[Stuff, New Zealand]
Liberation, France
How Brave Americans Were Turned Into Torturers
"What
explains the ease with which people working on behalf of the government of the
United States were able to accept the practice of torture on their prisoners? If
we want to understand why these brave Americans so readily agreed to become
torturers, we hardly need to look to a hatred or ancestral fear of Muslims and
Arabs."
By Tzvetan Todorov*
Translated By
McKenzie Zeiss
May 6, 2009
France - Liberation - Original Article
(French)
Memos made public by the
Obama Administration on April 16 relating to the practice of torture in prisons
run by the CIA shed new light on one question: What explains the ease with
which people working on behalf of the government of the United States were able
to accept the practice of torture on their prisoners? The fact of this torture was
already well known, but the new documents carry a great deal of information on
the manner in which the torture sessions were conducted and perceived by their
agents. What is most striking is the discovery of incredibly nit-picking rules,
formulated in the manuals of the CIA and followed by the responsible legal
officials in government. One would imagine that up to that point, the practice
of torture concerned what might be called blunders, the inadvertent exceeding of
the norm provoked by the urgency of the moment. We can see from the documents that,
to the contrary, it was a question of procedures set down to the minutest
detail, to the centimeter and nearly to the second.
Thus, the forms of torture
number ten, which then rise to thirteen. They are divided into three
categories: conditioning techniques (nudity, dietary manipulation, sleep deprivation), corrective techniques (beating), and
coercive techniques (dousing in water, cramped confinement and waterboarding). For face slaps, the interrogator must strike
with the fingers apart, at an equal distance between the chin and the bottom of
the earlobe.
The dousing in water of a
prisoner cannot last more than twenty minutes if the water is at 41 degrees Fahrenheit,
forty minutes if it is 50 degrees, and up to sixty minutes if it's 59 degrees. Sleep
deprivation must not last more than 180 hours, but, after a rest of eight
hours, it can recommence.
Waterboarding can last up to twelve seconds and no more than two
hours a day for thirty consecutive days (one tough prisoner suffered this ordeal
183 times in March 2003). Confinement in a small box mustn't last longer than
twelve hours, but if the box permits the prisoner to stand upright, it could last
as long as eight hours at a stretch, eighteen hours a day.
We have also learned what the
training of the torturers consisted of. Much of the torture was copied from a
program that American soldiers follow when preparing to confront extreme
situations (this permits the responsible officials to conclude that these tests
are perfectly acceptable). More importantly, the torturers themselves were
chosen from those who have had “a prolonged training experience" [a translated
quote] in these extreme tests, in other words: the torturers had been tortured
themselves. Following that, an intensive four-week training program sufficed to
prepare them for their new work.
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
The torturers’ indispensable
partners were the government's legal advisers, who were there to ensure the impunity
of their judicial colleagues. This, too, is a novelty: torture is no longer
represented as a breach of common norms, which is regrettable but excusable, but
is a legal norm itself. To accomplish this, the lawyers resorted to another
series of techniques. To escape the law, it was necessary to conduct the
interrogations outside the United States, although only at American bases. For the
same reasons, they suggest to the torturers that they deny any intent to cause
suffering. Thus, slaps were not administered to produce pain, but to provoke
surprise and humiliation. Confinement in a box was not meant to result to
sensory disorder, but to give the prisoner a feeling of discomfort! The practitioner
must always insist on his “good faith,” his “honest belief” and his reasonable assumptions.
Thus the use of euphemisms like “enhanced techniques” for
torture, and “expert interrogator” for torturer. It was also necessary
to avoid leaving physical traces of distress, and for this reason mental
destruction was preferable to physical damage; any visual evidence of the
sessions would be destroyed after the fact.
Several other professional groups
are implicated in the practice of torture: the contagion spreads well beyond the
limited circle of torturers. Apart from providing legal legitimacy for their
actions, repeated reference is made to psychologists, psychiatrists, doctors
(obligatorily present during every session), women (the torturers were men, but
degradation in front of women aggravated the humiliation), and university
professors who provided moral justifications - legal or philosophical.
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
SEE ALSO ON THIS:
NRC Handlesblad, The Netherlands:
Torture Has No Place in 'Shining City on a Hill'
Le Temps, Switzerland:
Doing Evil in the Name of the Good
Izvestia, Russia:
U.S. and Torture: For Mr. Obama, It's 'Hard to Be Gorby'
Publico, Spain:
Torture Charges Filed Against Bush Legal Team; Judge Garzon Handles Case
Hurriyet, Turkey:
Dick Cheney's Torture Logic is 'Deeply Offensive'
Die Tageszeitung, Germany:
America and Torture: 'Just Following Orders'
Financial Times Deutschland, Germany:
Obama: Inviting the Next Torture Scandal
Jornal de Noticias, Portugal:
Poverty and Torture: Bush Has Company in Europe
Le Monde, France:
'Fussy' Rights Groups 'Wrong' to Be Impatient with Obama
Le Figaro, France:
Obama's Moral Crusade: A Few Words of Caution
The Independent, U.K.:
America Doesn't Need a Witch-Hunt
BBC News, U.K.:
U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture Calls CIA Exemption 'Illegal'
Ottawa Citizen, Canada:
Torture the 'Chicago Way'
Toronto Star, Canada:
Winking at CIA Abuse
Who, today, should be held
responsible for these perversions of the law and of the most elementary moral
principles? The voluntary performers of torture less than the legal officials
who justified and encouraged them, and these less than
the policy-makers who demanded that they do so. Friendly foreign governments, particularly
European ones, also carry their share of responsibility: while they were always
in the know about these practices and benefited from the information obtained
in this way, they never raised the slightest objection or signaled their
disapproval. In a democracy, the condemnation of politicians consists of
depriving them of power - in not re-electing them. As for the other
professionals, one would expect them to be punished by their peers, for who
would want to be a student of such a teacher; a person on trial before such a
judge; or a patient of such a doctor?
If we want to understand why
these brave Americans so readily agreed to become torturers, we hardly need to
look to a hatred or ancestral fear of Muslims and Arabs. No, the situation is far
more serious. The lesson of these revelations is that any man, if the situation
is carefully framed and in obedience to noble principles dictated by the “sense
of duty,” by the need to “defend his country,” or moved by the elementary fear
for the lives and well-being of his own family, can become a torturer.
*Tzvetan
Todorov is honorary director of research at the National
Center for Scientific Research, a historian and an essayist
CLICK HERE FOR FRENCH VERSION
[Posted by WORLDMEETS.US May 7, 7:58pm]
