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POLITICS: Bush Administration Even Sucks at Torture

Remember the controversy back in 2004-2005 about then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales’ big hard on for the use of torture when dealing with the detainees at Guantanamo Bay? Remember how he wrote memos arguing that the Geneva convention does not apply to the detainees and Gitmo and thus it was alright to torture the everloving heck out of them to illicit information? Remember how Bush’s cronies in the White House and the DoJ all signed off on this plan despite opposition from the State Department and Colon Powell?

Well, turns out that they’re not only sadistic bastards with a faulty grasp on international law, but they are also totally shit when it comes to torturing people.

As the Bush administration completes secret new rules governing interrogations, a group of experts advising the intelligence agencies are arguing that the harsh techniques used since the 2001 terrorist attacks are outmoded, amateurish and unreliable.

The psychologists and other specialists, commissioned by the Intelligence Science Board, make the case that more than five years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has yet to create an elite corps of interrogators trained to glean secrets from terrorism suspects.

While billions are spent each year to upgrade satellites and other high-tech spy machinery, the experts say, interrogation methods — possibly the most important source of information on groups like Al Qaeda — are a hodgepodge that date from the 1950s, or are modeled on old Soviet practices.

“Soviet practices”? Classy. Apparently, in Soviet Russia water boards you!

Anyway, these so-called “scientists” and “experts” base these findings not only on long-standing principles of international law and morality, but on the notion that (despite the bill of goods that Jack Bauer is selling you,) torture just flat doesn’t work. Especially ineffective are the types of torture we’ve been using in Gitmo and around the world for the past five years.

In meetings with intelligence officials and in a 325-page initial report completed in December, the researchers have pressed a more practical critique: there is little evidence, they say, that harsh methods produce the best intelligence.

“There’s an assumption that often passes for common sense that the more pain imposed on someone, the more likely they are to comply,” said Randy Borum, a psychologist at the University of South Florida who, like several of the study’s contributors, is a consultant for the Defense Department.
[…]
[S]ome of the experts involved in the interrogation review, called “Educing Information,” say that during World War II, German and Japanese prisoners were effectively questioned without coercion.

“It far outclassed what we’ve done,” said Steven M. Kleinman, a former Air Force interrogator and trainer, who has studied the World War II program of interrogating Germans. The questioners at Fort Hunt, Va., “had graduate degrees in law and philosophy, spoke the language flawlessly,” and prepared for four to six hours for each hour of questioning, said Mr. Kleinman, who wrote two chapters for the December report.

Mr. Kleinman, who worked as an interrogator in Iraq in 2003, called the post-Sept. 11 efforts “amateurish” by comparison to the World War II program, with inexperienced interrogators who worked through interpreters and had little familiarity with the prisoners’ culture.

The Bush Administration eschewing proven, researched methods of international relations in favor of half-cocked aggression? Quelle Surprise!

These were not the only broadsides the Bushies took from experts in regards to the administration’s torture policy. Other swipes included one at the vast amount of resources that were directed at justification of the policy rather than creating one with an acceptable level of efficacy.

Robert F. Coulam, a research professor and attorney at Simmons College and a study participant, said that the government’s most vigorous work on interrogation to date has been in seeking legal justifications for harsh tactics. Even today, he said, “there’s nothing like the mobilization of effort and political energy that was put into relaxing the rules” governing interrogation.

The White House’s counter to this avalanche of rebukes is essentially “we didn’t torture anyone, and if we did it wasn’t really that tortur-riffic.” While this explanation flies in the face of the clear weight of the evidence showing excessively harsh treatment is common in Gitmo, I do give them some credit for at least attempting to make an argument that their tactics were legal beforehand. It’s a morbidly refreshing change from just brazenly breaking the law and then clumsily attempting to justify it later as was the case with the domestic spying situation.

Still, it is worth noting that Bush is in the process of finalizing a long-overdue executive order that would officially outlaw some of the more controversial techniques like waterboarding. On the other hand, the order is expected to authorize several techniques that, according to the New York Times’ piece, “go beyond those allowed in the military by the Army Field Manual.” One is forced to wonder whether the advice and critiques offered by this panel of experts will be reflected in the Administration’s new torture policies. We’ll have to wait to find out, but knowing them I sincerely doubt it.

Finally, my personal favorite criticism of the way the White House came upon their interrogation policy comes from one if their own. In this case, a former aide to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.

In an April lecture, Philip D. Zelikow, the former adviser to Ms. Rice, said it was a grave mistake to delegate to attorneys decisions on the moral question of how prisoners should be treated.

Asking your lawyer about questions of morality is a grave mistake indeed. Especially if that lawyer is Alberto Gonzales.

Hat tip: Necia

(Written by: Subrosa)

(via Jason’s shared items in Google Reader)