老澳门开奖结果

In an email sent to potential supporters a few days before releasing his book on CIA torture, Jose Rodriguez, the former head of the CIA鈥檚 Counterterrorism Center and its former Deputy Director of Operations, complained that his book, Hard Measures, would 鈥渂e attacked from many quarters鈥攎ostly by people who will never read it.鈥�

Having just finished reading Mr. Rodriguez鈥檚 book, I am confident that its readers will be critics, too. Hard Measures is a shameless defense of torture, and it is a dishonest one. At its core, the book has two central contradictions.

First, Mr. Rodriguez portrays the CIA鈥檚 鈥渆nhanced interrogation techniques鈥� simultaneously as lawful and therefore unexceptional, and as exceptional 鈥渉ard measures鈥� that democracies must employ when necessary. There is an inescapable tension between his two narratives. In the first, we don鈥檛 torture because 鈥渆nhanced interrogation鈥� isn鈥檛 torture. In the second, we have no choice but to suspend the normal rules and to design an interrogation regime 鈥渟pecifically for these terrorists, in these circumstances, and for this period of time.鈥� (p. 232, emphasis is Rodriguez鈥檚).

Mr. Rodriguez attempts to evade this tension with wink-and-nod descriptions of the 鈥渆nhanced interrogation techniques.鈥� He resorts to euphemisms鈥斺�渘ecessary roughness,鈥� (p. 96), 鈥渦npleasant,鈥� (p. 230), 鈥渟hock value,鈥� (p. 66), 鈥渉arsh treatment,鈥� (p. 103)鈥攖o obscure that they are torture. And in his (dissected by the 老澳门开奖结果鈥檚 Devon Chaffee here), he suggestively stated that the techniques were designed to let the detainees know that there was 鈥渁 new sheriff in town.鈥� His meaning was clear: the techniques carried with them a threat of even greater abuse. In Mr. Rodriguez鈥檚 world of dehumanizing abstraction, detainees 鈥渨ere brought to a point of cooperation鈥� but not subjected to 鈥済ratuitous pain.鈥� (p. 64).

The formula described would be familiar to many of history鈥檚 torturers: mistreatment carefully calibrated to communicate a threat of worse treatment but to . Rodriguez aims for a fiction: the 鈥渟weet spot鈥� of torture.

We know from experience that Rodriguez鈥檚 defense of the 鈥渆nhanced interrogation techniques鈥� as lawful is wrong. Our own history and our State Department鈥檚 reports on the human rights violations of other countries teach us that some of the techniques employed by the CIA amounted to torture or to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. They were war crimes, and they were domestic crimes. And at times even the CIA, Rodriguez reveals, recognized as much: 鈥淟ong before the interrogation techniques became known and the subject of public and media debate, we elected to stop using some of them. Despite the fact that we had been given legal authorization, we simply weren鈥檛 comfortable with their use and never again employed them.鈥� (p. 68).

Rodriguez also details the time that Senator Bill Nelson requested to be waterboarded by the CIA to decide for himself whether it was torture. The CIA refused, 鈥淸d]espite the fact that he appeared to be in great shape,鈥� because they 鈥渨ondered what would happen if he suffered a cardiac event during the experiment.鈥� (p. 238).

Second, Rodriguez鈥檚 central claim that the CIA resorted to torture because it 鈥渉eard the time bomb ticking,鈥� (p. 253), is undercut by the facts as even he presents them.

Rodriguez asked the contractor who helped him design the torture program how long the 鈥渆nhanced interrogation techniques鈥� would take to work. The answer: 鈥淭hirty days.鈥� (p. 62). How could the program be justified by the ticking-time-bomb theory if it wasn鈥檛 expected to work for thirty days? Rodriguez apparently didn鈥檛 expect it to: 鈥淲e never suggested that the EITs would be a panacea. Once detainees became compliant, that did not mean that they would tell us everything they knew.鈥� (p. 235). 鈥淓ven the most severe technique, waterboarding, . . . did not produce immediate results.鈥� (p. 92).

In attempting to claim the ultimate trophy sought by torture鈥檚 proponents鈥攖hat torture led to the killing of Osama bin Laden鈥擱odriguez鈥檚 discussion is similarly strained: 鈥淚 never said that the EITs were the immediate cause, or that they instantly led us to UBL. But without the EITs we might never have started on the long march that eventually allowed CIA analysts to come to the conclusion that UBL was probably holed up in Abbottabad.鈥� (p. 109).

It is hard to accept that torture was necessary in the 鈥渓ong march鈥� (nearly ten years, we now know) to locating Osama bin Laden. Two senators who have seen the evidence certainly . And it is hard to believe that a ticking time bomb was the true motivation for developing the program, when the program was not even designed to work for thirty days.

This is the problem with allowing fear of a threat to justify torture. As soon as the moral leap to torture is made, torture looks like the solution to every hard interrogation problem.

Late in his book, Rodriguez asks: 鈥淐ould we have gotten the same information using typical FBI practices.鈥� His answer: 鈥淢aybe.鈥� (p. 231). Experienced interrogators are less equivocal. You can read their resounding opposition to torture in a few recent statements , , and .

Torture is illegal. It betrays our ideals. It is fundamentally un-American. And even if we were to accept that torture 鈥渨orks,鈥� Rodriguez鈥檚 book shows why it is immoral. It dehumanizes not only the victim but the interrogator.