The CIA And Its Torture Record

Where Does The Buck Stop With Torture? 

It's always bothered me that the Abu Ghraib prison mess ended up with Lynndie England going to prison and the CIA handlers of the torture got away scot free. If you can't remember, Lynndie England was the poor sod left holding the leash in the photo of some Iraqi prisoner being tortured in Abu Ghraib prison. The way the trial concluded, it essentially placed all the culpability on a PFC with  less than average intelligence. As if it was all her idea.

The hypocrisy of the US Army and government satisfying itself with this outcome and shoving the whole issue under the carpet was one of the horrible little spectacles of the 2000s. Now we're finding out that the US government is atlas willing to form a commission to say the truth - that the CIA regularly tortured people, that the torture did not yield significant information and people responsible for these crimes against humanity have essentially walked free. Rank Hath Its Privileges and all that operating from top to bottom, which dovetails with the way PFC England's trial went.

Even the legal loophole that placed the Guantanamo Bay prisoners out of reach of US civilian courts, or the way 'renditions' were carried out so that the torture took place on foreign soil where torture was accepted indicates a a kind of ethical vacuum where hypocrisy played fast and loose papered over scrutiny and objection. Even now, republican politicians are saying the 'enhanced interrogations' were fruitful and necessary, and that the report is 'hooey'. Is 'hooey' even a proper refutation of anything?

"I declare your augment 'hooey'"
"Well good sir, I guess you got me a good one. Your call of 'hooey' renders all the facts and evidence presented before us meaningless now."
I don't think so Dick.

In light of all that, it's refreshing to see people want those in the highest offices be held accountable for those acts. It would be hard to see the likes of GW Bush, Dick Cheney, Condy Rice and Donald Rumsfeld brought to account for their part in this horrifying chapter in the War Against Terror. The problem is that it is aways so hard to wage a War Against Error. If there were any justice in any of this, the Bush Administration cabal of politicians would land in the dock for their part in presiding over this stuff. The cynic in me doubts it would happen. President Obama is speaking in a neutral tone trying to douse that flame. I guess he's got drone strikes on his record to worry about.

The Euphemisms Suck

Speaking of which... 'Enhanced Interrogation' is one of these euphemisms that make you wonder how much people are willing to screw with words in order to hide meaning. Calling torture 'Enhanced Interrogation' is like describing rape as 'Enhanced Seduction'. The impulse to substitute Latinate words over old Anglo-Saxon ones goes a long way towards making things sound more official and legitimate.

They do this in Asia too, whereby if you want something to sound more official, you dig up ever more obscure Chinese characters to describe things. So it's not a phenomenon unique to English. As a writer of some experience, it's easy to spot that the same trick is being used exactly to enhance authority and enhance legitimacy on something that is at its deepest core dodgy and suspect.

David Hicks Rears His Ugly Head

It didn't take long before the Guantanamo Bay returnee piped up and made himself visible as the victim of torture at Gitmo. After all these years I still find it difficult to be sympathetic, but I do take his point that if they wanted to know if people got tortured by the CIA, they need not have looked too much further than the inmates at Guantanamo Bay base. I didn't believe him when he said he was an accidental bystander, but I did believe him when he said they tortured him and others down in Gitmo.

I've been pondering from where this belief came, and I have to say it seemed obvious that the US Marines might not take too kindly to enemy captives who were suspected terrorists, in the wake of 9/11. It seemed far more unbelievable that such captives wouldn't be tortured in Gitmo. I would even posit and say the least surprising thing is to find confirmation that the CIA used renditions to torture prisoners in third-party nations, during the years straight after 9/11.

All the same I have mixed emotions about David Hicks turning up to confront the world with his experience of torture. Yes torture is bad and never justified, so I'm not going to say he deserved the torture he got but there's still a cloud over how and why Hicks ended up in a war zone with the Taliban to begin with. Most of us who witnessed the Twin Towers come down that day still went to work and we did our thing, discharged our duties and lived proper civilised lives. He - feeling inspired - went to fight with the Taliban (a fact he has tried to downplay since his return).

The disquiet I've always felt with David Hicks is that he won't come clean about that bit, so it's really hard for me to give him a whole lot of moral high ground just because he got captured, sent to Guantanamo Bay and got tortured. Sure torture is a terrible thing and it sucks that it happened to him. Be that as it may, there's a very good reason the vast majority of humanity didn't end up in Camp X-Ray with him - what ever it was that he did that led him to Gitmo, it was an asshole thing to do; and I am a cynic, doing my best not to get fooled again.