoners into "strange" environments through sensory deprivation, darkness, sleep-deprivation, clothing them in ill-fitting uniforms, humiliation, threats, and so on. The goal is to create an environment of ever-escalating stress, anxiety, and apprehension that will crack the detainee.

This manual was declassified a decade ago (although there's lots of "For Reasons of National Security" black-outs in the text), and of course it hasn't been officially studied for years and years.

Because "we don't torture."

torture, human rights, terrorism

"We are the priests of power..."

O'Brien: "How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?"

Winston: "By making him suffer."

O'Brien: "Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing."

Torture is about control--controlling actual and potential dissidents by malfiguring their identities, and then releasing them back into the general public so that they, as walking billboards for state power, can seed fear and intimidation. That's why effective torture is never really covert. Rather, its secrecy is pretend, faux, coy. Somehow, word has to leak into the open. Rumor, insinuation, the whispered report heard from a friend of a friend of a friend: such is the public relations network of torture. It's mysteriousness only serves to ratchet up anxiety and foreboding. The medium is the message.

George Orwell's 1984 spelled out the logic of torture: if you cut the human spirit into pieces, you can patchwork the fragments back together however you wish. And the best way to dismantle the spirit is to inflict agony on the body and mind. Torturers, as 1984's inquisitor O'Brien tells poor Winston Smith, are "priests of power." They know the magic words and rituals, they possess the arcane wisdom, the juju, to perform unholy eucharists. They transform humans into wraiths by breaking their wills. O'Brien knows that overt obedience simply isn't enough. We can walk the walk and talk the talk without buying any of it. Inner servitude , shattered resolve, bound will: that's the ticket.

If we read the memoirs of torture survivors who've somehow managed to verbalize their ordeals--an extremely difficult thing for them to do, as we'll see in future posts--the formula by which torturers rip spirits to pieces becomes pretty obvious. Isolation + physical/ sexual abuse + humiliation = fragmentation + regression + malfiguration.

Torture victims are secreted away from the "outside" world, hidden from their friends, relatives, and acquaintances. They lose all contact with normalcy. Their torturers continously assure them that they've been forgotten, that no one knows or cares where they are, that they have disappeared, that they are utterly alone. As one Argentinian torture survivor quoted in Nunca Mas relates, his torturers would say: "Since we disappeared you, you're nothing. Anyway nobody remembers you. You don't exist."

As the isolation sinks in, any sense of camaraderie or community that sustained the disappeared before her imprisonment erodes. The physical agony she suffers at the hands of her torturers, especially if it leads to the humiliating "betrayal" of her comrades through "confession," only deepens her forlornness. But because she, like all of us, in large part understands who she is through her social contexts and relationships, this isolation is not only emotionally devastating. It's also identity-unraveling. It's not unusual for torture survivors to have no or merely fragmentary memory of their pre-torture lives. The American Ursiline nun Sister Dianna Ortiz, tortured in Guatemala in 1989, to this day has only memory-scraps of her pre-1989 existence. For months after her release, she was unable to recognize even her parents or closest friends. Our identities hold our memories together. When the identity goes, so can memory.

At the same time that the torture victim's contacts with the outer world disappear, thereby beginning the dissolution of her identity, a perverse dependence on her torturers can develop. Brutal as they are, they're the only human contact she has. They do unspeakable things to her that break her will and reduce her to a state of utter dependence that can only be described as a second infancy. This coerced regression is complicated by the fact that sometimes the torturer pretends pity for her plight--"Let me help you. Help me to get you out of this horrible place. Just sign the confession"--at other times stresses his omnipotence--"We are everything for you. We are justice. We are God" (Nunca Mas, p. 25)--and at still other times manipulates the victim's agony and desperation in ways that horrifingly mimic erotic intimacy (Ariel Dorfman's play Death and the Maiden chillingly captures this dynamic). The torture victim has a new social context and new relationships that perversely fulfill her desperate need for a reprieve from her isolation, and each of them redefines her as absolutely subordinate, dependent, and needy, and each of them likewise keeps her in a constant state of anxiety and apprehensiveness. The fact that she often feels bone-deep guilt, either because she has "succumbed" to the torture and implicated friends and family, or because she feels herself filthy, dirty, and tainted from the experience of torture itself, further binds her to this new perverse community.

This is the new identity, the patchwork identity, that she takes into the "normal" world if she ever sees the light of day again.

torture, human rights, terrorism

A Perspective from the Other Side of the Truncheon

The Tortured Lives of Interrogators (sic)

(h/t to Majikthise)

torture, human rights, terrorism

Poetry, Torture, Truth

"Torture erupts out of a utilitarian or technocratic sense of efficiency. It provides the illusion of certainty favored by totalitarian regimes, typically yielding information less reliable than government propaganda. It also exposes as superficial the courage of leaders who rationalize its breach of human dignity as necessary for safeguarding people's lives and their freedoms, their democratic values and prosperity. It deceives those who practice it and dehumanizes all involved."

This from a profoundly insightful essay, "A Winter Sun: Writing Against Torture," by poet, essayist, novelist, teacher, and Neruda translator William O'Daly. The essay appeared in the Winter 2006 issue of Poets Against War Newsletter.

torture, human rights, terrorism

"The Soul Is the Prison of the Body"

So, says Foucault, is the guiding principle of the modern criminal system.* Its goal is to create docile bodies that conform to established social norms and work within established social institutions. But--and this the modern system considers a sign of its moral superiority to earlier ways of dealing with outlaws--the pathway to docility is through the soul. Indoctrination, re-education, rehabilitation: these are the officially preferred methods of the modern penal system. Take the soul where you want it to go, and the body necessarily follows.

Foucault argues that torture is incompatible with this goal of soul imprisonment, but I'm not so sure. Torture imprisons the body in a broken, memory-haunted soul. Physical agony, dread, somatic and psychological trauma, shame, remorse, guilt, fear, humiliation, exhaustion, sexual abuse: the tactics of torture aim at a brutal destruction--what I called "malfiguration" in an earlier post--of the psyche which paralyzes the will and hamstrings the body. The torture chamber is a citizen-factory. Raw, rebellious flesh--the raw material--goes in, and docile, broken-spirited citizens--the finished product--emerge. They not only are no longer threats to the state themselves; their wraith-like presence in our midst either intimidates other would-be rebels (the "admonitory" function) or reassures "good" citizens that the state apparatus is vigilant and indominable. In earlier times, public physical torture provided the "spectacle," to use Foucault's term, that admonished and reassured. Today, the souls of torture survivors are the spectacle.

______

Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, see especially pp. 24-31.

torture, human rights, terrorism

Ticking Bombs & Real Unicorns

A must-read post on torture and ticking bombs from The Anonymous Liberal.
torture, human rights, terrorism

Torture & Identity Malfiguration

Forget most of what you think you know about torture. It's rubbish.

The common understanding of torture is that it's a long-standing practice which enlightened societies are gradually evolving out of, that it's condoned today only by extremely repressive governments or, in a pinch, by liberal societies that find themselves in desperate straits, and that its primary purpose is to extract information from subjects.

Not so.

Torture today is markedly different from torture in the past. It's a new phenomenon, not a continuation of an old one. Moreover, torture is condoned by half the world's governments. In 2006 alone, Amnesty International documented torture in 102 nations. Many of them are controlled by blatantly repressive governments. Some of them--such as the United States--aren't. Finally, although some torture is overtly inquisitional, much isn't. The purpose of torture today isn't to extract information so much as to affirm power by manipulating identities.

Historically, torture was an interrogatory technique used in situations where the discovery of truth was thought to be too difficult for ordinary measures. Both the ancients and the medievals saw torture as primarily a means of truth-extraction,* and this understanding continued right up to the Enlightenment era. In his Discipline and Punish, Foucault notes that France on the eve of the Revolution still practiced interrogatory torture, typically performed in secret. But he also points out a new twist to torture, what one commentator has referred to as its "admonitory" function.** If found guilty, the accused might be subjected to public torture and execution as a warning or admonition to the populace: cross the line, and this is what awaits you. This function of torture both symbolized and reenforced the power of the sovereign or state.

This admonitory function of torture, which for previous generations was secondary to truth-extraction, is the primary goal of today's torturers. Granted, the popular myth is that torture is still an expedient way of extracting information during crisis situations. But we know that information and confessions coerced by torturers are notoriously unreliable: sooner or later, torture victims will say whatever it is their inquisitors want them to say.

Truth isn't the object; compliance, in which the power of the state and the powerlessness of the dissenter, is. To the extent that the state can reduce dissenters, rebels, political heretics, outlaws, disturbers of the peace--in short, anyone catalogued as an outsider--to impotence, it succeeds in an "identity-malfiguration." It malfigures the identity of the torture victim into pure evil, subhuman filth willing and in fact eager to disrupt society and destroy innocent lives. The "confession" of terrorism, criminality, treason, and so on that's extracted from the torture victim confirms his wickedness. At the same time, the identity of the state is malfigured into pure goodness, because it stands in opposition to the wicked other. Torture, then, both assumes and affirms a simplistic Manichean worldview--exactly the kind portrayed, for example, by the popular television show "24."*** And, just as in "24," the forces of good and the forces of evil usually get reversed in the process: torturers, racing against the clock to save innocent populations from cruel destruction, become the good guys (in fact, they're frequently the victims, because they heroically sacrifice their personal scruples for the commonweal); torture victims, bastards who know when and where the ticking bomb will explode, become the bad guys.

The goal of identity malfiguration shows that torture isn't an act of sadism inflicted on a few imprisoned individuals. In fact, governments that torture have little use for maverick sadists. Instead, as William Cavanaugh notes (p. 22), torture is "an assault on social bodies." Its purpose is to discourage dissent by intimidating potential outlaws and, at the same time, to stir up a sense of self-righteousness among insiders that condones torturing outsiders. This is just another way of saying that torture today is admonitory rather than interrogatory, and this means that it needs an audience.

Admittedly, this calls for some creative PR work. No government wants to come right out and actually admit that it tortures. Even governments caught red-handed deny it. (The "we don't torture" position made infamous by President Bush.) But it's in the interests of governments that torture for the world to know that they torture. So whispers, innuendoes, insinuations, undocumented accusations, and even full-fledged media stories are useful. All of them can be denied or, even better, spun in such a way that the official response is "We don't torture. But if we did--which (*wink-wink*) we don't--we'd do it only to protect our citizens against evil-doers who hate us and will stop at nothing to destroy us."

The admonitory function of torture is the key to understanding it as a means of perverse socialization. Too often discussions of torture get sidetracked by endless debate over where boundaries should be drawn between what is and what isn't an act of torture: name-calling isn't, electric shock is, water-boarding might be. These debates miss the point. Torture isn't a discrete list of interrogatory techniques to be haggled over. Torture is a strategem for malfiguring identities that just happens to use physical and psychological pain.

_________

*See, for example, Edward Peters' Torture.

**"Admonitory torture" is from Roger Paden's "Surveillance and Torture: Foucault and Orwell on the Methods of Discipline," Social Theory and Practice 10/3 (Fall 1984): 261-271.

***For more on "24," see this too.

torture, human rights, terrorism