FOR THE COMFORT OF TERRORISTS
Raymond S. Kraft

At the top of the news this week is the story that the CIA destroyed some videotapes of its interrogations of terrorists, in 2005, conveniently breaking just before the January primaries, the timing calculated, I must presume, to inflict maximum political embarrassment on the President and the Republican presidential candidates. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) asks for a probe of whether CIA officials "violated the law . . . this is an issue that cannot be ignored." Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) accuses the CIA of a cover-up: "The agency was desperate to cover up damning evidence of their practices." None of them, of course, asked for an inquiry into whether the terrorists being interrogated violated the law.

And nobody asks the one truly important question: What is the morality of torture? - or, more precisely, of using psychological pressure and waterboarding to elicit information from terrorists to save the lives of Americans, Iraqi soldiers and civilians, and others who might become the victims of the daily atrocities of terrorism?

Let me formulate the "torture equation" to make this choice perfectly clear:

Question No. 1: Is it moral to sacrifice the safety and lives of American soldiers, and Iraqi soldiers and civilians, to protect the comfort of terrorists?

Question No. 2: Is it moral to sacrifice the comfort of terrorists to protect and save the lives of American soldiers, and Iraqi soldiers and civilians?

If we choose No. 1, we make the moral judgment that the comfort of terrorists with information that could save the lives of American soldiers, or of Iraqi soldiers and civilians, is more important than the lives of the Americans and Iraqis who the daily atrocities of terrorism will maim, torture, and kill. We are conspiring, perhaps unwittingly, because we haven't thought this through as we should, but conspiring nevertheless, to aid and abet the atrocities of terrorism, by failing to do what we can to prevent them. We are condemning American soldiers and Marines on the ground in Iraq to mayhem and death, to protect the comfort and equanimity of the terrorists who intend to kill them. And by doing this, we become just as morally culpable, just as guilty, as the terrorists who trigger the IEDs and car bombs and suicide bombs in the streets of Iraq.

If we choose No. 2, we make the opposite moral judgment: that the comfort of terrorists should be subordinate to the lives of American soldiers, and Iraqi soldiers and civilians, whom the terrorists intend to kill.

In my view, the comfort of terrorists should always be subordinate to the safety and lives of American troops, and Iraqi soldiers and civilians. Many members of Congress, most of them Democrats, and John McCain, apparently disagree.

The choice that many members of Congress are making is, in my view, the most morally offensive and profoundly immoral choice that it is possible to make, the choice that the safety and lives of Americans and Iraqis are not as important as the comfort of terrorists. Let me restate this, to make myself perfectly clear: I cannot imagine an act of greater moral repugnance than to risk and sacrifice the lives of American troops for the comfort of terrorists. And I hope there is a hell, for an eternity in hell is a fate far too kind for the members of Congress who do this.

The method of "torture" at the crux of this debate is waterboarding, a technique now widely known in which the terrorist is strapped to a board, tipped head-down, his face covered with a cloth, and water poured over his face. This induces the drowning reflex, panic, as the body senses that it is in imminent danger of drowning. It does not actually drown the terrorist, it does not inflict severe pain or any permanent injury. It merely induces a reflexive sense of panic, from which the terrorist will fully recover. The information we have from CIA and other agencies is that this technique is used rarely, and only on high-value subjects, and is sometimes effective in eliciting information that can save the lives of American troops, and others.

It's a long stretch even to call waterboarding "torture," and I quote here from Webster:

The infliction of momentary panic (not "extreme pain") by waterboarding obviously does not meet this definition of "torture." Uncomfortable, unpleasant, panic-inducing, but not torture. That should be the end of the debate, but in Congress of course, it isn't. Reality is never an obstacle to demagoguery. Now, I would like to raise an example of real torture, to compare, which you can view at www.SmokingGun.com, photos of drawings of torture methods, tools of torture, and the wounds of torture victims, found by US forces in Baghdad in an Al Qaeda handbook on waterboarding, no, sorry, torture. Real torture. I will list the techniques described there, briefly: 1. Drilling hands. The drawing shows one man drilling with a power drill through the hand of another, strapped flat to a table. His face is not shown. Power drills are also sometimes used to drill into the heads and shoulders of victims. We often see reports of bodies found in Iraq, whose hands, shoulders, and heads have been drilled. 2. Severing limbs. This drawing shows one man hacking off the forearm of another with a meat cleaver, blood spurting, the victim screaming. 3. Dragging behind cars. This drawing shows a man with his hands bound and tied to the bumper of a car with a long rope being dragged through the street, screaming.

4. Eye removal. This drawing shows a man's eye being cut out with a knife, as he screams.

5. Blowtorch to skin. This shows one man applying a blowtorch to the skin on the back of another, who is screaming.

6. Suspended from ceiling and electrocuted. This drawing shows a man suspended from a hook in the ceiling by rope wrapped around his hands, while he is electrocuted with wires attached to his chest, screaming.

7. Breaking arms. This drawing shows a man suspended against a door, his arms forced backwards over the top of the door, his feet off the ground, and a second man behind the door pulling the victim's wrists down to break both arms over the top of the door. The victim is screaming.

8. Bind and beating. This drawing shows a man bound hand and foot to immobilize him, his head on the floor, his legs up over the back of a chair, while his feet are beaten with a cane. He is screaming.

9. Suspended and whipping. This drawing shows a man tied by the ankles and suspended from the ceiling, upside down, while another whips him. He is screaming.

10. Clothes iron to skin. This drawing shows one man applying a hot iron (clothes iron) to the chest of another. The victim is screaming. You can try this at home to see if you'd rather be waterboarded or ironed.

11. Crush head in vice. This drawing shows one man crushing the head of another in a vice. The victim is screaming. Whoever drew these pictures seems to like to depict the victims screaming. Those who draw these pictures and do this stuff can only be sadistic psychopaths who enjoy inflicting extreme pain and suffering on others, i.e., torture, real torture, for the cause of Allah, who is gracious, merciful.

Now, in my opinion, if we have to waterboard a thousand terrorists to prevent one incident of torture such as those described in this Al Qaeda handbook, or the death of one American soldier, or one Iraqi civilian, let's get busy.

The Social Contract, the Civilizational Contract, as conceived by Locke, Rosseau, and other Enlightenment philosophers of the 18th century, whose thought profoundly influenced Jefferson's Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution, is the implicit social and cultural agreement by which men (most men, and most women) agree to treat each other with decency and civility, in exchange for the expectation that others will treat them with reciprocal decency and civility. In contract theory, I can only invoke the terms of a contract so long as I have not breached them. Once I breach a contract, I can no longer expect or demand the benefit of the contract.

When a member of Al Qaeda, or any other terrorist organization, takes up terrorism, they breach the Social Contract, the Civilizational Contract, by committing, or conspiring to commit, deliberate, premeditated atrocities against innocent people, civilians, men, women, children, whoever happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, in the pursuit of their own political or religious ambitions. Once they have breached the Social Contract, the Civilizational Contract, they become outlaws, outside the protection of natural law. By refusing to treat others with decency and civility, they lose any moral claim to be treated with decency and civility themselves, and they no longer have any moral standing to expect that they should not be waterboarded.

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Raymond S. Kraft is a retired attorney in Northern California. He may be contacted at rskraft @ vfr.net.