The Wall Street Journal Editorial page was downright giddy. You’d think the editors finally received their new “Greenspan Gone Wild” videos in the mail.  How else to explain their bizarre 4/27 editorial which commemorated the one year anniversary of the Abu Ghraib scandal by claiming the story has been overblown?  The Journal’s evidence for this obnoxious claim?  The Pentagon itself.  Yes, the same Pentagon that hasn’t allowed for an independent investigation (funny how your own investigations conveniently exonerate you, huh Rumsfeld?) (ABC NewsOnline Australia, “One year on, Amnesty International blasts US for Abu Ghraib failings,” April 28) 

MYTH: Army Inspector General Stanley Green’s decision to clear four officers in the Abu Ghraib affair proves that the Abu Ghraib story has been overblown; the abuse of Abu Ghraib prisoners was an isolated incident.

After all the evidence to the contrary, continuing to allege systematic prisoner abuse--and a coverup--by the U.S. military is itself shameful. (Wall Street Journal Editorial, “Abu Ghraib Accountability, An Overhyped story, not a Whitewash,” 4/27/05)

This wailing says more about the accusers than about any facts that have emerged in the year since the scandal broke. The media and Congressional Democrats flogged the Abu Ghraib story for months throughout the 2004 election year, with a goal of stripping the Iraq War of moral authority and turning President Bush into another LBJ. But now that their worst chain-of-command conspiracy hypotheses haven't panned out, they refuse to admit it. (Wall Street Journal Editorial, “Abu Ghraib Accountability, An Overhyped story, not a Whitewash,” 4/27/05)

To read the Wall Street Journal editorial, one would believe that only the most partisan of partisans could possibly believe the abuse at Abu Ghraib was anything but an isolated incident.  The Journal opens its editorial by asserting that “10 major inquiries, sworn statements from 37 high-level officials, and information gleaned from dozens of court-martial and criminal investigations have cleared most senior civilian and military leaders of wrongdoing in the Abu Ghraib scandal and other Iraq prisoner abuses.”

Yet, what Journal declines to mention, is that the Pentagon has refused to allow an independent, outside investigation.  Of course the Defense Department has the right to take into account national security concerns when choosing whether or not to grant access to outside investigators.  Yet, these concerns should not serve as a virtual “get out of accountability free” card.  Until an independent investigation is conducted, all “findings” by the Pentagon itself can and should be taken with a grain of salt.

And, despite what the Journal would have you believe, it is not only political partisans who are skeptical about the Pentagon’s findings.  Two particularly loud voices calling for an investigation into the scandal (and the role of commanding military officers) are the international human rights groups Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.  “Amnesty International blasted the United States on Thursday for failing to launch an independent probe into Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison scandal, a year after images of abused detainees first shocked the world ….” reported Australia’s ABC News (the foreign press has been aggressive in covering the Abu Ghraib story), “’People around the world will be recalling the horrific images they saw a year ago and wondering what happened to those prisoners,’ said Amnesty secretary general Irene Khan, noting that only a handful of low-ranking US soldiers had been prosecuted or disciplined over the outrage.” (ABC NewsOnline Australia, “One year on, Amnesty International blasts US for Abu Ghraib failings,” April 28)   

While Amnesty and Human Rights Watch clearly do have an agenda (promoting human rights), it would be a huge stretch to accuse either group of  calling for investigations in order to turn “President Bush into another LBJ” (as the Journal so eloquently put it). 

These groups are trying to put public pressure on the military to stop abusing prisoners.  They have reason to believe that the higher-ups in the military have been sanctioning this abuse.  Why would they think such a thing?  For starters, Brigadier General Janis Karpinski (who was in charge of Abu Ghraib) has said that “[Major General] Geoffrey Miller, who had been sent from his duty at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba prison -- known as "Gitmo" -- to Iraq, where his orders were to "gitmoize" Abu Ghraib. Miller told officers there "to treat the prisoners like dogs." (Helen Thomas, “Responsibility for prisoner abuse lies with higher-ups,” Duluth News Tribune, April 30, 2005).  NOTE: This Thomas article also quotes Anthony D. Romero, the ACLU executive director, as saying that "The government cannot ignore the systemic nature of the torture that implicates the military chain of command to the very top."

Some people reading this may call Karpinski’s motives into question.  In fairness, she may just be passing the buck of responsibility in order to clear her own name.  However, it is fair to ask the same of the Pentagon higher-ups who are trying to pass the blame onto lower-ranking soldiers.  And then of course there is the Justice Department memo that provided a legal backdrop for the use of torture.

Without a truly independent investigation, it is difficult for the public to decipher who was really at fault.  It is fairly obvious to most reality based Americans that the torture uncovered at Abu Ghraib was not an isolated incident, nor is it being overblown. Given this uncertainty, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial is not just off-base, it’s irresponsible and deceptive.

While we’re on the topic of deception, the Journal’s insistence that Abu Ghraib was an isolated incident flies in the face of mounting evidence of prison abuse by American soldiers at Guantanamo and other U.S. facilities throughout the world.  For instance, the FBI found that, at Guantanamo Bay, “female interrogators forcibly squeeze[d] male prisoners' genitals, and that [FBI agents] witnessed other detainees stripped and shackled low to the floor for many hours.” (Neil A. Lewis and Eric Schmitt, “Inquiry Finds Abuses at Guantanamo Bay,” New York Times, April 30, 2005). 

Those who are interested in other reported cases of prisoner abuse by American soldiers can view a list compiled by Human Rights Watch, entitled “US: Abu Ghraib Only the ‘Tip of the Iceberg.’” (the list was released on April 27, 2005).

MYTH: US is hurting its effectiveness in the war on terror by not condoning torture.

These people are evil to the core. The only way to protect ourselves is to extract information they might have by whatever means necessary … This isn't about winning a congeniality contest. It's about winning a war and defeating an enemy so they won't try this garbage again. Let's put the fear of God into them and stop putting it unnecessarily into ourselves.  (Cal Thomas, “Modified Interrogation Tactics: Good News for the Enemy,” May 2, 2005)

It could be said that Cal Thomas is the Cal Ripken of right wing nutcases.  Ripken rarely missed a baseball game, while Thomas rarely misses the opportunity to make extremist, and tasteless statements in his columns.  In his May 2, column, Thomas comments on the Army’s new interrogation standards (designed to prevent future Abu Ghraibs) and keeps his impressive streak of lunacy alive. 

Right wingers love to try to make liberals and Democrats look like a bunch of “wussies.”  Remember Zell Miller spewing that John Kerry wanted to defend America with spitballs?  As an extension of this strategy, there are some right wing loonies like Ann Coulter and Cal Thomas that complain the U.S. is too soft on those that mean us harm.

For his part, Thomas has been shouting that the U.S. government should permit soldiers and intelligence agents to torture terror suspects.  As crass as his comments have been, Thomas is not alone in his opinion.  Even some mainstream thinkers, such as Alan Dershowitz have argued similar points. 

Therefore, Thomas’s viewpoint is worth examining further.

Beyond the moral issues, there are three practical flaws in Thomas’s arguments in support of torture:

(1) There is no proof that torture is effective. 

Writing for Salon.com, Darius Rejali details several ways that torture failed the French in Algeria and Vietnam. 

Along similar lines, in her January 2005 Washington Post column, Anne Applebaum raises serious questions about the effectiveness of torture.  Applebaum cites two former soldiers who also feel that torture is not the most effective means of interrogation – both suggest that people being tortured will be more likely to say anything (to stop the torture) than to give accurate information:

Air Force Col. John Rothrock, who, as a young captain, headed a combat interrogation team in Vietnam. More than once he was faced with a ticking time-bomb scenario: a captured Vietcong guerrilla who knew of plans to kill Americans. What was done in such cases was "not nice," he says. "But we did not physically abuse them." Rothrock used psychology, the shock of capture and of the unexpected. Once, he let a prisoner see a wounded comrade die. Yet -- as he remembers saying to the "desperate and honorable officers" who wanted him to move faster -- "if I take a Bunsen burner to the guy's genitals, he's going to tell you just about anything," which would be pointless. Rothrock, who is no squishy liberal, says that he doesn't know "any professional intelligence officers of my generation who would think this is a good idea.

Or listen to Army Col. Stuart Herrington, a military intelligence specialist who conducted interrogations in Vietnam, Panama and Iraq during Desert Storm, and who was sent by the Pentagon in 2003 -- long before Abu Ghraib -- to assess interrogations in Iraq. Aside from its immorality and its illegality, says Herrington, torture is simply "not a good way to get information." In his experience, nine out of 10 people can be persuaded to talk with no "stress methods" at all, let alone cruel and unusual ones. Asked whether that would be true of religiously motivated fanatics, he says that the "batting average" might be lower: "perhaps six out of ten." And if you beat up the remaining four? "They'll just tell you anything to get you to stop.(Anne Applebaum, “The Torture Myth,” January 12, 2005, 21)

The question of accuracy is especially relevant to the classic moral question of whether it is acceptable to torture a terrorist in order to prevent a nuclear bomb from detonating.  Here is Cal Thomas’s take on such a scenario:

If the Army nabs a person it suspects of knowing the location of a nuclear bomb that is about to wipe out an American city, would the interrogators and their military and civilian superiors refuse to use torture to squeeze the information out of the captive?”(Cal Thomas, “Modified Interrogation Tactics: Good News for the Enemy,” May 2, 2005)

California Western Law School professor William Aceves offers an intelligent response to such a hypothetic circumstance:

[The ticking bomb scenario] falls apart upon careful scrutiny. It assumes that law enforcement has the right person in custody. That is, the suspect knows where the bomb is and when it is scheduled to detonate. What if there is only a 50 percent chance that the suspect knows the information? What if this number is only 10 percent? Second, it assumes that torture will be effective in gaining access to the critical information. In fact, however, torture is notoriously unreliable. What if there is only a 60 percent chance that the suspect will reveal accurate information? How about 20 percent?”  (William Aceves, quoted by Amnesty International, “Ask Amnesty”)

(2) By using torture, we will encourage other countries to use it against us.    

Writes Applebaum:

Worse, you'll have the other side effects of torture. It "endangers our soldiers on the battlefield by encouraging reciprocity." It does "damage to our country's image" and undermines our credibility in Iraq. That, in the long run, outweighs any theoretical benefit. Herrington's confidential Pentagon report, which he won't discuss but which was leaked to The Post a month ago, goes farther. In that document, he warned that members of an elite military and CIA task force were abusing detainees in Iraq, that their activities could be "making gratuitous enemies" and that prisoner abuse "is counterproductive to the Coalition's efforts to win the cooperation of the Iraqi citizenry." Far from rescuing Americans, in other words, the use of "special methods" might help explain why the war is going so badly. (Anne Applebaum, “The Torture Myth,” January 12, 2005, 21)

While the US, under the Cal Thomas policy, may only implement torture under the most dire of circumstances, other countries could take America’s decision to use torture as a green light to torture political prisoners and petty criminals.  “Amnesty International has documented torture in more than 150 countries, including the United States. In more than 70 countries, it is widespread. People in 80 countries have died as a result of torture. The victims are mainly detained on minor criminal charges, including women and children, and the methods include rape and brutal violence.”  Writes Amnesty:

The US does not exist in an isolated corner of the world where use torture might go unnoticed. Any approval of torture by the U.S. - including extradition of suspects to countries where they are likely to face torture - sends a dangerous message of tolerance of torture that will be heard around the world. Amnesty International's 40 years of experience fighting torture shows that once torture has been legitimized, even on a small scale, the use of torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading practices inevitably expands to include countless other victims, and ultimately erodes the moral and legal principles on which society depends. (Amnesty International, “Ask Amnesty”)

(3) Terror suspects may be innocent.

Perhaps former Libertarian presidential candidate Harry Browne said it best: “In all the arguing over the presumed rights of a terrorist, one thing is being overlooked: no one knows for sure whether the person being tortured really is a terrorist.”  (Former Libertarian presidential candidate Harry Browne, Should the US Military Be Allowed to Torture People? January 12, 2005)