Psyche, Science, and Society

Physicians for Human Rights on Military Commissions Act

Physicians for Human Rights has come out with a strong statement on the Torture and Indefinite Detention Authorizatio Act of 2006, a.k.a. the Military Commisions Act:

September 29, 2006

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Nathaniel A. Raymond, Senior Communications Strategist

W)617-301-4232 Cell) 617-413-6407 E) nraymond@phrusa.org web) www.phrusa.org

PHR DECRIES HOUSE AND SENATE PASSAGE OF MILITARY COMMISSIONS ACT; PRESIDENT STILL BOUND BY COMMON ARTICLE 3 AND DETAINEE TREATMENT ACT—PHR VOWS TO HOLD ADMINSTRATION ACCOUNTABLE TO GENEVA CONVENTIONS

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) condemned yesterday’s passage by Congress of the Military Commissions Act, which gives President Bush the power to interpret what constitutes a violation of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. The group called on Congress to ensure that the President is held accountable for his obligation under the Military Commissions Act to uphold Common Article 3, the Detainee Treatment Act, and the War Crimes Act—legal standards that should be read to prohibit the “enhanced interrogation methods” used by the CIA.

“Yesterday Congress abdicated its responsibility to ensure the strongest standard of human rights and constitutional protections for those in US custody,” stated Leonard S. Rubenstein, Executive Director of PHR. “Because of the President’s track record of twisting US and international law to justify the use of abusive and illegal CIA interrogation techniques, Congress must now commit itself to hold the Executive Branch accountable for adhering to the Geneva Conventions and the Detainee Treatment Act.”

PHR expressed grave alarm about the Military Commission’s Act’s authorization of separate and lower legal and detainee treatment standards for the CIA, which undercut the higher protections found in the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Army Field Manual. The Army Field Manual prohibits many of the CIA techniques that have been in use in interrogations of detainees in the War on Terror. Some of these tactics that have not been officially disavowed by the Bush Administration include water-boarding, sensory deprivation, facial and abdominal slapping, shackling prisoners to the floor, induced hypothermia and others [See PHR’s statement on the mental and physical health effects of these tactics: http://www.phrusa.org/research/torture/news_2006-09-26.html].

“Detainee Treatment Act and Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions states that no outrages on personal dignity and no humiliating or degrading treatment of detainees is allowed,” said Rubenstein. “The CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques are still prohibited. Congress must make it explicitly clear to the President that no reading of the law permits the torturing and abuse of people in US custody.”

Another critical area of concern in the Military Commissions Act is the admission of testimony obtained through coercion, said PHR. By allowing coerced testimony, the Military Commissions Act could encourage further abuse of detainees. The Military Commissions Act also denies the right of habeas corpus to detainees. Health professionals and retired senior members of the Armed Forces have both spoken out strongly against the Military Commissions Act because of its implications for the health of detainees, the negative implications for the rule of law, and its potential impact on US service members and citizens.

“The Military Commissions Act is an affront to the values and codes that guide the professional soldier and the health professional,” stated Brig. General Stephen Xenakis, MD (USA-ret), an advisor to PHR and a signatory of the letter opposing the Military Commissions Bill sent to the President from twenty-eight retired senior officers. “The uniformed military and the health professions have been the strongest advocates for unequivocal adherence to the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It is a shame that the Executive Branch and Congress could not follow their wise council and adopt one, all inclusive standard of conduct and detainee trial and treatment for the Armed Forces and the intelligence services,”

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) mobilizes the health professions to advance the health and dignity of all people by protecting human rights. As a founding member of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, PHR shared the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize.

Lets hope that many other organizations will follow PHR as the struggle begins to reverse this massive setback for human rights.

September 29th, 2006

Want rights, vote Republican?

Law Professor Mark Graber, over at the legal analysis Balkinization site, argues that, after today, the Democrats, ever fearful of being cast as weak on terrorism, are likely to be the stronger Party of Torture.:

In light of the recent Democratic performance on the terror bill, might there be good reason for thinking that a future Republican president might be more inclined to protect human rights than a future Democrat. Consider the following logic. A future Republican president considering the appropriate level of human rights is unlikely to be influenced by the Democratic opposition. We know the Democrats will not put up much of a fight if they think the chosen policy does not protect basic rights sufficiently and the Republican is unlikely to have a rights policy Democrats think is insufficiently rights protective. Nor is it likely that any Republican will be too out of step with the Republican majority, even if they support a stronger rights policy than the present incumbent. And it does seem reasonable to think that McCain, maybe even Frist, would be slightly less barbaric than Bush. But think of the dilemmas of future Democratic presidents. If they adopt a stronger rights policy than the present incumbent, they will face sharp GOP attacks. And the fundamental political imperative of Democrats on the war on terrorism has almost always been to neutralize the Republicans so that the election will be decided on other issues (or Republican incompetence, which is not a policy choice). Far better for electoral purposes, the Clintons and Dick Morrises of this world know, to maintain and probably exceed President Bush’s policies. No doubt this is a bit exaggerated, but should there be any doubt in anyone’s mind that a president from the present Democratic Party will err radically on the side of superduper caution before supporting any greater rights for suspected terrorists, that a Republican would probably be more likely to support what their conscience thinks right, however misguided that conscience might be.

One should emphasize that, contrary to some rumors, Democrats have some backbone. Just show a Democrat thinking of running for the presidency a public opinion poll on support for bans on partial birth abortions and you will see backbone like you have never seen in American politics. They would never sacrifice a really fundamental human right merely to gain votes. But politics is politics and, judging from the action of recent Democratic aspirants for the presidency, we all know what they believe is the more fundamental right. If I switch parties now, maybe I can vote in the Republican primary.

The sad thing is, given the performance of the Democrats over the last five years, he just may be right.

September 29th, 2006

The day the darkness descended

The Senate today passed the Torture and Indefinite Detention Authorization Act of 2006. This is black day for the country and for humanity. Several thousand years of attempts to control arbitrary authority and to reduce brutality were thrown overboard. All but one member of the Torture Party voted in favor. Twelve members of the Spineless Party also supported the measure. Others in the Spineless Party made lovely speeches before departing for dinner. As far as I can tell, not one Senator bothered to attempt a filibuster. Freedom wasn’t worth it. After all, if the Spineless Party lies down and lets themselves be run over enough times, they might be granted the keys to the torture chambers one day.

In response, some people say we should vote for more of the Spineless Party. They seem to have a theory that adding on invertebrates will somehow add up to a spine. They neglect to say how this miracle would occur. Of course, if you are in the majority, it’s even more essential to show that you can be “responsible,” that you won’t challenge the Torture Party in any but the most minor of ways.

The country is in such bad shape that I’ll probably root for the Spineless Party, but holding my nose will not be enough to keep out the stench of internal rot.

Glenn Greenwald gives an example of the Profiles in Infamy that occurred today:

Jay Rockefeller (who voted for this bill) is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. When he was defending the amendment he introduced to compel the CIA to disclose to the Senate and House Intelligence Committees information about their interrogation activities, he complained that the White House has concealed all information about the interrogation program and that the Intelligence Committee members (including him) therefore know nothing about it. His amendment to compel reports to Congress was defeated with all Republicans (except Chafee) voting against it. He proceeded to vote for the underlying bill anyway, thereby legalizing a program he admits he knows nothing about (and will continue to know nothing about).

During the debate on his amendment, Arlen Specter said that the bill sends us back 900 years because it denies habeas corpus rights and allows the President to detain people indefinitely. He also said the bill violates core Constitutional protections. Then he voted for it.

He goes on to make clear that the Spineless Party lacks more than a spine. They also lack a brain [and a heart]:

ut it is still difficult to understand the Democrats’ strategy here. They failed to try to mount a filibuster because they feared being attacked as coddlers of the terrorists. But now they voted against the bill in large numbers, thereby ensuring those exact accusations will be made anyway — and made loudly (the White House already started today). Yet they absented themselves the whole time from the debate (until they magically appeared today), spent the last several weeks only tepidly (at most) opposing the President’s position, and thus lost the opportunity to defend and advocate the position they took today in any meaningful way. As a result, the Democrats took a position today (opposition to this bill) which they have not really defended until today.

They make this same mistake over and over. Isn’t this exactly what happened when they sort-of-supported-but-sort-of-opposed the Iraq war resolution in 2002 because they were afraid of being depicted as soft on terrorism, only to then be successfully depicted as soft on terrorism because they were too afraid to forcefully defend their position? It’s true that fewer Democrats voted for the President’s policy this time around, but it’s equally true that they found their voice only on the last day of the debate — on the day of the vote — after disappearing for weeks while they let John McCain “debate” for them.

To be fair, unlike me, Greenwald sees a silver lining:

Nonetheless, it is fair to say, given how lopsided this vote was (both in the House and the Senate), that the Republicans are the party of torture, indefinite and unreviewable detention powers, and limitless presidential power, even over U.S. citizens on U.S. soil. By contrast, Democrats have opposed these tyrannical, un-American and truly dangerous measures. Even if Democrats didn’t oppose them as vociferously as they could have and should have, this is still a meaningful and, at this point, critically important contrast.

Unfortunately, I think he’s grasping at straws, straws which have already broken into a multitude of nearly invisible pieces.

In any case, September 28, 2006 will go down as the day that the abolishment of freedom began and the torture descended on what was once a noble experiment.

September 28th, 2006

American Psychological Association condemns the Torture Legalization Act of 2006

Heaven knows, I’m criticized the American Psychological Association enough over their providing cover for psychologists’ participation in coercive interrogations. But today the APA has doen something comendable. They’ve joined Physicians for Human Rights and others to come out against the Torture Legalization Act of 2006 [aka McCain-Graham-Warner cowards' "compromise"], passed in the House and currently being debated in the Senate. They have posted a page on the APA web site telling members to Call Your Senators Today: Tell Them to Vote “NO” on the Compromise Military Commissions Bill.

There is still the possibility of a fillibuster. As the New York Times editorialized today:

[T]he Democratic leadership in the Senate seems to have misplaced its spine. If there was ever a moment for a filibuster, this was it.

We don’t blame the Democrats for being frightened. The Republicans have made it clear that they’ll use any opportunity to brand anyone who votes against this bill as a terrorist enabler. But Americans of the future won’t remember the pragmatic arguments for caving in to the administration.

They’ll know that in 2006, Congress passed a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy, our generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts.

So do as APA says and call! Now! And again!

Update:/b> Revere at Effect Measure echos my sentiments:

September 28th, 2006

Grandmother fasting for peace

Grandmother Patricia Brooks has been fasting against the war for 15 days. She says she’ll continue until there’s a groundswell of protest that can’t be ignored. She’s willing to fast until death, if necessary. What are you willing to do?

September 28th, 2006

Majority supports torture, religion increases support

As we ponder the spectacle of America legaizing torture, some wonder why the religious community doesn’t come out gung ho against torture. Well, a survey by the Pew Research Center last October [and reported in the National Catholic Reporter in March] gives a hint. It seems that the majoity of Americans (63%) support torture in some cases. Further, Secular people have the lowest rate of support (51%), followed by White Protestants (65%) [with no real differences between Evangelical and Protestants as a whole], and Catholics with the highest rate of support (72%). Here is the detailed table:

Survey by Pew Research Center for the People & the Press Oct. 12-24, 2005; nationwide survey conducted among 2,006 adults Do you think the use of torture against suspected terrorists in order to gain important information can often be justified, sometimes be justified, rarely be justified, or never be justified? Total public Total Catholic Often Sometimes Rarely Never Don’t know/refused 15% 31% 17% 32% 5% 21% 35% 16% 26% 4% White Protestant White evangelical Often Sometimes Rarely Never Don’t know/refused 15% 34% 16% 31% 4% 13% 36% 16% 31% 4% Secular Often Sometimes Rarely Never Don’t know/refused 10% 25% 16% 41% 4%

One might hypothesize from these data that religion fosters barbarism and that Secualism fosters humanism. Of course, a psychoanalyst might wonder if religion, rather, was a defense against one’s barbarous tendencies. If so, the people attracted to religion may have more brutal impulses evan than are here suggested.

Another possibility is that religious people are more likely to trust authority, such that they believe the authorities know what they are doing when they torture. If this view is true, one might conclude that religion is antithetical to democracy.

At a minimum, the survey certainly gives us no reason to believe that the world would be a better place if people were more religious. But, given the state of the world, I can’t imagine anyone seriously arguing that, anyway. Can you?

[Thanks to Richard Cranium at Daily Kos for pointing to this and to Valtin for calling my attention to it.]

September 27th, 2006

Olbermann on Clinton, Bush, and 9/11

While I’m not a fanny of Bill Clinton, the wasted Presidency, I did enjoy his slap-down of Chris Wallace. And I love Keith Olbermann’s commentary on it:

1 comment September 26th, 2006

Physicians for Human Rights calls for rejecting military commissions bill

Physicians for Human Rights has taken a clear stand againxst the “compromise” bill in Congress because, as we have said many times, it would authorize torture:

September 26, 2006

CONTACT: Nathaniel Raymond, Senior Communications Strategist

W) 617-301-4232 M) 617-413-6407 E)nraymond@phrusa.org Web) www.phrusa.org

PHR CALLS ON CONGRESS TO VOTE AGAINST MILITARY COMMISSIONS BILL;

INTERROGATION TACTICS THAT COULD BE AUTHORIZED CAUSE SEVERE SHORT AND LONG-TERM MENTAL AND PHYSICAL HARM

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) today urged all members of Congress to vote against the Military Commissions Bill this week. PHR is gravely concerned that the bill allows coerced testimony to be admitted in trials, eliminates the right of habeas corpus and could authorize the continued use of tactics that amount to torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

“This ‘compromise’ bill hands the President, who has repeatedly authorized abusive and illegal interrogation tactics, the power to reinterpret Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions,” stated Leonard Rubenstein, Executive Director of PHR. “If passed, much of the abuse of the past five years, particularly the CIA’s so-called ‘enhanced interrogation methods,’ could be interpreted by the President to be officially sanctioned, with immunity granted for these violations of US and international law, even retroactively.”

Additionally troubling is the fact that passage of the bill would result in two standards of conduct for US personnel—one generally strict set of guidelines for the armed forces that lists prohibited techniques and another, dangerously permissive standard for the intelligence services, the group said. The Army Field Manual released this month adheres to the Geneva Conventions and the basic guidelines of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, banning many of the techniques that the President seeks approval for the CIA and other intelligence services to continue to use.

“As a practicing doctor, former soldier, and active citizen, I cannot support this bill,” stated Brigadier General Stephen N. Xenakis, MD (USA-Ret.), an advisor to PHR. “My responsibility to protect the health of all people, the security of this nation, and America’s institutions is antithetical to a bill whose main aim is to legalize tactics that are against the spirit and the letter of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the Hippocratic Oath and US law.”

PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PHYSICAL IMPACT OF CERTAIN CIA INTERROGATION TACTICS

The group singled out tactics that may be interpreted by the Administration to be permitted if the bill passes in its current form, highlighting some of the short and long-term mental and physical damage that these techniques have been known to cause. PHR pointed out that while the language of the bill can and should be read to prohibit certain techniques that lead to suffering and harm, it lacks the clarity needed to assure that the Administration would not undermine other restrictions on draconian interrogation techniques, as it has done in the past.

“The most common adverse consequence of the infliction of physical pain or fear in an adversarial interrogation setting is prolonged psychological injury,” explained Dr. Scott Allen, MD, a physician with experience in correctional medicine and a Medicine as a Profession Fellow with PHR. “This ‘non-transitory’ harm can include major depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and personality change.”

Interrogation techniques that the Military Commissions Bill could be interpreted to allow include, but are not limited to, the following tactics, which have been attributed to the CIA in media reports:

1. Water Boarding is when a prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner’s face and water is poured over him. This tactic simulates drowning. Water boarding creates the sensation of imminent death by drowning. Survivors of death threats suffer high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. Despite the “simulated” drowning, hypoxia can and probably does occur. At the same time, a dramatic physiologic stress response, with tachycardia, hyperventilation and labored breathing is almost unavoidable. The combined psychiatric and physiologic stress resulting from this technique could induce cardiac ischemia and other cardiac issues in vulnerable individuals, and even brief hypoxia can cause neurological damage.

2. Prolonged Sleep Deprivation results in a number of deleterious psychological effects, most prominent among them being cognitive impairment. Cognitive impairments include memory, learning, logical reasoning, complex verbal processing, and decision-making. Sleep restriction can also result in hypertension, cardiovascular disease, a decrease in immune function, altered glucose tolerance and insulin resistance.

3. The cold cell/induced hypothermia (dangerously low body temperature): The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water. Hypothermia can cause reduced psychological function and mental capacity; loss of muscle function, harm to the cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, respiratory, and nervous, systems; and even death.

4. Shaking: The interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt front of the prisoner and shakes him. Shaking a prisoner has been outlawed by Israel’s Supreme Court. Shaking can result in trauma to the brain through an acceleration-deceleration mechanism. Consequences may include intracranial hemorrhage, potentially leading to increased intracranial pressure and herniation, a potentially fatal complication. Some brain trauma from shaking can potentially result in more subtle but clinically significant cognitive impairment.

5. Striking/slapping: While a slap diffuses the force a blow over a greater area than a closed-fist punch, a slap nevertheless causes blunt force trauma. Depending on where applied to the body, the resulting injury can be significant. Slaps delivered to vulnerable areas of the face including nose, eyes or mouth can result in soft tissue injury, bruising and laceration. Facial bones may also be fractured. A slap to the face also creates a torsion force that may result in neck injury. A slap to the abdomen can cause soft tissue injury, and even rib fracture. Internal organ damage includes such serious injuries as the rupture of the spleen.

6. Prolonged standing: According to media reports, prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. Prolonged standing is associated with venous thrombotic phenomenon such as deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism. Thrombo-embolic sequelae can be both acute and chronic. In addition, prolonged standing carries the risk of fainting, which can result in significant blunt force trauma including head injury, fractures and other soft tissue injury.

7. Threats of harm and mock execution: These tactics, like water-boarding, are based on threats of death or severe harm. Mock execution and other threats of harm to the subject, or to the subject’s family and loved ones, have been clinically found to cause the highest rates of depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and personality change.

This month, when releasing the revised Army Field Manual, Deputy Army Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Lt. General John (Jeff) Kimmons, stated that no actionable intelligence had been obtained through abusive interrogation methods. At the press conference, Kimmons said the following:

“No good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices. I think history tells us that. I think the empirical evidence of the last five years, hard years, tells us that. And, moreover, any piece of intelligence which is obtained under duress, through the use of abusive techniques, would be of questionable credibility, and additionally it would do more harm than good when it inevitably became known that abusive practices were used. And we can’t afford to go there. Some of our most significant successes on the battlefield have been—in fact, I would say all of them, almost categorically all of them, have accrued from expert interrogators using mixtures of authorized humane interrogation practices.”

For more information, see:
PHR‘s report: Break Them Down: Systematic Use of Psychological Torture by US Forces

I’m glad someone is forecwefully calling a spade a spade.

1 comment September 26th, 2006

Porter on Iran as savior of US

Gareth Porter has a new piece [Iraq Occupation Depends on Sadr -- and Iran] in which he argues that Iran is the savior of the US in Iraq. Porter, a historian, argues that al-Sadr’s forces are much stronger than in the past. He even cites figures of 200,000 for the Mehdi Army! According to Porter, Iran acts as a restraining force on the Mehdi Army, preferring to keep its enemy, the United States, tied down in Iraq rather than free to confront Iran with its full military might.

But the main threat to the occupation comes not from the Sunni insurgents but from the militant Iraqi Shiite forces aligned with Iran, led by Moqtada al Sadr’s Mahdi Army. The armed Shiite militias are now powerful enough to make it impossible for the U.S.. occupation to continue.

Gone are the days when the U.S. military could be so cavalier about Sadr’s forces that it deliberately provoked a major military confrontation with him in Najaf in April 2004. That was when he was believed to have 10,000 poorly-trained troops.

Since then, U.S. officials have avoided giving any estimate of the Mahdi Army’s strength. But according to a report published last month by London’s Chatham House, which undoubtedly reflected the views of British intelligence in Iraq, the Mahdi Army may now be “several hundred thousand strong”. Even if that estimate vastly overstates his troop strength, it reflects the sense that he has the strongest political-military force in the country — because of the loyalty that so many Shiites have to him.

The Mahdi Army controls Sadr City, the massive Shiite slum in eastern Baghdad that holds half the capital’s population. But even more important, perhaps, it holds sway in the heavily Shiite southern provinces, and as Sadr knows well, that gives him a strategic position from which to bring the U.S. military to a standstill.

Patrick Lang, former head of human intelligence collection and Middle East intelligence at the Defence Intelligence Agency, explained why in an important analysis in the Christian Science Monitor July 21: U.S. troops must be supplied by convoys of trucks that go across hundreds of miles of roads through this Shiite heartland, and the Mahdi Army and its allies in the south could turn those supply routes into a “shooting gallery”.

Lang notes the supply trucks are driven by South Asian or Turkish civilians who would immediately quit. And even if the U.S. military used its own troops to protect the routes, they would vulnerable to ambushes. “A long, linear target such as a convoy of trucks is very hard to defend against irregulars operating in and around their own towns,” he wrote.

It would not require a complete cutoff of supplies to make the U.S. position untenable. A significant reduction in those supplies would begin a “downward spiral”, according to Lang.

Alas, the US has a savior, for the moment:

If Sadr and his followers are already preparing for a showdown with the U.S. occupation forces, the only factor that appears to be restraining the Mahdi army now is Iran. After all, Tehran’s interest lies not in forcing an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces, but in keeping them in Iraq as virtual hostages. The potential threat to U.S. forces in Iraq in retaliation for an attack on Iran is probably Tehran’s most effective deterrent to such an attack.

An article well worth reading in full.

September 26th, 2006

The ticking time bomb, or the torturers’ folly

Journalists and commentators are obsessed with the “ticking time bomb” justification of torture. I heard Ariel Dorfman assaulted with it on an NPR talk show today. The interviewer [I don't recall who it was] combined the Dukakis attack with the traditional ticking time bomb” question: if someone kidnapped his daughter and was going to harm her, would Dorfman torture the man to find out where the daughter was. The interviewer kept on hammering at Dorfman with this unlikely scenario, as if her life depended on justifying torture. Unfortunately, I don’t think Dorfman did that well with the question.

Well, now Alfred McCoy, in The Myth of the Ticking Time Bomb directly tackles this silly question. He shows how it is built on improbable assumptions: that investigators catch a terrorist and know exactly what the terrorist knows, except for that one tiny piece of information they have to torture out of him; that torture would, in fact, get that information; and that the interrogators would recognize truthful information if the torture did succeed.

He then discusses the reasons for such an ineffective technique as torture, one which has the “side effect” of radically increasing opposition to the rule of the torturers:

These dismal conclusions lead to a last, uncomfortable question: If torture produces limited gains at such high political cost, why does any rational American leader condone interrogation practices “tantamount to torture”?
One answer to this question seems to lie with a prescient CIA Cold War observation about Soviet leaders in times of stress. “When feelings of insecurity develop within those holding power,” reads an agency analysis of Kremlin leadership applicable to the post-9/11 White House, “they become increasingly suspicious and put great pressures upon the secret police to obtain arrests and confessions. At such times, police officials are inclined to condone anything which produces a speedy ‘confession,’ and brutality may become widespread.” In sum, the powerful often turn to torture in times of crisis, not because it works but because it salves their fears and insecurities with the psychic balm of empowerment.

Further, torture frequently doesn’t stop there. What, after all, is to be done with the evidence, all those broken bodies connected to mouths that might talk?

As we slide down the slippery slope to torture in general, we should also realize that there is a chasm at the bottom called extrajudicial execution. With the agency’s multinational gulag full of dozens, even hundreds, of detainees of dwindling utility, CIA agents, active and retired, have been vocal in their complaints about the costs and inconvenience of limitless, even lifetime, incarceration for these tortured terrorists. The ideal solution to this conundrum from an agency perspective is pump and dump, as in Vietnam—pump the terrorists for information, and then dump the bodies. After all, the systematic French torture of thousands from the Casbah of Algiers in 1957 also entailed more than 3,000 “summary executions” as “an inseparable part” of this campaign, largely, as one French general put it, to ensure that “the machine of justice” not be “clogged with cases.” For similar reasons, the CIA’s Phoenix program produced, by the agency’s own count, over 20,000 extrajudicial killings.

Of course, another strategy may be to keep them locked away forever, in a Southern concentration camp, where escape is impossible and the law does not reach. Hence the need for Guantanamo forever.

September 25th, 2006