In Case You Still Thought Torture Worked

Though I believe that the most important debate surrounding the US torture program is the moral one, the fact remains that torture simply doesn't work. The Scientific American reports today that yet another study has come out proving that torture is counterproductive to the acquisition of meaningful information.

To quote the Scientific American article:

Proponents claim that waterboarding's effective because prisoners will tell the truth to make the interrogation stop. But O’Mara says that’s not supported by scientific evidence. Harsh interrogation doesn’t motivate prisoners to tell the truth. It motivates them to talk. Because while they’re talking they’re not being waterboarded. But that doesn’t mean that what they say is true.

What’s more, prolonged extreme stress impairs memory retrieval. American Special Ops soldiers have been shown to have trouble recalling things they’d learned before being subjected to food- or sleep-deprivation as part of their training. That’s because stress hormones can compromise brain activity, especially in regions involved in memory.

The real bombshell here is that torture in not merely inneffective but that it actually impairs memory. Despite this and many, many, concurring studies, we still get lots of opinion makers leaving us such intellectual treatises as this beauty of an editorial. Remind me exactly why torture is worth the damage to our moral fiber and international reputation?

You can read the Scientific American article or listen to a podcast of it here.

UPDATE:

Rachel Maddow covers the story in the first half of this segment:

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Obama Admin. contends that Bagram Detainees have no rights

Even as the Obama administration makes platitudes about closing Guantanamo and ending the US torture program, the DOJ filed a brief on September 14th asserting that, unlike Guantanamo detainees, prisoners in Afghanistan's Bagram air base have no rights whatsoever. Nada, zip.

The briefing appears to depend on a very narrow reading of the US Supreme Court ruling in Boumediene v. Bush which firmly established habeas corpus rights for Guantanamo detainees. The ACLU says in their statement that the DOJ has missed the entire point of the Boumediene ruling, and that it obviously upheld judicial review in all cases of detention.

This filing on the part of the Obama administration is deeply disappointing. What good is phasing out Guantanamo if, as the ACLU purports, the federal government can just send the detainees to Bagram instead, where they will have even less rights. Though the Obama administration is starting to give Bagram prisoners avenues to challenge their detentions, the prisoners' lack of habeas corpus rights is morally reprehensible.

For further reading see this ABC News Blog article.

The Ali Soufan Testimonial and the Truth About The Effectifeveness of Torture

This video of former FBI Interrogator Ali Soufan's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee should be required viewing for understanding the torture debate:



Ali Soufan makes two key points:

1. Key information was gleaned from Abu Zubaydah using professional and unquestionably legal FBI techniques. Once torture began, no more useful information was received.

2. The "smoking gun" argument is bogus. Torture (and especially sleep deprivation) takes time. Soufan received untarnished information from Zubaydah in the first hour using his techniques.

With this testimonial, the vast majority of the torture apologist / Dick Cheney argument is dismantled. No smoking gun can wait 180 hours for a sleep deprivation stage. The argument that torture's immorality was overshadowed by its effectiveness is shattered when its use directly caused the end of the information flow.

None of these facts can stop Cheney's fact-free media circuit, but with any luck he will begin to be challenged for his irreverence for the facts of torture's proven ineffectiveness.

Spain is Prosecuting the Bush Torture Lawyers!

Spain is going to go ahead with its exhaustive prosecution of the Bush lawyers (including Alberto Gonzales!) who constructed the argument for torture:

Spain to proceed with torture prosecution of Bush lawyers: Report

While this is unlikely to have the sway that Holder's special investigator will have in what actually happens to these men, this investigation will actually examine the legality of the entire program. The Holder investigation will only look at instances where interrogators overstepped the already outrageous bounds of the Bibey and Yoo memos.

Torture Focus

This semester I will be refocusing this blog on the torture debate in the United States. The largest reason why I am doing this is my upcoming Religious Studies course, "Religion and Politics". I plan to look specifically at Cheney, the "Bush Legacy Contract", and of course how the Obama administration defines the torture debate for themselves.

These are exciting times for the fate of human dignity, so please stay tuned!

Best,
Isaac

Obama DOJ Supports DOMA

This is so disgusting it's hard to even rant about:

http://www.americablog.com/2009/06/obama-justice-department-defends-doma.html

What a kick in the gut. The Obama administration has pulled the rug out from under the LGBT community. Rick Warren. Then no action on Don't Ask Don't Tell. Now his DOJ defends DOMA with the fervor of Pat Robertson. The administration claims it has to defend DOMA (bullshit), but do they have to compare gay marriage to incest and child molestation? He even went so far as to outright say that Loving v. Virginia which overturned anti-miscegenation laws has nothing to do with gay marriage and should be no defense for us.

Obama described himself in his campaign as a "fierce advocate" of gay rights. His administration's actions reveal instead pure bigotry. Even if Obama didn't mean what his DOJ said to the court (impossible for such a tightly controlled machine like the Obama administration), these words will provide strong ammunition against Obama if he ever does take a stand.

Awful, unconscionable, and absolute betrayal. Shame on you President Obama and your Department of Justice.

Matthew Shepard Act Passes in House

The Matthew Shepard Act, which would extend federal protection to LGBT victims of violence under a hate-crimes passed in the House yesterday by a 249-175 vote. This is a landmark bill that hopefully will help make sure that perpetrators of hate crimes like the men who killed Matthew Shepard in 1998. It's times like these that I'm glad that there's a 78-seat Democratic party advantage in the House. Hopefully the more problematic (and undemocratic) will pull through and rally behind the Matthew Shepard act for what it is: the next major step in civil rights.

With a bill that does nothing but protect individuals from hate-crimes based on avictim’s race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability, one might wonder what those 175 representatives objected to. The answer, according to a Fox News story is that social conservatives feel that the Matthew Shepard Act chills free speech. Really? Last time I checked, tying a 21 year old boy to fence, pistol whipping him, torturing him, crushing his brain stem and leaving him to die in rural Laramie isn't free speech. Hate-crimes bills aren't designed to quash dissenting ideas, they seek to protect individuals from violent offenses based on their identity. Shame on you House Republicans. This is beyond political, its inhuman.

The far-right position that protecting people like Matthew Shepard is a bad idead isn't even as crazy as the Republican response gets. We expect more out of the party of Michelle Bachmann and Glenn Beck, right? An article in the Huffington Post shares the delifghtful opinion of North Carolina congresswoman Virginia Foxx that Matthew Shepard's death was all a hoax. In her alternate reality, Matthew Shepard was merely the victim of a robbery, and his death as a victim of a hate-crime was invented to further the liberal agenda and impose "oppresive" bills that protect the innocent like the Matthw Shepard Act. Though Foxx later apologized for using the word "hoax", Shepard's mother Judy wasn't exactly mollified saying: "It's apologizing for semantics, not her ignorance". Tell it like it is Judy!

In response to the passage of the Matthew Shepard Bill in the House, the always awesome Rachel Maddow had Judy Shepard on to discuss the new bill. The interview is absolutely brilliant and very moving. Check it out:

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Rachel Maddow's impassioned defense of hate-crimes legislation from the segment is also perhaps the best I've ever heard:

"MADDOW: The concept behind this kind of legislation is often misconstrued but here's the deal as I understand it. The idea is that the federal Justice Department can get involved in a case to help local authorities or even to take the lead on a case if need be, in prosecuting individual serious violet crimes and murders in which the victim was selected on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, disability - the idea that crimes like that are intended not only to hurt or murder an individual, but to terrorize an entire community, and so there is a national interest in ensuring that those crimes are solved and prosecuted, particularly if local law enforcement doesn't want to because they are blinkered by the same prejudice that led to the crime in the first place."

Hate-crimes bills aren't about political corectness: this is protecting real people's lives and real endangered commmunities.