The term "harsh interrogation techniques" is pure PR. Calling torture anything other than torture is almost an acknowledgment of criminality. It's like calling bank robbery "expedited withdrawal." You don't make up a fancy new term for something if there's nothing wrong with the old one. And what's wrong with the old term is that it describes a crime.Likewise, the bankrobber doesn't get to argue that his program of expedited withdrawal works. The same should go for a program of "enhanced interrogation techniques."
Of course, torture doesn't work. The Bush administration's torture program turned up almost no useful intelligence and most interrogation experts agree that that information would almost certainly have been obtained without torture. Where the Bush administration turned to waterboarding and other forms of torture to interview terrorists, interrogators during WWII played chess with captured Nazis -- literally. If that didn't work, they tried Ping-Pong. "We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture," Henry Kolm, 90, an MIT physicist who had been assigned to play chess in Germany with Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess, once told the Washington Post." [Link via Crooks and Liars]
"During the many interrogations, I never laid hands on anyone," agreed fellow interrogator George Frenkel. "We extracted information in a battle of the wits. I'm proud to say I never compromised my humanity." But the Bush administration -- with some help of a media that refuses to be truthful, instead of merely factual -- has certainly compromised ours. A new headline at the Gallup website reads, "Slim Majority Wants Bush-Era Interrogations Investigated: Majority says use of harsh techniques on terrorism suspects was justified."
After reading that, I was about ready to give up on my fellow citizens. Wouldn't any torturing banana republic say torture was justified? Why didn't people see that we've compromised what it means to be American with torture?
Then I read a damned good point -- on Twitter. Usually, 140 characters isn't enough to make a solid and rational argument, but Editor and Publisher's Greg Mitchell posted one of the smartest observations I'd seen on the service for a good, long time. "Another Gallup poll on 'harsh' interrogation," he wrote. "Ignore all polls on this subject until they use the word 'torture.' Otherwise: meaningless."... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]
