Torture Debate

In order to subvert terrorist plans, it is necessary to collect information about terrorists and their organizations, plans, membership, and objectives. Terrorists usually do not give up this information freely, and often the threat of death is insufficient to compel a suspected terrorist to provide information to interrogators—indeed, death may have an ideological appeal to certain religiously centered terrorists. However, the dread of torture is so powerful that rational persons have committed suicide, even en masse, rather than be captured by those who might use torture against them. Therefore, the question has often arisen as to whether torture and the threat of torture are acceptable alternatives in a free democracy to acquire information from terrorism suspects. Societies in many forms, in contemporary and ancient times, have utilized torture and the threat of torture as a powerful tool in extracting information from adversaries, and surely the twenty-first-century United States is counted among them.

Torture is defined as an act that is a “coldblooded, calculated intent to inflict extreme and prolonged pain.” Interrogators of many cultures have regarded its use as a reasonable and accepted means for extracting information from a reluctant victim. Its priority as a methodology for acquiring information has frequently made torture and the threat of torture a principal tool of interrogation. During the Renaissance, those who were about to be interrogated were first shown torture devices and asked to confess before being subjected to any [Page 581]pain. Indeed, many confessed without being tortured, as the mere threat of torture caused sufficient fear in the victim to induce compliance with the interrogator.

Methods of torture are as varied as the imaginations of those who commit the acts. From the mechanical age of torture during the Renaissance to the horrors of Gestapo interrogations during World War II, and to contemporary uses of electric shock and waterboarding, man's ingenuity in inflicting pain on his fellow man appears boundless. Specifics of the debate on what acts are or are not torture will not be addressed here. That debate is more fitting for the courts, and there have been dozens of books written on the topic. However, in opening the torture debate, it should be noted that evidence collected over history has shown that inflicting pain or the threat of inflicting pain can compel nearly anyone to say nearly anything. Doubtless this includes suspected terrorists past, present, and future.

There is considerable question as to the usefulness of information extracted under torture. U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officials have reported that information collected under torture is notoriously unreliable. There is considerable evidence that an interrogator can induce a confession from someone who is not guilty or extract some other fictitious admission merely so the victim can stop the torture. In other words, torture does not guarantee veracity. As such, any information obtained under torture is immediately suspect and likely tainted, if nothing else, by the inferences of the interrogator during questioning. If this is so, then it begs the question, why torture at all?

The torture debate in the United States is multi-faceted and radically polarized, but it can generally be separated into two distinct groups: pro-and anti-torture. Pro-torture advocates believe that it is a necessary evil to save American lives. However, even though several U.S. presidents are on the record saying this very thing, the CIA doubts this has ever happened. The anti-torture believers hold that no violation of human rights is ever justifiable, even if it means the doom of civilization as we know it. However, the CIA has reported results using “extreme measures” (the CIA term-of-art for torture) in identifying terrorists and terrorist plots.

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