Missing from the Debate on Torture

Everyone is now talking about the torture policy of the Bush Administration. But there are a few points missing from the discussion that I think are important.

Justification: Cheney has tried to justify torture by saying it was necessary to prevent another 9/11. But America may have lost more lives as a result of torture than as a result of 9/11. It appears that many of these torture interrogations were focused, not on stopping attacks, but on justifying an invasion of Iraq. For example, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi was tortured by US and Egyptian agents in 2002. Al-Libi told his interrogators that Iraq was training Al Qaeda how to use explosives and chemical weapons. Bush used this "intelligence" as a major part of his evidence against Saddam Hussein. In 2004 Al-Libi said he had simply told interrogators what they wanted to hear in order to escape the pain of torture. So the "evidence" obtained by torture was used to mislead us into a war that resulted in the loss of over 4200 American lives.

High Value Targets: The investigations are focusing on the torture of a handful of Al Qaeda leaders. But hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people were tortured in prisons around the world, many of them in secret locations. Many of these prisoners had little or nothing to do with Al Qaeda. Maher Arar, for example, was kidnapped by the CIA and tortured for a year in Syria because he worked at a software company with someone whose brother was once associated with Al Qaeda. Khalid El-Masri was kidnapped and tortured for five months because his name is similar to Khalid Al-Masri, a known Al Qaeda operative. Oops. Remember the famous photo of the guy with the pointy hood and the electrical wires attached to his genitals. His name is Satar Jabar and he was accused of carjacking. Many innocent people were turned in by bounty hunters eager to collect the fortune offered by the US military. These folks ended up at Gitmo, Abu Graib and other prisons and were tortured along with the enemy combatants.

Safe and Sane Torture: The clinical language used in the torture memos make the techniques sound a bit tame. But the torture itself was not carried out by lawyers. It was carried out by strong men in dark prisons. These were violent acts. The ACLU has documented dozens of cases where prisoners died of blunt force trauma, strangulation and other injuries sustained while in custody. Many prisoners are simply missing.

So when you hear a discussion of Abu Zubaydah being waterboarded 83 times, remember that this is just the tip of the iceberg. Bush and Cheney presided over a nightmarish campaign of kidnapping and torture that is staggering in scope. We must investigate this matter fully then prosecute any high level officials that committed these crimes.