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

conditions theoretically necessary for successful torture were in place. Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi was in
charge of an Islamist training camp in Afghanistan when he was picked up and remanded to CIA
custody. His torture in Morocco under CIA direction revealed crucial information that the Bush
administration used in order to marshal support for an invasion of Iraq – information that was entirely
fabricated, and may even have been deliberately geared to draw the US into a costly war in order to
benefit al Qaeda. I conclude that torture failed to work or the United States, and evidence is abundant
that the US accepted misinformation as the result of torture. The implication is that – even though it
might be attenuated through better verification and reliability of agents – states that torture cannot
prevent themselves from falling into the deceptive cycle that characterizes torture at its worst. To
torture is to be misinformed.
5.2. Torture at Guantanamo
A review of the documentation surrounding the approval of interrogation methods by Donald
Rumsfeld, then Secretary of Defense, makes clear that there was a concern with broadening as far as
possible the techniques available to military interrogators at GTMO. A memo from Rumsfeld to the
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff dated January 19 th , 2002 announced the executive's determination
that the Geneva conventions did not apply to captured members of al-Qaeda or the Taliban, although
they were to be treated “humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity,
in a manner consistent with” those conventions. (emphasis mine) The importance of this qualification
becomes clear from an October 11 th memorandum of the same year from the Joint Task Force on
Guantanamo Bay (hereafter JTF-170 or JTF-GTMO) requesting that the head of the US Southern
Command approve the use of several more aggressive techniques, including stress positions, nudity,
'forced grooming' (Category II) as well as more dire techniques (Category III) such as induced
hypothermia, waterboarding, and threats “to convince the detainee that death or severely painful
consequences are imminent for him and/or his family.” (JTF-170 CG 11/10/2002, JTF-170 J2
11/10/2002 p. 2) The accompanying legal brief by LTC Beaver, Staff Judge Advocate, USA, appears to
originate many of the arguments underpinning the April 4 th Final JTF-170 report outlined above: as
long as the torture is used for the purposes of gathering information, it is not torture at all.
While these techniques were initially approved for use at the discretion of USSouthCom by
Rumsfeld on December 2 nd , he later rescinded that approval in a memo dated January 15 th , 2003,
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