Let's Talk Torture

Let's Talk Torture

Since the September eleventh terrorist attacks on the United States, the Patriot Act was enacted in 2001 which allowed prisoners to be held in Guantanamo Bay without any due justice. With this sudden change in policy, many people of high standing, such as politicians, began to advocate the use of torture. "The treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq focused worldwide media attention on the US practice of torture. Underlying such a practice was not only a self-serving debate in US political circles, academia and entertainment media on how a liberal democracy could justify such methods but also a history of counterinsurgency techniques which owed much to French warfare in Algeria," said Neil MacMaster. Since the Algerian war, featuring France, the U.S. picked up on the interrogation techniques and used them in Vietnam. Since then, the U.S. has not abandoned using torture, even with the terrible outcome of the Algerian war. The U.N. Convention Against Torture was adopted on December 10, 1984 and came into force on June 26, 1987. The Convention forbids torture and other acts of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment committed by public officials. All states which have ratified the Convention Against Torture must make it a criminal offence to commit an act of torture. President Ronald Reagan signed the treaty, President George H.W. Bush formally sent it to the Senate for approval, and the Senate ratified it in 1994. Congress also passed legislation turning the treaty's provisions into domestic law, which President Bill Clinton signed. But after the 9/11 attacks, President Bush's legal team told him that he had the power to bypass domestic and international restrictions on the treatment of prisoners. . Democracies were the real innovators of 20th century torture. Britain, France, and the United States were perfecting methods of torture before the CIA even existed.
So, do torture methods really work? Army Col. Stuart Herrington, a military intelligence specialist who conducted interrogations in Vietnam, Panama and Iraq during Desert Storm, and who was sent by the Pentagon in 2003 to assess interrogations in Iraq, says torture is simply ‘not a good way to get information.’ In his experience, nine out of 10 people can be persuaded to talk with no "stress methods" at all, let alone cruel and unusual ones. Asked whether that would be true of religiously motivated fanatics, he says that the average might be lower: ‘perhaps six out of ten.’ And for the remaining four, ‘They'll just tell you anything to get you to stop.’" The FBI, which has been critical of such physically aggressive interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, asserted in late 2003 that these tactics had failed to produce any intelligence that has assisted in the neutralization of any threat to date, something the military disputes. As gruesomely described by Elizabeth Sepper, "Recent reports described the death of Manadel al-Jamadi, a detainee who asphyxiated during a CIA interrogation at Abu Ghraib prison, his head in a hood and his body shackled in a torture position known as a "Palestinian hanging." A CIA guard who witnessed that interrogation recounted that, after stripping Jamadi and dousing him in cold water, a CIA interrogator threatened to ‘barbecue’ him if he did not talk. Several hours later, Jamadi was dead, with six broken ribs and blood gushing from his mouth and nose."
It is no surprise that U.S. government agencies are torturing foreign civilians when our own citizens are also being tortured in U.S. state prisons. Kevin Johnson said, "And what about California’s Corcoran state prison where guards set up fights between prisoners, gambled on the outcomes and then shot the prisoners for fighting? Some 43 were shot and eight killed just between 1989 and 1994. Others were shot and killed with no justification." An even more disgusting torture use was in California, when a mentally ill prisoner, Vaughn Dortch, bit an prison guard and was smearing feces on himself and around his prison cell. The punishment for this was the guards deciding to boil Vaughn Dortch in 145 degree water. His skin peeled off, and was taken to the emergency room, as described by Holly J. Bourkhalter.
What are the implications of torture? The mental health impact of psychological torture is just as damaging as physical torture. A study on 279 torture survivors in former Yugoslavia proved this claim to be true. The ill treatment often labeled as another form of interrogation or ‘torture lite’ - including psychological manipulation, humiliation, threats of rape, isolation, sham executions, and sleep deprivation - caused just as much distress and feeling of uncontrollability as torture that inflicted physical pain. Victims who reported feeling more distressed and more helpless from either form of torture were more likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder and depression later on. Dr. Allen Keller, associate professor of medicine at NYU School of Medicine and director of the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture, stated: ‘This study is a sobering reminder that torture and mistreatment - either physical or psychological - can have devastating health consequences.’"

Patricia Richardson
UIUC Campus Antiwar Network