Remember the Korean War and the Chinese brainwashing techniques that became infamous? Well apparently U.S. military and Intelligence officers have forgotten . . .
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKULTRA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Ewen_Cameron
A gift from China?!
America using Korea War-era torture methods that were developed by the Communist Chinese is an abomination, not to mention that, based upon its history, it does not work as a means of gaining useful information.
If America is engaged in a war of ideas, which I think it is, then our leadership should be using the correct set of tools. Unfortunately, this demonstrates that we have not had the leadership that we need.
Ah but false confessions are confessions nonetheless. The authorities are rarely interested in the truth. Imagine if the inquisitors obtained a list of every witch and sorcerer in the Western world…? –they’d be out of a job.
Military leadership relying on ideas, strategies and tools from the past that are more than likely so outdated and unapplicable as to be useless?
Doesn’t that sum up the American military?
Like in the first Gulf War, they had the grunts in the desert wearing Vietnam era swamp boots- these were not designed for desert use at all and caused a lot of problems. Only later they realized ‘hey, we need a new desert boot!’.
No forward thinking at all!
but but but america is #1, no?
America using Korea War-era torture methods that were developed by the Communist Chinese is an abomination, not to mention that, based upon its history, it does not work as a means of gaining useful information.
I know you don’t want this stuff to work. Perhaps ethically, it shouldn’t work. But it does. Your moral preening is the abomination, not our methods.
If America is engaged in a war of ideas, which I think it is, then our leadership should be using the correct set of tools. Unfortunately, this demonstrates that we have not had the leadership that we need.
The biggest part of the war of ideas is convincing the other side that they are doomed to defeat. We defeated the Germans and the Japanese primarily because we had more of everything, not because we had better ideas. And they accepted our ideas because they lost militarily, not to mention the fact that we ruled them by diktat for many years.
Let’s take the NYT, the paper of Walter Duranty, as the truth here even though they have been the major US organ of communist brainwashing and disinformation, the Pravda-USSA, who ever remain apologists for the Rosenbergs even after former Soviet files released in the 1990s confirmed their espionage. The NYT has an agenda and is not the most unbiased source of info on Gitmo or US policy in general. Anyone recall how Maureen Dowd strung together a bunch of partial quotes out of context, separated by ellipses, to make the President say the opposite of what he really said? Scott Shane has a clear agenda when one looks at the focus of his articles. His slant is that the interrogation class at Gitmo is based entirely on communist Chinese tactics from a 1957 report. Modern interrogation tactics have evolved a lot since then, even if they are built in part upon knowledge gained from the past (Call it learning form history). Furthermore, what he calls “false confessions” that lead to false information is being manipulated to serve his agenda. Are we to believe that the Chinese intentionally made US soldiers falsely confess to atrocities so the Chinese could then combat their invented threat, or did they make US soldiers confess such as a propaganda tool? I’m guessing it’s the latter, which means that what the Chinese did was indeed effective for the intentions and purposes they had all along. Oh, and I like how Mr. Shane included an anonymous, independent expert, the staple source of info for NYT reporters.
Mr. Shane’s false confessions of atrocities committed by US Servicemen at Gitmo are indeed ironic to say the least.
Score one for Zhang Fei over Mr. Elgin.
Nonsense, Choe. Zhang Fei is dangerously stupid, and he has scored nothing. Take a trip over to Google, type in, ‘Is torture effective?’ or ‘Does torture work?’ or any similar question you like. I’ll not get into trading URL’s, as you’ll find enough yourself to show that Zhang Fei’s fantasy of righteous westerners scoring intelligence victories through torture is pure bollocks.
His final two paragraphs are also useless. Elgin was positing that the current struggle is for hearts and minds, that is, a War of Ideas. I’d agree. World War 2 was a war of bombs, blood and steel, not ideologies. The two types of war require different strategies, and Zhang has failed to apprehend the difference.
I leave off with a quote. There are thousands like it. Please go find a few more, and convince yourself that America should get out - fully, unequivocally OUT, of the torture game.
I was going to post a reply to “Zhang” regarding the “war of ideas” but “Linkd” seems to have caught on. It is too bad “Zheng” that so many think a “war of ideas” boils down to either forcing someone to believe that they are wrong or the CCP game of flooding media outlets with revisionist lies and ideological inventions.
A real war of ideas is not so much a war as it is communication, dialog and PR. As it is, the American Government has done a lousy job of PR and IMHO, the coolest effort ever done of such was the “Jazz diplomacy” from the 50s-60s. Read the article; it’s great. It seems that, even today, when the musicians go out, connections are made.
Regarding Zheng’s first observation:
<nonsense>Your moral preening is the abomination, not our methods.</nonsense>There simply is *no* HTML coding to handle that sort of trolling. I’ll answer you on this point when some clever Chinese hacker develops a more refined version of hyper-text mark-up that can handle your thoughts. Considering how good Chinese hackers are nowadays (they really are quite good), it should not be long.
Regarding “NES”:
Maureen Dowd is a hack journalist and lousy writer whom I would never read — just for the record. As such, your posting is so off topic and one long act of misdirection. The topic is about America using Chinese torture tactics and how low and ignorant of history our leadership has become. America deserves much better than this.
Your opinion is that the US uses torture. Others disagree. What is torture? At what point does harsh interrogation cross the line and become considered as torture?
@13
It’s not completely off topic. I questioned your source that asserts the US is using Chinese torture tactics at Gitmo. Then I discussed torture in the context of that article. First, we have to study the past and use what is useful. Second, the Chinese wanted false confessions of US atrocities for propaganda purposes, not to go combat against their invented threat. This is putting information into someone’s head. The article tries to make this equivalent to getting information out of someone’s head.
At least we can agree on Dowd.
Mr. Hillson,
Given that I am neither an expert on the efficacy of torture nor even well-versed on the topic, my preference for Zhang Fei’s view over Mr. Elgin’s is emphatically provisional. That is, I am willing to revise my opinion on the matter if given persuasive counter-arguments or sources that offer them. In particular, I am a prolific reader and will almost certainly read what you produce with care, if the sources are respectable. Alas, you do neither.
To begin with, you must realize that it doesn’t help your credibility by beginning with ad hominem remarks. Sure, you may call me a hypocrite, given that I too have the tendency to call a spade a spade. But Zhang Fei, in spite of his pronounced biases at times, is certainly not “stupid.”
(I will not dwell overmuch on your accusing me of spouting “nonsense” by the mere agreement with Zhang Fei, even though the view that people who are tortured will “sing” seems to me the very definition of “common sense”—though I concede that “common sense” is not always right.)
Further, I am amused by your considered recommendation that I do a Google search to determine whether torture is effective. That’s it? Since when counting heads the acid test of determining the truth? Besides, just looking at the brief description under the said Google search (I actually did take your advice), it is not so crystal clear that torture is incontrovertibly ineffective. (And where would the cut-off line be: the first 10 results? The first 100? The first 1000?)
Seriously, if you really knew the subject as much as your certitude would imply, you would have at least cited a major article or a book (preferably the latter) by a respected authority that comprehensively examines the issue. I certainly would not advise someone to do a Google search if, for instance, someone were to ask me if journalists were right in linking George Bush’s foreign policy to the controversial philosopher Leo Strauss (a topic that I emphatically know well).
Be that as it may, I understand that it is difficult to always be thoughtful and thorough in the context of a Blog comment. I certainly have said many things in a hurried fashion online that I later came to regret. So in the interest of personal enlightenment (and not of the kind that Seung Sahn promised but couldn’t deliver), I would, in my current ignorance, obsequiously ask for arguments or sources that so conclusively proves that torture doesn’t work.
P.S. Mr. Hillson,
I forgot to broach the second issue of the debate. And I can only broach it because it will be my bed time in a few minutes:
You also distinguish between the War on Terror and World War II by claiming that the former is a “War of Ideas,” whereas the latter a war of, well, war materiel, rather than war of “ideologies.”
I am more than baffled by this comment. So fascism did not represent a comprehensive ideological challenge to Western liberalism? Hitler fought only for “Lebensraum”?
I agree with Elgin and Linkd. I recently interviewed an Australian airman who was tortured as a POW in Korea at a place called Pak’s Palace. He gave them faulty intelligence. Likewise, an American airman whom he was imprisoned with (who had to manualy eject from his cockpit and snapped his leg on the tail-wing) was told that unless he gave them intelligence they wouldn’t amputate his leg, which would have been a death sentence under the circumstances. He also gave the enemy false information and they cut his leg off with a saw (I understand he survived). The point: they gained nothing.
But faulty intelligence is the least important reason why torture should not be used. Guys like Zhang Fei and Wong Joon are morally weak - no better than those they would seek to protect American from.
By condoning torture you give your own enemies a mandate to torture your own soldiers, you alienate allies (like Australia and Britain), making it hard to find support in future conflicts, and you help convert moderates to extremists in countries that incubate terror, and that might have otherwise helped you.
And it raises a host of questions that the pro-torture clique would rather ignore:
1. What sort of torture do you allow, and how far do you let it go? Do waterboard someone, or start plucking fingernails? Do you draw any line at all?
2. Who decides who will be tortured, and who does the torturing? Or is that to be classified, and left to the discretion of some shadowy department beholden to some secret governmental body no one knows anything about. Is there a risk that this right to torture will be abused?
3. If America decides it has a moral mandate to torture someone, who else does America deem fit to use torture? No-one else (why?), just America’s allies? (Who?) Or any state that happens to wish to toruture someone?
4. Most importantly, next time the US stands on a pulpit and pretends to admonish some state or organization on the morality of its actions in killing/torturing x number of people, who will listen? And why should they listen?
“Guys like Zhang Fei and Wong Joon are morally weak - no better than those they would seek to protect American from.”
LOL, ok, what a sweeping judgment about someone on the basis of one extremely short Blog comment.
Glad to hear it’s provisional. The nonsense I spoke of was your assertion that Zhang Fei had scored over Elgin. He did not.
Regarding your research criteria…ah, you’re one of those. Were you around for the link combats when cinemagauche took on everyone with a flood of URL’s “proving” there was no Al Qaida and no planes hit the towers? Anyway, it’s the middle of the workday in Korea, so, if you’ll be patient, I’ll see what I can do for you this evening.
Mr. Hillson,
“One of those”? Yes, if you mean one of those who likes to thoroughly examine both sides of an issue in a thorough fashion!
And no, I wasn’t around for the particular online spat to which you refer. As a general matter though, I don’t really see URL wars of much value, as most that is written online is garbage.
It’s not always possible for me to monitor this site to ensure that you’ve responded (esp. because I am finishing up a manuscript of my own, and I work in binges). So you can also e-mail me at wonjoon(a)gmail.com to ensure that I get the article/book references or whatever else you will produce.
WWII involved fielded armies fighting each other while consuming their nation’s industrial outputs. The armies took the field only because they were ordered to. Hitler was a facist - he did not fight ‘for fascism’. The armies did not take the field to win the hearts and minds of civilian populations, which, I believe, is why the jihadis and the Americans are now fighting. Some respect for American-style philosophies came about in the losing countries, only because the US won, but that’s not what the US was fighting for.
“NES”, I really suspect that “harsh interrogation” is simply a nice word for “torture”. The refinement of inflicting agony without as much blood being spilled only reflects the Chinese desire at that time to improve their methods and not their desire to avoid using classical torture methods on their prisoners.
As Senator Levin comments
There are plenty of confessions on record of women who were consorts of the devil and who flew through the air on brooms during the Seventeenth Century; all taken during the course of “harsh interrogation” that were only less refined in neatness when compared to the Chinese methodology.
If the results in these examples is information, falsified for the sake of escaping duress and agony, what is the difference? How does this help America and what does it say about us when we use such methods? Should we then reconsider using medical information obtained from medical experiments performed by Third Reich concentration camp doctors or from Japan’s Unit 731?
We end up with bs and lessen ourselves at the same time. Has America learned nothing from the past?
That is certainly true. Though I teased him a bit, his commentary is usually thoughtful.
@19, ok, fair enough, that was a silly thing to say.
@23
Just to be clear, I do not support or condone the use of torture. However, I disagree that it isn’t an effective way to extract information. The US military train on how to use disinformation and not give up intel under duress while acknowledging that every man has his breaking point. Even John McCain and many others have said as much in documented testimony about when they reached their limits while staying at the “Hanoi Hilton.”
The anecdotes of 호주사람 give the experiences of a few men that we cannot analyze unless they are documented somewhere. Would they admit to having been broken? Were the techniques used against them poor? Were they not viewed as being important enough sources of intel for further interrogation? We don’t know.
Your example of the Salem Witch Trials only goes to further evidence of my point. Given enough torture, one will eventually break and admit to anything, even welcoming death. The point you try to make about false information, however, is invalid (You are turning the argument on its head just as Scott Shane did - I seem to recall something about never trusting somebody with two first names
). I don’t believe that US Military Intelligence is as unsophisticated as 17th Century Puritans. Furthermore, I also don’t believe that the interrogations performed by US Military Intelligence have the purpose of forcing Gitmo detainees into admitting a false assertion provided to them by the interrogators. Both the cases of Chinese torture and the Salem Witch Trials involved putting information into some one’s head and the designs of the torturers had success in both cases. The purpose of the interrogations at Gitmo is to pull information out of heads. The interrogators are well aware that false intel will be provided. Intel is tested and providers of false intel are reinteroggated again and again under the accusation of providing false intel until they finally break and give real, verifiable information. The agenda-driven article of Mr. Shane is a caricature of reality meant to support his predetermined conclusion. If you like that sort of thing, may I also recommend the Hankyoreh? ^^
The most valid point you made was, “‘NES,’ I really suspect that ‘harsh interrogation’ is simply a nice word for ‘torture.’” Exactly. Is “harsh interrogation” a euphemism for “torture?” Where is the line drawn? Who draws that line? Is waterboarding torture? These are very important questions. I would define “torture” as inflicting intense and/or permanent psychological and/or physical pain/damage upon another. However, the same questions can be asked about this expanded definition.
While I believe torture to be immoral, I have less of a problem with making detainees feel uncomfortable such that they give information in order to receive more comfortable treatment. You seem to be concluding that the US is torturing detainees at Gitmo. I have as of yet not seen conclusive evidence that such is the case.
@23
I’m surprised that Senator Levin didn’t also find it stunning that interrogators were supposed to learn out of a handbook written in Chinese!
Here’s a waterboarding demonstration made by people who are against it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sS4sGYmzCuA
It’s interesting that those making the video are willing to engage in and suffer “torture” in order to get their point across. I guess the ends justify the means.
The “victim” said he was being drowned, but I couldn’t help noticing that he was still breathing. He also said that those who do such deserve to receive such (In fact, they do experience it as a matter of training). However, that sounds a bit like arguments one might make in justifying war. That kind of reminds me of violent peace rallies and Korean candlelight vigils.
It would make an interesting study to see how many people would be willing to accept $50 to endure a “gallon” of waterboading versus the number of people willing to accept $50 to endure having bamboo splinters shoved under their fingernails (or have their bodies stretched with ropes until joints start to pop out of sockets).
NES is right in that there are nuances to this issue (and he didn’t even get into the “ticking time bomb” and “saving American lives” arguments).
Also, utility of torture is unclear (googling does little good on this matter since most links are to groups with agendas).
However, as a rule, I think torturing prisoners is immoral and as such is not a business members of our republic should be involved in. Being the conservative that I am, I have no qualms about pushing my moral views on my fellow citizens.
But then again, I am a Republican who is against the death penalty so what do I know?
#4,
I think you missed the point I was making with my two links…
Those brainwashing methods are very much American.
I for one am not buying the “de-linking” of ideology from the motives for fighting in the Second World War. If ideology “isn’t” the “body of ideas reflecting the social needs and aspirations of an individual, group, class or culture (thanks Mr. Webster!), then what was it that impelled Mussolini to march in Africa? Or the Japanese militarists to invade, Manchuria, and China? Or Stalin to invade Finland and Poland? Or Hitler to run amok all over Europe? Each person or group had their own view of the world, outlook on life, philosophy, (ideology), and acted on those motives. To reduce WWII to a large clash of conventional forces, devoid of ideological motives, cheapens the sacrifice made and cost paid to preserve the freedoms we enjoy today, to include the freedom of expression here in this blog.
Hey, that’s politics and it goes to show why America is so strong; make the other guy look like scum for what he does while you do the same thing secretly. The fact that the US has covered it up so well is probably what pisses most of their enemies so much, I mean it’s ridiculous to the extent they will go for it, like putting in jail some soldiers for shooting a few civilians in a war zone when the coupes that have been supported have killed thousands.
People from the Middle East, violence is what’s around us, and it ain’t a big thing, really. I mean, over here I’d never hit a person, my kid or anyone else’s and if my wife did I’d be mad and ‘offended’ as they say, but over there, you see a bomb go off, some people with missing limbs, and I, nor others, don’t flinch. American ‘torture’ looks merciful compared to what the native police might do.
Problem with the USA trying to put some control in Iraq, and why they aren’t doing too well is cause they don’t like to get their hands dirty enough; they’ll take the high horse approach and not really shake people up and let things get nasty.
If people in the world like bringing up ‘horrors’ of past American violence, it’s not really cause it’s any different from what they’ve done, it’s just for the sake of the holier than thou game.
USA, do what you gotta do.
Torture is clearly wrong, most people would agree on this. However, we need to seriously sit down and define what clearly what torture is. The UN human rights code on this is too vague in my opinion. For example “stressful positions” is considered torture by many. But you could then make the argument that handcuffing a suspect would amount to torture because that suspect is in a stressful position (if you have never spent more than 20 minutes in handcuffs, trust me they are not comfortable at all, and I’m not talking about the kind my girlfriend puts on me).
As for the Chinese interrogation tactics in the Korean War, they were extremely successful. Think about it, how many Allied POWs started making propaganda statements in support of the Nazis or the Japanese?
The Korean War was the first time that a true battle for the minds of POWs took place. This was a major victory for the Chinese, as they were able to convince millions in the 3rd world that they US was committing these horrible war crimes.
US soldiers were totally unprepared for Chinese interrogation tactics. As a result the Military Code of Conduct came about after the Korean War. It also didn’t help the fact that many of the POWs were extremely uneducated, often barely graduating middle school. The 21 Americans who stayed in China after the war where for the most part poorly educated and had low IQs.
Once again the Republic of Take-But-Don’t-Give, has the temerity to criticize a nation that has contributed and sacrificed more than any other in history - apparently having never heard the expression “beggars can’t be choosers.”
Once again, we see the tired old double standard: complaining of “US interventionalism” when Korea is expected to keep their end of a bilateral agreement, but “insufficient measures” whenever the Korean military decides to go civilian hunting from time to time.
Once again, as in Kwangju, where there is no smoking gun the lies-distortions-and-propaganda machine shifts into overdrive.
The old agenda of blaming big nose and Japan for Korea’s own mistakes is just too deeply ingrained in the culture to expect anything better.
The historical revisionist mantra of Korean “progressives” (ie. regressives): it’s easier to reinvent the past than to build a bright new future.
Three points. One, torture can work, as it did for the French Army during the Battle of Algiers. However, the operating environment of Iraq and GWOT is far removed from the Algiers example, where the Army won an important tactical victory at the cost of a loss of morale support among their own populace which contributed to France’s loss of Algeria.
Two, I agree with McCain on torture and mistreatment of prisoners. I do so because taken as a whole, it does not produce results and there is no (apparent) uniformity in its application.
Three, If, as a nation, we are going to resort to hard interrogation techniques (as opposed to Torquemadian torture), then the license to do so must be codified, must be subject to judicial approval, must be admninistered according to clearly established and approved guidlines by interrogators liable to the law for violating those guidelines, and must provide means of speedy redress for the victim if and when such proves to have been in error.
Tuesday, 10:11 pm
Mrs. Linkd (reading over my shoulder): why are you looking up ‘torture’?
Me: Uhhh…
Mrs Linkd: Marmot’s Hole?
Me (sheepish): Yeah.
Mrs. Link: That’s all I needed to know. G’night.
Me: G’night.
OK, here we go.
Where to start? As Andy says, most links are tainted by bias. The people who would have the most motivation to gather good data about torture are also those with the most motivation to be selective about their reporting. Reject anything from Amnesty, Red Cross, OECD, UN. On the other hand, reject anything from Cato, AEI, right-wing think tanks. Reject any blog. Virtually every Google link is therefore tainted.
So, I choose SSRN, Social Science Research Network ssrn.com. Hell, torture must be a social science, right? And the papers there are most likely to adhere to academic standards of objectivity, I assume.
There are 223 hits for “torture”. Pretty much all of them try to define torture, define when it can be used, analyze constitutional law, potential for successful prosecution. Many others are moral essays analyzing such hypothetical or real cases as the ‘ticking bomb’ Andy refers to. None seem to have the statement I’m looking for: A comprehensive study proving conclusively that torture does not work. But we must start somewhere.
Not good enough.
Original source material. A little better. #71 of 223 (Affirming the Ban on Harsh Interrogation, MARY ELLEN O’CONNELL, Notre Dame Law School ) finally gives this in its abstract:
And in the body:
Wow, evidence! Great, let’s see it. But no – Ms. O’Connell links to a NYT article quoting a man who wrote a book. She never read the book. It’s a good line, though:
There’s that “evidence” word again. Too bad we’ll never know what it is.
She also cites an article by investigative journalist Jason Vest for American Prospect, who interviewed a number of FBI interrogators:
At least we have the US Army Field Manual to set us straight:
Funny, the best thing I’ve found so far, and it comes from the US Army. And the CIA:
This is a reference within a SSRN reference, but, hey, I’m not going to buy the book:
That was from the J.Bell article, along with this:
Ms Bell is slippery, though. Her paper contains this quote:
When I chased down the original Bowden paper, I found it to be a strong treatise on the effectiveness of psychological torture, including hooking a guy’s balls up to wires and moving toward the switch. No need to ACTUALLY torture him.
Am I getting anywhere? Well, it seems there are no published controlled studies of the form: find 10 sets of identical twins and tell each of the 20 subjects a secret. Then set a stopwatch and begin torturing one twin from each pair….”. And so much of the online material references BOOKS, as if anyone reads them anymore. A book review:
And then there are the added problems of false information, both as a result of a real bad guy telling you lies, and the false confessions pried from the multitude of people you’ve swept up, hoping that you got a bad guy in the pile. From GUANTANAMO AND BEYOND: DANGERS OF RIGGING THE RULES, BRIAN J. FOLEY, J. Crim. Law & Criminology
And chasing down thousands of useless leads, which the prisoners would never have spouted to you had you not tortured them.
J.Bell also gives us a penultimate quote in line with Godwin’s Law:
Her evidence for this was a convoluted self-referring repeating circle of references of stupefying complexity, replete with Latin abbreviations I cannot understand.
After all this, it occurs to me that I would have been better off demanding proof that torture DOES work, and, in absence of such proof, standing firm that it doesn’t. As if I’m going to start researching that now. But while all the above was trying to come together, one case was mentioned several times as the poster-child for successful torture. For what it’s worth, here it is:
To conclude: saying anything definitive about the effectiveness of torture is dangerously stupid. Please god may I never get into one of these again so long as I live. And please let all my html tags be closed.
TLDR
The html gods smile on me.
BTW, WJ Choe, if you have library access, maybe you can see for free this tidbit that I can only find on pay download sites.
Linkd, my hat is off, and a deep bow in in order. You have thrown meat on the table. Well done!
Link’d, that was not tight but nice to see spelled out. You are energetic, aren’t you? Tell Mrs. Link’d that you are appreciated.
I would say that the one additional short-coming is that when you are found out to be using harsh methods, and it always comes out eventually, you are basically writing the recruitment pamphlets for your enemy.
Lately, I’ve been thinking alot of Ghandi. If you would not want to see these methods practiced on yourself or your comrades in arms, how can you practice them yourself? Ghandi actually protested his followers. If you do not maintain your integrity then you become your enemy. If that’s the case, then why the argument, the protest or the war? Shouldn’t we be distinguishing ourselves from our enemy?
“US, do what you have to do?” I’m sorry but I must disagree. Please stop!
And Pawi, if you pay attention to anything other than criticisms of Korea, please note that I am being critical of my own country.
As America becomes more socialist, it behaves as socialists behave. Everyone I knew in the 1960s approved of Mao: Mao jackets, Mao posters; when they weren’t fawning over Che or Castro. Their influence in America isn’t negligible, so why shouldn’t Americans behave as the heroes of the 60’s generation behaved? It’s not as if Mao, Castro, et. al. aren’t good people fighting the good fight against Capitalism.
Many people I know wanted America to lose in Vietnam, Korea, .. well, anywhere. “Bring the war home!” Since America has lost to socialists again and again, water-boarding represents the last gasp of failed Capitalism to achieve victory by aping its opponents. It will fail. Capitalists haven’t the stomach for true socialist interrogation techniques and warfare.
Viva Che!
What’s with all the moral bigotry? Nobody is completely moral and no country is either, so all the America bashers be quiet. Even in 2008, South Korea is not a shining example of morality in this world. Last year, the ROK government sent 22 north Korean refugees back to the DPRK. Just turned them away. All were executed upon return. So, spare me the “moral highness” of other countries compared to the US because your country is no better or worse.
There have been screw ups in the military who thought that resorting to harsher methods would get better infortmation. But, take it from me, the vast majority of human intel collectors are very humane people and don’t resort to those methods. I know this because I am one. First off, the story is from the New York Times. It’s like an American Hani. Second, even if the article were true, I’ve never seen nor hear of this materiel before I read the article. So, being a military person in the “game”, that tells me that something is up and not all is what it seems to be. I look at it this way, it’s just a piece that was put together to stir people’s emotions and keep this topic hot through the election season. Nothing more.
That’s cool, David. Everything I read also said that you get better info by being nice than being mean, and that most interrogators (at least the professionally-trained ones) have no use for brutality. The hole I had gotten myself into above was in effectively claiming that torture NEVER works. I wasn’t being country-specific, it’s just that the US happens to gather and release more info about torture than other countries do (imagine that). That’s what led to the looooong essay above. And no, I couldn’t find any paper that said conclusively that it ALWAYS leads to bad intel.
That is, I wasn’t intending to be country-specific. Of course no nation should practice torture, ever. America taking an unequivocal stand on this would be helpful, and give your country and the rest of the western world a lot more legitimacy in its dealings with other countries that have little respect for human rights.
# 43,
Che was a Maoist… Che was an idiot. Che deserved to die at the hands of the Bolivians and CIA.
Here’s why. Maoism states that in countries that are not industrializing, communisim needs a helping hand. You see, communisim in an industrialized country will naturally happen because the proletarian will tire of their petty bourgeoisie overlords and throw off the yolks of slavery in a catharthic revolution of the proletariat. An agricultural society? Well, they need more persuasion. Communisim needs to be actively “missionaried” if you will.
So we have Che, who is a fire brand of a revolutionary always bothering Castro about instituting a more “truer” form of “communism” and Castro pretending to listen to Che but really asking himself why he has to listen to this idealist from Argentina.
So Che, knowing that most of South America wasn’t industrialized, decided to take the Maoist approach to revolution and wanted to actively institute it and starting in Bolivia. He was nothing more than a nusance. His biggest accomplishment was to bother Bolivian farmers with his talks of a socialist utopia while he stole, uh I mean liberated their chickens, goats and grain to feed himself and his few dozen “revolutionaries.” The Bolivians were more then happy to tell the authorities where Che and his self-declared “communist” bandits were. The CIA’s involvement was way over emphasised. It was essentially just one Cuban American who acted more as an observer than an advisor. It was pretty easy tracking and hunting down Che and his men since the local population saw them more as a gang of chicken thieves rather than anyone with a high political agenda.
Any ways. Che Guevara, fire brand revolutionary, idealist. Stupid stupid stupid Bolivia adventure that could only end in his certain capture and probable death.
Linkd,
Reading your # 37 was both tortuous and ineffective…
J/K!!!
I understand Linkd. I wasn’t specifically responding to you, just an all round kind of thing. I firmly believe that torture is wrong no matter who practices it (but, then we go down the road of what exactly is torture. Is sleep dep. torture or standing for long periods et al.). And you are right, the US releases much more information than most countries regarding the running of our institutions, the military included. But, I also wanted to say that the vast majority of us in the role of gathering that kind of information are not gathering it in that way, and this is the first time I ever saw this kind of chart, which leads me to believe this isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Anyone ever see the German film, “The Lives of Others”? If so, would the first scene of the movie be considered torture?
@37 Linkd
You quote the US Army Field Manual as saying, “The use of force, mental torture, threats, insults, or exposure to unpleasant and inhumane treatment of any kind is prohibited by law and is neither authorized nor condoned by the US Government.” Is this the same US Army Field Manual written in Chinese and based on torture techniques from a 1957 report?
You also gave a quoted section about the torture of Abdul Hakeim Murad by police in the Philippines with the following reference:
Ref: C.I.A. Taught, Then Dropped, Mental Torture in Latin America, NYT, TIM WEINER, January 29, 1997
However, the quoted section is nowhere to be found in the article. I read it a few times over to make sure.
The closest reference I could find to your quote was this:
Ref: “If a Terror Suspect Won’t Talk, Should He Be Made To?” NYT, PETER MAASS, March 9, 2003
However, the story of his torture comes from his defense team during his court hearing. I suppose that we can all take the word of a terrorist and his lawyers as fact. From your source of choice:
Two medical experts testifying in defense of one of the three men accused of plotting to blow up American jetliners overseas said yesterday that his behavior supported his claim that he had been tortured while in Philippine police custody.
Dr. Richard I. Frederick, a forensic psychologist, and Dr. Angela Haggerty, a neuropsychiatrist, said in separate testimony in Federal District Court in Manhattan that the defendant, Abdul Hakim Murad, exhibited symptoms of a post-traumatic stress disorder when they interviewed him in Federal custody recently.
[No shit. Getting caught and put on trial causes stress. Who woulda thunk it? I also hear he had an overbearing mother who didn’t love him enough. He’s a very sad terrorist…]
Dr. Frederick, who saw Mr. Murad during the 48 days that he spent in the United States Medical Center for Prisoners at Springfield, Mo., made clear that he did not know whether Mr. Murad had been tortured by Philippine police interrogators to make him admit to a role in the plot.
Dr. Haggerty was less cautious. Based on her diagnosis of Mr. Murad in New York, she said, “I concluded that most likely he was tortured” during the three months that he was detained in the Philippines. But her testimony was undercut by her volubility and her penchant for straying from the questions of Clover M. Barrett, Mr. Murad’s lawyer. Judge Kevin Thomas Duffy cautioned her to stick to her field of expertise.
Dr. Frederick said the symptoms of post-trauma stress disorder include headache, nightmares, sleeplessness, weight loss and irrational anxiety about people and places, all of which Mr. Murad exhibited. But he acknowledged that the disorder could be feigned, and he admitted, “I don’t know anything about what happened to Murad in the Philippines.”
Ref: “Experts Say Plot Suspect Showed Signs Of Torture” NYT, CHRISTOPHER S. WREN, August 23, 1996
OK. He supposedly had broken ribs and cigarette burns on his testicles, and these injuries did not provide enough medical evidence (scars, misshaped bones, etc) for the defense team’s doctors to know what happened?! (Such medical evidence is typically found in the medical reports used by survivors of torture seeking asylum in the US.) I’ll venture a scholarly opinion and take this all to mean that the quoted section from the NYT article that you cited is complete bullshit. Who would have expected such from The New York Times, the paper of Jayson Blair, Maureen Dowd, and Walter Duranty.
Another problem is that the police in Manila didn’t need to torture him since they already had his laptop computer with the plans on it. They also rejected bribes from him for more money than they make in a year.
Evidence against Murad was no less compelling. Interrogation tapes played in court depicted Murad elaborating on the technical specifics of bomb making. He was also recorded talking about how much he enjoys killing Americans.
Ref: “Plane terror suspects convicted on all counts” CNN/Reuters, Brian Jenkins, September 5, 1996
I wonder how easy it was to understand his “torture” tape confession over the screams due to searing testicles…
More meat for the grinder…
I’ll begin my rant with this:
1. I am against torture and find it morally objectionable.
2. I do not accept assertions that the US Military is engaging in the torture of detainees at Gitmo and will not accept such assertions without conclusive evidence.
That being said:
Linkd provided a litany of quotes from references to social science studies made by people who are against torture that in the end provided no evidence or conclusive data and therefore proved nothing. (To Linkd’s credit, he admitted as much.) Most social science studies, like polls, are designed by the authors, who are almost always socially liberal academics, to come up with a predetermined conclusion through loaded questions, incomplete data that ignore important factors, and data massaging. There are rare exceptions when a study is designed in a truly unbiased, scientific way. Even in the hard physical sciences, most scientists consider about 50% of the literature to be garbage, 80-90% if you ask a professor from a top-tier institution. If one asks the same question to physical scientists about social science literature, then the number is more like 99% garbage. While my statements here are purely anecdotal (based on actual statements made directly to me by three different US university professors), so are most of the social science studies in the literature.
Given the social science anecdotes, I feel free to provide my own anecdotes:
John McCain described in his autobiography, “Faith of My Fathers,” how he fractured both arms and a leg when his plane was shot down over Hanoi, he had his shoulder crushed with a rifle butt and was bayoneted by an attacking crowd, and then his Vietcong captors exploited his injuries to extract information.
“Demands for military information were accompanied by threats to terminate my medical treatment if I did not cooperate,” he wrote.
“I thought they were bluffing and refused to provide any information beyond my name, rank and serial number, and date of birth. They knocked me around a little to force my cooperation.”
“Eventually, I gave them my ship’s name and squadron number, and confirmed that my target had been the power plant.”
Recalling how he eventually broke and yielded information to his captors, McCain said: “I regret very much having done so. The information was of no real use to the Vietnamese, but the Code of Conduct for American Prisoners of War orders us to refrain from providing any information beyond our names, rank and serial number.”
McCain underwent severe torture beginning in August of 1968 in the form of repeated beatings and rope bindings, all while suffering from dysentery. In an interview with U.S. News & World Report entitled “How the POW’s Fought Back,” John McCain described the day Hanoi Hilton guards beat him “from pillar to post, kicking and laughing and scratching. After a few hours of that, ropes were put on me and I sat that night bound with ropes.”
After only four days, he made a confession that supported Vietcong anti-American propaganda. “For the next four days, I was beaten every two to three hours by different guards… Finally, I reached the lowest point of my 5 1/2 years in North Vietnam. I was at the point of suicide, because I saw that I was reaching the end of my rope.” [I’m sure no pun was intended]
McCain was taken to a room and ordered to sign a document confessing to war crimes. “I signed it,” he recalled. “It was in their language, and spoke about black crimes, and other generalities.”
While feeling that his statement was dishonorable, he later wrote, “I had learned what we all learned over there. Every man has his breaking point. I had reached mine.” [emphasis mine]
Now, it was claimed that those who are tortured also give false information, and that much is true. McCain also told a lot of lies to his captors, such as giving the names of American football players when asked who his commanding officers were. Ultimately, the Vietcong did not have a sophisticated enough international intelligence network to invalidate false claims and for the most part were more interested in intentionally producing false confessions for propaganda purposes. Most effective interrogators are well aware that false information will be provided and that information must be vetted. Information can be tested and liars can be tortured again and again under the accusation of lying until they finally break and give real, verifiable information. Despite what one might think, it does not require chasing thousands of false leads (and lie detection of one sort or another can be integrated). Furthermore, interrogators will include asking questions that they already have the answers to based on intelligence or ask multiple prisoners the same questions individually in order to catch lies. Only one lie needs to be found and the captive severely punished for that lie. After a few iterations of this, the captive realizes that he must provide verifiably true information in order to avoid further torture. Put simply, torture is only as effective as the torturer (methods and means).
For my next set of anecdotes, I will quote from the ever anti-American al-BBC, or Pravda-UK (PUKe), the British version of NYT. The following are from: “The truth about torture” BBC News, Kate Townsend, April 5, 2005
…many of the people who’ve dealt out near electrocutions, mock drownings and beatings believe such techniques are effective - that torture works in getting people to talk. And some retired torturers insist they would not hesitate from doing the same today.
…
Like many former torturers, [French Resistance fighter Paul Aussaresses] still believes it is the most effective way to gather intelligence in a so called “ticking bomb” case. He claims to have stopped Algerian bomb makers from killing French civilians by extracting confessions though electric shocks and suffocation with a water saturated towel. They were methods he’d adapted from the Nazis.
…
The belief that torture works is justification enough for most torturers. Some experts claim that information divulged under force is always unreliable, but many who’ve practised torture say they have the experience to prove otherwise.
Torture, they say, is the fastest and most reliable means of forcing prisoners to divulge information.
During the apartheid era in South Africa, Gideon Nieuwoudt, one of South Africa’s most notorious torturers, used a range of techniques on his ANC victims and retains a philosophical perspective.
“It’s like a piano: you make use of the black notes and the white notes to make a sweet melody,” he says.
He has no doubt the beatings he inflicted on detainees forced them to talk: “The people will never give you anything without torture, that I can assure you.”
…
Former colleague Paul Van Vuuren lost count of the number of people he tortured under apartheid, but is still proud of his skills.
“There are all these movies about Rambo and stuff where they put electricity on his bodies and he’s not talking. That’s bullshit. There is no-one in the world; I haven’t yet seen one guy that don’t talk. I can take anyone on and make them talk, that’s no problem.”
Now, I don’t put a whole lot of trust into the BBC, but I figured I would include these quotes from torturers anyway to add to the anecdotes. I conveniently ignored the other parts of the article that don’t fit my point of view. This is my “study,” after all…
For my last anecdote, I invoke something that should hit home with most of you. How many here have been on at least one side of a big brother/little brother dispute that involved some small amount of “torture.” It usually doesn’t take too much nipple or arm twisting for a big brother to coerce desired information out of a little brother. Sometimes the little brother lies, and that is usually followed up by more of the same until big brother receives verifiable information.
Torture can be an effective method to extract information from a captive. The success depends on the effectiveness of the torturer in inflicting pain and fear, chemical/drug enhancement, the usefulness of the questions being asked, the ability of the torturer to verify information through intelligence and/or instrumental means (lie detector), the level of importance to the captive that the particular information not be revealed, and the physical and mental endurance of the captive being tortured. I think there are certain people who can withstand torture, and I think that there are certain things that certain people are not willing to say or do even under torture. However, I think that such exceptions are few and far between. That being said, however effective or ineffective torture is, it should not be used because it is immoral.
FOr WangKon936. in re: Guevara. I agree that the CIA connection is way overblown, however there was more than “a single Cuban”. Simply put; the 8th Special Forces Group sent down a training team that gave a Bolivian Army battalion the equivalent of U.S. Army basic and advanced Infantry training. The CIA funded the uniforms and equipment. This placed the Bolivian “Rangers” heads and shoulders above the rest of their Army, who were essentially a garrison-bound force armed with a variety of late 19th century weapons. Once that battalion was ready to operate, Che’s days were numbered. They tracked down and destroyed his forces using simple combat patrolling techniques. As you know, it was the Bolivians who decided to kill El Che, as the CIA wanted him alive. (But, why spoil the Left’s fantasy) The only account I know of the operation is contained in BG Luis Reque Teran’s “La Campana de Nancahuaze” (La Paz, BOL, 1987). A delicious irony is that in 1966-67 Bolivia, an Argentine was just a Spanish speaking Gringo to the great majority of the nation’s inhabitants. I regret to say that at present, the Che’s image has been resurrected among the Bolivian left, who know him mostly because of the tee shirts. The Ranger company that captured Guevara was advised by two US Army Special Forces NCOs named Lopez and Carpenter (a Mexican of Confederate descent). Carpenter got to see Che before his death, Lopez did not. They had earlier participated in the ambush that killed Tanya and El Rojo.
For LINK and NES: Again, on torture, since Paul Ausseresses is mentioned. When reviewing Algeria, it is helpful to keep in mind the reality of 1956-57, when the 10th Airborne Division took over Algiers. First, they were part of the government, not a “foreign” force. Second, the first thing they did when given the mission was to sieze all pertinent police files. Thus they had a data base to begin with. Third, there was a screening and validation process, using snitches and turned captured terrorists, that that weeded down the prospects for enhanced interrogation techniques, which led to the identity of those who most likely had the information needed. These received the heaviest interrogation methods. This is not to say that mistakes weren’t made, but it was not a willy-nilly process, or some Reservist prison guards acting out their fantasies. Fourth, the use of such techniques split the French Army from the beginning. In some biographies, former paras note that those who excelled in hard interrogation techniques tended to be from among the worse elements of any unit. And no less a personage that GEN Paris de la Bollardiere came out publicly against it, thereby ending a career that included SAS service in WWII and Indochina. Ironically, one of the female Algerian bombers went on to marry a prominant attorney and lives in France today. She intended to “liberate” a country that she had no intention of remaining in.
Re: Che
Get your t-shirts here, comrade!
http://www.che-mart.com/
Here is an editorial that demonstrates what I mean by a “war of ideas” rather than discussing the subtleties of inflicting pain, by N. Kristoff, It Takes A School, Not Missles.
We do a lot of that too. Go take a look at the US AID web site.
http://www.usaid.gov/
Hi NES, sorry I didn’t know until now that anything happened on this thread after #49. Thank you for your extended critique, and I am sure you are correct in all you say. For my part, I’m bowing out of anything further on this topic. That 3-ish hour search, cut & paste fest I went through last Tuesday was quite enough for me.