I support Leon Panetta 100% in his efforts to support his employees at the CIA, but I hope he loses. To be clear, I don’t support prosecuting underlings for the crimes of their superiors. No. But anyone who participated in torture should be retired right now. If they avoid prosecution, I can probably live with that. I’ll feel better about it if Dick Cheney has to sleep in a cramped 3 by 3 cell on a maggot-infested mattress, but I can live with it. Prosecute the big dogs first, for sure. But no torturers should remain on the payroll. Period.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
I don’t see a link in “loses”.
I donated again today. thanks for all you do.
Fixed, I hope.
But anyone who participated in torture should be retired right now.
What kind of mind thinks up tortures? What kind of mind asks others to design tortures? What kind of mind asks others to perform such tortures?
The breadth and depth of this whole operation needs to be dismantled… and the participants in all the various capacities need to be rehabilitated before entry into regular society.
What kind of mind complies enthusiastically when told to torture?
But let’s not kid ourselves. The United States has always tortured. America’s use of torture did not begin with “this operation”, and it will not end with it unless there is accountability combined with an absolute determination at all levels not to let it happen anymore.
What kind of mind complies enthusiastically when told to torture?
One who is amoral or well indoctrinated or psychopathic or some sort of combination.
Those who torture without “enthusiasm” must come up with some means of justification. If their justification is not strong enough, they are destroyed.
“…it will not end with it unless there is accountability combined with an absolute determination at all levels not to let it happen anymore.”
I don’t think that is enough. The whole “entertainment” industry from tv to film to “games” is part of a cultural indoctrination to violence. But it gets protection under “free speech.” So accountability and responsibility by the media for its contribution to the cultural mind set is avoided.
Thinking on this, I considered some of the definitions of torture:
How different is it between the person who physically tortures someone and someone who purposefully inflicts pain on another using words?
Have you ever observed someone who seems to really enjoy hurting others with cutting comments? How about those who make hurtful comments, then tack on “Just kidding?” There are children who can be quite good at this.
There are people like this out and about in workplaces and social organizations. They are on the tv and radio – “comedians” or “entertainers” or “sitcom characters.” Those who “practice inflicting severe pain” for their own pleasure, using words, might not necessarily be difficult to find. They are not even doing it because they were “told” to.
Are these people unique to the United States or can they be found cross culturally?
I would not say that the kinds of verbal abuse you described rises to the level of torture. Certainly it can be abusive, and certainly it causes psychological pain, but torture? Not really.
In the ’60’s, I believe it was, the United States engaged in considerable research to develop the most effective methods of torture, and a good deal of that work centered around various mental and psychological methods. Among the findings was that sensory deprivation could cause a person to psychologically disintegrate virtually completely in a very, very short period of time.
According to reports, testimony of troops, etc., popular methods of purely mental and psychological torture in Iraq, Guantanamo, and elsewhere consist of isolation (solitary confinement, in other words), causing victims to believe they are about to be executed, causing suffering to their loved ones, including children, in front of them, causing them to believe that their families were being harmed or would be harmed if they did not provide wanted information, causing them to believe that their families had all been killed, threatening to rape their wives, daughters, sisters, mothers, and so on. When you have someone captive and completely in your power, these things can be very effective I am sure.
Humiliating and degrading treatment that does not necessarily cause physical pain, such as some of the things depicted in the Abu Ghraib photos and reports are certainly a form of psychological torture intended to cause the personality to break down.
You might even go so far as to label as torture punitive house demolitions, and punitive demolition of fruit orchards, which was more commonly practiced in Iraq than most people would think.
And, of course, a good deal of this is also part of the Israeli playbook. Israel is expert at collective punishment, some of which the Americans copied in Iraq.
I would not say that the kinds of verbal abuse you described rises to the level of torture. Certainly it can be abusive, and certainly it causes psychological pain, but torture? Not really.
I was considering the spectrum of torture, focusing on behavior by individuals who inflict pain on others for their personal pleasure using words. It is good to know that such behavior is not unique to U.S. citizens.
You have provided examples of formalized, institutional torture. We began with “who would do such things?” And there have been comments in this thread on who should be held accountable and responsible.
One question not asked is, “Who would pay for people to do this?” We know all of the pieces of torture from research to command structure to active participation is funded by taxes. Is it a valid excuse to say, “I have no control over where my taxes are spent, therefore, I cannot be considered a contributor to torture?
One may be very swift in determining that if ordered to torture the only choice would be refusal. But to refuse to pay the taxes that supports torture, knowing the result will be a loss of material items and jail time…
For a very long time I have wrestled with the fact of what my taxes pay for. Short of becoming part of the underground economy, I have not found an effective way of simultaneously avoiding paying taxes and honouring my responsibilities to others in my life as long as I am an employee of an above-ground company. The IRS automatically takes a certain portion of what I earn with each payment I receive. I can keep what they automatically get to a minimum and refuse to pay more, but one way or another, if I own anything at all they will ultimately get their money, and if they take it, they will take far more than they would have gotten had I simply paid it.
I guess in part what it means is that I am not willing to impoverish myself, abandon those who depend on me, and sacrifice what liberty and pleasure I have in this life in order to make a gesture that will have no perceptible impact on the situation.
PS I don’t think the use of verbal abuse and bullying is at all a peculiarly American practice. I think it is one of the things that is found among humans everywhere.
“I’ll feel better about it if Dick Cheney has to sleep in a cramped 3 by 3 cell on a maggot-infested mattress…”
No.
Asking someone to guard Cheney under such conditions is not right – it will mess them up. It will also mess up the persons involved in food preparation, laundry, heating and cooling, electrical maintenance, sewage, garbage removal, etc. – everyone connected to such a punishment will get messed up. The cost is too high, to too many people who would only be “doing their jobs.”
If the man is tried & convicted, let him spend life in prison with all the same conditions that exist in our overcrowded, cramped, maggot infested food, lack of medical care prisons, that other criminals are in 24/7.
The food is prepared by other criminals, & one thing about equal justice it applies to all convicted criminals. same bed, same food, same time.
He is much more than a common criminal, but equal means equal.
For another little twist, grab the top criminals & have them rat out the next ones below them instead of the other way around, for a possible future consideration, that will be granted them, once we find the WMD`s.
Those lizard brained chicken shits will be singing like divas.
If they claim insanity, throw them in the hole & tell em it`s the Hilton. Since they `re crazy, they shouldn`t notice the difference.
Tough call.
The Bush administration went to great lengths to get assurances from Justice (and IIRC to some degree Congres s) that those using “enhanced tecniques” would have legal protection. And in many cases they would have suffered consequences professionally if they “refused orders”
That in no way excuses them morally but legally I think it is wrong to change the rules after the fact. The rules are wrong and it is imperative to change them, but deal with the incompetent hacks who wrote the legal findings and rules, not those who followed them.
So this shit needs to be cleaned up from the top W probably has “plausible deniability”, but Cheney has got to have crap on him that he can’t wash off. Then there are those at Justice who could have pushed back and knew they could, but chose not to. That’s who need to be nailed. The tough part is it has to be done in a totally above board manner so it doesn’t look like a witch hunt politically. Sadly that may mean in the end no one goes to jail but the record of history in cleaned.
As for forced retirement for the agents involved, that may be OK, but in the end the important thing will be for the agencies to correct their culture. Any agents who thought this was a good idea need to get on board that this was shit that will never happen again. If they can’t get totally aligned with that then they need to go. There can be no underground dissent on this issue.
To be clear, I don’t support prosecuting underlings for the crimes of their superiors.
I don’t either. But I do support prosecuting underlings for their own crimes. Any of the underlings who wants to make the case that they didn’t know what they were doing was torture and were only doing what they were told by their superiors is free to do that in a court of law. But it really should be up to a jury to decide if the Nuremberg Defense is going to be a valid one or not.
I find it pretty damn hard to believe that the CIA employs people so stupid that they don’t realize that “enhanced interrogation” is torture. I find it somewhat easier to believe that they might employ people so mentally messed-up that they don’t care (every organization of sufficient size will employ a few psycho/socio-paths). But it needs to be examined and judged – not just quietly covered up by letting those involved shuffle off to a quiet retirement.
I have very little belief that such a sunshine could come on the CIA, btw. But if we’re talking about “what’s right” vs. “what we end up having to settle for”, “what’s right” is that every last person involved in this atrocity be prosecuted and a jury decide whether what they did was reasonable given the circumstances or not.
(And as for punishment – “what’s right” is that the guys at the top spend some time in the prison system that they themselves have designed for the rest of us for ordering these actions. “What I’d settle for” is to have them all recognized as monsters and not be able to walk down the street without children crying, people pointing and calling them monsters, and no legitimate news organization ever discussing anything about them without putting “TORTURER” on the chyron next to their names. Sadly, “what I’m going to get” is that these guys are still considered to be legitimate members of the elite power structure. Bastards.)
It may be completely counter to yours and my sensibilities but there are plenty of people who think electric shocks, burns, breaking of bones, castration and removing of fingers and toes are torture, but water boarding and some of the other stuff we did is not.
They see a difference because there is not supposed to be any actual physical harm. You and I, the Red Cross and the Geneva Convention don’t agree but these were “extraordinary times”, or so that was the (flawed)thinking., and also what Cheney and Justice tried to articulate in their memos.
I don’t think the analogy to concentration camp guards is perfect because if you put six million people in ovens and otherwise starve and work them to death, that’s pretty obvious to anyone that you are doing wrong.
If on the other hand you have supposedly legal permission, and even imperative, to “extract information to prevent another attack and save lives”, that not IMO for a jury to decide. Morally, though that’s something you’ll have to live with.
But on the other hand, I do think it is for a jury to decide whether the people wrote those laws/rules willingly put them in place knowing they were illegal and actively worked to cover their tracks. I have no trouble making those people answer for their war crimes.
Meh. I’m fairly certain that any reasonable person could see that restraining someone, closing their nose, and then forcing water into their mouth to simulate drowing was torture. If they didn’t think it was before they did it the first time, they certainly would have known afterwards. And did you read the stuff they did to the prisoners in that leaked Red Cross report?
But again – I can see I disagree with you, and many other people would probably disagree with me. Which is why we have a jury system in the first place. It should not be up to the people at the top to decide if the guys at the bottom were doing the right thing by “following orders” or not – it should be up to our criminal justice system. That’s why we have one, after all.
“Following orders” may be a valid defense in this case. But I’m not prepared to just say “sure, let ’em go”. That’s what juries are for. If they decide it’s a valid defense, fine. I may be upset about the verdict, but at least it was arrived at in the right way, and not by the head of the CIA and the head of the DOJ deciding autocratically that they’re going to completely short-circuit the system we have in the first place.
Most people might see it as torture, but the question is whether it was legal.
The Bush administration went to some lengths to show it was and to show agents it was. So that leads to the second greater question of whether the administration knew they were making illegal rules.
And don’t forget, if it was done to the darkies it’s more okay.
Legally after a huge amount of discussion I think it best comes down to the Bushies knew or should have known that it was illegal. To think otherwise based on both the timeline of events and stuff like the memos and interviews we know of, is unreasonable.
.
Almost immediately following his rise to power, Hitler began the creation of concentration camps. Initially these were designed to incarcerate political prisoners (enemies of the regime), criminals and security risks. While conditions were, predictably, horrible in these camps, and while the death rates were high, there is no evidence that they were used for extermination purposes. By the late 1930s there were literally hundreds of camps scattered throughout Germany and with the Nazi takeover of Czechoslovakia, Austria, Poland, Holland and France, camps were established throughout the Reich. The death rates were so high, from malnutrition, typhus and exhaustion that the disposal of corpses became a serious problem.
In Dachau, one of the largest camps in Germany proper, crematoria were constructed for disposal of corpses. There was also a gas chambers constructed at Dachau; however, there is no evidence to this point that they were ever used for extermination. Presumably, the crematoria displayed on the left were used for disposing of the corpses of those who perished from other causes. There were other execution devices at Dachau, such as a gallows, and presumably prisoners were executed and disposed of there.
Two important precedents for the death camps deserve attention: The Nazi Euthanasia Project and the Aschaffenburg concentration camp.
The T-4 camouflage organization created for the medical killing of mental and physical defectives defines by the Nazi government as undesirable was also known as the Reich Work Group of Sanitoriums and Nursing Homes [Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft Heil und Pflegeanstalten]. It operated from the Berlin Chancellery, at Tiergartenstrasse 4, hence the “T4” code name. The program was rationalized as the elimination of “life unworthy of life.”
This program paved the way for the Holocaust in several important ways. First, it had the effect of legitimizing government-sponsored killing. In keeping with the Nazi emphasis on racial purity, eugenics and national health, euthanasia was presented as a necessary program for eliminating those who carried defective genetic materials which might endanger the quality of the “Aryan” stock.
Second, it was the beginning stage in the corruption of the German medical profession. Robert J. Lifton [Nazi Doctors] asks the question: How did a profession committed to healing, the protection of human life and the relief of human suffering become part of the Nazi killing machine? The apparent answer to this question is that it was a gradual process, a “slippery slope” which began with the Euthanasia Programme of “mercy killing” and resulted in the full scale involvement of some members of the medical profession in the mass extermination of Jews and others in the Nazi death camps.
Third, the T-4 program was crucial in developing the technology which would later be applied to mass murder. Euthanasia centers, such as the ones at Hadamar and Brandenburg were equipped with gas chambers (using carbon monoxide) and crematoria.
Red Cross says doctors helped CIA torture
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."leon panetta has absoltuely no incentive to do any of this. his boss has adopted the bush administration’s state secrets abuse, and since there’s no risk that any cases will move forward (for the time being), these people have cover.
not gonna happen. you might as well hope that i sprout wings and fly aroudn the room like a hummingbird.
“But no torturers should remain on the payroll. Period.” Perfect. I wouldn’t argue with a word.
Anyone who participated in torture is a criminal and should be prosecuted. Letting them get off by merely being retired immediately is like letting a hit man who committed murders for hire off with a slap on the wrist while only prosecuting the people who hired him.
Everyone responsible for a crime is culpable and must be prosecuted, including the guy who actually pulled the trigger.
Given what we know of the post WWII history of the CIA, I’d say that you’re asking for a purge of enormous extent. That would be good, but seems unlikely.
Hurria,
What I find quite frustrating, is discussion about what should be done & to whom.
Any activity considered a crime, should have all involved in this activity, in front of a court of law.
The law is already in place, & it`s not to be applied only after discussion, especially when talking about the ultimate crimes of torture.
No one discusses the case for a car thief, a bank robber, or who ordered it. The only retirement home for them, is a prison.
I agree with you completely.
We are in agreement, KH! And I do not understand how on earth otherwise thoughtful people can even question that the people who actually pull the trigger are as culpable as those who give the orders.
It puts me in mind of this part of the message in the song Universal Soldier.
But without him,
How would Hitler have condemned him at Dachau?
Without him Caesar would have stood alone,
He’s the one who gives his body
As a weapon of the war,
And without him all this killing can’t go on.
He’s the Universal Soldier and he really is to blame…
folks, we have a fundamental problem: we can’t have a democratic republic with little to no credibility on human rights and other crucial issues.
and we can’t have a democracy with a minority (wealthy investor class, oil transnationals and the military/industrial complex) running our country and doing nearly everything contrary to what we want done.
this is a farce.
China imprisons dissidents? executes prisoners and harvests their organs to sell? how is that worse than torture? it’s not.
This is what cannot be allowed to happen: litigation junkies cannot become the ultimate arbiters of US national security policies. That would spell the end of any functional US national security policy.
Panetta will win this argument because President Obama doesn’t want to conduct investigations into prior acts of torture either. Anything less would not be “looking forward,” in President Obama’s mind.
Happy to be wrong about this.
That all sounds reasonable, but I’m extremely skeptical that this can/would get done. You’re saying that Panetta can/would “go to the mat” for people that he’s busy firing/retiring? Really? How?
How does one fire/retire an employee but simultaneously go to war to defend them from being investigated? Is that a plausible state of affairs?
Anyone who participated in torture should be retired? That’s it? Perhaps you mean something different by “participate” than I do. It would be Bushlike moral blindness to exempt any torturer from all-out prosecution. That Bush, Cheny, Yoo, Rumsfeld and the rest will escape prosecution is no grounds to give underlings who participated a free pass. We would do well to recall where the “just following orders” defense gained its notoriety.
Being under orders wasn’t an excuse for the Nazis, wasn’t an excuse for the Argentinians, wasn’t an excuse for the SA Apartheid security forces, wasn’t an excuse for the Serbs, why should it be an excuse for CIA case officers who grew up watching Judgment at Nuremberg? Why should it be an excuse for officers who took an oath to defend the constitution? Why should it be an excuse for those who grew up in a culture when they knew better and what is to keep if from happening again?
I am really sick to death of politicians who bleat about their relationship with Jesus, but turn a blind eye to torture.
An important distinction between “our” torturers and those that you listed is that for the ones you listed there were no rules. They could do as they liked and add the body to the pile in the pit.
For the CIA agents, and this is the most insidious thing about it, their government’s own justice department told them it was legal and even their duty to “enhance” their interrogations so long as they follow the rules. It would “save lives”.
In some ways it is worse than what happened in SA, Argentina and elsewhere because the superiors dressed it up as OK in seemingly very formal and legal ways making seem legit to some (but certainly not all) involved.
Obviously some objected because what we know was leaked by those that objected or at least wanted more transparent discussion about it.
Be clear I am not defending our interrogation methods in anyway. I just think in this case it is far more evil to dupe and con people who are presumably dedicated to serving their nation and cause into doing something illegal than it is to actually do that interrogation.
Think about it. If you are in the agents role and you object, here you can be shown memos and documents saying no, no, no, this has been fully vetted by Justice and others and so long as you follow these rules its OK and if you don’t do it somebody might be on a jumboliner tomorrow killing the citizens you’re sworn to protect.
That’s different from ethnic cleansing and forms/places of torture to describe. Doesn’t make it any more legal, moral or right, but it is different. Skewer the people who fucked with the rules and exploited those who tried to follow them.
And pity those agents who now have doubts about what they did, though I’d bet a great many do. Agents tend not to be people you and would likely have much sympathy for and I don’t want to portray them as victims here, but I am appreciative of the need for fair game and not changing the rules.
What a terrible sickness our country labors under nowadays.
I wonder what secrets the military industrial complex and corporate elite gained from sweeping through the populace and pulling in random people to be rendered and tortured?
I doubt strongly that the things they learned or wanted to learn had much to do with ‘terrorist’ activities.
I don’t think I have witnessed anything so abominable in my life. My country is so sick now…I have lost faith in its ability to recover. How could any of you labor under the ideology that this country is ‘good’ or ‘democratic’ or ‘representative of truth and justice’. I am mourning for my country the same way I mourned my mothers death.
Oh, no! I don’t pity those agents in the least. There are some absolutes in this world, and we all have a duty to do the right thing. They made a choice. “They told me it was legal” is not a better defense than “I was just following orders”. There are people who could not, under any circumstances, be persuaded that it is right to torture, and murder, and destroy. They are the standard, not those who allow themselves to be persuaded.
People who commit crimes are guilty of crimes, even when they commit those crimes on orders from those who are more powerful than they are.
The real war heroes are those who say “no”.
The person not intelligent enough or morally aware enough to blindly follow the orders to torture, should first, not be in that position (or is that why he was the one chosen to blindly follow),I`m thinking Bush here, & secondly, placing “pity” on the table for the subhumans who were eating their own kind is oxymoronic.
I want to defend them in a court of law, by showing the courts the pity they showed for their fellow humans.
Let me find those files, uh.. hey I`ll get back to you on that your honor.
The only ones I pity are the families of the torturers, who shall be banished in shame for the horrible sins of their fathers, husbands, sisters, & wives.
Those who were/are the victims of the horrific abuse who still live, I extend my hand in help, to right the wrongs inflicted on them, but will never pity them. Pity is reserved, when applicable, to the criminal, never the victim. Do not make victims of the torturers, please.
You are making a moral judgment, and one I agree with. All involved have a stain on them.
That’s different than a legal judgment though.
Legally I think there is a difference between the agents and those that conspired to make the US a nation that illegally tortures as well as a difference with other torturers who did it with unrestrained malice
Who is saying that the torture was not done with unrestrained malice?
I don`t know for sure either way, but I`d never say that the photos of those erecting piles of masturbating Iraqis into pyramids, with self congratulatory smiles on their faces, is not proof of unrestrained malice.
I`d argue the opposite actually.
I don`t know if you`ve seen any of the photos.
I`m not talking about the “few bad apples” photos.
Those are lightweight compared to others I`ve seen, & I don`t even want to think about them.
Some are going to hell for what they did, others will spend life in prison first.
I hope.
Just because there was a “memo”, of retroactive immunity, or “legalizing” torture, does nothing to prevent unrestrained malice.
That should be quite easy to comprehend, no?
You’re talking about a different scenario/events. The humiliation and abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib has nothing to do with the “enhanced interogation” advanced by the administration.
The abuse at Abu Ghraib was the result of incompetent leadership, lack of training or guidelines and moral failure by the guards. They were not even trained as guards and were told to “soften up the detainees”.
That was wrong and those involved (except those at the top who created the situation) went to prison and even Rumsfeld said it was wrong.
What we are talking about is a set of illegal techniques carefully defined through a set of rules to try to make them look legal simply because they were carefully defined that were used a Gitmo and other CIA/military prisons.
Edit to my post above. Typo. I believe most of the agents today feel just fine about the “enhanced interrogations” they conducted though I have no evidence either way.
Personal feelings aside, US law is clear that the “I was only following orders” defense is bogus, as it should be. A decision to commit a crime is a personal decision.
“No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture” and “an order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture” (Art. 2 (2-3)).
sorry about that dog that humans trained to like the taste of human blood… but it’d have to go, too. Once the taste for it is there… especially with no reform program for these CIA employees… yuck!
If they don`t kill the snarling dog, the baby is next.
“I was just answering the phone” won`t cut it.