Tough interrogation of terror suspects is necessary

28 Oct 2010

Why Now?

Picture the situation: you are a coalition commander in Iraq trying to establish order, calm a civil war and stop your men being blown up in road-side bombs. You think torture sometimes works to deliver good intelligence, but you know that pushing the boundary of "tough interrogation" might get you into serious trouble. General Sanchez, who was deemed responsible for the penitentiary regime that gave us the horrors of Abu Ghraib, lost his job over allowing torture to be used. At the same time, you know that you have to build the capacity of the Iraqi army, police and intelligence to deliver security on their own. You also know that they can be brutal torturers themselves.

Isn't there an obvious temptation to achieve your goals without endangering your career by making sure local Iraqi institutions are responsible for the cases where torture might "work".

We learn from this week's Wikileak that the Iraqi police, army and security services have been systematically glorifying in the kind of abusive violence of detainees that were so characteristic of the Saddam Hussein regime with the full knowledge of the coalition forces.

The reports are shocking in themselves, but also in making it transparently clear how much the occupying forces knew. Some torture victims were treated by American military doctors; all the leaks bureaucratically report the cases that the American military were made aware of.

Despite clear human rights or law of war violations, the stock response from the military, encapsulated in "Frago 242" (a Frago is a fragmentary order, an in-the-field operationalisation of a complex decision) was to investigate only in the case of direct involvement in torture by the coalition troops. Where the violence is Iraqi on Iraqi, says Frago 242, only an initial report is made. That report is relayed to the relevant Iraqi "authority", often the very body that has perpetrated the abuse.

Do these revelations undermine the coalition's claim to having waged a moral war? It's interesting to go back to this 2008 Intelligence Squared debate from New York on the justifiability of using "tough interrogation techniques". Listen carefully to the proponents, and ask yourself whether they would comfortably have been defending what we now know the coalition forces were allowing the Iraqi security institutions to do.

The proponents coyly refer to the "T-word", as if pronouncing the word conjures what it refers to into existence. They insist on our social ability to draw fine distinctions. Using stress to extract information from detainees should not be compared to the use of deliberate and severe pain. Fine. Let's make these distinctions. But what about the distinction between knowingly permitting torture under our occupation and simply torturing?

Event information:

Arguing in favour of the motion are Heather MacDonald, David Rivkin, and Rick Francona.

Heather Macdonald begins by arguing that the stress methods used by the US for getting information from terrorists, post 9/11, are light years away from ‘torture’. Instead, the stress methods used (such as short periods of sleep deprivation/isolation, cold rather than hot meals) are lawful and therefore cannot, morally, be off limits.

David Rivkin asserts that this is a debate about our policy for gaining intelligence in war. The legal definition of torture is necessarily vague...and is, therefore, a context-specific standard.

Rick Francona argues that outlawing all physical interrogation practices would be dangerous, he says, because prisoners who know that their interrogators are restricted by law will not feel the fear necessary to make them speak.

Arguing against the motion are John Hutson, Darius Rejali, and Jack Cloonan.

John Hutson outlines the ways in which torture is immoral, and how it can go wrong - he notes that 40 people have been killed in terrorist detention centres. Hutson also points out that the USA's current allies will not stand by them in future wars if they fail to abide by the Geneva Convention.

Darius Rejali asserts that both sides want good counter terrorism measures and greater safety, but that torture is a “clumsy method” for obtaining those things. He says that apart from being clumsy, torture is also immoral, because “it takes far more innocent lives than it has ever saved.”

Jack Cloonan doubts that the money and the might of the military can replace what is most needed: “good human intelligence.” The military's use of torture does not address this lack, but instead brings home a serious danger – the enemy is “duty bound to get revenge.”

Thank you to IQ² US for allowing us to use this video.

Speakers for the motion

David Rivkin

Partner in the Washington office of Baker & Hostetler LLP
Heather MacDonald

John M Olin Fellow, Manhattan Institute
Rick Francona

Retired US Air Force lieutenant colonel

Chair

Brooke Gladstone

Host and managing editor, National Public Radio newsmagazine

Speakers against the motion

John Hutson

Retired rear admiral, US Navy
Jack Cloonan

FBI veteran and internationally respected security expert
Darius Rejali

Professor of political science, Reed College, in Portland, Oregon