The Right's Jack Bauer Fantasy: 'Clip the Electrodes to His Balls and Turn on the Juice'

By Larry Beinhart, AlterNet. Posted February 5, 2009.

Why don't we torture him?

It has been against American policy since George Washington fought the British. It is illegal under the Geneva Conventions, to which we were signatory back before WW II. We accepted those standards, even though the enemy did not live up to them.

According to Army Field Manual FM 34-52 -- Intelligence Interrogation, torture does not produce reliable information. How do they know?

Experience indicates that the use of prohibited techniques is not necessary to gain the cooperation of interrogation sources. Use of torture and other illegal methods is a poor technique that yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts and can induce the source to say what he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.

FM 34-52, 1987.

Clearly they tried it, probably quite often, and it failed.

Revelation of use of torture by U.S. personnel will bring discredit upon the U.S. and its armed forces while undermining domestic and international support for the war effort. It also may place U.S. and allied personnel in enemy hands at greater risk of abuse by their captors. Conversely, knowing the enemy has abused U.S. and allied [prisoners of war] does not justify using methods of interrogation specifically prohibited by [international law] and U.S. policy.

FM 34-52, 1987

Most of all, what we were fighting for, and fighting as, was to be a country that is committed to the dignity of the individual, even an enemy, and to the rule of law, even in difficult circumstances.

OK, time for a different movie. "Judgment at Nuremburg" (1961). It has all-star cast, including: Burt Lancaster, Spencer Tracy, Maximilian Schell, Montgomery Clift, Judy Garland, Marlene Dietrich and Richard Widmark. It's based on a real trial. The men being prosecuted are very interesting.

They didn't run the death camps, plan the Final Solution, run wars of aggression or even fill the top ranks of the Nazi Party. They were judges. Men who simply put the legal veneer on the laws of genocide and oppression, which were national policy.

It is hard to say that today's terrorists are either more evil or more fearsome than the Nazis and Wehrmacht. Yet these men were kept in decent condition and had real trials. They could meet with their attorneys, confront their accusers and all the rest.

Burt Lancaster plays a judge who, before the Nazis, had been a highly esteemed jurist, an internationally recognized scholar of the law. He explains how he came to be a functionary of the Nazi regime. 

Above all, there was fear. Fear of today, fear of tomorrow, fear of our neighbors, fear of ourselves. … There are devils among us. … Once the devils will be destroyed, your miseries will be destroyed. … What about those of us who knew better? We who knew the words were lies and worse than lies? Why did we sit silent? Why did we take part? Because we loved our country! What difference does it make if a few political extremists lose their rights? 

What difference does it make if a few racial minorities lose their rights?"

It is a perfect description of the American mentality after 9/11. It is a perfect description of the fantasy represented by "24."

The impulse to torture, and excuses that are made for it, are well understood. That's why the Convention Against Torture, which the U.S. signed and became U.S. law as federal statute 18 U.S.C. §§ 2340; 2340A, says:

No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

Yet that is what we did. We had lawyers in Washington who came up with legal theories that: 

• Created a class of people who were beneath the law, like Jews and Gypsies once were.
• That evaded the Geneva Conventions.
• That legitimized torture.
• And said that "I was only following orders" would be a legitimate defense against war crimes charges.

The chief prosecutor at the Nuremburg Trials for war crimes, U.S. Associate Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson said:

Certain acts in violations of treaties are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.

In light of that, let me point out who some of those Washington lawyers are: Jay Bybee, now a federal appeals court judge; John Yoo, teaching law at the University of California, Berkeley; and Alberto Gonzales, recently the attorney general of the United States. 

See more stories tagged with: bush, torture, cheney, 24, alberto gonzales, chertoff, john yoo, jack bauer

Larry Beinhart is the author of Wag the Dog, The Librarian and Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin. His latest book is Salvation Boulevard. Responses can be sent to beinhart@earthlink.net.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »