The Torture-Friendly Trump
Administration
Only stupid people say torture works
— and one of them is sitting in the
White House.
By Medea Benjamin
It should come as no surprise to
anyone that Donald Trump is
pro-torture. He said on the campaign
trail he’d approve waterboarding “in
a heartbeat,” plus “a
hell of a lot worse.”
He
added:
“Only a stupid person would say it
doesn’t work.”
There
are certainly a lot of stupid people
then, because everyone from
interrogators to researchers have
repeatedly concluded that torture
doesn’t work.
People will say whatever you want
them to say to make the pain stop,
making torture not only inhumane but
also bad for intelligence.
A 2009
Senate Armed Services Committee
review concluded that torture
“damaged our ability to collect
accurate intelligence that could
save lives, strengthened the hand of
our enemies, and compromised our
moral authority.” That’s why the
Senate voted in
2015 to turn the presidential ban on
torture into official law.
To his
credit, Trump did water down his
original support for torture,
allowing Defense Secretary James
Mattis — who opposes
torture
— to override him.
But if the Trump administration is
now opposed to torture, why are they
nominating the architects of
America’s torture fiasco to key
posts?
Take Steven
Bradbury,
nominated to be general counsel for
the Transportation
Department. Bradbury is infamous for
writing the legal memos authorizing
CIA torture at the Bush Justice
Department.
Bradbury’s confirmation was placed
on hold by Senator Tammy Duckworth,
an Iraq veteran who lost her legs in
the war. “The actions you helped
justify put our troops in harm’s
way, put our diplomats deployed
overseas in harm’s way, and you
compromised our nation’s very
values,” she said angrily at his
confirmation hearing.
Or what about Donald Trump’s nominee
to head the FBI, Christopher Wray?
Wray
was at the Justice Department when
attorney John Yoo and others were
drafting their torture
memos.
Wray knew about detainee abuse and
did not, as head of the criminal
division, bring charges against any
of the Bush administration torturers
— except for one low-level
CIA contractor who
beat a prisoner to death.
A third
person connected to torture is Gina
Haspel, who was appointed deputy
director of the CIA. Haspel ran
a “black site” prison in
Thailand where suspects were
waterboarded — and then
helped destroy video
of the interrogations.
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The Senate Intelligence Committee
meticulously documented the sordid
U.S. record of torture under the
Bush administration in a 6,770-page
report. But the public hasn’t been
able to read it — only the executive
summary has been released.
Yet this isn’t just an exercise in
history. In June, Human Rights Watch
and the Associated Press published
explosive reports revealing a secret
network of prisons in southern Yemen
run by U.S.-allied United Arab
Emirates and Yemeni forces.
The reports reveal horrific
practices in which prisoners,
including children, have been
arbitrarily detained, forcibly
disappeared, sexually assaulted, and
tortured. One torture method, known
as the “grill,” had victims tied to
a spit like a roast and spun in a
circle of fire.
Reports
indicate that the U.S. military knew
about the torture, received
transcripts of the interrogations
conducted by Yemeni interrogators,
and
interrogated several detainees
themselves.
According to one Yemeni security
officer, American forces were only
yards away
from a facility where torture took
place.
Senators John McCain and Jack Reed
immediately expressed outrage,
calling on the Trump administration
to investigate the allegations. But
the reaction of the White House to
these revolting reports is telling:
radio silence.
Trump’s refusal to publicly condemn
these secret prisons, together with
the appointments of people who
played a role in George W. Bush’s
torture program, should set off
alarm bells.
Only stupid people say torture
works, and one of them is sitting in
the White House.
