The Torturer's Dilemma: Analyzing the Logic of Torture for Information

use of torture by the US at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and at the CIA blacksites, we will be able to see
whether or not these failures could have been prevented institutionally.
In this chapter the predominant form of source is journalistic. This is so due to the very recent
nature of the events examined, as well as the relative lack of academic work on the topic. This facet of
the research brings its on problems: journalism, as history's first draft, is subject to revision in a way
that academic work is not (or at least, is less so than journalism). In addition, where questions of
national security are involved, governmental sources (on whom journalists often rely) have strong
incentives to massage and obscure the truth. This was made especially clear during the time-period
dealt with in this chapter: the revelations of collusion between media and government during this era
(the Valerie Plame affair, the Judith Miller scandal, and the practice of 'embedding' reporters during the
war) all militate against taking the news media as a neutral arbiter of the truth. However, the benefits
of using media sources are nonetheless strong: news articles can give an indication about what
knowledge was public at what time, and if government sources were able to shift coverage in their own
favor, then news that did not fit the narrative takes on an extra weight. Finally, media sources are quite
simply better than nothing – and the time that has passed has helped to sift the story by revealing which
news articles were misguided or inaccurate. Every effort has been taken to ensure that the media
articles sourced in this chapter represent the most accurate understanding of events, as we know them
as of this writing.
The rest of this chapter is divided up as follows. The second section focuses on torture
committed at US military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Here the captives were individuals who had
been captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan and elsewhere and had been classified as 'enemy
combatants' – allowing the government to side-step the criminal justice system and its restrictions on
self-incrimination. The third section considers the use of torture at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.
Those captives exposed to torture tended to be those considered linked to the insurgency then involved
in widespread attacks on US troops. While the interrogations were overseen by military intelligence
and CIA agents, they were premised on 'softening up' conducted by National Guard soldiers that was
clearly directed at forcing prisoners to break. The fourth section examines torture at its most refined: at
the CIA blacksites reserved for those suspected of high-level membership in al Qaeda. These
interrogations were conducted by CIA personnel directly, and represent the most strenuous conditions
for torture. Finally, I examine one case of torture in particular as a critical case: where all of the
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