Tactical Use of Torture Leads to Strategic Defeat
By Matt Rowe, Executive Director, WinTheGWOT.org
In the Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti's May 30th New York Times article, Advisers Fault Harsh Methods in Interrogation, a group of psychologists and other specialists who were commissioned by the Intelligence Science Board, recently advised US intelligence agencies that the cruel interrogation techniques in use since 911 are “…outmoded, amateurish and unreliable.” Although we understand the need for secrecy, it still concerns us that the Bush Administration’s forthcoming new rules governing interrogations will remain secret, especially given its past effort to legitimize the use of torture. Unfortunately, the Administration simply does not understand that the tactical use of torture works directly against our strategic goals in the Global War on Terror, and the article failed to bring out this important point.
The actual perpetrators of terrorist and other attacks make up only a very small percentage of any society. The socio-political networks around them consist of supporters, sympathizers, and neutral persons. By far, the largest proportions of people are in the sympathizer and neutral categories. Every time we torture a person or conduct an attack that somehow harms innocent people, we increase the ranks of enemy supporters and sympathizers, and reduce the neutral ranks. These are the very people we are trying to win over to our cause, and they are also our best sources of enemy intelligence.
Gathering human intelligence is the most important and effective method compared to satellites and other technology we have come to rely upon. We had plenty of machine driven intelligence before we invaded Iraq, but we lacked the human intelligence. Had we been closer to the available human sources we would have understood the true status of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program and the fragile nature of the society we were about to shatter.
Although a 2005 Harvard study on “highly coercive” interrogation techniques indicates that torture is sometimes beneficial to gathering information, breaking a suspect’s will to resist via pain is merely a tactical victory. It still may not produce any useful information. Finally, harsher interrogation techniques are only available for use against people we have control over and have typically captured and declared as an enemy in some form.
What do we do with a person whom we suspect may know some piece of important intelligence information, but who we know is not directly involved with the terrorists? At best, torture only stiffens this person’s resolve to resist telling us anything, and at worst creates a motivated enemy of the United States. More modern methods of producing human intelligence via “torture free” interrogations are available, and they are desperately needed.
In the Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti's May 30th New York Times article, Advisers Fault Harsh Methods in Interrogation, a group of psychologists and other specialists who were commissioned by the Intelligence Science Board, recently advised US intelligence agencies that the cruel interrogation techniques in use since 911 are “…outmoded, amateurish and unreliable.” Although we understand the need for secrecy, it still concerns us that the Bush Administration’s forthcoming new rules governing interrogations will remain secret, especially given its past effort to legitimize the use of torture. Unfortunately, the Administration simply does not understand that the tactical use of torture works directly against our strategic goals in the Global War on Terror, and the article failed to bring out this important point.
The actual perpetrators of terrorist and other attacks make up only a very small percentage of any society. The socio-political networks around them consist of supporters, sympathizers, and neutral persons. By far, the largest proportions of people are in the sympathizer and neutral categories. Every time we torture a person or conduct an attack that somehow harms innocent people, we increase the ranks of enemy supporters and sympathizers, and reduce the neutral ranks. These are the very people we are trying to win over to our cause, and they are also our best sources of enemy intelligence.
Gathering human intelligence is the most important and effective method compared to satellites and other technology we have come to rely upon. We had plenty of machine driven intelligence before we invaded Iraq, but we lacked the human intelligence. Had we been closer to the available human sources we would have understood the true status of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program and the fragile nature of the society we were about to shatter.
Although a 2005 Harvard study on “highly coercive” interrogation techniques indicates that torture is sometimes beneficial to gathering information, breaking a suspect’s will to resist via pain is merely a tactical victory. It still may not produce any useful information. Finally, harsher interrogation techniques are only available for use against people we have control over and have typically captured and declared as an enemy in some form.
What do we do with a person whom we suspect may know some piece of important intelligence information, but who we know is not directly involved with the terrorists? At best, torture only stiffens this person’s resolve to resist telling us anything, and at worst creates a motivated enemy of the United States. More modern methods of producing human intelligence via “torture free” interrogations are available, and they are desperately needed.
2 Comments:
No shit, pretty common sense there.
I have copied and pasted shamelessly here....
"On 15 January 2007, the Intelligence Science Board of the United States National Defense Intelligence College released a report entitled Educing Information: Interrogation: Science and Art-Foundations for the Future about the interrogation methods used by the U.S. intelligence community in their dealings with terror suspects.
This report reinforces...and heightens awareness of the immediate need to cease harsh interrogation methods that amount to torture. The report is quite simply a remarkable confirmation by a large group of highly experienced interrogators and intelligence professionals of the point we have always maintained: torture has no place in our world today, be it operationally, legally or morally."
Read the report:
The study Educing Information: Interrogation: Science and Art-Foundations for the Future can be downloaded on the Federation of American Scientists' website at
http://www.fas.org/irp/dni/educing.pdf
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