It's coming out slowly, these torturous revelations of the US's role in the world-wide institution of state-terror. Maybe now it can end. Neither the cold war nor the old war (this 'war' with the Moslems is an anachronism) ever justified the use of state-terror; torture, disapearances, arrests without due process, or abbrogations of human rights. And in any case it is a horror that the US should be involved in this behavior in any way. But we have been. In yesterday's paper allegations were repeated that the US continues to engage in "renderings" with full intent of letting our allies in the terror war (hardly a war on terror if we are committing acts designed to scare people):
In yesterday's Post, A U.S. government official who visited several foreign prisons where suspects were rendered by the CIA after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, is quoted saying:
"It's beyond that. It's widely understood that interrogation practices that would be illegal in the U.S. are being used." (note: )
Investigations are finally starting; "The CIA inspector general recently launched a review of the rendition system, and some members of Congress are demanding a thorough probe. Canada, Sweden, Germany and Italy have started investigations into the participation of their security services in CIA renditions." But I doubt anything will come of them except some fluff and then they'll be quietly buried, a few perpetrators given punishment and the rest promoted. These practices have to be stopped, not encouraged, and the US should realize that it does not encourage democracy to use them.
In today's Times a report tells how Porter Goss was "not able to tell you that" the CIA had always employed legal methods in it's interrogations. This is because they appeared to have followed the memos written in 2002 which relaxed the rules. In short the CIA has been using methods that are considered Torture under US laws and the Geneva convention, even with prisoners under it's own jurisdiction. And it has been using rendering, as in the case from Afghanistan, to get around even the relaxed rules of 2002. In the Afghan renderings, the CIA officials involved were in virtual control of the prison and it's Afghan jurisdiction was a pure cover:
In my blog I've been talking about the reports of abuse of prisoners by the US in it's efforts to stop Al Qaida. This stuff is important for a number of reasons, and the primary one to me is that if the US is going to be a herald of Democracy and freedom around the world it also has to set an example. But the practical reason this is important is that the notion that somehow this is an effective way to defeat terrorism is a faulty notion and it is illegal.
Intelligence officials will concede that torture is an ineffective way to extract information. But if so, then why use it at all? Well the real purpose is to break and subdue prisoners and bend them to the will of the state. Moreover, when they say that torture is ineffective they are doing a kind of dance, because the more subtle forms of "torture light" that they teach as interrogation methods are often very effective -- at breaking and rendering docile prisoners. When they break a prisoner, he'll tell them anything; but because he's so desperate to please that he'll do this, he won't always tell them stuff of that much value. When the prisoner first breaks he'll lie, later he'll merely blurble. Hard torture doesn't produce this "breaking" alone -- it takes sophisticated psychological technique. What the spokesmen won't tell ya is that often these go together.
The technique is best explained in a book by Arthur Koestler. Though there have been other explainations offered by American Interrogation Experts, the ones offered by the fictional character Gletkin explain the metaphysics of torture as well as the intelligent use of it. They are basically the same explanations, the same rationale, and the same totalitarian principles. The interrogator has to get total control of the prisoner. That can take the form of "legal" methods like making them stay awake for day in or day out, bright lights and relentless questioning, or it can take "illegal" or "semi-legal" forms; our folks use hooding, nudity, shaming, cold water, hot water, physical pain. He only used some of these things and actually left his prisoners some dignity. But in either case the goal and the method is designed to break the persons' physical ability to withstand or resist the questioner. And this works, Gletkin explained to Koestler's character Rubishof, because the people of his country were not ready for civilized behavior. He felt they needed to be broken in, disciplined; that they were wild and untrained. He also felt that when the State was in danger, such wild people wouldn't cooperate with law enforcement any other way. Thus for the sake of the future, the State needed to get the information to protect itself. He tried to explain that once the people were properly broken the world would be able to evolve into the paradice that all wanted. Once they were nicely broken they'd do their jobs and live their lives without needing such intense fear. He said that eventually after years of oppression they'd get to be like workers in the US or Britain, they'd have the habits of working every day, obeying a boss, and respecting authority. The arguments aren't much different for repression everywhere.