{"id":3200,"date":"2007-01-16T11:02:04","date_gmt":"2007-01-16T18:02:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2007\/01\/16\/close-enough-for-government-work-torture\/"},"modified":"2007-01-16T16:59:02","modified_gmt":"2007-01-16T23:59:02","slug":"close-enough-for-government-work-torture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2007\/01\/16\/close-enough-for-government-work-torture\/","title":{"rendered":"“Close Enough for Government Work” Torture"},"content":{"rendered":"

A newly-released Pentagon-funded study entitled \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Educing Information\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/a><\/strong> examines the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153concerns about recent U.S. interrogation activities, subsequent investigations, and the efficacy of contemporary tactics, techniques, and procedures.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Surprise, surprise: the U.S. government has little or no idea what it is doing when it tries to beat the truth out of people. A Washington Post<\/em> story<\/a> on the study today noted that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153no significant scientific research has been conducted in more than four decades about the effectiveness of many techniques the U.S. military and intelligence groups use regularly.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

But this does not mean torture is barren for purposes of state. Some of the key \u00e2\u20ac\u0153evidence\u00e2\u20ac\u009d linking Saddam and Al Qaeda was generated by torture. The fact that the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153confession\u00e2\u20ac\u009d later turned out to be false did nothing to resurrect the scores of thousands of people who have been killed in Iraq since the U.S. invaded.<\/p>\n

Juan Cole, a University of Michigan history professor and an expert on the war on terrorism, observed, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Torture is what provides evidence for large important networks of terrorists where there aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really any, or aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t very many, or aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t enough to justify 800 military bases and a $500 billion military budget.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

The U.S. government has a pathetic batting average regarding alleged terrorists. The vast majority of the people the feds have accused of being terrorists or labeled as terrorist suspects have turned out to be not guilty as charged.<\/p>\n

This has often proved embarrassing. And this may be where torture comes in. Cole asks, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153How do you prove to yourself and others a big terror threat that requires a National Security State and turn toward a praetorian society? You torture people into alleging it. Global terrorism is being exaggerated and hyped by torture just as the witchcraft scare in Puritan American manufactured witches.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Cole explains that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Bush needs torture \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 to generate false information that exaggerates the threat to his regime, so as to justify repression. He needs the ritual of confession and naming others, to have it down on paper so he can show it to Congress behind closed doors.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

The Defense Intelligence Agency study did not examine this \u00e2\u20ac\u0153benefit\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of torture.<\/p>\n

Comments & cavils on this topic are welcome at my blog here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A newly-released Pentagon-funded study entitled \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Educing Information\u00e2\u20ac\u009d examines the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153concerns about recent U.S. interrogation activities, subsequent investigations, and the efficacy of contemporary tactics, techniques, and procedures.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Surprise, surprise: the U.S. government has little or no idea what it is doing when it tries to beat the truth out of people. A Washington Post story on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[676],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-3200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-antiwar-movement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3200\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3200"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}