No. It's Tough Treatment But Is It Torture?

The current hyperventilation over whether or not the current administration authorised torture is a difficult matter to parse correctly. To do so with any hope of accuracy requires differentiating between arduous treatment and actual torture. This is not the kind of issue the Geek likes to deal with because it ultimately depends upon purely subjective considerations.

Assuming that the documents quoted in the New York Times and other mainstream media are accurate, the treatment described as having been employed by CIA personnel in the secret prisons seems to have been lifted bodily from the survival, evasion, resistance, and escape (SERE) training long used to prepare US military and similar personnel for unpleasant eventualities. The combination of psychological and physical techniques approved by the current administration including exposure to cold temperatures, prolonged sleep deprivation, head slapping, even "waterboarding" are customary components of SERE training.

The SERE course is no fun. Ask anyone who has been through it. Even though the person will not be able to provide details (classification and all that, don't you know), he will probably agree with the Geek's characterization. The Geek calls it, "Rugged."

Rugged beyond a doubt. Unpleasant to be sure. An out and out gut check. But, not torture.

It's not torture if the definition of torture is limited to the administration of unbearable pain, potentially damaging physical mis-treatment such as was commonplace in the dungeons of the Middle Ages or the cellars of the Soviet secret police. SERE and SERE derived techniques do not inflict pain beyond the capacity of the normal, healthy, motivated person to tolerate--not enjoy--but tolerate. Neither do these techniques carry the risk of genuine physical damage or the impairment of health.

Even though the techniques employed with the authorization of the current administration are in and of themselves not torture in the Geek's estimate and experience, their effects would have been potentiated by contextual factors. Chief amongst these is the reality that the people subject to the techniques were being held in an unknown location for an unknowable period of time. They were cut off completely and no doubt knew that they could be killed at any time and that their death would not be known outside the walls of the prison.

Isolation. Prolonged, hopeless isolation. Prolonged, hopeless isolation with the possibility of a lonely, unmourned death hanging in the air could (and perhaps did) elevate the package of psychological and physical pressures to the level of torture.

The worst torture is not the physical but the mental. As a result of this consideration, which is well documented in the debriefings of torture victims and psychological literature alike, the Geek is willing to argue that the combination of unpleasant techniques and isolation constitutes torture.

The Geek opposes torture.

Not because it offends his ethical schemata. The Geek opposes torture in all its forms including the potentiation of relatively innocuous techniques by isolation because it doesn't work as well as other forms of interrogation.

The most effective form of interrogation as the history of intelligence operations shows is the use of patient, empathic questioning by an individual who is highly knowledgeable about the person being interrogated. The classic example of this approach is Jim Skardon's slow, careful, ever-so-friendly interview of the atomic spy Klaus Fuchs. In less than three days of effort, Skardon elicited a detailed confession from Fuchs, a highly motivated, well disciplined Soviet agent who had been working in the bowels of the Manhattan Project. Without that confession, Fuchs would have walked.

There are other approaches that work well without the potentially distorting effects of torture or overly harsh treatment which borders on torture. Cops. intelligence officers, and others who have to gain reliable, time sensitive information from people not overly eager to divulge it are aware of them. There is no need to take space rehashing them.

All that is necessary is to rehearse the obvious. People who are isolated from customary environments, dislocated from the usual anchors and reference points of life, look for a way to lower the fear that normally accompanies such disruption. The combination of offering a way of lessening fear with a knowledge of the psychology of the interrogatee and taking full advantage of the reality that most people have a compulsion to talk will open the door to information.

Now for the ultimate hypothetical, the one posed to candidates and people in the field alike. The ticking atomic bomb scenario.

The Geek admits this is the toughest call of all. It is difficult because it places deontological ethics in direct conflict with teleological. That is to say it opposes the notion of absolute standards with absolute limits against the idea of a good end being achieved by bad means.

On this the Geek takes the Utilitarian position: the greater good for the greater number. As a last resort and under severe time constraints, the use of non-damaging physical coercion would be allowable. With a caveat. After the fact, those who authorized and administered the torture must be held accountable.

This means quite simply that the people involved with the decision to use physical torment must admit potential violation of relevant law and submit their conduct to judicial scrutiny. Not pleasant.

But the alternative would be worse.

The creation of a slippery slope leading to the unconstrained use of torment and torture would not be in the best interests of any of us.