If you watched Batman when you were growing up, chances are you saw him torture someone. If you watched Jack Bauer from the hit show 24, chances are even better that torture scenes were involved. And if you watched the Netflix show Daredevil, you probably saw it in almost every single episode.
The problem with relying on the effectiveness of torture in this context is that it’s a dramatic plotdevice. In these situations torture has to work or else the plot won’t move forward. But in reality torture isn’t done by people in menacing bat-suits or people who have only twenty-four hours exactly until people are going to die. Torture is not only immoral but almost always ineffective.
But try telling that to the CIA and Department of Defense.
Back in December the Senate Intelligence Committee did exactly that when they published a report on the CIA’s use of torture. It revealed tactics like Russian roulette, water boarding, and as John Oliver recently reported, “forced rectal rehydration”. Rectal rehydration involves serving prisoners liquefied food by force-feeding it through a tube inserted into the prisoner’s rectum.
Adding to this, the Christian Science Monitor and other outlets like the New York Timesrecently revealed a damning 542-page report. According to the report, the American Psychological Association (APA) aided the CIA by rebuffing critics of the CIA’s fifteen-year-long “enhanced interrogation.” It did this by deliberately “hiding its head in the sand” about the existence of CIA torture, and even softening its ethical guidelines in order to give tacit approval to the CIA’s techniques. The report also reveals close ties between DOD and APA staff members, as well as an eagerness in the higher ranks of the APA to curry favor with the DOD.
Continue reading “The Tortured Logic Behind Using Torture”
