"We will find the truth. We will fully investigate."

[via Ed Brayton]

why torture doesn't work

From time to time, this blog has discussed the morality of torture, which, for its proponents, hinges on one thing: whether it works. But even the severest utilitarian would have hard time justifying a practice that, as far as we can tell, is worse than useless. Consider the newly-released details of the CIA's investigation on Abu Zubaida. Ed Brayton points to the story, found in the Washington Post:

When CIA officials subjected their first high-value captive, Abu Zubaida, to waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods, they were convinced that they had in their custody an al-Qaeda leader who knew details of operations yet to be unleashed, and they were facing increasing pressure from the White House to get those secrets out of him.

The methods succeeded in breaking him, and the stories he told of al-Qaeda terrorism plots sent CIA officers around the globe chasing leads.

In the end, though, not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida's tortured confessions, according to former senior government officials who closely followed the interrogations. Nearly all of the leads attained through the harsh measures quickly evaporated, while most of the useful information from Abu Zubaida -- chiefly names of al-Qaeda members and associates -- was obtained before waterboarding was introduced, they said.

Zubaida's "confessions" produced garbage, yet his captors, even when faced with evidence that further waterboarding was pointless, continued to torture him. Brayton comments,

This is one of the main problems with such interrogations and it has nothing to do with those famous "ticking timebomb" scenarios we hear so much about. They're convinced they have a high value target in detention but in fact he's just a low level flunkie who has little to tell [them]. So when he doesn't give them useful information, they're convinced they have to torture him to get the information they're sure he has.

And even after they torture him and he tells them everything he thinks they want to hear to make them stop, and even after they waste time and resources chasing all the false leads he gives them, they never think to question their own assumptions either for that person or for others. Even after the failure of their first instance of torture, they continued to approve others.

I see at least two reasons for this. First, in the heightened emotional state brought on by the combination of crisis-thinking and moral abnegation, the ordinary distortions of confirmation bias are amplified until the noise drowns out the signal. Second, torture is a sort of moral Rubicon--once crossed, there's no going back, no possible admission of failure, for it would reveal a truth too ugly to comprehend--not only to the outside world, but to the torturer.

a lack of political will

Suppose it turns out that, legally speaking, acts sanctioned by the Bush administration at Guantanamo constitute torture. Actually, you don't really have to suppose:

In her interview, Crawford acknowledges that it was "the combination of the interrogation techniques, their duration and the impact on Qahtani's health that led to her conclusion. 'The techniques they used were all authorized, but the manner in which they applied them was overly aggressive and too persistent. … This was not any one particular act; this was just a combination of things that had a medical impact on him. … It was that medical impact that pushed me over the edge' to call it torture." What Crawford has done here is astounding. She has repudiated the formalistic (and perennially shifting) definitions of torture as whatever-it-is-we-don't-do. She has admitted that there is a medical and legal definition for torture and also that we have crossed the line into it.

What then?

The answer to that question takes you to a very different place when the act is torture, as Crawford says it is. Under the 1984 Torture Convention, its 146 state parties (including the United States) are under an obligation to "ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law." These states must take any person alleged to have committed torture (or been complicit or participated in an act of torture) who is present in their territories into custody. The convention allows no exceptions, as Sen. Pinochet discovered in 1998. The state party to the Torture Convention must then submit the case to its competent authorities for prosecution or extradition for prosecution in another country.

The former chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces and general counsel for the Department of the Army has spoken. Her clear words have been picked up around the world. And that takes the prospects of accountability and criminal investigation onto another level. For the Obama administration, the door to the do-nothing option is now closed. That is why today may come to be seen as the turning point.

All LDers should be watching this situation closely, since it puts a sharp edge on the debate over the current resolution. It's entirely conceivable that a former president and high-ranking officials, never mind the soldiers, doctors, and citizen contractors who participated, could be prosecuted under international law. They won't, of course, since the U.S. will never allow it. And Barack Obama isn't going to press the case.

Just last weekend, Obama signaled in a television interview that he was not inclined to launch sweeping new criminal investigations of detainee treatment and interrogations that took place under the Bush administration. "My instinct is for us to focus on how do we make sure that moving forward we are doing the right thing," Obama told ABC's George Stephanopoulos. "That doesn't mean that if somebody has blatantly broken the law, that they are above the law. But my orientation's going to be to move forward."

What then?

Update: Eric Posner (U. Chicago) lists five reasons Eric Holder, the incoming Attorney General, is unlikely to prosecute torture charges.

the bitter result of extraordinary rendition

For every tidbit of anti-terror intelligence gained by torture, there's a mountain of misinformation, and the possibility that a true innocent will end up shattered by suspicion.

Arar, now 36, was detained by U.S. authorities as he changed planes in New York on Sept. 26, 2002. He was held for questioning for 12 days, then flown by jet to Jordan and driven to Syria. He was beaten, forced to confess to having trained in Afghanistan -- where he never has been -- and then kept in a coffin-size dungeon for 10 months before he was released, the Canadian inquiry commission found.

O'Connor concluded "categorically there is no evidence" that Arar did anything wrong or was a security threat.

More reasons to question the use of torture here.

useful sources for the torture debate

This is by no means finished. Please suggest other important articles, resources and postings in the comments.

Sen. John McCain, Newsweek, Torture's Terrible Toll
"To prevail in this war we need more than victories on the battlefield. This is a war of ideas, a struggle to advance freedom in the face of terror in places where oppressive rule has bred the malevolence that creates terrorists. Prisoner abuses exact a terrible toll on us in this war of ideas. They inevitably become public, and when they do they threaten our moral standing, and expose us to false but widely disseminated charges that democracies are no more inherently idealistic and moral than other regimes. This is an existential fight, to be sure. If they could, Islamic extremists who resort to terror would destroy us utterly. But to defeat them we must prevail in our defense of American political values as well. The mistreatment of prisoners greatly injures that effort."


Brian Ross and Richard Esposito, ABCNews, "CIA's Harsh Terror Techniques Described"
"Harsh interrogation techniques authorized by top officials of the CIA have led to questionable confessions and the death of a detainee since the techniques were first authorized in mid-March 2002, ABC News has been told by former and current intelligence officers and supervisors."


Jean Maria Arrigo, member of the Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security, "A Consequentialist Argument against Torture Interrogation of Terrorists"
"Stated most starkly, the damaging social consequences of a program of torture interrogation evolve from institutional dynamics that are independent of the original moral rationale. Further, a legal, regulated program cannot eliminate use of rogue torture interrogation services, because they still serve to circumvent moral and procedural constraints on the official program."


John B. Roberts II, Washington Times, "School for scandal"
"Because the Guantanamo 'emerging strategic interrogation techniques' appear to have become the baseline for military intelligence interrogations worldwide, what is urgently needed is an independent evaluation of the value of the interrogation techniques being used at Guantanamo. They may be less valuable than was originally believed."


Julian Sanchez, Reason Magazine, Habeas Corpses
"Of course, in the absence of any judicial review, not only will we remain in the dark about how well interrogators are sticking to the rulebook; we also can't know how many of our detainees are hardened al-Qaeda killers and how many are Afghan farmers who'd been conscripted by the Taliban, or targeted at random by bounty hunters eager to reap a reward for catching terrorists, or singled out by informers who happened to be personal or political enemies, or simply caught in the wrong place at the wrong time."


Editors, The Economist, How to lose friends and alienate people
"Mr Bush would rightly point out that anti-Americanism is to blame for some of the opprobrium heaped on his country. But why encourage it so cavalierly and in such an unAmerican way? Nearly two years after Abu Ghraib, the world is still waiting for a clear statement of America's principles on the treatment of detainees. Mr McCain says he will keep on adding his amendment to different bills until Mr Bush signs one of them. Every enemy of terrorism should hope he does so soon."


Mark Olson, Pseudo-Polymath, Torture and Cultural Norms
"IAs we deal with “torture” as defined with respect to our foreign affairs, one might wonder if “cruel and unusual” or “torture” should be defined relative to the cultural norms of the people we are dealing with and not the culture of the beltway. One does not have to be an advocate of moral relativism to admit that there are cultural norms regarding comfort and how one defines unusual treatment."
(See also A Final Comment on Interrogation, Is "Perfect" Interrogation Torture?, Clarification (yet again) on Torture, Zero Sum Assumption and a Note on Torture, and Clarifying Torture.)


Jim Anderson, decorabilia, the ends justify the mean
"This is moral calculus of the lowest common denominator, and a wholesale rejection of the purported moral role of this nation in its war on terror. Apparently "moral clarity" applies to all subjects except torture."
(see also the efficacy of torture)


Jason Kuznicki, Positive Liberty, Torture Yet Again
"I argue here that torturing detainees is not only morally wrong, but that it is far more likely to elicit false information than true, and that separating the one from the other is a task that few torturing regimes have ever performed successfully. Indeed, I will argue, the mere use of torture makes them ill-equipped to do so. It’s not so much that “forceful interrogations” will “never” produce correct information, as Mark Olson somewhat inaccurately distills my position, but rather that any true information is almost certain to be mixed in with and outweighed by a consistent narrative that matches the torturer’s own expectations."
{See also Truth Serum and Read This.)


Edward_, Obsidian Wings, The Bush Legacy: America's Human Rights Record is Now a Subject of Legitimate Debate
"If, as we're told again and again, this is a war of ideas and values, then there's no room for this sort of misstep. Forget whether Bush and Cheney's personal definitions allow them to baldly declare that we don't "torture"; through sheer stubbornness, one must assume, they're undoing hundreds of years' worth of human rights advances right before the entire world's collective eyes. The civilized world is dumbfounded. The terrorists' recruiters are delighted. And increasingly the citizens of the United States are being shamed by this incomprehensible, treacherous policy."


Matt Welch, Reason Magazine, Inside Outside U.S.A.
"It's easy to get distracted by the semantics and immorality of it all, but the ABC News story suggests a very pragmatic rebuttal to the administration: By whatever name or euphemism, water boarding seems like one of the worst methods possible of obtaining quality information. And treating water-boarded data either as a strong basis for policy, or as a prop to make a political argument, seems unwise at best."

torture versus the rule of law

Later I'm going to provide a list of links regarding the recent torture controversy, but I want to first point out a singularly forceful article by Julian Sanchez.

the efficacy of torture

Regarding torture (once more), Mark Olson claims,

I haven’t been convinced by Mr Kuznicki’s arguments that they never work, and I don’t think I’ve seen data to that effect from anyone who has access to the data and has done a careful study to verify that assumption or not. This is a matter which can surely be settled. The question is, why hasn’t it? There is the distinct possibility that the reason this hasn’t settled for the public is that the answer is the uncomfortable one, not the one that nice people in warm rooms wish it might be, not the one that voters would cheer.

The research is out there. It's just that Olson hasn't taken the time to find it. Consider a document that demands a much wider audience, "A Consequentialist Argument against Torture Interrogation of Terrorists. In language both banal and horrifying, Jean Arrigo addresses theories behind torture's efficacy to justify a particular course of action. If torture works, we don't yet have solid evidence to prove it.

Even under the Nazis, torture interrogation failed to break dozens of high state officials and military commanders involved in late-war plots to assassinate Hitler. According to Peter Hoffman’s History of the German Resistance: 1933-1945[27]:

Six months from the start of their investigations the Gestapo still had nothing like precise knowledge of the resistance movement.......This lack of information and knowledge is all the more astounding in that Himmler's men employed every means to extract confessions.... Moreover all forms of torture were used without hesitation....

Hoffman attributes the failure of the Gestapo to the “fortitude of their victims....”

A criminological analysis of 500 British court cases found that police interrogation of defendants contributed little to discovery and conviction. Rather, the study concluded that interrogation fulfilled certain psychological and administrative needs and that “police perceptions of reality dominate the criminal process.”[122]

Torture, Arrigo notes, simply isn't as effective as other methods.

Here I pass over a considerable literature pointing to the greater efficacy of noncoercive interrogation based on social skills: subtlety and finesse of interrogation,[34] sympathy with the subject,[35] appeal to the subject’s self interest,[36] and outright deceit and trickery.[37]...

Arrigo considers the obvious statistical fact that many, if not most, of the subjects will be useless, or worse--innocent.

What proportion of ignorant or innocent suspects are likely to be interrogated under torture? Modern crime statistics indicate that among suspects arrested and charged with serious crimes, one-half to three-quarters are not convicted, depending on the state of jurisdiction.[78] Under the proposed torture interrogation program, a detainee firmly believed to be involved in serious acts of terrorism will likely be tortured. The secrecy and urgency of terrorist cases certainly cannot improve the rate of accuracy over serious criminal convictions, for the counterterrorist program rejects normal judicial safeguards—the right not to testify against oneself, the right to legal counsel, habeas corpus, bail setting, public hearings, and so on. Moreover, in tracking terrorist operations it is customary to interrogate individuals just because they are acquainted with a person who has been detained, not because they are suspected of crimes.[79] So an error rate of one-half to three-quarters of torture interrogees would be a low estimate. For a long historical comparison, examination of court records for 625 cases of torture interrogation in France, from the 1500s through the mid-1700s, showed approximate rates of error—that is, no confession on the rack, under repeated drowning, crushing of joints, and the like—in 67% to 95% of cases, depending on the province.[80]

Arrigo considers the purported urgency that demands torture, and finds that the threat of societal backlash or instability caused by programs of torture is as destructive as the threat of civilian casualties; this, in Arrigo's final estimation, is reason to reconsider torture as an effective means of interrogation.

The moral error in reasoning from in the ticking bomb scenario arises from weighing the harm to the guilty terrorist against the harm to the prospective innocent victims. Instead, the harm to innocent terrorist victims should be weighed against the breakdown of key social institutions and the state-sponsored torture of many innocents. Stated most starkly, the damaging social consequences of a program of torture interrogation evolve from institutional dynamics that are independent of the original moral rationale.

Now, Olson may respond by attacking this evidence, as it is secondary, and perhaps oversimplifies the matter. But the larger point is that the information is accessible, and that these judgments can and must be made in its light. The burden of proof, as it always has, lands squarely on the shoulders of those who would promote, excuse, or rationalize immoral means to a moral end.

while we're talking about torture

Upon reading this distressing NY Times op-ed, Julian Sanchez asks,

So: How many of the folks who howled with outrage that someone might compare our tactics with those of despotic communist regimes will exhibit it in the same measure toward those who made the comparison apt by deciding to model our interrogation tactics on those of despotic communist regimes?

Your thoughts, Mr. Olson?

the ends justify the mean

Mark Olson sees the gray in the torture debate.

The point is that “cruel and unusual” and “torture” are terms which are very much culturally relative. In fact, what is cruel and unusual in the sheltered parts of the US may be ordinary existence in other parts of the world....One does not have to be an advocate of moral relativism to admit that there are cultural norms regarding comfort and how one defines unusual treatment....

This is moral calculus of the lowest common denominator, and a wholesale rejection of the purported moral role of this nation in its war on terror. Apparently "moral clarity" applies to all subjects except torture.

In a comment, Mark writes,

If the practices going on in those facilities is the standard and expected norm in that region and culture but is considered torture here, is it still torture? I don’t know the answer to that.

Change the moral term, and you'll see the amazing shift in perspective. The Bush Doctrine has been to spread freedom and liberty because they are universally good. Imagine Bush opining, "If jailing political dissidents is the standard and expected norm in that region and culture but is considered oppressive here, is it still oppressive?"

Mark also addresses the empirical argument against torture.

It has been also said of “torture” and more specifically using modern psychological techniques some of which involve varying degrees of discomfort never work. That they only can extract what the questioner or interrogator wishes to hear in the first place. This is well documented in modern fiction, but I have seen no references to studies claiming the same in any peer reviewed scientific literature. I think claims and counter-claims on that regard by almost everyone on this topic can be well compared with Medieval science. For neither side has fact or data or any basis in reality. Both are arguing from various principles which may or may not relate to reality. For while it seems certain that many times methods used in questioning of this sort certainly can fall into a trap of only being able extract information that the questioner wishes to divulge, it also seems likely that it might be more effective, e.g., The Quiller Memorandum.

First, there won't be any peer-reviewed studies of torture, given that researchers adhere to stringent ethical codes when dealing with human subjects. Second, as Mark points out in a comment, "...we haven’t done a very good job of understanding and documenting what is going on...." The Bush administration's secrecy regarding the matter, and the necessity of investigations by the ACLU into the treatment of detainees, only compounds our lack of necessary information. Last, the burden of proof is on those who justify torture as a means to an end. After all, if torture is justified by its ends, it'd damned well better work.