NECESSARY EVIL OR WAR CRIME?
WHY ARE WE NOW TALKING ABOUT TORTURE?
By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER
Interrogation used to be an art taught to the “best and brightest.” The CIA even has an interrogation manual called KUBARK, long on the internet (google it) showing how to classify “subjects” and get them to spill their guts. Most of the methods are psychological and those with the most to tell, respond to psychological ploys much better than being beaten.
Really tough people will lie to you for years. If nobody has noticed, we are fighting really tough people. Intelligence is only “timely” for 48 hours or as soon as your enemy knows you have someone who can put them in danger. They move, they hide, they cover their tracks. This game is 4000 years old and will never end.
We changed the rules. We didn’t torture to get intelligence. We had liars working for us. The truth was never the goal. We wanted an excuse to go to war, an excuse to arrest lots of people, guilty and innocent. We wanted lies to back up our mistakes, not “secret intelligence” to find “sleeper cells” or track down “evil Osama.”
Questions changed. No longer did we ask: “Where is you leader hiding?” We now asked: “Sign this confession saying all these people did these things, true or not, had these weapons or not, and we will stop what we are doing to you.” “If you don’t agree to lie, we will torture you.”
We stopped being America and we became North Korea.
The real issues are not about torture. We tortured German POWs, or as phonies and “spin doctors” want to call it, used “harsh interrogation techniques.” We did everything we do now. We started “waterboarding” during the Philippine rebellion over a hundred years ago. We called it the “water cure.”
The debate in Washington is never an honest one. Everything is driven to give newspapers the stories they need, raise money from special interest or supply fodder for talk shows. We have become a nation of liars led, too often by fools. Nobody needs to be told this. We live with it every day.
Torture, done publicly, bragged about by total idiots is insane. The Geneva Convention makes torture a crime. President Roosevelt never bragged on his “fireside chats” that we tortured German saboteurs or POWs for vital information. If he did, he would have faced war crime trials right there with Hermann Goering.
How could we execute German soldiers for the Malmedy Massacre if we openly admitted murdering their POWs? How could we prosecute Japanese for murdering our POWs or using them for experiments if we did the same? (Actually, we brought the scientists who experimented on Americans back to the US to help us with our germ warfare program. These brutal criminals lived their lives in comfort as American citizens.)
What were the reasons some of the worst lawyers in the country and the stupidest people on Earth turned out bushels of “memos” supporting war crimes as legal when everyone knows better? Giving power to the stupid, the arrogant and the spineless is how so many other countries turned to hellish prisons.
Torture may be necessary for a few situations, done secretly, done in a timely way, when America’s survival is really at stake. Legalizing torture as a normal part of the criminal justice system, as has been done now, has simply announced to the world that our respect for our own laws, our respect for international treaties and our common sense is at an end.
Dozens of countries that once respected us now look on us as akin to brutal dictatorships they despise. We tortured to get lies. We tortured as a show of force, using brutality on the helpless. We tortured to brag about it to get votes. Worst of all, we showed ourselves to be amateurs and fools, brutal and incompetent, to the real enemies we need to fear us.
Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran and regular contributor on political and social issues.
Gordon Duff posted articles on VT from 2008 to 2022. He is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War. A disabled veteran, he worked on veterans and POW issues for decades.
Gordon is an accredited diplomat and is generally accepted as one of the top global intelligence specialists. He manages the world’s largest private intelligence organization and regularly consults with governments challenged by security issues.
Duff has traveled extensively, is published around the world, and is a regular guest on TV and radio in more than “several” countries. He is also a trained chef, wine enthusiast, avid motorcyclist, and gunsmith specializing in historical weapons and restoration. Business experience and interests are in energy and defense technology.
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