[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 37 (Tuesday, April 5, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E529-E530]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              JEFF JACOBY SHOWS INTEGRITY ON TORTURE ISSUE

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. BARNEY FRANK

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, April 5, 2005

  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, one of the saddest aspects 
of our current political dialogue is that partisanship has extended 
into the intellectual sphere. That is, I very much agree that people 
should pick one party or the other as being more representative of 
their views than the alternative and generally support that party. That 
is legitimate partisanship. Excessive partisanship comes when people 
are never willing to admit that ``their side'' ever makes mistakes, or 
that the ``other side'' ever has any virtues.
  It is for this reason, as well as the substance of his well-reasoned 
articles, that I was very gratified to read Boston Globe Columnist Jeff 
Jacoby's two-part series on torture. Mr. Jacoby is a strong, outspoken 
conservative who supports the war in Iraq. But unlike many, he does not 
let his general ideological position in this set of issues make him an 
apologist for specific actions which go counter to the very moral 
values that the war in Iraq is supposed to be vindicating.
  In a forceful two-part series in the Boston Globe, Mr. Jacoby makes a 
principled, thoughtful, fact-based case against the use of torture by 
Americans, even in the service of our entirely justified fight against 
terrorism.
  Mr. Jacoby puts it eloquently in his first article: ``Better 
intelligence means more lives saved, more atrocities prevented and a 
more likely victory in the war against radical Islamist fascism. Those 
are crucial ends and they justify tough means. But they don't justify 
means that betray core American values. Interrogation techniques that 
flirt with torture, to say nothing of those that end in death, cross 
the moral line that separates us from the enemy we are trying to 
defeat.''
  In his second article, Mr. Jacoby argues that the case against 
torture is not only a moral one but also a pragmatic one, noting, among 
other things, ``torture is never limited to just the guilty.''
  Mr. Speaker, I salute Jeff Jacoby both for the force of his arguments 
and for the intellectual integrity he has shown in making them. No 
issue confronting our Nation is more important than how we deal with 
this set of questions and I therefore ask that Mr. Jacoby's very 
significant contribution be printed here.

                [From the New York Times, Mar. 17, 2005]

                    Where's the Outrage on Torture?

                            (By Jeff Jacoby)

       In August 2003, when he was commander of the military base 
     at Guantanamo Bay, Major General Geoffrey Miller visited 
     Baghdad with some advice for US interrogators at Abu Ghraib 
     prison. As Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, the military 
     police commander in Iraq, later recalled it, Miller's bottom 
     line was blunt: Abu Ghraib should be ``Gitmo-ized.'' Iraqi 
     detainees should be exposed to the same aggressive techniques 
     being used to extract information from prisoners in 
     Guantanamo.
       ``You have to have full control,'' Karpinski quoted Miller 
     as saying. There can be ``no mistake about who's in charge. 
     You have to treat these detainees like dogs.''
       Whether or not Miller actually spoke those words, it is 
     clear that harsh techniques authorized for a time in 
     Guantanamo forced nudity, hooding, shackling men in ``stress 
     positions,'' the use of dogs were taken up in Afghanistan and 
     Iraq, where they sometimes degenerated into outright 
     viciousness and even torture. Did the injunction to ``treat 
     these detainees like dogs'' give rise to a prison culture 
     that winked at barbarism? Should Miller be held responsible 
     for what Abu Ghraib became?
       The latest Pentagon report on the abuse of captives, 
     delivered to Congress last week by Vice Admiral Albert Church 
     III, doesn't point a finger of blame at Miller or any other 
     high-ranking official. It concludes that while detainees in 
     Iraq, Guantanamo, and elsewhere were brutalized by military 
     or CIA interrogators, there was no formal policy authorizing 
     such abuse. (On occasion it was even condemned in December 
     2002, for example, some Navy officials denounced the 
     Guantanamo techniques as ``unlawful and unworthy of the 
     military services.'')
       But surely, Church was asked at a congressional hearing, 
     someone should be held accountable for the scores of abuses 
     that even the government admits to? ``Not in my charter,'' 
     the admiral replied.
       So the buck stops nowhere. And fresh revelations of horror 
     keep seeping out.
       Afghanistan, 2002: A detainee in the ``Salt Pit'' a secret, 
     CIA-funded prison north of Kabul is stripped naked, dragged 
     across a concrete floor, then chained in a cell and left 
     overnight. By morning, he has frozen to death. According to 
     The Washington Post, which sourced the story to four US 
     government officials, the dead man was buried in an unmarked 
     grave, and his family was never notified. What had the Afghan 
     done to merit such lethal handling? ``He was probably 
     associated with people who were associated with Al Qaeda,'' a 
     US official told the Post.
       Iraq, 2003: Manadel al-Jamadi, arrested after a terrorist 
     bombing in Baghdad, is brought in handcuffs to a shower room 
     in Abu Ghraib. Shackles are connected from his cuffs to a 
     barred window, hoisting his arms painfully behind his back a 
     position so unnatural,
       Sergeant Jeffrey Frost later tells investigators, that he 
     is surprised the man's arms ``didn't pop out of their 
     sockets.'' Frost and other guards are summoned when an 
     interrogator complains that al-Jamadi isn't cooperating. They 
     find him slumped forward, motionless. When they remove the 
     chains and attempt to stand him on his feet, blood gushes 
     from his mouth. His ribs are broken. He is dead.
       Then there is the government's use of ``extraordinary 
     rendition,'' a euphemism for

[[Page E530]]

     sending terror suspects to be interrogated by other countries 
     including some where respect for human rights is nonexistent 
     and interrogation can involve beatings, electric shock, and 
     other torture. The CIA says it always gets an assurance in 
     advance that a prisoner will be treated humanely. But of what 
     value are such assurances when they come from places like 
     Syria and Saudi Arabia?
       Of course the United States must hunt down terrorists and 
     find out what they know. Better intelligence means more lives 
     saved, more atrocities prevented, and a more likely victory 
     in the war against radical Islamist fascism. Those are 
     crucial ends, and they justify tough means. But they don't 
     justify means that betray core American values. Interrogation 
     techniques that flirt with torture to say nothing of those 
     that end in death cross the moral line that separates us from 
     the enemy we are trying to defeat.
       The Bush administration and the military insist that any 
     abuse of detainees is a violation of policy and that abusers 
     are being punished. If so, why does it refuse to allow a 
     genuinely independent commission to investigate without fear 
     or favor? Why do Republican leaders on Capitol Hill refuse to 
     launch a proper congressional investigation? And why do my 
     fellow conservatives--those who support the war for all the 
     right reasons--continue to keep silent about a scandal that 
     should have them up in arms?
                                  ____


             [From the Boston Sunday Globe, Mar. 20, 2005]

                      Why Not Torture Terrorists?

                            (By Jeff Jacoby)

       (Second of two columns)
       The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or 
     Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which the United States 
     ratified in 1994, prohibits the torture of any person for any 
     reason by any government at any time. It states explicitly 
     that torture is never justified--``no exceptional 
     circumstances whatsoever . . . may be invoked as a 
     justification for torture'' Unlike the Geneva Convention, 
     which protects legitimate prisoners of war, the Convention 
     Against Torture applies to everyone--even terrorists and 
     enemy combatants. And it cannot be evaded by ``outsourcing'' 
     a prisoner to a country where he is apt to be tortured during 
     interrogation.
       In short, the international ban on torture--a ban 
     incorporated into US law--is absolute. And before Sept. 11, 
     2001, few Americans would have argued that it should be 
     anything else.
       But in post-9/11 America, the unthinkable is not only being 
     thought, but openly considered. And not only by hawks on the 
     right, but by even by critics in the center and on the left.
       ``In this autumn of anger,'' Jonathan Alter commented in 
     Newsweek not long after the terrorist attacks, ``a liberal 
     can find his thoughts turning to--torture.'' Maybe cattle 
     prods and rubber hoses should remain off limits, he Wrote, 
     but ``some torture clearly works,'' and Americans had to 
     ``keep an open mind'' about using unconventional measures--
     including ``transferring some suspects to our less squeamish 
     allies.''
       In March 2003, a few days after arch-terrorist Khalid 
     Sheikh Mohammed was captured in Pakistan, Stuart Taylor Jr. 
     acknowledged that he was probably being made to feel some 
     pain. ``And if that's the best chance of making him talk, 
     it's OK by me,'' he wrote in his National Journal column. In 
     principle, interrogators should not cross the line into 
     outright torture. But, Taylor continued, ``my answer might be 
     different in extreme circumstances.''
       By ``extreme circumstances'' he meant what is often called 
     the ``ticking-bomb'' scenario: A deadly terror attack is 
     looming, and you can prevent it only by getting the 
     information your prisoner refuses to divulge. Torture might 
     force him to talk, thereby saving thousands of innocent 
     lives. May he be tortured?
       Many Americans would say yes without hesitating. Some would 
     argue that torturing a terrorist is not nearly as wrong as 
     refusing to do so and thereby allowing another 9/11 to occur. 
     Others would insist that monsters of Mohammed's ilk deserve 
     no decency.
       As an indignant reader (one of many) wrote to me after last 
     week's column on the cruel abuse of some U.S. detainees, 
     ``The terrorists . . . would cut your heart out and stuff it 
     into the throat they would proudly slash open.'' So why not 
     torture detainees, if it will produce the information we 
     need?
       Here's why:
       First, because torture, as noted, is unambiguously 
     illegal--illegal under a covenant the United States ratified, 
     illegal under Federal law, and illegal under protocols of 
     civilization dating back to the Magna Carta.
       Second, because torture is notoriously unreliable. Many 
     people will say anything to make the pain stop, while some 
     will refuse to yield no matter what is done to them. Yes, 
     sometimes torture produces vital information. But it can also 
     produce false leads and desperate fictions. In the ticking-
     bomb case, bad information is every bit as deadly as no 
     information.
       Third, because torture is never limited to just the guilty. 
     The case for razors and electric shock rests on the premise 
     that the prisoner is a knowledgeable terrorist like Mohammed 
     or Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. But most of the inmates in military 
     prisons are nothing of the kind. Commanders in Guantanamo 
     acknowledge that hundreds of their prisoners pose no danger 
     and have no useful information. How much of the hideous abuse 
     reported to date involved men who were guilty only of being 
     in the wrong place at the wrong time?
       And fourth, because torture is a dangerously slippery 
     slope. Electric shocks and beatings are justified if they can 
     prevent, another 9/11? But what if the shocks and beating 
     don't produce the needed information? Is it OK to break a 
     finger? To cut off a hand? To save 3,000 lives, can a 
     terrorist's eyes be gouged out? How about gouging out his 
     son's eyes? Or raping his daughter in his presence? If that's 
     what it will take to make him talk, to defuse the ticking 
     bomb, isn't it worth it?
       No. Torture is never worth it. Some things we don't do, not 
     because they never work, not because they aren't ``deserved;' 
     but because our very right to call ourselves decent human 
     beings depends in part on our not doing them. Torture is in 
     that category. We can win our war against the barbarians 
     without becoming barbaric in the process.

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