A recent bombshell report released by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program has shocked the globe with its findings. It was revealed that the CIA engaged in torture which far exceeded their much-maligned ‘enhanced interrogation techniques,’ and that torture ultimately proved ineffective at producing intelligence.
Prime Minister Harper has responded to the report by claiming that it “has nothing to do whatsoever with the government of Canada.” Canada has facilitated torture by handing over prisoners to Afghan forces and the CIA, despite being aware of the possible torture they might undergo.
The Senate Committee Report detailed that the torture went beyond waterboarding. The CIA used stress positions, sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, sexual abuse, rectal feeding, and beatings. These acts are war crimes according to international law. Torture is the epitome of inhumane treatment, and the state has a fundamental obligation to respect human dignity.
To a certain degree, one must divorce the debate on torture from the tangible benefits of such programs. It is not the government’s mandate to accomplish its objectives at any cost necessary, nor are people’s human rights abandoned as soon as it seems profitable to do so. An individual’s right to life, personal security, and affordance of the most basic human dignity ought not to be subject to a political debate.
An individual’s right to life and personal security ought not to be subject to political debate.
The brutality inherent in torture programs necessitates a shroud of secrecy and deception. Were the public ever allowed insight or the government ever permitted oversight over torture programs, it is unlikely that they would exist. The Senate Committee report found that not only had the torture programs exceeded their mandate, but key CIA officials had misled the government about the nature and efficacy of such programs.
CIA Director Michael Hayden had testified in 2007 to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence about the interrogation techniques used on Abu Zubaydah, an al-Qaeda operative captured by the CIA in 2002. In Hayden’s testimony, he claimed, “we knew he knew a lot. He would not talk. We were going nowhere with him.” Information gathered from CIA records contradict this characterization, and detail that Zubaydah was cooperative before torture was used. In fact, he provided far more intelligence before he was subject to torture than during and after the torture was inflicted.
An individual under inordinate amounts of physical and psychological duress cannot be trusted to yield legitimate intelligence. Such an individual will say anything to stop the abuse; the information they provide can in fact compromise intelligence gathering. The report found that seven of the 39 CIA detainees profiled produced no intelligence and “while being subjected to the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques [. . .] multiple CIA detainees fabricated information, resulting in faulty intelligence.”
Moreover, the excessive amount of resources devoted towards torture programs diverts resources away from effective counter-terrorist initiatives. According to Nathan Vardi of Forbes, the CIA’s program cost “well over $300 million in non-personnel costs,” which does not take into consideration the “millions of dollars in cash payments to foreign government officials” to shore up their cooperation. Perhaps most crucially, torture feeds into terrorist narratives about the west and contributes to a radicalized environment.
The Senate report provides damning evidence that torture is ineffective and often compromises intelligence operation. Furthermore, this program is an assault on democratic values and human rights. With brutal terrorist attacks shocking the globe in recent weeks, it is unclear what, if anything, torture programs have done to keep us safe. If anything, we are even more defenceless in an increasingly dangerous world.
