Torture

Commentary By Ron Beasley

The death of Osama bin Laden has once again brought out those who want to justify torture. Of course Darth Cheney is front and center.

But Cheney and Rumsfeld moved quickly from their praise to a series of critiques, most notably of Obama’s stance on enhanced interrogation techniques, which have been a constant source of disagreement between the former and current administrations. Almost two years ago, in a strange showdown, Obama and Cheney delivered competing speeches on torture and terrorism. On Sunday, Cheney said he remains concerned that the Obama administration has stopped using some of the techniques first instituted during the Bush years. “I’m still concerned about the fact that a lot of the techniques that we have used to keep the country safe for seven years are no longer available, that they’ve been sort of taken off the table,” Cheney said. “It’s not clear to me today if we still have an interrogation program to put someone through.” Cheney said the Obama administration should be willing to use waterboarding and other enhanced techniques.

This is a subject I know something about. I was a student at the DIA interrogation school is 1969. I worked as an interrogator/debriefer for three years after that working for the DIA. One of the first things we discussed was torture - and yes water boarding is torture. We were reminded that torture is against both US and international law. We were reminded that we executed Japanese who had water boarded Americans. More importantly we were instructed that torture is ineffective. When you torture people they tell you what they think you want to hear - anything they think you want to hear. It doesn't matter if it's true or not. You may get some good intelligence from torture but you are going to get a lot more bad intelligence which will both send us down the wrong road and endanger US troops and agents. Torture has historically been used to get false confessions - you can ask John McCain about that.

There has been lots of talk but no evidence that torture contributed to the death of Osama bin Laden. There is no evidence that torture has contributed to any worth while intelligence.

I do agree with Cheney on one point - those CIA agents who tortured should not be prosecuted as long as John Yoo, Dick Cheney and George W Bush are not prosecuted.