The Elm Student Newspaper
What Kind of Nation Are We?
Volume 80, Issue 25
May 1, 2009
By Mario Carter
Elm Staff Writer
President Obama has lived up to his campaign promise of transparency by releasing the memos which exposed the kind of heinous tactics that were used against terrorists. It was a repugnant exposure of those top agents within the CIA who had committed unspeakable acts with the intention of getting valuable information.
Of course none of these tactics were successful and what they did was make America appear to be a nation that was willing to be as cutthroat as the very terrorists that we are battling. We are above that as a country and we do not need to act as if we are willing to give into our impulses of seeing vile people being tortured no matter what their evil actions have led to.
In the memos that were released, they gave several vivid descriptions of what was done to the detainees at Guantanamo Bay. They included several vivid descriptions of using crude tactics such as repeatedly bashing a person’s skull into the wall, sticking a dangerous insect into a box with someone who had a phobia of insects and putting a terrorist in a box and increasing the temperature to a point where it became unbearably hot.
The most famous of these tactics that was used was the water boarding of two Al Qaeda terrorists, Abu Zubaydah and the planner of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
It is common for right wing pundits to trot out the typical 24 type scenario that they use when debating someone from the opposing side. They usually begin by asking a question such as, ”What if there is going to be an attack in Chicago and a terrorist knows what part of the city that it will take place in and what time it is scheduled to take place, shouldn’t we have to use some unsavory methods at getting the information out of him?”
No, we do not need to use any torture tactics or “enhanced interrogation tactics” for getting the information out of them. If that situation arises, then the successful methods of the Army Field Manual should be employed. If using torture tactics works so well, then why did Zubaydah have to be waterboarded 83 times and why did Mohammed have to be waterboarded 183 times in one month? In fact, time is wasted because we are relying on the false information given by terrorists.
Shouldn’t they have already been ready to speak after the first time? Waterboarding is an evil method for making people crack and suffer. This is a technique that was developed and used during the Spanish Inquisition. It was used against a black convict at a prison in Auburn, New York in 1869 where he repeatedly called for it to stop and when he was taken back to his cell, he died five minutes later. It has been has been used by the Japanese against American soldiers in World War II. The International Tribunal for the Far East sentenced many of the Japanese soldiers to death for using waterboarding.
In 1969, the Washington Post reported a story of an American soldier in Vietnam giving instructions to waterboard a Vietnamese soldier. There was an official investigation and two months later, he was court-martialled. Between the years of 1975-1979, waterboarding was used under the brutal dictator, Pol Pot under the Communist regime of the Khmer Rouge. This is not even a complete list of the history of waterboarding.
We must ask ourselves if we want to follow this despicable record of using a heinous method of torturing people. This is a tactic that has its roots in the Spanish Inquisition and was designed to provide the maximum amount of punishment.
The United States does not need to sink to the level of terrorists because we are better than them. We are more honorable and noble than they are. We do not believe in vile brutality like the terrorists showed when they beheaded the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Should we not exemplify why we are better than they are and why we do not need to use the same wicked tactics that they have used.
Criminals such as the former Vice President Dick Cheney, who has committed himself to destroying President Obama, have tried to gain some gravitas back by stating why torture was useful. On CNN’s State of the Union, Cheney said,” And now, he is making some choices that, in my mind, will, in fact raise the risk to the American people of another attack.” On Hannity, he criticized the decision to release the memos but has now claimed that he requested that the CIA release memos that show how the torture techniques worked. But that was a complete lie.
President Obama made the right decision in releasing the memos, but he has to go farther in prosecuting the criminals that were responsible for using illegal tactics and helping to tarnish the image of America .