Will next president ban torture?
Published Tuesday October 28th, 2008
It's only one week until Americans choose their next president, but whether McCainmania or Obamarama takes the day, there's one thing that we all should hope will come about shortly thereafter: the end of the American torture state.
It's hard to believe that a country which prided itself so much on freedoms and rights could have degenerated on such a fundamental question. Prior to 9/11, talk about whether torturing suspected terrorists was morally justified might have been limited to the backrooms of the Pentagon or Fort Bragg. In the years immediate following, there was much pubic discussion about whether or not torturing suspected terrorists was acceptable, and even prime-time television (think 24 or Lost) featured scenes of sympathetic heroes torturing bad guys for information. At Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and other places, there was more than just discussion.
When I use the term "suspected terrorist," please note that it includes real terrorists, insurgents, and anyone else the U.S. Forces happened to pick up in their Iraqi misadventure. Early in the war, as reported by Gwynne Dyer and plenty of others, young - sometimes teenaged - American soldiers with lots of high tech gear and not much local knowledge were making reports on fresh detainees to the effect of "went to the home of suspected insurgent, he wasn't there, neighbour came out to see what was going on, so we picked him up instead." It was Keystone Cops meets HALO, and tragedy or travesty depending which side of the bars you ended up on.
The use of torture by American officials has been well documented, though the term "enhanced interrogation techniques" is usually preferred to "torture." Donald Rumsfeld himself signed off on techniques that clearly violated both the Geneva Convention and the UN Convention against Torture, such as use of stress positions, removal of clothing, sensory deprivation, and inducing stress through phobias, such as guard dogs. The depravity inflicted by military police on prisoners at Abu Ghraib wasn't far beyond the pale set by their superiors.
Waterboarding is another "enhanced interrogation technique" in which an individual is hooded and strapped to a board, head lowered, and water poured into his mouth and nose. This technique was first used by the Spanish Inquisition. Christopher Hitchens, a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and all round polemicist, was challenged by editor Graydon Carter to experience waterboarding firsthand. The resulting article, entitled "Believe me, it's torture," should quell any doubts people have about the justifiable use of this torture.
Well, that's America, and they've been torturing people by proxy since at least the mid 1980s, when the CIA trained and supported Contras in Nicaragua. What's this have to do with us in Canada? Well, "suspected terrorist" would also include such individuals as Canadian engineer Maher Arar, who, despite not even being linked to terrorism, spent more than year being tortured in a Syrian prison. Arar was arrested in the United States as a terrorist suspect, denied counsel, and after being interrogated by American officials, deported to Syria for further interrogation. This is what was referred to as "extraordinary rendition." Arar has noted that the questions his Syrian interrogators asked were identical to those asked by his American interrogators.
If Will Ferguson were to issue a new edition of his wonderful work Why I Hate Canadians, he would need to add a chapter on our complicity in the American torture network. Stephen Harper and Giuliano Zaccardelli, then commissioner of the RCMP, apologized for the role Canadian officials played in providing American officials with inaccurate information about Arar. Harper accompanied his apology with $10 million in compensation, and Zaccardelli eventually resigned because of inconsistencies in his statements. Arar's lawsuits in the United States have been dismissed on the grounds they might affect national security. Since then, three more Canadian men have been identified as suffering torture in Syria.
Many of the techniques Rumsfeld and others condone, such as sensory deprivation, were first experimented with in Canada on Canadian civilians. The CIA funded mind-control experiments on unwitting patients in Montreal in the 1960s. They couldn't brainwash anyone, but they could destroy their minds, and data gleaned from this "research" ended up in CIA manuals.
The "ends justifies the means" people should be disheartened by the lack of actionable information obtained despite the misery and permanent physical and psychological damage inflicted on so many people, innocent and guilty. It seems absurd that American military police reservists would be conducting ineffective "enhanced interrogations" in Cuba while experienced interrogators, for example homicide detectives, were a short flight away in Florida.
Hopefully either John McCain, himself a torture victim, or Barack Obama will lead their nation away from this dark period in their history.
Peter T. Smith is a teacher and writer who lives in Hampton. He can be reached by e-mail at ptsmith_tj@hotmail.com. His column appears on Tuesday.
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