Enhanced Interrogation Critiques

There are many ways to inflict excruciating pain upon people. As a form of violence against children, as a means of execution, as a form of discrimination, or even as some kind of entertainment. All of these are forms of torture, but, I haven’t really spoken about one of the most common forms that torture takes in the popular zeitgeist: as a form of extracting information.

I don’t like violence, I have even written about how I think violence goes against human nature, and either makes people who commit it unwell, or requires an unwell person to commit it in the first place. In general, I am a pacifist, and I honestly believe that there is not a single form of violence that could not have been avoided with greater communication, healthcare or education. However, I am also a cynic and a realist, and I understand that sometimes people make mistakes, and when they do, not every situation can be defused without violence. Once communications have broken down, they cannot be rebuilt with more words . . . I understand this.
And, I think we all do. When we are dealing with violence, in order to maintain human life and liberty we sometimes need to respond with violence. It’s not pretty, but when things take a turn for the worse, we sometimes need to act a little worse ourselves, as “dying for your principles” isn’t actually an effective method of proliferating those principles amongst people who disagree.

So, when things get really bad, when the threat is so large and the opponent is so stubborn that they refuse to co-operate, how can we possibly get information from them? Information can turn the tides of war, since you can prepare for your opponent if you have accurate information as to how they are planning to fight you, or what strategies they are going to use.
How can we possibly get information from a stubborn enemy? If they want us to die, what could possibly convince them that talking to us is the best option? I suppose, what I’m really asking is . . . isn’t it logical that, when innocent people are at a severe threat to life and liberty, isn’t it reasonable that we can use torture against captured enemies, in order to gain valuable information? Doesn’t the information gained from torture justify the torture itself?
Well, I’m afraid that the answer is No . . . The Word of the Day is: ‘INTERROGATE’

Interrogate /in'terəgayt/ v.t. 1. To ask a series of questions of (a person), especially in a close or formal way; question. ♦v.i. 2. To ask questions.

So, to begin with, let’s look at what I mean when I am talking about “torture”. How exactly is this meant to help get information? Well, the following “enhanced interrogation techniques” listed in the leaked legal documents such as the Torture Memos, & “coercive interrogation tactics” described in the Report on Torture and Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading treatment of Prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba have been used as forms of torture:
Abdominal Slap: Slapping the detainee’s stomach with the back of the hand, from a foot away.
Attention Grasp: Grabbing a detainee by the collar, and roughly pulling them closer to you.
Cold Showers: Drenching a naked detainee with cold water (10 °C), for up to twenty minutes.
Confinement: Trapping detainees in a box just large enough to stand in, for up to 18 hours.
Facial Hold: Restraining the detainee’s head by firmly grasping either side of their face.
Insult Slap: An open-palm facial slap, so as to “disabuse of the notion they won’t be harmed”.
Rectal Rehydration: Forcing pureed food into a detainee’s digestive system, via the rectum.
Short-shackling: Chaining a detainee’s arms and legs together, for days on end.
Sleep Deprivation: Keeping detainees awake for up to 180 hours (7½ days), often through pain.
Stress Positions: Sitting detainees in positions designed to cause muscle exhaustion, for several days.
Walling: Grabbing a detainee by a collar or towel around the neck, and slamming them into a wall.

If you wonder why I am calling these people “detainees” is because prisoners are granted certain rights under the Geneva Convention. It is illegal to torture prisoners, but neither the convention nor any domestic law said anything about using “enhanced interrogation” against “detainees”.

The theory behind these techniques is that a program of systemic torture will make the subject more forthcoming, by making them less resistant to questioning, more suggestible and less likely to provide misinformation. They based this on the Learned Helplessness theory, developed by Martin Seligman, a rather cruel experiment which showed that if you randomly cause discomfort in a dog (with electric shocks), and do not give it a way to prevent it, then the dog will learn not to try stop the discomfort, when later given the opportunity to do so. Essentially, if you make a dog feel helpless, it will act helpless. However, not only does this not apply to humans as we have a greater capacity to problem-solve, but helplessness is not - and has never been - a characteristic of a reliable informant. There is no science supporting the theory that torture makes a person more reliable, suggestible or intellectually subservient; but on the other hand there is an abundance of research which supports the opposite.
To begin with, despite the systematic torture programs implemented at Guantanamo Bay, exactly zero of the detainees provided useful information, and all of the information provided was completely false - according to the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture:

“The CIA's use of its enhanced interrogation techniques was not an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining cooperation from detainees.”

According to this report, of the 39 detainees known to have been subject to torture, nine provided no information whatsoever, several only provided accurate information prior to being tortured, not after; and “multiple” detainees provided fabricated information, leading to faulty intelligence and wasted resources.
But, these are just the statistics we know about, what about the science behind it? Well, in his book Why Torture Doesn’t Work: The Neuroscience of Investigation, Professor Shane O’Mara - a professor of experimental brain research at the Institute of Neuroscience at Trinity College - explains the science of how brains react to stressors, pain, anxiety and trauma in the following way (bold added for emphasis, tangents redacted):

“There is overwhelming evidence (detailed in my new book [...]) that the extreme stressors employed during torture force the brain away from the relatively narrow, adaptive range that it operates within. Furthermore, these stressors attack the fabric of the brain, causing tissue loss in brain regions concerned with memory (especially in the temporal lobes, adjacent the temples) [. . .]
[. . .] Sleep deprivation is a most effective method for causing deficits in cognition, mood and memory, and it does so in direct proportion to the dose of sleep deprivation imposed. The sleep deprived show large decrements in psychomotor and general cognitive function, as well as profound deficits in declarative memory. Studies of persons in severe chronic pain, and studies of the interaction between supervening states of pain, cognition, and memory demonstrate reliably that pain impairs cognition, memory, and mood. Deliberate suffocation or near-drowning is a form of predator threat, involving the repeated imposition of a near-death experience. However, oxygen restriction reliably draws activity away from brain regions concerned with higher cognitive function and memory in favor of brainstem regions concerned with reflexive responses supporting immediate survival — militating against detailed recall.
Chronic and severe stress compromises integrated psychological functioning, impairing recall, and facilitating the incorporation of information contained in leading questions, and the captive and interrogator both might not know this subtle process of incorporation has occurred. Torture fails during interrogation because torture is an assault on our core integrated, social, psychological, and neural functioning. Given what we know of the brain, memory, mood and cognition, it is little surprise that the signal-to-noise ratio from torture is so poor.”

O’Mara, S. (2016), Why Torture Doesn’t Work. Retrieved from PsychologyToday.com

But that’s not all . . . the logic behind torture is inherently flawed. It requires you to not have the solution to a problem, yet want to know it badly enough to consider torture viable. If the options were limited enough that you could just explore all options - you would do that, since we’ve established that you’re desperate enough to attempt torture, surely you’re desperate enough to expend a few resources.
So, the only reason why you would be forced to use torture is if you’re in a situation where you have either absolutely no information about the solution for you problem, or the potential solutions are so numerous that torture is somehow less of a burden than exploring the potential solutions to try to solve the problem.
This granted, it means that you must, therefore, lack any ability to verify the viability of the solutions given to you, unless you attempt them. So, already, you’re flying completely blind.

Now, even if you know that a person has the solution to your problem - which is a logical paradox in and of itself, but let’s skip that for a moment - even if you did somehow, some way, find a person who has the solution, but does not want to tell you (and they must not, as if they did then you would not need to resort to torture), how could you possibly know that the information they give you is viable?
Worse, what if the information given isn’t the kind of thing that you can “test”? What if, rather than an abundance of options, you have a problem whereby attempting the wrong solution would lead to catastrophe?
I can’t see a single situation whereby your desperation to find an answer leads to the person you are torturing somehow needing to give you the answer more than you could possibly want it. And if that person does not like you, then either not giving you the answer - or giving you a false answer - would become the most attractive options.
Basically, it’s an issue of a self-aggravating problem. If your victim doesn’t want to reveal the information to you, then as your desire for torture grows (alongside your desire for the solution), so too does your victim's desire to keep their secrets. But, if your victim does want to give you the answer, but doesn’t have one, then they have the greatest possible reason to give you an answer - any answer - to stop you from hurting them, since there is no possible way of telling the difference between a person who knows and is lying, and someone who is honest but telling the truth.

And that’s where it gets truly horrifying.. Personally, I don’t think that anyone deserves to be tortured, but just in case you do, keep in mind that not only is there a high chance that innocent people could be tortured, there is proof that innocent people have been tortured, by these kinds of cruel, barbaric, unconstitutional programs.

But, do you want to know the craziest part about all this? A lot of the reasoning behind this, whilst it originates from a misapplication of common sense, at the end of the day most people mistakenly believe that torture is effective because of television. Shows were the hero resorts to torture often show that, whilst the act is gruesome, it is always effective, and therefore always justifiable in fiction.
So, shows like The Punisher, Homeland, The Shield & especially 24, always showing torture in this way are helping to deceive people. You may think that I’m overreacting, but members of the American government have been quoted citing shows like 24, and characters like Jack Bauer, as justification for torture. Just let that rattle around in your head for a while . . .

Anyway, that’s all I have to say about torture as a form of coercive interrogation - basically, it isn’t one. But, it gets even worse when you consider the other costs involved - the psychological costs, the economic costs, the political costs & the social costs of being a country that commits human rights violations. The only possible benefit of torture as a form of interrogation is that it sometimes makes anti-heroes seem more dramatic . . .
Anyway, until next time, I’m the Absurd Word Nerd, and I approve this message.