Green Lights for Torture

So there were WMDs in Iraq after all. They're called digital cameras. Partly because of them, the United States faces one of the most humiliating defeats in imperial history. But there's also a clear paper trail. Not just the long and copiously documented record of US torture, with many of its refinements acquired by the CIA from the Nazis after World War II, but the more recent lineage of encouragement.

Within a few days of the Trade Towers going down in September 2001, a vacationing FBI agent told an acquaintance of mine in Puerto Vallarta that detainees in the United States were being tortured. On May 3, 2004, two such detainees, a Pakistani called Javaid Iqbal and an Egyptian, Ehab Elmaghraby, filed a civil complaint with a US court describing their beatings in the Brooklyn Detention Center, one of them sodomized with a flashlight and put in a tiny cell lit twenty-four hours a day without blanket, mattress or toilet paper. Both were expelled from the country, pleading guilty to minor charges unrelated to terrorism. The center was harshly criticized in a 2003 Justice Department report for serious maltreatment of inmates.

By October of 2001, public opinion here was being softened up for the use of torture. The Washington Post published a piece by Walter Pincus citing FBI and Justice Department investigators as saying that "traditional civil liberties may have to be cast aside if they are to extract information about the Sept. 11 attacks and terrorist plans." Jonathan Alter, Newsweek's liberal pundit, told readers in November that something was needed to "jump-start the stalled investigation." His tone was facetiously upbeat, in line with the "just hazing" approach now promoted by the pain-averse Rush Limbaugh: "Couldn't we at least subject [detainees] to psychological torture, like tapes of dying rabbits or high-decibel rap?" Alter also made respectful reference to Alan Dershowitz--then running around the country promoting the idea of "torture warrants" issued by judges--and to Israel, where "until 1999 an interrogation technique called 'shaking' was legal."

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