The United States DOES Torture

"WE DO NOT TORTURE."
—George W. Bush, November 7 2005

In what has become an administration of corruption par excellence, an assortment of criminals and hypocrites so devoid of legitimacy and so infected with power that Nixon's rotting bone marrow blushes, we still, unbelievable as it seems, sink further into the heart of darkness as more lies are exposed and more truths, horrific as they may be, surface.

It should come as no surprise that a presidency that lied about a faulty terrorist connection, lied about the justifications of war, lied about the unwarranted spying on its own citizens, lied about the firing of U.S. attorneys, lied about the politicizing of the Justice Department, and lied about the nuclear programs of Iran (and that's just a rudimentary run-through) would lie about its torture of detainees.

These past two weeks have been a flurry of affirmations, verifications of information any American with a conscience was already certain of: the United States did torture via waterboarding and other torture methods, did know what it was doing, and did gain absolutely nothing in the process.

The difficulty in assessing the Bush legacy is choosing what event will best epitomize these eight years of fear, embarrassment, and terror, but the four torture memos released by President Obama last week (an act of transparency and political bravery unmatched in modern times), along with the Senate Armed Services Committee, may just be the symbol we were looking for, detailing in shocking specificity different torture procedures, such as "Walling," which amounted to slamming a detainee's head into a wall, exact times and procedures for detainee sleep deprivation and cold storage, and, the piece de resistance of Bush administration war crimes, waterboarding, including specific times to waterboard detainees.

Further details are even more disturbing: as expected, the signing off on torture runs as high as Vice President Dick Cheney, with Donald Rumsfeld personally approving 15 tactics for Abu Ghraib and Condoleezza Rice signing off on waterboarding in 2002. The administration, though warned by previous memorandums that waterboarding was indeed torture, approved the interrogation measure in mid-2002, prior to the apprehension of Abu Zubaida and Kalik Sheikh Mohammad (and phone calls as early as December of 2001 strongly suggest conversation of torture then). And, most damning of all, the possibility that waterboarding and other "advanced interrogation methods" were used simply to provide faulty information for an illegal invasion of Iraq, and additionally, the Yoo/Bibby memos (the four released last week) as after-the-fact documents that desperately tried to legitimize the patently illegal practices of torture.

The facts are enormous and the evidence insurmountable: the United States tortured. But even beyond what we know, there are still ambiguities, such as the 100 or so detainees who died while in U.S. custody and the 30 or more who were tortured to death.

I should make one point, though: waterboarding is torture. Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, the international standard on detainee treatment, says so. The Red Cross, who investigated U.S. treatment of detainees and is, per the Geneva Conventions, the official authority on what constitutes as torture, says it is torture. Bush officials, writing pre-Yoo/Bibby memos, says it is torture. Waterboarding is not "advanced interrogation," as Fox News euphemistically dubs it. It's torture. There is no debate.

And, in closing, torture does not work. A common defense of torture is the supposed "ticking time bomb" situation, that we must resort to illegal measure in the face of daunting catastrophe. Kalik Sheik Mohammad was waterboarded 183 times in one month. That's six times a day. Abu Zubaida was waterboarded a mere 83 times in one month. The widespread use of the treatment denies any such emergency usage. Furthermore, the very information derived from the torture—information Dick Cheney still claims saved American lives—was garbage. Zubaida, for example, told the CIA everything he knew—prior to being waterboarded 83 times. Then, in the face of excruciating suffering and near death (including urinary dysfunctions he still suffers from today), Zubaida said ANYTHING to stop the pain, resulting in misleads and faulty information that cost millions of dollars.

Interrogators during World War II, in legendary sessions with Nazi soldiers, learned of invaluable information regarding Axis plots and saved thousands of lives in their efforts. How did they do this? How did they wrestle such key information from their subjects? German-speaking U.S. interrogators played chess with the Nazi soldiers.

Torture is morally reprehensible. Torture is wrong. Torture does. not. work.

I am ashamed.