Senator John McCain / Newsweek – 2005-11-27 07:22:39
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10019179/site/newsweek/
Torture’s Terrible Toll
Senator John McCain / Newsweek
In a powerful cover story on torture, NEWSWEEK observed: “Rumsfel’d position is unclear (often the case with the blunt but slippery Defense secretary) and Cheney remains adamantly opposed to any check on executive power” and concludes: “Overlooking timely doubts raised by some US inteligence officials, the ideologues in th eBush administration had used information obtained by torture to mislead the world.”
(November 25, 2005) — The debate over the treatment of enemy prisoners, like so much of the increasingly overcharged partisan debate over the war in Iraq and the global war against terrorists, has occasioned many unserious and unfair charges about the administration’s intentions and motives. With all the many competing demands for their attention, President Bush and Vice President Cheney have remained admirably tenacious in their determination to prevent terrorists from inflicting another atrocity on the American people, whom they are sworn to protect. It is certainly fair to credit their administration’s vigilance as a substantial part of the reason that we have not experienced another terrorist attack on American soil since September 11, 2001.
It is also quite fair to attribute the administration’s position-that U.S. interrogators be allowed latitude in their treatment of enemy prisoners that might offend American values-to the president’s and vice president’s appropriate concern for acquiring actionable intelligence that could prevent attacks on our soldiers or our allies or on the American people. And it is quite unfair to assume some nefarious purpose informs their intentions. They bear the greatest responsibility for the security of American lives and interests. I understand and respect their motives just as I admire the seriousness and patriotism of their resolve. But I do, respectfully, take issue with the position that the demands of this war require us to accord a lower station to the moral imperatives that should govern our conduct in war and peace when they come in conflict with the unyielding inhumanity of our vicious enemy.
Obviously, to defeat our enemies we need intelligence, but intelligence that is reliable. We should not torture or treat inhumanely terrorists we have captured. The abuse of prisoners harms, not helps, our war effort. In my experience, abuse of prisoners often produces bad intelligence because under torture a person will say anything he thinks his captors want to hear-whether it is true or false-if he believes it will relieve his suffering. I was once physically coerced to provide my enemies with the names of the members of my flight squadron, information that had little if any value to my enemies as actionable intelligence. But I did not refuse, or repeat my insistence that I was required under the Geneva Conventions to provide my captors only with my name, rank and serial number. Instead, I gave them the names of the Green Bay Packers’ offensive line, knowing that providing them false information was sufficient to suspend the abuse. It seems probable to me that the terrorists we interrogate under less than humane standards of treatment are also likely to resort to deceptive answers that are perhaps less provably false than that which I once offered.
Our commitment to basic humanitarian values affects-in part-the willingness of other nations to do the same. Mistreatment of enemy prisoners endangers our own troops who might someday be held captive. While some enemies, and Al Qaeda surely, will never be bound by the principle of reciprocity, we should have concern for those Americans captured by more traditional enemies, if not in this war then in the next. Until about 1970, North Vietnam ignored its obligations not to mistreat the Americans they held prisoner, claiming that we were engaged in an unlawful war against them and thus not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions. But when their abuses became widely known and incited unfavorable international attention, they substantially decreased their mistreatment of us. Again, Al Qaeda will never be influenced by international sensibilities or open to moral suasion. If ever the term “sociopath” applied to anyone, it applies to them. But I doubt they will be the last enemy America will fight, and we should not undermine today our defense of international prohibitions against torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners of war that we will need to rely on in the future.
To prevail in this war we need more than victories on the battlefield. This is a war of ideas, a struggle to advance freedom in the face of terror in places where oppressive rule has bred the malevolence that creates terrorists. Prisoner abuses exact a terrible toll on us in this war of ideas. They inevitably become public, and when they do they threaten our moral standing, and expose us to false but widely disseminated charges that democracies are no more inherently idealistic and moral than other regimes. This is an existential fight, to be sure. If they could, Islamic extremists who resort to terror would destroy us utterly. But to defeat them we must prevail in our defense of American political values as well. The mistreatment of prisoners greatly injures that effort.
The mistreatment of prisoners harms us more than our enemies. I don’t think I’m naive about how terrible are the wages of war, and how terrible are the things that must be done to wage it successfully. It is an awful business, and no matter how noble the cause for which it is fought, no matter how valiant their service, many veterans spend much of their subsequent lives trying to forget not only what was done to them, but some of what had to be done by them to prevail.
I don’t mourn the loss of any terrorist’s life. Nor do I care if in the course of serving their ignoble cause they suffer great harm. They have pledged their lives to the intentional destruction of innocent lives, and they have earned their terrible punishment in this life and the next. What I do mourn is what we lose when by official policy or official neglect we allow, confuse or encourage our soldiers to forget that best sense of ourselves, that which is our greatest strength-that we are different and better than our enemies, that we fight for an idea, not a tribe, not a land, not a king, not a twisted interpretation of an ancient religion, but for an idea that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights.
Now, in this war, our liberal notions are put to the test. Americans of good will, all patriots, argue about what is appropriate and necessary to combat this unconventional enemy. Those of us who feel that in this war, as in past wars, Americans should not compromise our values must answer those Americans who believe that a less rigorous application of those values is regrettably necessary to prevail over a uniquely abhorrent and dangerous enemy. Part of our disagreement is definitional. Some view more coercive interrogation tactics as something short of torture but worry that they might be subject to challenge under the “no cruel, inhumane or degrading” standard. Others, including me, believe that both the prohibition on torture and the cruel, inhumane and degrading standard must remain intact. When we relax that standard, it is nearly unavoidable that some objectionable practices will be allowed as something less than torture because they do not risk life and limb or do not cause very serious physical pain.
For instance, there has been considerable press attention to a tactic called “waterboarding,” where a prisoner is restrained and blindfolded while an interrogator pours water on his face and into his mouth-causing the prisoner to believe he is being drowned. He isn’t, of course; there is no intention to injure him physically. But if you gave people who have suffered abuse as prisoners a choice between a beating and a mock execution, many, including me, would choose a beating. The effects of most beatings heal. The memory of an execution will haunt someone for a very long time and damage his or her psyche in ways that may never heal. In my view, to make someone believe that you are killing him by drowning is no different than holding a pistol to his head and firing a blank. I believe that it is torture, very exquisite torture.
Those who argue the necessity of some abuses raise an important dilemma as their most compelling rationale: the ticking-time-bomb scenario. What do we do if we capture a terrorist who we have sound reasons to believe possesses specific knowledge of an imminent terrorist attack?
In such an urgent and rare instance, an interrogator might well try extreme measures to extract information that could save lives. Should he do so, and thereby save an American city or prevent another 9/11, authorities and the public would surely take this into account when judging his actions and recognize the extremely dire situation which he confronted. But I don’t believe this scenario requires us to write into law an exception to our treaty and moral obligations that would permit cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment. To carve out legal exemptions to this basic principle of human rights risks opening the door to abuse as a matter of course, rather than a standard violated truly in extremis. It is far better to embrace a standard that might be violated in extraordinary circumstances than to lower our standards to accommodate a remote contingency, confusing personnel in the field and sending precisely the wrong message abroad about America’s purposes and practices.
The state of Israel, no stranger to terrorist attacks, has faced this dilemma, and in 1999 the Israeli Supreme Court declared cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment illegal. “A democratic, freedom-loving society,” the court wrote, “does not accept that investigators use any means for the purpose of uncovering truth. The rules pertaining to investigators are important to a democratic state. They reflect its character.”
I’ve been asked often where did the brave men I was privileged to serve with in North Vietnam draw the strength to resist to the best of their abilities the cruelties inflicted on them by our enemies. They drew strength from their faith in each other, from their faith in God and from their faith in our country. Our enemies didn’t adhere to the Geneva Conventions. Many of my comrades were subjected to very cruel, very inhumane and degrading treatment, a few of them unto death. But every one of us-every single one of us-knew and took great strength from the belief that we were different from our enemies, that we were better than them, that we, if the roles were reversed, would not disgrace ourselves by committing or approving such mistreatment of them. That faith was indispensable not only to our survival, but to our attempts to return home with honor. For without our honor, our homecoming would have had little value to us.
The enemies we fight today hold our liberal values in contempt, as they hold in contempt the international conventions that enshrine them. I know that. But we are better than them, and we are stronger for our faith. And we will prevail. It is indispensable to our success in this war that those we ask to fight it know that in the discharge of their dangerous responsibilities to their country they are never expected to forget that they are Americans, and the valiant defenders of a sacred idea of how nations should govern their own affairs and their relations with others-even our enemies.
Those who return to us and those who give their lives for us are entitled to that honor. And those of us who have given them this onerous duty are obliged by our history, and the many terrible sacrifices that have been made in our defense, to make clear to them that they need not risk their or their country’s honor to prevail; that they are always-through the violence, chaos and heartache of war, through deprivation and cruelty and loss-they are always, always, Americans, and different, better and stronger than those who would destroy us.
McCain is the senior US senator from Arizona.
McCain on Iraq: 2004
Fox News Network
http://www.newshounds.us/2004/09/19/mccain_on_iraq.php
Fox News Sunday (Sept. 19, 6:00 p.m.) interviewed John McCain about Iraq and the CBS memo.
This is a summary key points:
Fox News: The NY Times reported that U.S commanders will take control of the sanctuaries of the insurgents by the end of the year.
McCain: Yes, the sooner the better.
Fox News: Was it a serious mistake to allow safe havens inside the country?
McCain: The serious mistakes were: Not enough troops; allowing the looting; not securing the borders; saying we would take Fallujah and then pulling out. We must equip and train the Iraqi army. We can and must win. Failure has enormous consequences.
Fox News: It was another bloody week with 50 attacks a day. The Viet Nam analogy is the TET offensive. Could that be an attempt to defeat Bush or to play a role?
McCain: It’s not about defeating Bush, but swaying the American public before the election, loving to see a repeat of the Madrid bombings.
Fox News: What about the July Intelligence estimate?
McCain: It’s very serious. The situation is deteriorating. There’s certain to be more casualties. It’s for a noble cause. It’s tough going between now and the election. We have the will and ability to prevail.
Fox News: (Shows Bush being upbeat about Iraq.) Is this straight talk? Is he leveling about how tough it is?
McCain: Perhaps not as straight as we would like. Not artillery or air strikes, but boots on the ground will get rid of the sanctuaries – the most difficult kind of fighting. We would like the president to be more clear.
Fox News: Could we de-classify intelligence and let people make up their own minds?
McCain: We should have hearings in the Armed Services Committee. Correct the mistakes we made – mistakes are made in every conflict – correct and prevail.
Fox News: What do we do now?
McCain: Take out the sanctuaries as quickly as possible. Enlarge Army and Marines. Keep casualties down. Reduce strain on Guard and Reserves.
Fox News: Kerry is talking of a secret plan to call out more Guard and Reserves after the election.
McCain: About 40% are Guard and Reserves. More of an over-all plan should be articulated by the president.
Fox News: How confident are you that Iraq will hold elections in January?
McCain: More straight talk. There won’t be an election until we get rid of the insurgents’ sanctuaries. Yes, we’ll do it by January.
Fox News: What advice do you have for Dan Rather and CBS?
McCain: Get to the bottom of it quickly, and get it behind you. They can’t stand the sustained publicity.
Fox News: Do you believe it’s a fraud?
McCain: The country can’t stand to refight the Viet Nam war – reopen old wounds. We need to close the wounds – can’t erase deaths. The pundits have control.
Fox News: Did you tell Kerry not to make Viet Nam a big issue? Didn’t Kerry open the door?
McCain: (Hesitates) It makes sense to let others talk about it. His service was honorable. We don’t want to talk about every detail – every medal. Vets have made peace. It’s unfair to veterans to reopen it.
The memos were rehashed for another ten minutes during the panel discussion.
Posted in accordance wiht Title 17, US Code, for noncommercial, educational purposes.
