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

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CHAPTER 1 TELL ME THE TRUTH: Torture for Information Since the terror attacks of September 11 th 2001, the utility of torture has once again become a subject of debate among politicians, pundits, and scholars in western countries. This debate has not been confined entirely to the world of academia – rather, it has shown up in news shows, television programs, films, and (as has become apparent since the revelations of abuse at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib) even in government policy. The consensus on torture for many years had been one of opprobrium – torture is something that autocracies do, while civilized powers understand it to be morally beyond the pale. This consensus has apparently diminished in the last decade, and the debate has shifted from questions of moral philosophy (can torture ever be justified) towards a realist paradigm centered around whether we can afford to consider morality in the face of an existential threat. This has led some observers to argue, in essence, that torture is useful, and can be harnessed by the state to find useful information (that is assumed to be unobtainable by other means) while avoiding its pitfalls. Most prominent among these observers has been the famed attorney Alan Dershowitz, whose piece in the Los Angeles Times 1 argued that torture could be made part of a liberal society if it could be regularized and subject to judicial proceedings – taking the ultimate in lawless acts and subjecting it to the rule (and regularity) of law. This debate was furthered by a collection of essays on torture edited by Sanford Levinson (2004), wherein Dershowitz defends his proposal against critics on the anti-torture left (Elaine Scarry) and the right (Richard Posner). 2 The hypothetical nature of this debate is perhaps best exemplified by the title of Michael Ignatieff's essay in Prospect magazine, “If Torture Works...” 3 In a sense, the debate has been centered on a clash of ethical systems: deontology – where actions are judged by how well they follow a set of normative rules – and teleology – where actions are 1 Dershowitz. “Want to Torture? Get a Warrant.” Los Angeles Times (January 22 nd , 2002) 2 Levinson, 2004. 3 April, 2006. Excerpted from "Torture: Does it Make Us Safer? Is it Ever OK?," edited by Kenneth Roth and Minky Worden. The New Press in conjunction with Human Rights Watch, 2006 1
judged by their effects. The deontological arguments against torture are of course highly familiar: torture is always wrong, it is a violation of human rights, etc. The teleological arguments can best be represented by the famous 'ticking bomb' scenario. In this hypothetical situation, the state holds in its custody a terrorist who alone knows where a bomb is located that in a short amount of time will go off. The bomber refuses to reveal the location of the bomb. Should the state torture the bomber, or allow the deaths of (some number of) civilians to safeguard the rights of their killer? The hit show '24', starring special agent Jack Bauer, has repeatedly used precisely this premise as a means of allowing its anti-hero to engage in torture repeatedly, and nearly always successfully – by breaking the right fingers at the right time, Bauer has saved the lives of countless extras, taking on the moral burden of torture and doing what we, the audience, worry we would not do ourselves. And given the circumstances of the episode, who could argue with him? If torture is always wrong, then the lives of innocents are transformed into necessary costs for society to pay – a position that is hardly tenable politically since most voters would identify themselves and their loved ones with the victims and not the terrorist. If torture can be justified by its results, then torture can always be justified – simply increase the number of potential victims or the likelihood that the captive is guilty until the correct balance is achieved. The imperatives of necessity make everything licit: John Yoo, former head of George W. Bush's Office of Legal Council argued that necessity could even extend to crushing the testicles of an innocent child in order to make his father talk. 4 Necessity trumps all laws, even the Constitution, according to no less a jurist than Richard Posner. (Posner, 2006) If the debate is between deontology and teleology, between Kant and Bentham, then torture advocates have won from the start: in the absence of any social consensus on which (and whose) rules to follow, arguments that torture can never be justified are themselves unjustifiable. Torture may be wrong, but it cannot be ruled out: it may be the 'least bad thing to do.” (Elshtain, 2004) While individual cases of torture might be attacked as having failed the cost-benefit test of legitimacy, torture itself will be resurrected as a legitimate extension of state power. This choice between the Scylla of existential terror and the Charybdis of a torture-state is false, however: it assumes that torture 'works' without proving anything of the sort. Characteristically, this has meant a focus on whether or not torture has ever worked, with the assumption being that a successful instance of torture can justify a 4 Yoo made this claim during a debate in 2005 with Notre Dame Professor of Law John Cassel. The audio track is readily available online at YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO2p0KHyzpw&feature=related. 2
Page 1 and 2: THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEG
Page 3 and 4: This work is dedicated to my wife,
Page 5 and 6: TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT vii 1. T
Page 7: ABSTRACT In the aftermath of the Se
Page 11 and 12: etter than chance on average, no ma
Page 13 and 14: from fiction, and also in the time
Page 15 and 16: the cases differ in how well inform
Page 17 and 18: characterization by method. Torture
Page 19 and 20: gather such evidence was strong, to
Page 21 and 22: ineffective. Something must prevent
Page 23 and 24: The description which it would be n
Page 25 and 26: powerful themselves. 21 While histo
Page 27 and 28: known by the misnomer 'torture-ligh
Page 29 and 30: substitute for intelligence gatheri
Page 31 and 32: This lack of good data on torture t
Page 33 and 34: found that the procedure can cause
Page 35 and 36: captive who has faced torture, and
Page 37 and 38: state cannot credibly commit to pla
Page 39 and 40: incentive not to present as favorab
Page 41 and 42: units, those engaged in the applica
Page 43 and 44: of causal mechanisms in a very dire
Page 45 and 46: the threats they face are real, whe
Page 47 and 48: 3.1. Introduction. CHAPTER 3 THE WI
Page 49 and 50: discovered by Sir Thomas Newton and
Page 51 and 52: two, and the execution of the convi
Page 53 and 54: years preceding the outbreak at Sal
Page 55 and 56: these women - non-Church members, p
Page 57 and 58: Hubbard) and four grown and married
Page 59 and 60:
innocent, and recalled that when he
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crowd was deeply and troublingly mo
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it was precisely in these terms tha
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came to an end. Misogyny was all to
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only the witch-trials that brought
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partners in their own (apparent) de
Page 71 and 72:
possibility would be to question th
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John Bridges (whose own wife and da
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she again broke down and named seve
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forcing the already convicted to re
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We can thus see Tituba's confession
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Samuell Parris. 70 The strongest ev
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order to purge political dissidents
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torture as a failure based on this
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torture - the state will apply it e
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time, the government in Paris was c
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for two reasons - first, because Me
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The Soummam conference in the Summe
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one of the primary justifications f
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DOP in particular is instructive fo
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us stops in the city center. These
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one that would turn the dangers of
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dismantling of the ZAA organization
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found in the literature: the revela
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In fact, the use of torture did hav
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e.g.), by March (when the DPU had b
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Paul Teitgen appears to have been c
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the French public. 95 Secondly, the
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conditions theoretically necessary
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the reasons for holding the detaine
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y military interrogators. (Washingt
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fact come verbatim from a 1957 jour
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ole in the acquisition of intellige
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to those believed to have informati
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name for metanetwork analysis. 102
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other words, the CIA High Value Det
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Padilla was accused by KSM of plott
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and an enemy of the United States,
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alternative mechanism) by Darius Re
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York Times, 09/12/2005) Insofar as
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these interrogations were conducted
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al-Qaeda is structured, names of in
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CHAPTER 6 CONCLUSION: The Misleadin
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problem by the authorities - and ye
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situations (France in Algeria and V
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Jack Bauer was used as justificatio
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Biderman, Albert D. “Effects of C
Page 153 and 154:
Crelinstein, Ronald and Alex Schmid
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History Teacher. 30:4 (1997): pp. 4
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International Council on Security a
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Lewis, Neil A. “Red Cross Finds D
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Obuchowski, Chester W. “Algeria:
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Schiemann, John W. “Interrogation
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Barack Obama is Inviting the Next A
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United States, Department of Defens
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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Patrick Armshaw
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