A Good Resource on Torture

Born in 1918, Ella Mazel has been compiling material about torture--its meaning, purpose, technique, morality, victims, perpetrators, and consequences--for nearly half a century. Two years ago, she cyber-published the results of her work. Her book is entitled Not in My Name!: A collection of quotes on the past, present, and future of the practice of torture. It's an invaluable resource, and deserves wider recognition than it's received.
Here's one of the passages Ms. Mazel quotes. It's from George Ryley Scott's 1940 The History of Torture Throughout the Ages. It seems especially pertinent today.

"War and torture are bedmates. . . . When once a war breaks out, torture may be recognized as an inevitable concomitant. Even if the governments concerned ostensibly denounce and prohibit torture, it occurs nevertheless. There is no way in which bodies of men or individuals can be prevented from surreptitiously practising torture upon such of their enemies as fall into their power where licence to kill and maim has been freely given."

Torturespeak and Language Rules

Language is uncanny, especially when it's manipulated by people with evil intent and uneasy consciences. In an earlier post on torturespeak, I referred to Marguerite Feitlowitz's brilliant observation that torturers rip "benign domestic nouns" from their normal contexts and appropriate them as descriptions of their own disgusting practices. Torturers in Latin America, for example, took the ordinary word "disappear" and gave it an entirely new and sinister meaning.

So torturers can demonize ordinary language. But they can also use language as a shield that hides the demonic nature of their actions. As I argued in yesterday's post, they sometimes use language that neutralizes the horror of what they do. "Torture," for example, becomes "enhanced interrogation." Once again, ordinary, benign, domestic words are appropriated. Torturers malfigure language as well as bodies and spirits.

In her Eichmann in Jerusalem, which I've referred to on several occasions in this blog, Hannah Arendt notes that the Nazis in charge of the "final solution" invented an entire lexicon of neutralization to shield their real intentions. They adopted a "language rule" (Sprachregelung) which generally banished "bald words" (or, as Feitlowitz might put it, "malignant" ones) such as "extermination," "liquidation, or even "killing," and replaced them with neutral code words: "evacuation" (Aussiedlung), "special treatment" (Sonderbehandlung), "resettlement" (Umsiedlung), "labor in the East" (Arbeitseinsatz im Osten). Arendt perceptively notes that "The net effect of this language system was not to keep these people ignorant of what they were doing, but to prevent them from equating it with their old, 'normal' knowledge of murder and lies." (Chapter VI)

This is a powerful insight. The language rule of torturers that neutralizes language is motivated by the fact that what torturers do is utterly unacceptable, both to themselves and to the public, if it's equated with the ordinary meaning of "torture." Psychotic child molesters kidnap, torture, and rape. Drunken, abusive husbands torture. Leering, scar-faced, monocle-wearing Nazi sadists torture. Saddam Hussein and Idi Amin torture. How could any nation accept, much less condone, this kind of behavior as its own? How could torturers, at least the ones who aren't completely insane, accept this as their professional description?

So a torturing nation shifts into linguistic neutralization. We don't torture. They, the enemy, the bad guys, are the ones who torture. All we do is interrogate in enhanced ways. And even if at times our interrogation can get a bit "rough," all that really means is just enough discomfort to the prisoner to persuade him to tell us what we need to know. And if things do get out of hand, and circumstances force us to publicly confess that torture, not enhanced interrogation, really took place, we have two separate modes of neutralization to fall back on. Either the torture was accidental, performed by misguided individuals and not condoned by officialdom; or the torture was tragically necessary to protect tens of thousands of Americans in the Homeland. In the first case, the torture is neutralized by reducing it the same status as child molestation: the work of a single, fucked-up loner. In the second case, the torture is neutralized by appealing, with regret, to a greater good: sometimes the noble thing to do is dirty one's hands for the good of one's country.

Curious, that we're so adept at spotting and condemning another culture's Sprachregelung, but so blind to our own. Perhaps such deception is a necessary survival tactic. But this doesn't make it any less disgusting.

________

Photo credit: "Book Burning," Joe Moorman.

torture, human rights, politics

Neutralizing the Language of Murder and Torture

The expression "collateral damage," beloved by military types, is a neutralizing reference to the act of violently killing innocent noncombatants. Sometimes the infliction of "collateral damage" is accidental, as when a so-called smart bomb lands off-target. Sometimes it's intentional, as when a military target is hit with the full knowledge that, because of their proximity, noncombatants will die. But in either case, "collateral damage" is a weasel expression designed to neutralize the brutal state of affairs to which it refers: the murder of innocent people.

The expression "enhanced interrogation," beloved by Bushite bureaucrats and pseudo-patriots, is another neutralizing term. It refers to torture: the physical and psychological abuse of persons, the malfiguration of their identities, the breaking of their wills and the collapsing of their spirits, the infliction of wounds that will cripple them for the rest of their lives. It is a weasel expression designed to neutralize the brutal state of affairs to which it refers: the intentional and orchestrated destruction of another human being.

People who use these sorts of neutralizing references have uneasy consciences. They try to hide bitter reality by covering it over with pink linguistic icing. But this kind of dissimulation is disgusting. Slain and maimed noncombatants are not accidentally damaged items. Waterboarding, sensory overload, sleep deprivation, stress positioning, isolation: these are not innocent ways of asking questions.

Verbal neutralization of horrible deeds is a sign of cultural decay, reminiscent of expressions like "final solution" and "cultural revolution."

torture, human rights, politics

From the Why-Do-I-Even-Bother? Department

I use a software program that tells me the keywords used in internet searches that bring visitors to this blog as well as which posts are most heavily visited. (Don't worry: it doesn't divulge identities of visitors, although it does tell me what part of the world you come from.)

Here's the single most trafficked post in the whole blog. The most common search keywords that bring visitors to this site include "torture fucks," "torturing and fucking maidens," "sex and torture," "handcuffs shackles" and "fucks+tortures."

I could've gone all day without learning this.

Why US Torturers Get Away With It

"Enhanced interrogation"--or as Bush's legal beagle John Yoo puts it, questioning that falls short of maiming or murdering (Yoo is also the guy who opines that, if it came to it, the President has legal authority to torture a child)--is a euphemism for torture. Torture violates both constitutional and criminal law. Thus "enhanced interrogation" violates both constitutional and criminal law.
The syllogism is simple. But US torturers are getting away with torture. Nobody but a handful of underlings have been prosecuted for the Abu Ghraib debacle. Guantanamo excesses continue. The CIA continues interrogating at black sites, outsourcing its interrogations to regimes known for having their "ways of making people talk," and blithely ignoring standards of decency. All of this is done with the President's knowledge and approval--and, you can bet, with the knowledge and approval of a lot of his lieutenants in the White House, State Department, and Justice Department, as well as the intelligence and military establishments.
So why aren't Bush & Co. in jail? Can you say "legal loopholes"?

1. Military Commissions Act (2006). Since early 2002, Bush administration officials have feared that they could face legal prosecution for their approval of torture. So President Bush included a provision in the Military Commissions Act, the infamous law rushed through Congress to circumvent the US Supreme Court's decision that struck down Bush's flaunting of the Geneva Conventions, that retroactively decriminalized any act of torture committed before the end of 2005. Critics have referred to this as a "stealth pardon" granted by the legislation to both President Bush and all his associates (a unique instance of a sitting President issuing a presidential pardon for himself). Along the way, of course, it also nullified habeas corpus, granted the President the omniscience-assuming right to jail anyone he designates an enemy combatant, and continued to defend enhanced interrogation--thereby, according to Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) "setting the [human rights] clock back 800 years." As Press Secretary Tony Snow let slip in mid-October 2006, the Military Commissions Act makes Bush the "final arbiter on torture."

2. US v Verdugo-Urquidez (1990). So the Military Commissions Act decriminalizes torture committed up to the end of 2005, and President George "Final Arbiter of Torture" Bush has basically guaranteed that any subsequent torture will be decriminalized as well by not being officially recognized as torture. But can torture victims sue him and his pals for civil damages?

Under normal circumstances, individuals are unable to bring civil suits against the US government or any of its federal officials or agencies. This is the "doctrine of sovereign immunity." But one of the exceptions to immunity is constitutional violations. If the constitutional rights of an individual have been violated, they may still, despite the doctrine of sovereign immunity, file civil suit against the offending federal employee. If the employee is found guilty, damages are out of his or her pocket.

This possibility of personal liability was intended to deter federal employees from abusing their power, and it's pretty much worked with the FBI, whose legal domain is limited to domestic investigations. But the CIA (for example) legally operates outside the US. Are its employees similarly liable?

Apparently not. In US v Verdugo-Urguidez, which focused on a Drug Enforcement Agency's warrantless seizure of a Mexican drug lord's papers, the Court ruled that the Fourth Amendment doesn't apply to the search and seizure by US agents of property owned by non-resident aliens and located in foreign countries. So long as CIA agents or contractees use "enhanced interrogation" on aliens in foreign countries, they work with civil impunity. While it's true that in another decision, Rasul v Bush (2004), the Supreme Court ruled that some Guantanamo detainees had habeas corpus rights, Rasul v Bush doesn't overrule US v Verdugo-Urguidez, because the 2004 ruling was made in part on the understanding that Guantanamo, leased as it is from Cuba, is de facto US, not foreign, territory. The Court found for Rasul only because the second necessary condition of US v Verdugo-Urguidez was violated.

3. Sosa v Alvarez-Machain (2003). But wait a minute. There's always the Federal Tort Claims Act (FACTA) to fall back on, isn't there? Enacted in 1946, FACTA permits private individuals actually to sue the US itself because of actions committed by individuals working on behalf of the US. So if a US-employed CIA agent tortures you, or if the US-employed CIA agent outsources the torture to a third party, you can sue the US. FACTA allows for a waiver of sovereign immunity. Now we're getting somewhere, right?
Wrong. In Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, the Supreme Court ruled that actions carried out on foreign soil by US agents on behalf of the US government aren't subject to the FACTA waiver of immunity. Once again, CIA agents or their contractees are exempt from civil liability.
And that's how they get away with it. Despite Supreme Court rulings that torture is criminal, legal loopholes--the Military Commission Act's blanket pardon, the denial of constitutional rights to aliens on foreign soil, and the protection of US agents from civil prosecution--allow torture to continue. When you factor in the national paranoia about terrorist enemies within and without and the American public's apparent willingness to swallow the Bush Administration's disingenuous claim that enhanced interrogation isn't really torture, the outlook is bleak.

________

Two very good resources for exploring the legal discussions of US torture are Karen Greenberg's The Torture Debate in America and chapter 4 of Jennifer Harbury's Truth, Torture, and the American Way. Both were published prior to the Military Commissions Act. Michael Otterman's more recent American Torture discusses the latter.

torture, human rights, politics

Why Bush & Co. Are Criminals

"The soldiers at the bottom of the chain are taking the heat for Abu Ghraib and torture around the world, while the guys at the top who made the policies are going scott free. That's simply not right."

Scott Brody, Special Counsel, Human Rights Watch

It's genuinely astounding, this game the US government is playing with the American public. Everyone in the nation either knows or should know--the documentation is available for the asking--that "enhanced interrogation" is sanctioned by the President and all his underlings. Everyone also knows that "enhanced interrogation" is a thin euphemism for torture. Whenever a government official uses the term, it's always with a wink and a nudge. We're not really deceived by the term, and they know we're not really deceived. But so long as no one breaks the rules of this cynical game by actually uttering the torture word, so long as we all continue to make nice by loudly proclaiming that torture isn't The American Way, we can continue the charade. We can pretend that state-sponsored and public-sanctioned enhanced interrogation isn't torture, and that when torture does happen, it's the act of individual goons acting on their own.
It's time to end the game. Torture is sanctioned at the highest level, and torture is criminal. The American public is complicitous in this crime--guilty after the fact, if you will, by not denouncing torture and removing those officials responsible for it--and this complicity calls for justice. But more immediately, President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, former CIA Director George Tenet, National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, and Major General Geoffrey Miller--and this is only the first echalon of felons--should be prosecuted, convicted, and punished. They are criminals. They ordered torture at Abu Ghraib. They denied their own complicity. They have continued the policy of torture since Abu Ghraib.
In doing so, they have at least violated:

1. Article VI of the United States Constitution: "This Constitution and the laws of the United States shall be made in pursuance thereof and all treaties made or which shall be made under the authority of the United States shall be the supreme law of the land. Any provision of an international treaty ratified by the United States becomes the law of the United States."

• The US is a signatory to the 1948 UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "No one shall be subjected to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." (Art. 5)
• The US endorses the 1949 Geneva Convention which prohibits the torture of any prisoner, whether a formal prisoner of war, a saboteur, or a resistance fighter in a civil war.
• The US approved the 1975 UN Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Being Subjected to Torture.
• The US agreed to the 1992 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which prohibits torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment. (Art. 7) This provision is non-derogable--cannot be suspended--even "during time of public emergency which threatens the life of the nation."
• The US signed onto the 1984 UN Convention Against Torture.

2. Ashcraft v State of Tennessee (1944), in which the US Supreme Court overturned a murder conviction based on a confession extracted under torture. Chief Justice Hugo Black wrote the decision that banned coercive interrogations:

"The Constitution of the United States stands as a bar against the conviction of any individual in an American court by means of a coerced confession. There have been, and are now, certain foreign nations with governments dedicated to an opposite policy: governments which convict individuals with testimony obtained by police organizations possessed of an unrestrained power to seize persons suspected of crimes against the state, hold them in secret custody, and wring from them confessions by physical or mental torture. So long as the Constitution remains the basic law of our Republic, America will not have that kind of government."

3. Columbe v Connecticut (1961), in which the US Supreme Court reaffirmed the ban on coerced confessions and stated that "neither the body nor the mind may be twisted until it breaks."

4. Filartiga v Pena-Irala (1980), in which the Second Circuit Court ruled that "Turning to the act of torture, we have little difficulty discerning its universal renunciation in the modern practice and usage of nations."

5. Hudson v McMillian (1992), in which the US Supreme Court ruled against the sadistic disciplining of prisoners.

6. Hope v Pelzer (2002), in which the US Supreme Court ruled that the "unnecessary infliction of pain" upon prisoners is "both degrading and dangerous," and furthermore ruled that guards inflicting such pain have no legal immunity.

Why, then, aren't the multiple violations of Article VI and Supreme and Circuit Court rulings being prosecuted? Why aren't Bush & Co. behind bars? Tomorrow's post explores this question. Some previews: US v Verdugo-Urquidez, Sosa v Alvarez-Machain, and the Military Commissions Act. Oh, yeah. And public indifference.

"The official position of defendants, whether as heads of state or responsible officials in government departments, shall not be considered as freeing them from responsibility or mitigating punishment."

Nuremberg Charter, Art. 7

torture, human rights, politics

Torture in the News

Top Stories

A victory for School of the Americas/Assassins Watch. The House of Representatives has approved a report accompanying the FY 2008 Defense Appropriations bill that demands the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (SOA/WHINSEC) release to the public the names of all students and instructors who attended the school during the fiscal years of 2005 and 2006. The directive also requires that the same information be available to the public in all future fiscal years.
In the report accompanying HR 3222, the fiscal year 2008 Defense Appropriations bill, the committee declares:

The Committee supports the mandate of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation to be a transparent and democratic institution. To promote such transparency and democratic values, the Committee directs the Institute to release to the public the names of all students and instructors at the Institute for fiscal years 2005 and 2006. The list shall include all names, including but not limited to the first, middle, and maternal and paternal surnames, rank, country of origin, courses taken or taught, and years of attendance. In all future fiscal years, this same information shall be made available and provided to the public no later than 60 days after the end of each fiscal year.

______________________________

The New Yorker reports that al-Qaeda lieutenant and 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was tortured at a "black site" following his 2003 capture. The CIA, of course, responds by saying "the United States does not conduct or condone torture." This and more on the CIA's "enhanced interrogation" practices in Jane Mayer's "The Black Sites."



Also in the News


The Los Angeles Times editorializes on the duplicity of the Bush Administration's denial of torture. Meanwhile, the Vero Beach Press-Journal criticizes what it calls the "sort of against torture" policy of the White House.

Bisher al-Rawi and other victims of extraordinary rendition sue Boeing, the parent company of the private airline chartered to fly al-Rawi to imprisonment and torture. The experience, says al-Rawi, was "horrific beyond words."

The Muslim Brotherhood accuses Cairo police of torturing and disappearing three of their members. The Egyptian Interior Ministry refused to comment, but Egypt has a notorious torture record, so the accusation is credible on the surface. The Brotherhood, a Sunni Islamist international organization, publicly denounces violence but has been implicated in several terrorist actions. Elsewhere in Egypt, in the Nile Delta village of Tilbanah, local cops have been accused of torturing Nasr Amed Abdallah to death.

Vagina Monologues author Eve Ensler denounces rape as torture in the Congo, where rape, forced amputation, murder, and lawlessness, despite a 2003 peace agreement, continue.

Torture victim Clement Abaifouta reflects on Chad's "African Pinochet," ousted dictator Hissene Habre's, reign of terror.

Azerbaijani officials announce a criminal investigation into allegations that Baku cops tortured two criminal suspects. Given Azerbaijan's poor human rights record, it's not clear how genuine the investigation will be.

A senior police official in India's Tripura district has been suspended for torturing a criminal suspect while interrogating him. "The police official pierced pins in my nail and thrust chilli powder inside my anus and penis, besides the nose. Then he beat me for the whole night using a thorny branch," Kamal Acharjee, the victim, told journalists at a hospital.

Ten years after his torture by New York City cops, Haitian immigrant Abner Louima reflects on police brutality.

torture, human rights, politics

We Are Hibakusha

Please take some time today, August 6, and Thursday, August 9, to remember the terrible atomic killings that took place on these dates in 1945. An estimated 140,000 people died from the blast in Hiroshima, and another 70,000 in Nagasaki.

Survivors of the blasts are called "hibakusha"--literally, "explosion-affected people." But the term could also be used to describe all survivors of military-inflicted violence, including torture victims.

It also includes all of us, who live in a world forever changed by August 6 and 9, 1945. We are all explosion-affected people. We are hibakusha.

_______

Photo: the sunflower is the international symbol for a nuclear-free world.

Hiroshima Nagasaki anniversaries, nuclear weapons

"Every country has its own way of torturing people..."

When we were kids, my sister and I went through a (thankfully) short period of fighting like cats and dogs. Its physical expression never got beyond the occasional slap or pinch, because my parents quickly laid down the law: no physical contact. None. Period. Use words. Be nice.
But my sister and I soon figured out a second-best alternative. We went through a spell of psychologically slapping each other. We deliberately bugged the hell out of one another by tauntingly getting in each other's face (but scrupulously avoiding physical touch), playing music too loudly, hiding cherished items, defacing homework, reading each other's diary, and so on. Pretty childish stuff, in the grand scheme of things, but significant for this reason: it was a premeditated assault, a deliberate infliction of pain that scrupulously stayed within the letter of the law (no physical contact!) while ruthlessly violating its spirit (be nice).

I suppose we expect this kind of behavior from kids. But we oughtn't to tolerate it from adults, and we certainly oughtn't to let our governments get away with it. Yet this is what's going on in the US today when it comes to torture. Our officials point to the genuinely horrific physical torture practiced by repressive regimes--Saddam Hussein's Iraq or Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe--and innocently insist that because we don't chop off fingers or gouge out eyes, we don't torture.

But this is innocence in the technical letter-of-the-law sense, because we do use techniques that are the grown-up analog to the juvenile psych ops my sister and I tried out on each other. The method of torture preferred by the US is one that minimizes physical contact and focuses instead on psychological abuse--a beating, as it were, that leaves no telltale bruises. As Rustam Akhmiarov, a Russian detainee who spent some time as a Guantanamo detainee said, "Every country has its own way of torturing people. In Russia, they beat you up; they break you straight away. But the Americans had their own way, which is to make you go mad over a period of time. Every day they thought of new ways to make you feel worse."

I've discussed torture US-style several times in previous posts (for example, here, here, here, here, and here). There's absolutely no doubt that detainees are being subjected to psychological abuse--sleep deprivation, auditory overload, isolation, anxiety-inducing threats, and so on--in addition to "mild" physical abuse such as waterboarding and hooding (not to mention the out-sourcing of physical torture to governments that do lop off fingers and gouge eyes). President Bush admitted as much last month in his Executive Order concerning acceptable interrogation techniques; the admission was repeated by his Director of Intelligence Mike McConnell; and the practice was infamously defended by The Decider in his September 2006 White House speech announcing the formation of military commissions to try detainees.* So more verification of the US practice of psychological torture isn't necessary.

What's intriguing is how the government--and, apparently, many US citizens as well--is able to rationalize this abuse of prisoners as "nontorturous." In any other context, we'd readily acknowledge that the deliberate attempt to inflict psychological pain on another human being is cruel and outside the law. But when it comes to the "interrogation" of detainees, we insist otherwise. If we're not actually smacking them around, we're not torturing them. Our hands are clean, our consciences are clear, our motives are righteous.

If our blows are invisible, they're not really blows: this is the logic of torture US-style. It's a strategy adopted by children on the one hand or people with uneasy consciences on the other.

_____________
*From The Decider's September 2006 White House speech: "We knew that Zubaydah had more information that could save innocent lives, but he stopped talking. As his questioning proceeded, it became clear that he had received training on how to resist interrogation. And so the CIA used an alternative set of procedures. These procedures were designed to be safe, to comply with our laws, our Constitution, and our treaty obligations. The Department of Justice reviewed the authorized methods extensively and determined them to be lawful. I cannot describe the specific methods used -- I think you understand why -- if I did, it would help the terrorists learn how to resist questioning, and to keep information from us that we need to prevent new attacks on our country. But I can say the procedures were tough, and they were safe, and lawful, and necessary."

________________

Photo credit: Cindy Debold, "The Silent Scream"
torture, human rights, politics

Until Next Week...

Dear Friends: The Maiden is traveling, and will post no new messages until early next week.

Torture, Ticking Time Bombs, and the Part of the Report that WAS Read

A clumsy way to do ethics is to take the worst case scenario and use it as raw material from which to manufacture ethical strategies. I remember one or two (thankfully, not more) of my ethics professors doing this in my college days. Your mother is being attacked by a crazed rapist. You have a gun in your hand. What ought you to do? or You have the opportunity to assassinate Hitler. Should you go for it?

Worst case scenarios (or thought experiments, as the professional philosophers like to call them) are bad ways of doing ethics for the obvious reason that they're so unlikely. I suppose it's possible that someone could try to rape your mother in front of your eyes, or that you might have the opportunity to assassinate a meglomaniac dictator, but the chances are against it. So why use such scenarios as test cases? Far better to generate ethical principles and moral strategies from realworld scenarios.

Much of the torture debate in North America (but not so much elsewhere) either explicitly assumes or has in the back of its mind a worst case scenario: the ticking time bomb. A weapon of mass destruction has been planted in Manhattan or Los Angeles. Authorities have captured the terrorist who knows the WMD's precise location and the exact time of its detonation. May they torture him to save hundreds of thousands of lives? Put in less Hollywoodish terms, the scenario is one that stresses urgency: may we torture someone to prevent an imminent disaster from befalling innocent people?

History has shown that this is an unlikely situation. There is no known actual ticking bomb torture case. These sorts of things may happen on shows like "24," but not in real life. The intelligence that interrogatory torture obtains is generally (a) unreliable, (2) small change of little importance, or (3) already known for the most part by the torturers. And as this blog has documented over and over, most torture isn't interrogatory anyway. Its purpose is to punish, to intimidate, and to assert authority. It's these types of situations, not improbable ticking bomb scenarios, that ought to be the test cases when debating the ethics of torture.

Now, I raise this obvious point because the 2004 Schlesinger Report on torture, which I introduced in an earlier post, discusses torture and morality exclusively in terms of the ticking bomb scenario in a brief Appendix H. The analysis is astoundingly simplistic. "Most cases for permitting harsh treatment of detainees on moral grounds begins with variants of the 'ticking time bomb' scenario," write the Report's authors. The reader's expectation is that this is a preliminary to taking a different, more fruitful approach. But the expectation is quickly disappointed, because the authors slide right into a strangely coy justification of torture from a ticking bomb perspective--as if no other torture scenarios either exist or are worth considering.

In a stressful ticking bomb scenario, the Report continues, it's understandable that military personnel would be tempted to use torture. But "a morally consistent approach...would be recognize there are occasions when violating norms is understandable but not necessarily correct." So if a soldier indeed does step over the line, he or she must do the honorable thing and turn themselves in to their superiors.

Huh? What this amounts to is: if you torture, be sure to do the right thing afterwards. What about doing the torture itself?! Here it is: military professionals much "accept the reality" that in some situations "morally appropriate methods to preserve...lives may not be obvious." "The tension between military necessity and our values will remain."

So, it appears that the prevention of torture isn't a priority for the Schlesinger Report, perhaps because it thinks of torture only as a desperate attempt to forestall absolute calamity. The problem, of course, is that "absolute calamity" is a relative term, and what seems calamitous to one interrogator may not at all seem so to another. The give-away is the Report's use of the term "military necessity." This is a weasel expression that can be used to justify nearly anything.

Perhaps the most ominous line in the whole Report is this: "National security is an obligation of the state, and therefore the work of interrogators carries a moral justification." But it's not entirely clear if this means that interrogators ought not to torture because such behavior would reflect badly on the state, or if torture is ethically permissible because interrogators are working to preserve the state. Given that the Report identifies the necessity for torture with ticking bomb scenarios, thereby implying that torture only occurs in situations of immediate and horrible urgency, the latter interpretation seems most appropriate.

Incredible.

Torture, Moral Disengagement, and the Report That Wasn't Read

I've been re-reading the Schlesinger Report lately.

You remember the Report, right? It came out in August 2004, and was a document submitted by "The Independent Panel to Review Department of Defense Detention Operations." This panel, commissioned by then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, was chaired by ex-Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger (an old pal of Rummy). Also on the panel were ex-Secretary of Defense Harold Brown (ditto), Republican hawk and Rumsfeld advisor Tillie Fowler, and retired Air Force general and Desert Storm veteran Charles Horner. (With four military insiders like these, the "independent" part of "Independent Panel" obviously is loosely-defined.)

The Independent Panel's charge was to "provide independent professional advice on detainee abuses [at Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, and Afghanistan], what caused them and what actions should be taken to preclude their repetition." Its final report pretty much repeats the Bush Administration's line: abuses are the actions of lone rangers, not the consequences of policy.

Nothing much new or interesting there.

What is interesting are two appendices to the report: Appendix G, "Psychological Stresses [contributing to torture]" and Appendix H, "Ethical Issues [of torture]." Study of the first appendix suggests that administrative officials have astoundingly little self-insight. Study of the second one suggests that they flunked Ethics 101.

Let's look at Appendix G today, and save Appendix H for tomorrow.

In Appendix G, the Report's authors appeal to social psychologist Phillip Zimbardo's famous Stanford Prison Experiment as well as one of Albert Bandura's studies of moral disengagement to come up with a list of behaviors that discourage "normal self-regulatory mechanisms" and encourage "abusive treatment and similar immoral behaviors."

Two of these behaviors are especially descriptive of persons who actually perform torture: displacement of responsibility ("I was just following orders") and diffusion of responsibility (groupthink). But the other five are descriptive of apparatchiks who give the orders to torture but don't actually participate: moral justification (torture is justifiable if it serves a social good); euphemistic language (avoid "torture"; substitute benign expressions like "enhanced interrogation"); advantageous comparison (torture really isn't so bad compared to what terrorists do) ; disregard consequences of actions (minimize torture by attributing it to lone rangers and bad apples, not policy); and attribution of blame (torture victims are terrorists, and bring their suffering on themselves).

These behaviors create moral disengagement by downplaying torture on the one hand--using euphemistic substitutes, pointing the finger, if a public scandal erupts, at bad apples, making lop-sided comparisons between torture and terrorism--and emphasizing its importance on the other by creating a climate of crisis--torture is necessary to protect the common good, the horrible plans of terrorists have to be discovered before they can be carried out, and so on. This much is easy to understand. You don't need to have studied social psychology to see how this kind of thinking and speaking creates moral distance between "us" and "them."

What's truly incredible, though, is how the current administration, despite the caution about morally disengaging behavior in one of its own officially commissioned reports, continues to indulge in such behavior. In just the last ten days, with the publication of the new Executive Order on interrogation of detainees, President Bush and the White House have insisted that the US doesn't "torture," but only "interrogates," thereby also implying that any "torture" that takes place must be the behavior of bad apples; insinuated that enhanced interrogation--not "torture," mind you--is necessary to protect US citizens from 9/11-like attacks; and stirred up anger and fear by emphasizing the brutality and determination of the "enemy," thereby suggesting that US interrogation tactics are really pretty tame in comparison. We're the good guys--so good that even when we interrogate in ways that might appear torturous, we're not. Besides, they're the bad guys--so even if we do torture them (which we don't, by the way), they deserve it, because they'd do worse to us if they could.

Appendix G of the Schlesinger Report concludes with the warning that this kind of rhetoric, if tolerated, carries a "higher risk of moral disengagement on the part of those in power and, in turn, are likely to lead to abusive behaviors."

Did anyone in the White House actually read the Report?

torture, human rights, politics

Torture, US-Style: Slip-Ups in Mike McConnell's "Meet the Press" Interview

You'd think a National Intelligence Director would be a little more discrete. But the revelations about torture that Mike McConnell let slip last Sunday on "Meet the Press" are such that he's probably had his lips sewn shut this week. Or at least he might've, if the US public gave a shit about what he said. So far, there's been remarkably little flap, and almost all of it comes from the marginalized independent media that don't reach especially large audiences anyway. Yet McConnell said several things that ought to be red flags. None of them is brandnew information, true. But the fact that they were confirmed on national television by the US intelligence czar is sobering.
Admiral McConnell, who after all is new on the job and so not yet adept in spin, was asked by "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert to comment on The Decider's "new" policy on torture. Here's the pertinent section of the interview (the entire transcript can be read here):

MR. RUSSERT: Let me ask you about the executive order the president issued about enhanced interrogation measures. What does that allow a CIA-held target—what kind of measures can they use to get information from them?
Admiral McCONNELL: Well, Tim, as you know, I can’t discuss specific measures. A variety of reasons for that. One, if I, if I announce what the specific measures are, it would, it would aid those who want to resist those measures, measures to train to understand them and so on. So I won’t be too specific. Let, let me, let me go back to a higher calling in this context. The United States does not engage in torture. President’s been very clear about that. This executive order spells it out. There are means and methods to conduct interrogation that will result in information that we need. And what I would highlight, I was, I was concerned and worried and quite frankly appalled by Abu Ghraib. My view was America risked losing the moral high ground. And so I focused on this when I came back. What I can report to you is that was an aberration. The people who were responsible for the atrocities at Abu Ghraib have been held accountable, and, and they’re serving a sentence for that. That is not the program the CIA was administering. It is not the program that the president approved in the recent executive order.
MR. RUSSERT: But by the use of the term “enhanced interrogation measures,” there clearly are things that are used to elicit information. Have we eliminated waterboarding? Can you confirm that?
Admiral McCONNELL: I would rather not be specific on eliminating exactly what the techniques are with regard to any, any specific. When I was in a situation where Ihad to sign off, as a member of the process, my name to this executive order, I sat down with those who had been trained to do it, the doctors who monitor it, understanding that no one is subjected to torture. They’re, they’re treated in a way that they have adequate diet, not exposed to heat or cold. They’re not abused in any way. But I did understand, when exposed to the techniques, how they work and why they work, all under medical supervision. And one of the things that’s very important, I think, for the American public to know, in the history of this program, it’s been fewer than 100 people. And so this, this is a program where we capture someone known to be a terrorist, we need information that they possess, and it has saved countless lives. Because, because they believe these techniques might involve torture and they don’t understand them, they tend to speak to us, talk to us in very—a very candid way.
MR. RUSSERT: Does this new executive order allow measures that if were used against a U.S. citizen who was apprehended by the enemy would be troubling to the American people?
Admiral McCONNELL: I can report to you that it’s not torture.
MR. RUSSERT: How do you fine—define torture?
Admiral McCONNELL: Well, torture is—an attempt to define torture in the, in the executive order, it gives examples: mutilation or murder or rape or physical pain, those kinds of things. Let me just leave it by saying the, the techniques work, it’s not torture. They’re not subjected to heat or cold, but it is effective. And it’s a psychological approach to causing someone to have uncertainty and in a situation where they will feel compelled to talk to you about what you’re asking about.
MR. RUSSERT: And we would find it acceptable if a U.S. citizen experienced the same kind of enhanced interrogation measures?
Admiral McCONNELL: Tim, it’s not torture. I would not want a U.S. citizen to go through the process, but it is not torture, and there would be no permanent damage to that citizen.

Now, take a look at some of the extraordinary assertions/admissions in the transcript.

• What isn't said by McConnell is much more revealing than what is said. He can't discuss specific interrogatory techniques--he won't even deny, when asked pointblank, that waterboarding is one of them--but he asks viewers to accept on trust that the US government follows a "higher calling" and so doesn't torture. Enhanced interrogation, the going euphemism, doesn't include, per The Decider's newest Executive Order, murder (whoever said that murder was a torture technique, anyway?), mutilation, rape, or physical pain (this an benignly stretched version of the Executive Order's "cruel or inhuman treatment"), sexual degradation, or religious denigration. But McConnell knows, The Decider knows, and Jane and John Q. Citizen know, that there's a lot of space in between these categories for some down-and-dirty torture. So there's a unsettling coyness to McConnell's remarks. His claim of clean hands is transparently false, and he doesn't seem to care.
• Perhaps he doesn't care in part because at least some US torture is terroristic, as he let slip. State-sponsored torture generally comes in two varieties: interrogatory and terroristic. The purpose of the first is, obviously, to gather intelligence. The purpose of the second is to terrorize potential dissenters or enemies with the threat of torture: If you cross us, this is what we'll do to you. That the US uses torture as a terroristic deterrent comes across clearly in McConnell's remarks: torture doesn't work unless not-yet-captured detainees are convinced that horrible things will be done to them unless they cooperate.
• McConnell insists that whenever the US government appears to get caught torturing, it's really a few bad apples, like the ones at Abu Ghraib, who are responsible. Does anyone really believe this anymore? Yet apparently the US government works under the assumption that a lie told often enough becomes truth.
• McConnell admits that the US practices "white torture," the brutal psychological malfiguration favored by nations like Iran, and speaks as if this is a humane alternative to old-fashioned physical torture. Something sinister seems to be going on with the administration's latest understanding of torture: if you don't physically touch 'em, it ain't torture. This isn't to say that there's not one helluva lot of physical touching going on--waterboarding, for example--but the denial that white torture techniques are real torture is alarming, bespeaking either egregious stupidity or equally egregious malevolence.
• McConnell says on more than one occasion that torture is practiced under "medical supervision." Extraordinary! Medical doctors, who presumably have taken the Hippocratic Oath to "do no harm," are overseeing the abuse of prisoners. When German doctors or Chilean doctors or Russian doctors similarly supervised torture, the US denounced them as monsters. Why isn't McConnell's admission front page headlines across the nation? Why has it gone almost unnoticed?
• Finally, McConnell admits that even interrogatory torture is more often a fishing expedition than a focused intelligence-gathering. There's a big difference between the two. In the latter, the torturer goes after the answer to a specific question. Theoretically, at least, when the answer is gotten, the torture ends. But torture as a fishing expedition has no specific goal. The torturer inflicts pain just to see what might bob up to the surface. Since there's no focused goal, there's no anticipated end to the torture. Prisoners can be fished again and again and again. Detainees held at Gitmo are such fish.

torture, human rights, politics

Torturers as Dementors

While watching the opening scene of the latest Harry Potter film in which dementors attack Harry and his Muggle cousin Dudley, it occurred to me that J.K. Rowling's horrific dementors are a perfect literary metaphor for torturers.
Dementors are malevolent wraiths who specialize in "malfiguring" their victims by destroying minds and souls. They rob them of their good will, their virtue, their very identities, leaving them mindless and spiritless shells. Rowling herself says that Dementors suck out hope and leave in its place a "deadened feeling." Dementors are incapable of empathy, compassion, or warmth. Tormented by their own nothingness, they are nothing but voracious hungers incessantly driven to feed off of the vitality others.

They are torturers.
torture, dementors, harry potter

Torture in the News

Top Story

July 20. President Bush issues new Executive Order that continues the policy of allowing torture just so long as it's called something else in public (text); the White House issues a statement (text) that insists on the usefulness of torture, even though the White House also insists that al Qaida is growing; and a White House press conference on the EO follows (text) in which Senior Administration Officials demonstrate that it is indeed possible to speak for an entire half hour without actually saying anything. The civilized world recoils in horror. Two days later, National Intelligence czar Mike McConnell repeats the refrain on "Meet the Press": "I would not want a US citizen to go through [the approved interrogation techniques]. But it is not torture, and there would be no permanent damage to that citizen." A small percentage of the US public sputters in disheartened protest for approximately 98 seconds, after which business as usual resumes.



Other Stories

• Torture in Uganda. Activists cite torture as the number one human rights abuse in Uganda. Report to be released next month. Majority of reported cases attributed to national security forces.
• Tortured Confessions. The six medics, 5 Bulgarians and 1 Palestinian, released after a decade in Libyan prisons, reported that their "confessiona" of infecting Libyan children with HIV were made under torture. All six endured electric shock and beatings. There are also allegations of rape.
• A World Without Torture. Yemen editor Yusra Al-Shathli opines that the "human soul is too precious and sensitive to be subjected to torture." A courageous stand, considering Yemen's torture record.
• Madison, WI, Apparently Secedes from the US. The Madison Impeachment Coalition, obviously separating itself form the rest of the nation, protests state-sponsored torture.
• Police Torture. Pakistan cops apparently tortured 5 boys to death. The lads, aged 7 to 15, had been picked up for petty theft. Most torture in the world is perpetrated against criminal suspects, not political prisoners.
• Conservative Christians & Torture. Four months ago, the National Association of Evangelicals endorsed a statement calling for an end to torture. Religious columnist Peter Steinfels wonders why it's caused no buzz.
• Force Feedings at Gitmo. Two Gitmo prisoners, Abdul Rahman Shalabi and Zaid Salim Zuhair Ahmed, continue their hunger strike, and are force-fed by US military.

torture, terrorism, politics, intelligence, bush, gitmo

The Un-Long-term Effects of Un-Torture (which, according to Mr. McConnell, we STILL don't want to inflict on US citizens)

Yesterday I reported Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell's bizarre (and breathless) "Meet the Press" string of claims that the US (1) doesn't use torture on detainees, that (2) he wouldn't like to see the untorture the US inflicts on foreign detainees inflicted on US citizens, and (3) but if it were, there'd be no permanent or longterm effects anyway. (As a sidenote: presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, who never met an enhanced interrogation technique he didn't like, thinks The Decider's newly-released Executive Order on torture, the immediate reason for McConnell's TV appearance, is just peachy.)

Anyone who regularly reads this blog knows that the first and third claims made by McConnell are falsehoods (see this, for example), suggesting that he either knows nothing about torture or is lying. I'll take him at his word on the second claim, although history clearly shows that states which torture gradually extend the circle of those who are considered torturable.

Physicians for Human Rights has just released an executive summary of a forthcoming "Report on Criminality of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques," co-authored with Human Rights First. The entire summary is worth reading. One section in particular speaks to McConnell's idiotic claims:

"Medical literature clearly establishes that tactics such as the CIA’s reported “enhanced interrogation techniques cause the types of physical and mental anguish that are criminalized under the WCA and other laws. In a letter sent to Senator John McCain during the height of the MCA debate, several leading medical and psychological experts, including current and past presidents of the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association, conveyed this collective knowledge:

There must be no mistake about the brutality of the “enhanced interrogation methods” reportedly used by the CIA. Prolonged sleep deprivation, induced hypothermia, stress positions, shaking, sensory deprivation and overload, and water-boarding (which may still be authorized), among other reported techniques, can have a devastating impact on the victim’s physical and mental health.

The pain and suffering arising from the individual and combined use of water-boarding, hitting, induced hypothermia, prolonged bombardment with loud music and flashing lights, stress positions, total and long-term isolation, and other “enhanced” interrogation techniques is directly related to the purpose of these techniques: to “break” detainees, mentally and physically. The medical consequences of such abuse have been well-documented through years of research and treatment of survivors of violence and severe trauma.

Some of the enhanced techniques, particularly water-boarding, hitting, induced hypothermia, and stress positions are capable of causing “severe” or “serious” physical pain and suffering, the intentional infliction of which violates the “torture” and “cruel and inhuman treatment” provisions of the WCA. Each of the techniques can also cause significant psychological harm. According to one recent study, in fact, the significance of the harm caused by non-physical, psychological abuse is virtually identical to the significance of the harm caused by physical abuse.

This mental harm can take many different forms, including:

• Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), manifested in: prolonged, recurring flashbacks and nightmares; significant impairment and instability in life functions; suicidal ideation; and, weakened physical health, among other consequences. Rates of PTSD range from 45% to 92% of torture survivors, subjected to both physical and mental torture.

• Depressive disorder manifested in self-destructive and suicidal thoughts and behavior, and other characteristics.

• Psychosis, in the form of delusions, bizarre ideations and behaviors, perceptual distortions, and paranoia, among other manifestations.

These techniques, moreover, are generally used in combination – prolonged isolation, for example, combined with sleep deprivation, light and sound bombardment, and exposure to cold – compounding their devastating psychological impact."

torture, terrorism, politics, intelligence, enhanced interrogation

Have You No Shame, Sir?

Mike McConnell, new Director of National Intelligence, gave his first big interview on today's Meet the Press. Tim Russert asked whether McConnell would be comfortable if a US citizen was subject to the enhanced interrogation techniques defended (but not specified) in The Decider's latest Executive Order. McConnell: "It's not 'torture,' Tim. I want to make that clear." But McConnell then said that he wouldn't want to see it used on US citizens. If it were, though, he hastily added, "there'd be no longterm damage."

This is a man who either knows nothing about torture or is a liar.

torture, terrorism, politics, intelligence

Let's Hear It for Torture! A Letter from a Christian Patriot Yahoo

There's a document making the rounds in cyberspace that pretends to be red-white-and-blue but in fact is as splenetic and hate-filled a piece as I've ever read. There are several accounts of its authorship. The version that was sent me credits it to "a housewife in New Jersey--one ticked-off lady!" Other versions of it claim that one Pam Foster from Atlanta is the author. TruthOrFiction insists that the document is largely based on a piece written by columnist Doug Patton back in 2005.

Personally, I don't care who wrote it. What interests--and frightens--me is that it's all over the place. Google lists over 30,000 references to it, and this doesn't include the hundreds of thousands of people who've received it over e-mail. Its popularity is a testiment to just how easily (and, for many, persuasively) rage legitimates torture.

Here it is, as I received it. The friend who forwarded it to me, an octogenarian Christian pacifist and activist, tells me that he thinks the final paragraph "about as close to blasphemy as anything I have ever seen." Not too mention stupid and pathetic.

---------- Forwarded message ---------->

Written by a housewife from New Jersey and sounds like it! This is one ticked off lady.

Are we fighting a war on terror or aren't we? Was it or was it not started by Islamic people who brought it to our shores on September 11, 2001?

Were people from all over the world, mostly Americans, not brutally murdered that day, in downtown Manhattan, across the Potomac from our nation's capitol and in a field in Pennsylvania ?

Did nearly three thousand men, women and children die a horrible, burning or crushing death that day, or didn't they?

And I'm supposed to care that a copy of the Koran was "desecrated" when an overworked American soldier kicked it or got it wet?...Well, I don't. I don't care at all.

I'll start caring when Osama bin Laden turns himself in and repents for incinerating all those innocent people on 9/11.

I'll care about the Koran when the fanatics in the Middle East start caring about the Holy Bible, the mere possession of which is a crime in Saudi Arabia .

I'll care when these thugs tell the world they are sorry for hacking off Nick Berg's head while Berg screamed through his gurgling slashed throat.

I'll care when the cowardly so-called "insurgents" in Iraq come out and fight like men instead of disrespecting their own religion by hiding in mosques.

I'll care when the mindless zealots who blow themselves up in search of nirvana care about the innocent children within range of their suicide bombs.

I'll care when the American media stops pretending that their First Amendment liberties are somehow derived from international law instead of the United States Constitution's Bill of Rights.

In the meantime, when I hear a story about a brave marine roughing up an Iraqi terrorist to obtain information, know this: I don't care.

When I see a fuzzy photo of a pile of naked Iraqi prisoners who have been humiliated in what amounts to a college-hazing incident, rest assured: I don't care.

When I see a wounded terrorist get shot in the head when he is told not to move because he might be booby-trapped, you can take it to the bank: I don't care.

When I hear that a prisoner, who was issued a Koran and a prayer mat, and fed "special" food that is paid for by my tax dollars, is complaining that his holy book is being "mishandled," you can absolutely believe in your heart of hearts: I don't care.

And oh, by the way, I've noticed that sometimes it's spelled "Koran" and other times "Quran." Well, Jimmy Crack Corn and-you guessed it-I don't care !!

If you agree with this viewpoint, pass this on to all your E-mail friends. Sooner or later, it'll get to the people responsible for this ridiculous behavior!

If you don't agree, then by all means hit the delete button. Should you choose the latter, then please don't complain when more atrocities committed by radical Muslims happen here in our great Country! And may I add:

"Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference in the world. But, the Marines don't have that problem." -- Ronald Reagan

I have another quote that I would like to add AND.......I hope you forward all this. "If we ever forget that we're One Nation Under God, then we will be a nation gone under." Also by.. Ronald Reagan

One last thought for the day: In case we find ourselves starting to believe all the Anti-American sentiment and negativity, we should remember England 's Prime Minister Tony Blair's words during a recent interview. When asked by one of his Parliament members why he believes so much in America , he said: "A simple way to take measure of a country is to look at how many want in... And how many want out."

Only two defining forces have ever offered to die for you:

1. Jesus Christ

2. The American G. I.

One died for your soul, the other for your freedom.

YOU MIGHT WANT TO PASS THIS ON, AS MANY SEEM TO FORGET BOTH OF THEM. AMEN!

torture, terrorism, christianity, patriotism

New Bush Directive Forbids Torture (*wink-wink*)

Remember when Clinton said "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is..." when asked if he was schtupping Monica Lewinsky? It was pretty clear to the nation that he was playing word games to weasle out of a tough spot.

Well, The Decider is playing his own word games now. Under international pressure, he's just issued an Executive Order prohibiting the CIA from using "torture." The problem is that what he means by "torture" remains his and the CIA's little secret. We know from the public five-page EO that torture has something to do with "mutilation or cruel or inhuman treatment," and that "sexual humiliation" and acts denigrating religion are out. Short of that, though, we're given little idea of what the Bush team thinks the term means. Everything is vague--and deliberately so. As CIA Director Michael Hayden puts it, "the information developed by our program is irreplaceable," with the information developed by our program being bureauspeak for torture and irreplaceable meaning "we're not stopping."

We should also note that there's no significant difference between this EO and The Decider's long-standing insistence that he and he alone will be the one who decides how to define the word "torture."

So, does the US government torture? It depends on what the meaning of the word "torture" is. Rings just as false as Clinton's testimony, doesn't it? Except that this time, we're not talking about blowjobs. Wonder if the nation will go as ballistic over this transparent dishonesty about torture as it did over a lie about a bit of hanky-panky in the White House?

bush, torture, CIA, human rights, politics, gitmo

Guilt and Self-Loathing on the Torture Trail

One of the consistent claims of this blog is that torture is a moral (and spiritual, if one accepts such things) abomination because it aims to "malfigure" the torture victim's self: to break her will, erode her identity, and fragment her ability to relate normally with others even if she survives and returns to society.

The longterm physical consequences of torture are horrendous enough: chronic and frequently severe pain caused by nerve damage, broken bones, permanently damaged tissue. But the psychological effects are even worse: a sense of lost identity, chronic anxiety and panic disorder, sleep disturbances and nightmares, depression, suicidal ideation, uncontrollable anger and aggression, decreased memory or outright amnesia, lack of concentration, and PTSD-related flashbacks.

There's also one more common psychological symptom suffered by torture victims, and it's the focus of today's post: guilt and self-loathing. It's one of the true tragedies of torture that people who survive it frequently come away thinking that they're no better than their torturers, and consequently fear and loath themselves as much as they do their tormenters.

To those of us who have never experienced abuse, it may seem strange and even slightly perverse that torture victims would feel guilt. But it makes sense if one keeps in mind that the fruit of torture is malfiguration. The torture victim is subjected to violations that, if "successful," result in deep humilitation. The victim is trespassed upon in every imaginable way: orifices are violated with penises, fingers, and objects; bodies are violated with pain-causing instruments and techniques; psyches are invaded with terror and agony; resolve is broken with each and every blow; taboos are thrown to the winds as victims are forced to do unthinkable things such as eating excrement.

Under these circumstances, it's surprising if a torture victim doesn't develop a negative self-image. She loathes herself for being so weak, so cowardly, so pliable. She feels dirty, filthy, disgusting, because of the sexual invasions she's endured. She comes to hate her very body because of the pain and humilitation it's brought her, her very mind because it couldn't block the agony, her will power because it shattered under pressure. Every virtue she once thought she possessed has failed the test. How could she not despise herself?

Once the self-loathing sets in, the guilt isn't far behind. The torture victim may experience survivor-guilt, for example: she's survived only because she wasn't as strong as her comrades. They resisted to the death. She broke. It's they who deserved to live, not she. The torture victim may also feel guilt because she's been so traumatized that she's unable to experience appropriate emotions such as compassion or pity for other victims or rage against their tormenters. Some victims report that after a certain point they witnessed the torture and even execution of their friends dispassionately.

Other victims feel guilt because they've been forced by their torturers to perform horrible acts. Sister Dianna Ortiz, kidnapped by Guatemalan security forces in 1989, reports that one of her captors forced a machete into her hand, closed his fist around hers, and forced her to chop a fellow female prisoner to death. Raped repeatedly, Sister Dianna was impregnated and, after her release, obtained a medical abortion. Both of these acts haunted her as much as the actual abuse she herself endured. "You're no better than we, your torturers, are! You're just like us!" For years after her torture, Sister Dianna heard these words echoing inside her.

Horribly, most torture victims are psychically impregnated by their tormenters. Victim after victim reports that their torturers continue to "live inside" them. They associate their torturers with filth, agony, brutality, and hatred. But because these powerful emotions have been internalized and self-directed, the torturers remain with the victims. How unspeakably awful it must be to fancy that you've become what you most fear and loathe.

As I've said in earlier posts: torture doesn't end in the torture chamber, and anyone who seriously thinks that the ethics of torture is up for debate doesn't know the first thing about torture.

________

Photo credit: "The Guilt" by resquin, for the Emotions 6 contest

torture, enhanced interrogation, human rights, torture victims