Is It Torture? Try It
by Mort Rosenblum
Ask any reporter who knows brutal regimes: No hairs can be split over torture. Victims see no ambiguity. The memory stays fresh all their lives. More than pain, they recall smoldering contempt for their torturers.

You might have asked Baudouin Kayembe, the courageous owner of a weekly paper who helped me when I covered the Congo in the 1960s. But he died from his torture.

Over 40 years, Baudouin’s intimates never forgave Mobutu Sese Seko, the man responsible, nor American authorities who kept Mobutu in power.

I saw this repeatedly in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. But nothing made the point like Argentina’s “guerra sucia,” its dirty war on terror.

Government goons particularly favored “el submarino.” They held suspects’ faces underwater until lungs nearly burst. Sometimes they waited too long.

As is usually the case with torture, it backfired. Little useful intelligence was gained. Survivors talked to anyone who would listen. Decent societies reacted. And it took Argentina decades to live it down.

Each time I interviewed victims, hearing their bitter words and watching their hands shake, I felt a flash of gratitude for the blue passport in my left pocket. We Americans reviled torture, as individuals and as a nation. When it was exposed, we reacted. Torture was one reason we invoked for overturning Saddam Hussein.

Today, we Americans have come up with “waterboarding,” which sounds like a fraternity prank. It is el submarino: cruel and, for a people that respects itself, unusual.

Obviously, we are a far cry from an Argentine military which put thousands to death in a long nightmare of official terror. But what are we prepared to accept?

Our justification is the same that was used in Argentina: What **** Cheney calls harsh interrogation is needed to protect innocent people from terrorism. Our government contracts some of this harsh interrogation to private mercenaries who pledge no allegiances. Not even the Argentines did that.

George W. Bush denies that we torture, which adds hypocrisy to our sins. His attorney general refuses to call waterboarding torture and won’t rule out its use.

Whatever Americans may think, judgment elsewhere is plain. When our highest authorities excuse torture - even applaud it - it is no surprise that terrorist ranks swell, and so many people loathe us.

Even if torture did provide useful information, what is the longer term cost? By employing such terror ourselves, we lose claim to a higher moral plane.

Not long ago, I was on a Tufts University panel with a retired white South African police colonel and an African National Congress leader he used to torture. Both agreed: brutal methods eroded the policeman’s humanity while it fortified the activist’s resolve. The torturers lost in the end.

The debate goes on and on. I just heard Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court on National Public Radio evoke the ticking-bomb conundrum. What if a suspect has knowledge that could save many lives? Extreme methods might help in specific cases.

That’s fine for a law school hypothesis, others argued, but it does not work that way. Police don’t know what a suspect can tell them - or whether he is lying to escape torture.

Authorities insist that exceptional measures are reserved for very specific instances. But once torture is permitted, it becomes generalized.

For anyone not clear whether something is torture, here is a simple test: Try it. Not under controlled circumstances, when you know that it will stop. Try it for real. Find some sadist accountable to no one. Stick with it long enough to see the irrelevance of sterile debate at a safe distance. Does water actually enter the lungs? Does it matter?

What defines torture is the inner damage it causes - the indelible mark on mental circuitry.

Terrorists are out there, and we have to thwart them. This takes intelligence in all of its meanings. We need police work and tough punishment when justified. But we also must understand human reality.

If we act blindly, brushing aside perceived injustices that underpin terrorism, we face growing ranks of enemies desperate to make us pay in some dramatic fashion. If we fight evil with inhumanity, what does that make us?

Mort Rosenblum, former editor of the International Herald Tribune, is the author, most recently, of “Escaping Plato’s Cave: How America’s Blindness to the Rest of the World Threatens Our Survival.”

Copyright © 2008 The International Herald Tribune

Do most people even know what waterboarding is? I bet most don't.

Just say to long read posts.

I believe its another word for hanging ten...lol jk

Waterboarding
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Waterboarding is a form of torture that consists of immobilizing a person on his or her back, with the head inclined downward, and pouring water over the face and into the breathing passages. Through forced suffocation and inhalation of water, the subject experiences the process of drowning and is made to believe that death is imminent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterboarding

Waterboarding: A quick form of intense interrogation that leaves no long lasting physical or psychological impact and has broken the world's top terrorists, such as Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who released credible information that stopped numerous planned terror plots and led to the arrest of many terrorists.

yea it's torture. No torture is not right. But i have no sympathy for those being interrogated at time of war. But i agree some regulation is required. For the record im not for or against this. If it is used it should be last or desperate resort. Games have rules ladies and gentlmen. When it boils down to it war is not a game.

"made to believe death is imminent" must suck.....

Lol thank you for your objective definition.

so madison, I take it that you agree with waterboarding as a method of gaining intelligence information? Do you also agree with bamboo slivers under finger and toenails? or being tied up in a reverse fetal position for hours and days on end?

Willy I am not sure were you got all that from but no I do not believe in torture as it has been proven to be innefective for the most part. Under torture you will condem your own innocent mother to save yourself. I had the statistics on the percentage of people at Abu Graib who were ever convicted of any crime but lost it. It was so low as to be discracefull.

im thinkng there is a fine line between those... (that being physical side affects)

Lol the whole article was talking about how torture was atrocious and had psychological after effects.

Anyway, I'm cool with waterboarding and the bamboo stuff. Reverse fetal position not so much.

Yeah I'm a picky torturer. What of it?

so, in a hypothetical situation, the cia has in custody a person whom they suspect has knowlege of a plot to contaminate Pensacola with some type biological material, say ebola or anthrax. do you think they should just ask him to talk about it, and if he says "No" they should just give him their card and have him call them if he changes his mind, with an "Oh, well, hope those ppl are gonna be ok" attitude, or should they do everything in their power to force him to talk?

hmmmmm...second time I have posted this scenario on a liberal anti-torture thread by this poster, and both times his computer has crashed and he has been unable to respond, and the thread died....so sad

yet no one has answered....

how many of you seen the show on history channel

about end of WWII the united states executed

japenese waterboarders

just a lil bit of history

Confused, as all hell

What the U.S. ??? Hypocritical????