Perspective

Torture Doesn't Work---Except
to Make New Enemies

from "Man on Fire--Not!" [excerpts; emphasis added]
by Larry Johnson

Mr. Johnson worked with the Central Intelligence Agency and was a Deputy Director of the U.S. State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism.

I think Dick Cheney has been watching too many Hollywood flicks that glorify torture. He needs, instead, to get on the ground and talk to the folks he is ostensibly trying to empower to torture.

Unlike Dick I have spoken with three CIA operations officers in the last three months--all who have worked on terrorism at the highest levels--and not one endorses torture or believes it will help us. In fact, they believe it will hurt us on many levels.

Two of my friends served in Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of 9-11. If the suicide bombing of the World Trade Centers was not enough justification for hooking Haji up to battery cables, I don't know what is. My friends recognized correctly that their mission was to gather intelligence not create new enemies. If you inflict enough pain on someone they will give you information, but, unless you kill them, they will hold a grudge. As far as the information goes there is no guarantee it will be correct.

What real CIA field officers know from their work with actual sources is that whatever shortterm benefit can be derived from torture will be offset by the new enemy you have created. It is better to build a relationship of trust, no matter how painstaking, rather than gain a short term benefit that puts you on par with a Nazi concentration camp guard.

And that's the point. We should never use our own fear of being attacked as justification to dehumanize ourselves and another human being in our pursuit of so-called truth.

MORE HERE