Should the US allow torture as a means of fighting the War on Terror?

No

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by David Nuttle

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When the world dicovered that U.S. forces used torture to interrogate terrorist suspects, the U.S. lost the support of many peoples whose help we need to win the so-called War on Terror. Disclosure of American torture tactics, at Abu Ghraib Prison, in Iraq, caused extensive damage to the U.S. effort to defeat terrorists, worldwide. According to an ACLU investigation and report, U.S. Army General Richardo Sanchez approved the torture. Further investigations have disclosed that U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and President George W. Bush were fully aware of these terrorist tactics. In fact, President Bush had reportedly directed that terrorist suspects be held as "unlawful enemy combatants" rather than prisoners of war, so the 1949 Geneva Convention agreement, for the "Protection of Victims of War," would not apply. All of these events have made many in the world now view us as the "outhouse in the swamp," rather than a "beacon of freedom on the hill."

The use of torture to collect intelligence, on an enemy force, usually results in false or essentially useless information generated under duress. Torture has been used, and torture techniques constantly perfected for hundreds of years. It has been a means to punish an enemy as well as a way to give a strong warning to potential enemies. Battlefield interrogations, of captured soldiers, have utilized torture as a quick means to hopefully obtain immediate intelligence on enemy forces. Prolonged interrogations, over many months, are designed to obtain all possible information about enemy leadership, tactics, weapons, strength, deployment techniques, support systems, plans/intentions, and other intelligence information. In recent decades, Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese communist forces attempted to perfect the art they call "coercive persuasion," to be used for interrogating prisoners.

Coercive persuasion, as used by the communists on their war prisoners, employed the use of isolation, cold, wet, water/food/ sleep deprivation, beatings, painful stress positions for standing, sitting, kneeling, or prone, promotion of diseases and stress, constant bright lights, mock executions, hooding, forced nakedness, electric shock, harmful drugs, and similar torture tactics. At Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and secret prisons in foreign locations, Americans also used loud music, dogs, sexual humiliations, name calling/ego attacks, simulated drowning (so-called "water boarding"), and a few other tortue techniques of their own. As noted above, all this mostly produced useless information. All the investigations of such failure have motivated the writing of a new U.S. Army handbook on interrogation, and it resticts U.S. use of any tactics now considered as torture. However, many people believe that the CIA (U.S. Central Intelligence Agency) will not be forced to follow the new guidelines. There is also concern, on the part of U.S. military forces, that their new interrogation guidelines will simply be used to help the terrorists develop innovative techniques to resist interrogation.

The lesson learned from U.S. interrogation of communist Viet Cong prisoners, in Vietnam, was that in many cases, these terrorist could be recruited and persuaded to go back to their old Viet Cong units as double agents. False escapes and other tactics were used to give these individuals a cover story for their return. In most cases, such double agents knew for certain that their families would receive considerable benefit from their cooperation with the U.S. In some cases, those prisoners assumed to be new double agents simply told the Viet Cong of the U.S. offer to operate against them. Such revelations were beneficial for the U.S. because Viet Cong cells started to distrust other members of their cell not knowing if there were more double agents they did no know about. These types of operations are more difficult with Muslim fanatics, but double agents may still be recruited. In Vietnam there were a few cases where covert tracking devices, were placed on a prisoner without their knowing. A fake escape would then be arranged, with the idea that these "escaped" prisoners could return to their secret operating bases, so those bases could be found and destroyed.

War is war, and if we seek to win as well as long survive as a free nation, the U.S. must take effective action against terrorist suspects and detainees. All the evidence suggests that we have not been doing so, and our employment of coercive persuasion techniques have not forced terrorist detainees to be cooperative, other than in two or three cass of record. New policies and tactics are needed, and the U.S. should never again use torture as a means of fighting the War on Terror. We cannot persude the world to defeat terrorists if the U.S. acts as if we are also terrorists.

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