The Truth About Torture

The truth is that torture doesn’t save lives, it wastes them.
As early as 2004 at least 37 US prisoner’s deaths were suspected of being caused by torture. The US has secret prisons across Europe and Asia. We cannot know how many victims there really are. Many innocent Iraqis are killed or wounded and their property destroyed because of the US military acts on intelligence extracted by torture

Torture damages both perpetrator and victim. The suicide rates among members of the military who have served in the Middle East is soaring. We cannot know how many of these self inflicted deaths are the result of being ordered to commit acts of cruelty or torture.

Engaging in torture does not help the US it harms it. Our credibility as a nation has been severely damaged. We have lost our ability to influence other nations to move toward more just societies. We have exposed our military to reprisals from those we have damaged.

The victims of US torture are not “bad guys”. They are military prisoners who have had no access to any recognizable legal process to determine their innocence or guilt. Many were swept up indiscriminately. Guilty or innocent, it is a violation of domestic and international law to engage in torture.

Torture is not a form of interrogation; it is the worst form of cruelty. Unlike interrogation, it does not produce accurate intelligence. The victims of torture have no power to defend themselves. It can easily escalate to murder.

Torture began at the top. Bush administration aides have been linked to torture. Bush issued a memo authorizing torture and while denying that the US tortures has publicly defended incidents of torture. Cheney has openly advocated torture.

Mercenaries are linked to torture. Wherever we find contract interrogators or mercenaries, we find incidents of torture. Many were untrained and inexperienced. Congress has no control over them and and they cannot be prosecuted under military or US law.

Engaging in torture is a form of psychotic behavior. It is an intimate relationship between torturer and victim. Torture is often the result of misdirected psychosexual energy and situational causes. Members of the Bush administration chose to torture over other more effective methods of developing intelligence and engaged in inappropriate deceptive and manipulative behavior in order to do

No society that has engaged in torture on foreign soil has escaped torture intruding on domestic society. The use of torture produces a class of people who are accomplished and enjoy it. They become a permanent problem to the society.

Propaganda by the military and mainstream media has normalized the idea of torture and in some cases may have provoked it. The Pentagon manufactures propaganda incorrectly assigning blame to Iraq for 9-11 and WMDs and restrict other news sources to the members of the military. Mainstream media under report the reality of US torture and are uncritical of the justifications for torture.

Torture doesn't defend democracy, it destroys it. The engagement of our government in torture has a chilling effect on political activism. When the government has complete power over the bodies of its citizens, justice and democracy die.

Torture is forbidden by the Constitution, Congress had no right to ratify torture by passing the Military Commissions Act. A law that conflicts with the Constitution has no legitimacy and should never have been proposed by Congress or the president.
Changing the Constitution requires approval by 2/3 of the the States.

The Geneva Conventions governing the behavior of countries engaged in warfare is both international and domestic law. They were instituted after the horrors of two world wars by a world sickened and disgusted by the depravity that marked those conflicts. The US was a leader in creating the Geneva conventions. Torture is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions. Failure to prevent torture, when you are aware of it and have the power to do so, is a war crime.

Carol DW