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June 28, 2004
We only torture bad people, honest
The New York Times is reporting that the August 2002 memo by the Justice Department has been written as an after-the-fact rationalization of “extreme” interrogation techniques already used against high-level Al Qaeda members such as Abu Zubaydah. In other words, they were already using these techniques and were worried about legal cover so they asked the Justice Department for advice.(Yes, there are many memos floating around and it gets confusing; this one was the ‘royalist’ memo arguing that the President in his Commander-in-Chief capacity could authorize torture and could not be held accountable under international treaties or federal torture laws.)
Until now, it has not been clear that the memo was written in response to the C.I.A.'s efforts to extract information from high-ranking Qaeda suspects, and was unrelated to questions about handling detainees at Guantánamo Bay or in Iraq.
It all reads a bit like spin from administration officials eager to make an acceptable case for what their attack-dogs are openly claiming: the torture was necessary to save American lives:
In the end, administration officials considered Mr. Zubaydah's interrogation an example of the successful use of harsh interrogation techniques. Most notably, they said, he helped identify Mr. Mohammed as the principal architect of the September 2001 hijacking plot and was the source of information about Jose Padilla, who was arrested in May 2002 in what officials said was a nascent plot to develop a dirty bomb using radiological materials.
The article also explains that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was indeed “waterboarded” -- strapped to a board and immersed in water to the point of almost drowning. Admittedly, being told someone’s an architect of 9/11 dilutes one’s aversion to torture -- and that’s the argument being made here.
From Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, though, we also go to Jose Padilla how this article now tells us was fingered by Abu Zubaydah under torture. We also know that somehow the Justice Department doesn’t seem to have much on Jose Padilla who is nonetheless being held indefinitely without charges or access to courts -- for all we know, he’s the cousin of a friend of an Al Qaeda sympathizer whose name Zubaydah happened to know because he thought an American citizen might be useful at some point. From there on, we have thousands of people held in Abu Ghraib under questionable conditions at best, and some definitely tortured and at least dozens killed plus a worldwide, lawless enclave where men, and a few women, disappear into and emerge months or year later, if at all, without being charged with even having wielded a pointed stick against Americans or anyone else.
Somehow, the administration would have us believe, they authorized torture under very controlled conditions for a few mass murderers and somehow, magically, the practice just spread all around U.S. detention centers around the world, from bad apple to bad apple.
Even if we accept administration’s spin, this would be a good example of what anti-torture advocates have always pointed out. Once you authorize it, the conduct will spread. If you are tempted to use it on someone who you are sure is guilty, you will be tempted to use it on someone of whose guilt you think you are sure, followed by using it on anyone who you think might be guilty and so on. Second, you will get bad information because people will say anything to make it stop and you will not be able to tell the bad information from real information.
Incidentally, we also learn in this piece that CIA's suspension of "enhanced" techniques does not apply to Guantanamo or other military prisons. So where is CIA interrogating people?
An article in Sunday's Washington Post reported that the C.I.A. had suspended the use of the extreme interrogation tactics at the agency's detention facilities around the world pending a review by Justice Department and other administration lawyers, although the decision does not apply to military prisons such as the one at Guantánamo Bay.
Posted by zeynep at June 28, 2004 12:05 AM
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