Task Force Tried To Stop The Torture

There is an excellent article posted now on the MSNBC website about the torture at Guantanamo. It seems that this torture has been going on longer than most people realize.

Members of the Defense Department Criminal Investigation Task Force are now speaking out. They say the torture started as early as the first part of 2002, and had the blessing of the Defense Department.

The experienced investigators of the Criminal Investigation Task Force tried to convince officials as high as those in Rumsfeld's office that torture was not the way to go. The only response they got were accusations of not being patriotic enough.

Many of the Task Force's officers were experienced, and had gotten confessions from terrorists in the past by establishing rapport with the suspects. Colonel Brittain P. Mallow, commander of the task force from 2002 to 2005, said, "We had agents who knew how to do adversarial interviews, had sat across from bad guys. Interviews and interrogations are not about making someone talk. They are about making them want to."

But administration officials were not interested in what works to get reliable information. They turned inexperienced intelligence officers loose with virtually no restrictions on what they were allowed to do. It's like administration officials were more interested in revenge than information or justice.

Col. Mallow tried to explain there were five good reasons not to allow the torture of suspects:

1. It does not work.

2. It produces unreliable information, if any at all.

3. It is not legal, ethical or moral.

4. It can hurt you when it comes time to prosecute.

5. Sooner or later it will be discovered and embarrass the U.S.

He was right on all counts. You simply cannot believe the confession of someone who was tortured. They will tell you anything you want to hear, but it may not even be remotely connected to the truth.

Administration officials recently bragged about the confessions of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed after months of torture. It seems he confessed to being responsible to every act of terrorism for the last 14 years. It's obvious to any thinking person that he told them what they wanted to hear so the torture would stop. I'll bet he would have confessed to planning the Boston Tea Party if they wanted to hear that.

Ask yourself, could you convict someone on evidence of a confession extracted under torture? I know I couldn't. That kind of thing may have passed for justice in the middle ages, but we are supposed to be more enlightened.

I think our forefathers would be spinning in their graves over this kind of illegal, immoral and unethical behavior. They tried to prevent this kind of governmental behavior by giving us a Constitution and a Bill of Rights. Unfortunately, Bush and his cronies have no interest in either of these documents.

With their approval of torture, the Bush administration has truly been an embarrassment to all decent Americans.