Original Blog Reporting: TTD Interviews Author Michael Otterman On Torture

The Moderate Voice applauds weblogs that do original reporting. The reason: weblogs are an incredible opportunity to do original reporting as WELL as commentary. And there some that do just that.

One blog that does it on a regular basis is the always-unique The Talking Dog which has run a series of detailed interviews involving issues related to detainees jailed due to charges involving terrorism. TTD’s questions are quite specific (you can tell he does his homework and is an attorney) and to the point. As usual, we’ll give you the intro and one excerpt and encourage you to read the entire piece.

INTRO:

Michael Otterman is a journalist and the author of “American Torture: From the Cold War to Abu Ghraib and Beyond”, documenting the institutionalized use of torture by the United States intelligence services and military from World War II and the early Cold War through the extensive use of torture by the United States in the Global War on Terror. Mr. Otterman will be on a speaking tour of the United States in September and October, and regularly updates of his schedule and other information is available at his website, “American Torture”. On July 11, 2007, I had the privilege of interviewing Mr. Otterman by e-mail exchange.

EXCERPT QUOTING OTTERMAN:

Acts like waterboarding are indeed torture. That’s not just my opinion, but it’s been the official US government opinion for decades. The act was considered a war crime during the post WWII Tokyo Trials. One Japanese general was sentenced to 15 years for authorizing it. Marines caught waterboarding in Vietnam were kicked out of the Army. This torture—like sensory deprivation, forced standing, hypothermia, sleep deprivation—were all labeled during the Cold War as tortures by US agencies studying Soviet use of these methods. The State Department, still to this day, calls these acts in its yearly Country Reports on Human Rights by their right name: torture.

That said, before 9/11 tortures were used by the US at home and abroad—but it was always behind closed doors.

They were taught to CIA and special forces as “what the enemy does” and though condoned, the formal approval was never written down. 9/11 brought the American use of torture out of the shadows. On September 17, Bush authorized the CIA to kill, capture, or detain anyone they deemed to be al Qaeda. The Geneva Conventions were then nullified (to void the War Crimes Act), then official approvals for tortures like waterboarding were granted to the CIA by the Department of Justice. CIA interrogators were trained by SERE staff in use of these methods. Torture—as it always does—then spread. By late 2002, the same tortures approved for the CIA for use in black sites were then granted by Rumsfeld for use in GTMO. SERE trainers were sent to Cuba in late 2002 to train interrogators there. The techniques quickly jumped to Afghanistan, then Iraq.

From the beginning, phrases like “new war” and “new paradigm” have been used to justify these authorizations. Cheney’s comments to Tim Russert days after 9/11 that the US was now to “work the dark side” weren’t simply rhetoric. The Bush administration made a conscious decision to fight dirty— to fight inhumanity with inhumanity. The approval was sought, and granted, at the highest levels in the context of the post 9/11 GWOT.

Of interest to all sides in this debate. Read it in its entirety.