Last week someone named Anson Rohr wrote a letter to the Denver Post trying to justify torture (search for “Anson Rohr” to find it). I thought it was shortsighted and immediately dashed off a response. Imagine my surprise when they called me to say they were running it. My letter was published on Sunday, December 4. You can find it here, but the whole letter is below.
Letter-writer Anson Rohr uses the example of terrorists attacking a school in Beslan, Russia, as the kind of thing torture could prevent.
The reality is that Russia has routinely used torture (documented by Human Rights Watch) against Chechen separatists specifically to try to prevent such attacks. Obviously it didn’t work. Conversely, during World War II our best interrogator was Sherwood Moran, who explicitly rejected torture for his own use and in his training of other interrogators. Meanwhile, Japan tortured American prisoners. Guess who got the best information in that war.
Interestingly, even the sadistic Nazis recognized this. Their best interrogator was a man named Hans Joachim Scharff, who likewise did not use torture.
It’s been shown over and over that torture simply doesn’t work. Why would anyone advocate a method that 1) doesn’t work and 2) inspires the Arab world to view us as just another class of barbarians like the terrorists?
We are better than they are not because of what we say but because of what we do. And by doing better, we get better results.
The idea of torture is seductive in the “ticking bomb” scenario everyone always uses to justify it. Except for the fact that it doesn’t work.
As I write this I’m listening to an interview with John McCain on NPR. Here’s a guy who suffered terrible torture and spent seven years in the hellish Hanoi Hilton. In the interview he recounts how most of the information he supplied was bogus – for example, naming members of the Green Bay Packers as important command officers. As you might expect, he opposes torture. Not just because it’s wrong, but because it doesn’t work for intelligence. (He concedes that it’s good for propaganda, such as getting someone to make a statement denouncing the US, as the Viet Cong did to him.)
Also today at Sadaam Hussein’s trial they cross-examined one witness’ testimony thusly:
“I agree things in Abu Ghraib were, until recently, bad. But did they use dogs on you? Did they photograph you?” When the witness was silent, the judge prompted her. “Did they?”, he asked. “No,” said the witness.
To be clear, I don’t for one second believe Abu Graib is nearly as bad under the US as it was under Sadaam. But that’s not the point.
The real question is, what does the the Arab world think?
