Paul Peregord

Conor Shaw-Draves

11/02/2010

Intelligent Intelligence Gathering: How Torture Is Not

Intelligence gathering techniques are highly debated. They range from the clichéd good cop/bad cop to the infamous Water-boarding method. America’s previous President George W. Bush and, in particular, Vice President Dick Cheney were both in favor of using this method to extract information out al-Qaeda members. Torture is an exceptionally poor intelligence gathering technique because it has invented false information, is cruel and unusual, has caused the death of many individuals, weakens international laws, and other non-torture means have been just as successful, if not more so, at getting information out of prisoners. This paper should fully illustrate how Waterboarding is a method of torture and how torture is not a method of interrogation.

An al-Qaeda prisoner captured shortly after 9/11, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, provided us with phony information. At first you might assume that al-Libi did this to throw us off track, however, al-Libi furnished the lies while being a test case for Dick Cheney’s campaign to establish torture as a typical interrogation practice overseas. According to a declassified memo, al-Libi supplied us with forged information suggesting that Iraq had trained al-Qaeda to use Weapons of Mass Destruction (Whitt). This is only one example of when torture has produced artificial confessions. With a simple search, it is easy to find many examples of when torture produced false confessions. Water-boarding can be so unbearable that if a person is being tortured and the questions are being led, that person is likely to falsely testify to anything just to make the maltreatment stop. It has been argued that torture is the only way of getting need-to-know information quickly, information that needs to be obtained within hours or days. If a person will admit to things they have never done and have no knowledge about, those statements cannot be used for anything without at least a little doubt about the truthfulness of the “testimonial”. Imagine being tortured by methods that have been deemed cruel and unusual, admitting to things you have never done, concurring with statements you aren’t listening to, agreeing with and saying anything to make it stop.

As Americans we consider ourselves above the use of “cruel and unusual” treatments, and we solidified this statement by signing at the Geneva Convention, a meeting of countries in the United Nations that made torture illegal. If an interrogation gets a little too out of hand and the prisoner is killed, was that not only a cruel and unusual method of interrogation, but also a cruel and unusual method of being executed? Torture is defined as the infliction of intense pain to punish, coerce, or afford sadistic pleasure by the Webster dictionary. Some forms of torture are far worse than others; water-boarding, strangely, is an acceptable method of interrogation in the eyes of our previous political leaders. Cutting off limbs is labeled without hindsight as torture. Water-boarding may have proved itself useful but it has also proven itself deadly. The United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment even notes uninterrupted water-boarding can ultimately lead to death. Lethal Injection is considered the most humane way a person can be terminated, but debates over this subject have raised the question: Is Lethal Injection cruel and unusual? Regardless of the answer to that question, Lethal Injection is not torture. If a painless death can be classified as cruel and unusual, then death by simulated drowning must be malicious and extraordinary. Though water-boarding is an accepted interrogation technique, it should be labeled as a form of torture. It causes unbearable pain and is definitely cruel and unusual. As mentioned before, water-boarding is accepted as an interrogation technique. If the American government can legally use water-boarding as an interrogation technique, could it also be said we as a people find the cruel and unusual treatment of a person acceptable? Surely the people had no say in how the 9/11 terrorist were treated, we would not expect our government to torture anybody. When reports of torture were released, it had such a small effect on the American population, little was done to stop it. Then there were the al-Qaeda members. Countless numbers of photos were released, plainly showing abuse and the unusual treatment of the prisoners. Little was done still. If the American populace does not want to be labeled as a people who accept the cruel and unusual treatment of others, we cannot let our government use methods of interrogation that have caused death, such as water-boarding.

There are reported cases of people dying as a result of torture across the face of the planet. Any method of ending a person’s life is going to encounter dispute, but a method that includes the deliberate mistreatment of an individual is absolutely atrocious.

Medical personnel were involved in numerous instances of torture of terror suspects by the CIA, according to an International Committee of the Red Cross report that was completed in 2007 but not released to the public until this April, The New York Times reported April 7. Based on statements by 14 high-value prisoners belonging to al-
Qaeda who were interrogated at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the Red Cross determined healthcare workers monitored prisoners undergoing water-boarding, among other techniques, apparently to ensure they were not in danger of dying. The report claims the medical workers' participation was a breach of medical ethics even if their intention was to prevent death or permanent injury, but also found that their primary role appeared to be to support the interrogators, not to protect the prisoners (Mullett).

If torture did not have the capability of ending a person’s life, then these medical professionals would not have been involved. Even more appalling is the idea that the medical workers were not truly there to prevent the death of the torture victims, but instead were there to incite the progress of the ordeal. Participating in the deed is only the first step. If a country that signed the same anti-torture act as the United States sees that we are involved in torturous methods of interrogation, that country is surely going to wonder why we are above the law and they must follow it obediently.

Believing that there aren’t enemies of ours that have some regard for human life would be folly. Believing that they wouldn’t be disinclined to see their citizens tortured would be a poor assumption. Nevertheless, if torture is made a policy, other nations may react in correspondence. Consequently, countries that initially may have followed Geneva laws may resort to torture themselves. On September 5, 2007 the fourth death in less than a year caused by torture is reported in Eritria. The homicide was committed by government authorities from the East African country, the woman tortured to death was killed because she refused to deny her evangelical faith (Sellers). Eritria signed the Geneva Convention. If Eritria can torture a citizen of their own country, what would stop them from torturing an enemy of their state? Torture is a slippery slope that does not need to be sauntered, especially if there are alternatives.

Sometimes the best way to get a person to talk is to be nice. Without water-boarding, yelling, slapping, walling, sleep deprivation, or lies, the most successful interrogation by U.S. officials of an al-Qaeda operative was achieved with a handful of sugar-free cookies. After being offered the cookies the al-Qaeda operative, Abu Jandal, was unable to look at his interrogators as evil beings, and started to look at them as human beings (Ghosh). You cannot get everything out of a person with just cookies, it did take a bit of surreptitiousness and questioning, but the cookies were the catalyst for the reaction. TIME magazine interviewed numerous interrogators who had worked for the U.S. military as well as others who had recently retired from the intelligence services and every one of them had agreed that the best way to interrogate a reluctant individual is to use the sneaky processes of interrogation rather than using the direct and awful instruments of torture. Torture leads to false answers and death. Interrogation leads to cooperation and accurate answers. Torture is not interrogation, and deploying the heinous deed has done nothing but prove that it is indisputably ineffective and morally wrong.

From the notorious water-boarding method to the inimitable cookie method, intelligence gathering techniques are varied and disputed. Our government was surely in the wrong when they tortured the al-Qaeda members, and the reports and photos that emerged from the incident prove that torture is cruel, unusual, and undeniably wrong. It [torture] has proved that it can extract information, but keep in mind that the information is usually fashioned by the tortured person to get the suffering to stop. When interrogating, the goal is to find some sort of information previously unknown. Not to kill. Torture kills, and if one country can use torture to kill and interrogate, other countries may “hop on the bandwagon” and the slippery slope of torture may evolve into a full blown mud slide. America seems to be a country that lives by the saying “Do as I Say, Not as I Do”, if we want torture to be a horrible thing of the past, we need to lead by example, not hold ourselves above the laws we helped orchestrate.

Works Cited

Ghosh, Bobby. "How to Make Terrorists Talk." Time 8 June 2009: 40. Academic OneFile. Web. 11 Nov. 2009. <http://0-find.galegroup.com.elibrary.mel.org/gtx/start.do?prodId=AONE&userGroupName=lom_accessmich>.

Mullett, Steve. "Torture debate." Healthcare Traveler 16.13 (2009): 16. Academic OneFile. Web. 11 Nov. 2009. <http://0-find.galegroup.com.elibrary.mel.org/gtx/start.do?prodId=AONE&userGroupName=lom_accessmich>.

Sellers, Jeff. “Tortured to Death in Eritrea.” ChristianityToday December 2007, Vol. 51, No. 12. Web. 11 Nov. 2009. <http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/december/2.15.html>

Whitt, Clayton. "Nothing sacred: what we talk about when we talk about torture." The Humanist July-Aug. 2009: 10+. Academic OneFile. Web. 11 Nov. 2009. <http://0-find.galegroup.com.elibrary.mel.org/gtx/start.do?prodId=AONE&userGroupName=lom_accessmich>.