The Gestapo and “Enhanced Interrogation”

Here is an excellent post by Andrew Sullivan on U.S. use of torture techniques taken directly from a Gestapo manual (that also refers to them as “enhanced interrogation” techniques.

Sullivan points out some of the particularly chilling parallels in both language and initial policy regarding torture:

The phrase “Verschärfte Vernehmung” is German for “enhanced interrogation”. Other translations include “intensified interrogation” or “sharpened interrogation”. It’s a phrase that appears to have been concocted in 1937, to describe a form of torture that would leave no marks, and hence save the embarrassment pre-war Nazi officials were experiencing as their wounded torture victims ended up in court. The methods, as you can see above, are indistinguishable from those described as “enhanced interrogation techniques” by the president. As you can see from the Gestapo memo, moreover, the Nazis were adamant that their “enhanced interrogation techniques” would be carefully restricted and controlled, monitored by an elite professional staff, of the kind recommended by Charles Krauthammer, and strictly reserved for certain categories of prisoner. At least, that was the original plan.

Also: the use of hypothermia, authorized by Bush and Rumsfeld, was initially forbidden. ‘Waterboarding” was forbidden too, unlike that authorized by Bush. As time went on, historians have found that all the bureaucratic restrictions were eventually broken or abridged. Once you start torturing, it has a life of its own.

Everyone in the U.S., both pro- and anti- torture, should bear that last point in mind. The supposedly moderate position in favor of allowing “enhanced interrogation” under certain circumstances and with strict limitations in terms of oversight merely obfuscates what actually happens once a state embarks on a policy of torture.

Sullivan goes on to show that John Yoo’s definition of torture is the same as the Gestapo’s. He then addresses the following to his inevitable critics:

Critics will no doubt say I am accusing the Bush administration of being Hitler. I’m not. There is no comparison between the political system in Germany in 1937 and the U.S. in 2007. What I am reporting is a simple empirical fact: the interrogation methods approved and defended by this president are not new. Many have been used in the past. The very phrase used by the president to describe torture-that-isn’t-somehow-torture - “enhanced interrogation techniques” - is a term originally coined by the Nazis. The techniques are indistinguishable. The methods were clearly understood in 1948 as war-crimes. The punishment for them was death.

Indeed.

Military Intelligence?

If I were designing a policy of torture-for-information, I would avoid using techniques originally intended to elicit false confessions. Unless I were the U.S. government, of course.

What Evil Looks Like. (NOT WORK SAFE)

That picture, and the ones below show exactly what the depths of inhumanity look like. The links come from a new Wired Magazine article, but I found them by way of the Washington Independent. This is what American foreign policy actually looks like. This is what “enhanced interrogation methods” lead to. This is why we ought never torture. It leads to our soldiers celebrating the corpses of torture victims:

Yes, that is a real corpse. Here we see the full banality of evil, as Specialist Charles Graner nonchalantly preps his digital point-and-shoot camera:

Abu Graib itself is not news. We have known about this for almost four years now and still remain mired in a surreal debate about whether or not torture is ever acceptable, whether or not what we see above constitutes torture, and so on all down the depraved list of our nation’s crimes against humanity. These images depict EVIL. As thinking, feeling human beings we ought to recognize that whatever our loyalty to this country or its causes, whatever the rationalizations the torturers or their apologists may rely on, we have a moral obligation to STOP torture and hold our own people, our own government accountable.