by Robert Fisk
“Torture works,” an American special forces major - now, needless to say, a colonel - boasted to a colleague of mine a couple of years ago. It seems that the CIA and its hired thugs in Afghanistan and Iraq still believe this. There is no evidence that rendition and beatings and waterboarding and the insertion of metal pipes into men’s anuses - and, of course, the occasional torturing to death of detainees - has ended. Why else would the CIA admit in January that it had destroyed videotapes of prisoners being almost drowned - the “waterboarding” technique - before they could be seen by US investigators?

Yet only a few days ago, I came across a medieval print in which a prisoner has been strapped to a wooden chair, a leather hosepipe pushed down his throat and a primitive pump fitted at the top of the hose where an ill-clad torturer is hard at work squirting water down the hose. The prisoner’s eyes bulge with terror as he feels himself drowning, all the while watched by Spanish inquisitors who betray not the slightest feelings of sympathy with the prisoner. Who said “waterboarding” was new? The Americans are just apeing their predecessors in the inquisition.

Anther medieval print I found in a Canadian newspaper in November shows a prisoner under interrogation in what I suspect is medieval Germany. In this case, he has been strapped backwards to the outer edge of a wheel. Two hooded men are administering his agony. One is using a bellows to encourage a fire burning at the bottom of the wheel while the other is turning the wheel forwards so that the prisoner’s feet are moving into the flames. The eyes of this poor man - naked save for a cloth over his lower torso - are tight shut in pain. Two priests stand beside him, one cowled, the other wearing a robe over his surplice, a paper and pen in hand to take down the prisoner’s words.

Anthony Grafton, who has been working on a book about magic in Renaissance Europe, says that in the 16th and 17th centuries, torture was systematically used against anyone suspected of witchcraft, his or her statements taken down by sworn notaries - the equivalent, I suppose, of the CIA’s interrogation officers - and witnessed by officials who made no pretence that this was anything other than torture; no talk of “enhanced interrogation” from the lads who turned the wheel to the fire.

As Grafton recounts, “The pioneering medievalist Henry Charles Lea … wrote at length about the ways in which inquisitors had used torture to make prisoners confess heretical views and actions. An enlightened man writing in what he saw as an enlightened age, he looked back in horror at these barbarous practices and condemned them with a clarity that anyone reading public statements must now envy.”

There were professionals in the Middle Ages who were trained to use pain as a method of enquiry as well as an ultimate punishment before death. Men who were to be “hanged, drawn and quartered” in medieval London, for example, would be shown the “instruments” before their final suffering began with the withdrawal of their intestines in front of vast crowds of onlookers. Most of those tortured for information in medieval times were anyway executed after they had provided the necessary information to their interrogators. These inquisitions - with details of the torture that accompanied them - were published and disseminated widely so that the public should understand the threat that the prisoners had represented and the power of those who inflicted such pain upon them. No destroying of videotapes here. Illustrated pamphlets and songs, according to Grafton, were added to the repertory of publicity.

Ronnie Po-chia Hsia and Italian scholars Diego Quaglioni and Anna Esposito have studied the 15th-century Trent inquisition whose victims were usually Jews. In 1475, three Jewish households were accused of murdering a Christian boy called Simon to carry out the supposed Passover “ritual” of using his blood to make “matzo” bread. This “blood libel” - it was, of course, a total falsity - is still, alas, believed in many parts of the Middle East although it is frightening to discover that the idea was well established in 15th century Europe.

As usual, the podestà - a city official - was the interrogator, who regarded external evidence as providing mere clues of guilt. Europe was then still governed by Roman law which required confessions in order to convict. As Grafton describes horrifyingly, once the prisoner’s answers no longer satisfied the podestà, the torturer tied the man’s or woman’s arms behind their back and the prisoner would then be lifted by a pulley, agonisingly, towards the ceiling. “Then, on orders of the podestà, the torturer would make the accused ‘jump’ or ‘dance’ - pulling him or her up, then releasing the rope, dislocating limbs and inflicting stunning pain.”

When a member of one of the Trent Jewish families, Samuel, asked the podestà where he had heard that Jews needed Christian blood, the interrogator replied - and all this while, it should be remembered, Samuel was dangling in the air on the pulley - that he had heard it from other Jews. Samuel said that he was being tortured unjustly. “The truth, the truth!” the podestà shouted, and Samuel was made to “jump” up to eight feet, telling his interrogator: “God the Helper and truth help me.” After 40 minutes, he was returned to prison.

Once broken, the Jewish prisoners, of course, confessed. After another torture session, Samuel named a fellow Jew. Further sessions of torture finally broke him and he invented the Jewish ritual murder plot and named others guilty of this non-existent crime. Two tortured women managed to exonerate children but eventually, in Grafton’s words, “they implicated loved ones, friends and members of other Jewish communities”. Thus did torture force innocent civilians to confess to fantastical crimes. Oxford historian Lyndal Roper found that the tortured eventually accepted the view that they were guilty.

Grafton’s conclusion is unanswerable. Torture does not obtain truth. It will make most ordinary people say anything the torturer wants. Why, who knows if the men under the CIA’s “waterboarding” did not confess that they could fly to meet the devil. And who knows if the CIA did not end up believing him.

–Robert Fisk

© 2008 The Independent
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/03/6810/

in regards to terrorists, as far as I'm concerned the Interrogator's can get all Joseph Mengele on them!

Mad, the enemy dont share your concern/ love for them that you seem to have for them. They will torture your family in front of you for laughs. If we can get some info out of them i say get the thumbscrews and cut thier willys off also. They wouldent hesitate to to reciprocate given the chance.

somehow I dont think you understand that torture doesnt work never has never will it only serves to bring some type of pleasure to those that torture. There is a reasone for the Nuremberg laws and the Geneva conventions. But I fear my fellow countrymen are so brainwashed and mentaly debilitated by a never ending stream of porpaganda that they think torture is just fine. so much for a hundred years of progress.

so------

who are the tortures that you posted this for, Americans or something?
we are nothing like them in any of "our tortures", water boarding or cs gas is nothing like, meat grinders up to the toes- knees- fingers to the elbows, rape, red hot irons up the wazoo, electrosis on the nips, shooting wives and kids in front of each other, but sure go ahead put us in the same catagory as them by all means.

and by the way- geneva convention- yeah we are the only ones who truely abide by that, written to make little fairies feel better about themselves.



zap----i am starting to remember why i havent been here. aurgh!!!

i take it you have never been in a war zone. I have and as far as im concerned, any method that can shorten the war or give us an advantage is a wonderful thing. Not propaganda but first hand expierence in my case. It does work, though messy and crude, although the liberal dribble that we get from the communist ran news in this country would tend to indicate otherwise. If the media would have behaved like they do now in WW2, THEY WOULD HAVE BEEN TAKEN OUT AND SHOT FOR TREASON.

I think the Nazis attempted something like in there defence at the Nuremberg war trials.....most of them were hung

Torture tends to bring an answer...keep in mind most of the time the answer is just given to stop the torture and is not true in most respects. I however will not cite my references as most should have the basic know of this fact, but if you want I can...though my references are psychology related and not a liberal front such as the OP here. Torture also belittles respect for humans as a whole, the nature of torture is to allow yourself to lose control of the situation in the first place once you lose control you do what ever is necassary to get an answer be it right or wrong. So in retrospect torture doesn't work, but I suppose if your looking for any answer it works.

NOW YOUR COMPARING OUR MILITARY TO THE NAZIS? Mabe you should go join the fight to get a dose of reality. These decisions are not popular unless its your base that DOESENT get attacked because someone squeesed the plan out of an enemy. also, the geneva convention only applies to uniformed combatants, not terrorists dressed as civillians. They have no coveture, and for good reason. I WOULD RECCOMENT NOT judging a situation until youve seen your fellow soldiers running around with thier heads blown off, or being blown up by a roadside mine or mabe the little kid who drops the ping pong ball full of draino in the fuel tank of your vehicle. These are realities of war and ANYTHING done to shorten it is a good thing. I never said i like it but it is in fact a necessasary evil.

it is rather unfair that the country we invaded no longer has a standing uniformed army, it sounds more like a colonial upriseing to me rather than a war. It realy is too bad that all our brave young men fighting over there are being misused by our criminal government. I was in the service in fact I was in basic training at Ft Knox as desert storm 1 was comeing to an end. if I knew then what I knew now I never would have enlisted

Torture may not work for getting "truth" out of people, but there are other messages that torture can send.
yer right, some of these bastards can be pretty nasty, but noooo God forbid we stoop to their level. Hell I say go well BELOW their level and scare the HELL outta them.
Anyone, and I mean ANYONE and everyone who is caught with nooo doubt they have terrorist ties, should be dealt with harshly, immediately and publicly if necessary. This may sound evil but I don't care, the only way to beat evil is to be nastier.
Surgically remove the bastards arms, legs, and tongue.
Stick them on a military transport, with a 'chute strapped to their sorry a$$e$, and just before you hoof 'em off the plane, smear 'em with bacon fat.
Get the message?? Don't F**K With US!!!

There's the shiny beacon of freedom...

God bless the USA

Torture is not a good idea, it is setting a bad example: AS YOU SOW ---SO SHALL YOU REAP!!! Do unto OTHERS as You would Have Them Do Unto You!!! Torture is carried out by Satanists and not by a God of Love. Sometimes I wonder why the year 2012 keeps coming up: Maybe that just might be the deadline for the Satanists to accomplish their New World Order,they had planned to have their NWO running back in 2000,remember Y2K?? But regardless, I am against Torture. Hey, I also believe some of these Satanists are stealing your little kids and torturing them too. I suggest looking for these torturers also among high members of some of your secret societies. I don't believe there exists such a thing as a GOOD SECRET SOCIETY!!What are they Hiding??TORTURE???SATANISM???

Roger that.

Hung? The size of their genitalia has nothing to do with it. But if you are impressed then to each his own.

I consider us better than common terrorists, so yes, I hold us to higher standard then them. Any of us who are in favor of torture are no better then the common terrorists and I am concerned for us. We are not a third world country and our intelligence is supposed to have evolved to a level that we are not animals. I expect more from us then this. If you are in favor of torture shame on you!!!!!

One of the many genuine tragedies that have come out of the Bush Administration's maladroit handling of the past six years has been the transformation of the United States into a pariah among nations. American democracy has always had its flaws, but the country was truly viewed by many around the world as "the shining city upon a hill" rhetorically much loved by Ronald Reagan. Confronted only by a Democratic congress that is too terrorized and internally riven to pose any obstacle and a tame press, the White House now appears hell bent on a course that can only add new embarrassments during the fourteen months that George Bush and **** Cheney will continue to be in power.

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The disregard for the values that once made America a beacon to mankind has been nowhere more evident than in the approval of Michael Mukasey as Attorney General of the United States. Mukasey refused to call simulating drowning or waterboarding torture when confronted by a limp wristed congressional attempt to have him define and thereby eliminate the practice. He was let off the hook and given the majority needed for approval by the Judiciary Committee's Democratic Senators Charles Schumer of New York and Dianne Feinstein of California, who broke ranks with fellow Democrats to approve the nomination. As Mukasey, Schumer, and Feinstein are all Jewish one would have hoped that they might have paid more attention to issuing a free pass on the torture issue given its historical antecedents. In particular, they should perhaps study the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials to learn how the Nazis institutionalized torture as part of the judicial system, acceptance of torture being just one part of an institutional mindset that led to much greater horrors.

Schumer and Feinstein might profitably recall that the United States defeated Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Communist Russia without having to torture anyone and without suspending the constitution. Nineteen fanatics crashing planes into buildings should not have resulted in a trashing of the rule of law, but apparently it has, at least for some people. The changes that have taken place have made official Washington adhere closer to the values that drove the occupants of the Reich Chancellery in Berlin than to the Founding Fathers, whose declaration of independence cited a "decent respect for the opinions of mankind." Instead of adhering to a constitution that guaranteed liberties, the Germans in the 1930s adopted a principle of government that placed the country's leadership above the law. It was called the Fuhrerprinzip or "leadership principle" and basically said that a leader is answerable to no one and can be relied upon to do what is good for the country, even when he violates the law or constitution. This is more-or-less the operating principle of today's "unitary executive" which has determined that the torture of "enemy combatants" is an acceptable practice. The increasing tendency to designate critics as enemies or as allies of terrorists in the current political debate in the United States, insofar as there is one, suggests that the worldview of 1936 Berlin is not so far removed from that of 2007 Washington.

It might be argued that the United States made a deliberate decision to turn down the road leading to torture and other abuse immediately after 9/11. In May 2002 the White House withdrew from a 1998 agreement to participate in the establishment of an International Criminal Court that would be empowered to prosecute war crimes, genocide, and other crimes against humanity. The Bush Administration's argument that the court would diminish US sovereignty and lead to frivolous prosecution of American soldiers, diplomats, and government officials was a red herring at the time because there were safeguards built into the court's guidelines preventing such action. Every European country has ratified the statute creating the court and no nation has complained that it has resulted in unjustified prosecutions. Given subsequent developments, it is likely that even in early 2002 the White House was sensitive to possible charges that it was engaging in war crimes connected with the "global war on terror" and was seeking to shield senior officials from possible prosecution. Vice President **** Cheney openly spoke of going over to the "dark side" in prosecuting the war against the Islamists, signaling that international rules for behavior were made to be broken.

As history often repeats itself, the Nazis even had an expression for today's "enhanced interrogations", "Versharfte Vernehmung", which means "intensified questioning." As practiced by the Gestapo, it generally left no permanent marks and relied on physical stress, hypothermia, simulated drowning, and sleep deprivation. The United States dominated the Nuremberg Tribunal and did not buy the argument made by lawyers of accused Nazis that the torture was not really torture and that the prisoners - largely civilians who had been in the various European resistance movements fighting against the German occupation - had no rights as they were not soldiers. Today the fashionable dehumanizing expression is "enemy combatants," but the assertion that they have no legal rights remains the same. The Nuremberg judges ruled that any and all prisoners must be treated humanely and that any "severe mental or physical pain or suffering" was torture and that to commit torture is to carry out a war crime. The penalty inflicted on a number of Nazis who were found guilty of torture, most of whom were Gestapo officers, was death
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/philip-giraldi/torture-american-style_b_72188.html

Your child is protecting a UN delegation. Intelligence has received a tip that a suicide bomber is planning an attack and you have captured one of his followers. You need to know the particulars to save many lives and the danger is imminent. Do you:
A: Give him a Charms blow pop.
B: Ask him politely.
C: Threaten to tickle him with goose down.
D:Prepare to tell te dead that you did not want to step on his rights.
E: Bring in the professionals to hook a welder to his nuts and tickle him with the switch until he lets you in on the deal.
Then be grateful that your child is alive.
Insert any scenario you like. It is so easy to stand on the soap box preaching until the reality of it all is staring you in the face.

your country was invaded and for no reasone, your friends and family have been killed in the crossfire. you have no electricity, no heat, no clean water, no medical treatment, no job, no future for you or your family......what country is this and who is resposnable?