Al Libi, The Bogus Iraq-al Qaeda Link and the Effects of Torture
By now you've all seen this from the NYT. I'm not sure what there is to say about it.
This story may end up marking a turning point in my thinking about this war. Until now I've usually been inclined to try to distance myself from my judgments about what's going on. That is, though I'm fairly certain the administration handled evidence irresponsibly in the run-up, fairly certain they deceived us, fairly certain that the GWoT (G-SAVE, P-FUNK, whatever) is being run in a sub-optimal manner, and in particular fairly certain that the invasion was hasty at best and completely ill-conceived at worst, I keep trying to back off of those judgments and re-evaluate them, gather more evidence, consider more arguments (like e.g. Den Beste's formulation).
But new evidence in support of the judgments aforementioned seems to pour forth almost every week. The picture becomes clearer and clearer; the parts fit together in a more and more coherent manner.
The Times story (if true) brings at least four conclusions we have arrived at independently into coherence with each other: we have independent reason to believe that:
(i) There was no significant operational relationship between al Qaeda and Saddam
(ii) The evidence the administration used to persuade us that there was was thin and suspicious
(iii) We are employing torture or allowing torture to be employed with our imprimatur
(iv) Torture is an unreliable way to obtain information
The al Libi revelations give us reason to believe that we are, in fact, right about all of the above. In particular the story (if true) establishes certain interesting explanatory relationships. That the administration and/or its agents wanted to hear that (i) was false, together with the fact that torture victims tend to tell their torturers what they want to hear (which entails (iv)) explains why al Libi asserted that (i) was false. The information didn't fit in with other, better information to the effect that there was no significant operational link, and this conflict in part explains (ii). And, of course, the story, if true, means that (iii) is true.
As others have pointed out, none of this should come as a surprise given that the methods of torture being employed were designed to get people to assert certain pre-determined propositions--propositions that the torturers want to hear the tortured assert (if this can, in fact, be properly called 'assertion').
This grisly type of theater has always sent my mind reeling. The North Vietnamese torture our pilots until they get them to say certain words--"this war is illegal" or whatever--then they parade the film around as if it meant something. As if we didn't know that you can inflict enough pain on someone to get them to emit certain noises, including words, including words that sound like assertions.
The image of Christian inquisitors huddled over their victims, pulling out fingernails and burning flesh until the victims made the word-shaped sounds their torturers wanted to hear has always struck me as nauseating almost beyond imagining, not merely because of the inhuman brutality of the thing but almost as much because of its astonishingly sickening irrationality. Who could be so brutal and stupid to think that such quasi-assertions matter? If A knows that, with enough cutting and burning, he can get B to emit whatever words A chooses, why does A feel the urge to go through the gruesome motions at all?
Peirce somewhere says something like: assertion has a hypnotic effect. He may mean something like: merely hearing the words irresistably gives us some inclination to believe them, no matter how much collateral information we have that the asserter cannot be trusted. Maybe this can help explain what's going on in the minds of the torturers, and perhaps even in the minds of the administration, the sponsors and consumers of the resultant misinformation.
So this is what I'm thinking now: it's about time to stop distancing myself from my own considered judgments about all this. In the absence of a reliable official investigation of the matter--and, of course, the administration's resistance to an official investigation is another datum here--our evidence has become about as good as it can get that we were right about (i)-(iv). That's too bad, of course. I wish we'd been wrong, but that possibility seems more and more remote by the day.
By now you've all seen this from the NYT. I'm not sure what there is to say about it.
This story may end up marking a turning point in my thinking about this war. Until now I've usually been inclined to try to distance myself from my judgments about what's going on. That is, though I'm fairly certain the administration handled evidence irresponsibly in the run-up, fairly certain they deceived us, fairly certain that the GWoT (G-SAVE, P-FUNK, whatever) is being run in a sub-optimal manner, and in particular fairly certain that the invasion was hasty at best and completely ill-conceived at worst, I keep trying to back off of those judgments and re-evaluate them, gather more evidence, consider more arguments (like e.g. Den Beste's formulation).
But new evidence in support of the judgments aforementioned seems to pour forth almost every week. The picture becomes clearer and clearer; the parts fit together in a more and more coherent manner.
The Times story (if true) brings at least four conclusions we have arrived at independently into coherence with each other: we have independent reason to believe that:
(i) There was no significant operational relationship between al Qaeda and Saddam
(ii) The evidence the administration used to persuade us that there was was thin and suspicious
(iii) We are employing torture or allowing torture to be employed with our imprimatur
(iv) Torture is an unreliable way to obtain information
The al Libi revelations give us reason to believe that we are, in fact, right about all of the above. In particular the story (if true) establishes certain interesting explanatory relationships. That the administration and/or its agents wanted to hear that (i) was false, together with the fact that torture victims tend to tell their torturers what they want to hear (which entails (iv)) explains why al Libi asserted that (i) was false. The information didn't fit in with other, better information to the effect that there was no significant operational link, and this conflict in part explains (ii). And, of course, the story, if true, means that (iii) is true.
As others have pointed out, none of this should come as a surprise given that the methods of torture being employed were designed to get people to assert certain pre-determined propositions--propositions that the torturers want to hear the tortured assert (if this can, in fact, be properly called 'assertion').
This grisly type of theater has always sent my mind reeling. The North Vietnamese torture our pilots until they get them to say certain words--"this war is illegal" or whatever--then they parade the film around as if it meant something. As if we didn't know that you can inflict enough pain on someone to get them to emit certain noises, including words, including words that sound like assertions.
The image of Christian inquisitors huddled over their victims, pulling out fingernails and burning flesh until the victims made the word-shaped sounds their torturers wanted to hear has always struck me as nauseating almost beyond imagining, not merely because of the inhuman brutality of the thing but almost as much because of its astonishingly sickening irrationality. Who could be so brutal and stupid to think that such quasi-assertions matter? If A knows that, with enough cutting and burning, he can get B to emit whatever words A chooses, why does A feel the urge to go through the gruesome motions at all?
Peirce somewhere says something like: assertion has a hypnotic effect. He may mean something like: merely hearing the words irresistably gives us some inclination to believe them, no matter how much collateral information we have that the asserter cannot be trusted. Maybe this can help explain what's going on in the minds of the torturers, and perhaps even in the minds of the administration, the sponsors and consumers of the resultant misinformation.
So this is what I'm thinking now: it's about time to stop distancing myself from my own considered judgments about all this. In the absence of a reliable official investigation of the matter--and, of course, the administration's resistance to an official investigation is another datum here--our evidence has become about as good as it can get that we were right about (i)-(iv). That's too bad, of course. I wish we'd been wrong, but that possibility seems more and more remote by the day.
posted by Winston Smith at
9:12 AM
6 Comments:
Peirce somewhere says something like: assertion has a hypnotic effect.
Of course. Whether it's Bush or Kos or Limbaugh, or The New York Times, you're going to have to think for yourself.
When I find a piece of rhetoric attractive, I google the opposition.
If there's one thing I've learned from the good philosophers, is that it ain't so easy to clear your mind. We are all gullible: mentally and morally lazy and most tragically, cowardly. So be it; that's how we're wired.
I happen to think it's easier to lose faith than to keep it. This is by no means a universal rule---human history is full of tyrants who abuse the faith they've been accorded. But neither is rebellion the morally unambiguous path in its easiness (considering that nothing human is ever perfect and thus rebellion has a built-in advantage over any status quo).
There can be no doubt it is easier to undermine something than to achieve it. I try to factor that in. Faint heart never won fair maiden. (Surely that saying would not have stuck around if there weren't some truth to it...)
It's an interesting point, Tom. Though I kinda wonder whether we haven't gotten past the point where faith matters in the case at hand...the evidence seems to get clearer all the time...
But I have doubts about your thesis anyway. I think that faith is as seductive as cynicism/skepticism. It's easy to just stick doggedly/dogmatically to one's faiths, and easy to become angry and cynical and intellectuall destructive...but hardest to be rational and keep a reasonable grip on reasonable hopes/faiths. The kooks on your side of the aisle tend to be those who keep a death grip on their childhood faiths and seemingly want to burn all those who don't at the stake. The Fundies, that is. The kooks on my side of the aisle tend to be those who revel in their cynicism and skepticism. They are like intellectual and spiritual vandals, gleefully trying to destroy for the sake of destruction, seemingly hating those who continue to find any value or have any hope in anything. The postmodernists, that is. (Thankfully those guys are really bad at what they do; real intellectual lightweights. As my mom might say, if they had a brain they'd be dangerous.)
There's something seductive about both sides. The trick is to get it right, find the golden mean here...
Well, that's my guess.
The postmodernists, that is. (Thankfully those guys are really bad at what they do; real intellectual lightweights.)
No, no---my idiots are worse than your idiots! :-)
Yeah, well, spend some quality time with MY idiots and let's see what tune yer singin' after.
My idiots are the thing mostly likely to drive me to your side of the aisle...
Well, I admit the best thing about my idiots is that they tend to keep to themselves. Usually in armed compounds.
Yeah, my idiots tend to hole up in literature and anthropology departments...they're isolated from the world, but, though needless to say resolutely unarmed, still able (and often willing) to pass their stupidity on to a new generation... That's very bad... But on the bright side they have absolutely no political power or influence whatsoever. Thank the gods for small favors...
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