Torture is prohibited under international law, and even some countries have laws against it. Yet, there is still a debate as to what defines torture.
The UN sees torture as a serious violation of human rights enough to condemn it but not deem it illegal. In the U.S., the fear of "terrorism" has many people blindly defend the methodology to extract information from people who are seen as a possible threat.
In many television shows like Homeland or 24, the message is that torture is sometimes necessary. The justification is that if physical or psychological harm can extract secrets to save lives, then it's worth it.
Shane O’Mara has long been an outspoken critic against torture. His book "Why Torture Doesn't Work - The NeuroScience of Integration" deals another blow to the intelligence networks that use these "enhanced interrogation" tactics to get information.
Torture doesn't work the way torturers assume it does, even for the "lighter" 'white torture' methods (assaults on our core psychological, neural, and physiological functioning).
Some of them used by the CIA and other agencies are "oxygen deprivation through near-drowning and suffocation; shackling and stress positions; extended sleep deprivation; freezing, cooling, and starving the body and brain; overloading the senses with loud noise and bright lights; drip-feed assaults on personal dignity through facial slaps and holds, enforced nakedness, and the imposition of adult diapers; the slow destruction personhood through social isolation, social deprivation, and a deliberate program of deindividualisation; confinement in cramped boxes; predator threat using guns, drills, and attack dogs; pretended assaults on the loved ones of the captive."
The way the brain reacts to fear, extreme temperatures, starvation, thirst, sleep deprivation, waterboarding, stress positions, and freezing water create stressors and problems for memory, mood and thinking.
Those who are put through these conditions will produce unreliable information which is counterproductive to intelligence purposes. If you want information you can depend on to save lives, then torture is not the method to obtain it.
Even Napolean recognized this: “It has always been recognized that this way of interrogating men, by putting them to torture, produces nothing worthwhile.”
Torture doesn't make people want to cooperate through reasoning with them. Instead it creates panic, dissociation, unconsciousness and long-term neurological damage.
The stressors applied will attack the fabric of the brain with the loss in brain tissue with respect to memory. The effects of torture create the same symptoms as post-traumatic stress disorder and other related conditions. Chronic and extreme stress will affect brain regions that deal with intention and general behavioral control. Studies on combat soldiers, patient groups and the normal population show that stressors compromise memory, mood and cognitive function.
O'Mara recounts the story of a 60-year-old torture survivor in Cambodia, reported by an intellgence officer:
“He told his interrogators everything they wanted to know, including the truth. In torture, he confessed to being everything from a hermaphrodite, and a CIA spy to a Catholic bishop and the King of Cambodia’s son. He was actually just a school teacher whose crime was that he once spoke French.”
Interrogators will shift towards more extreme torture as they believe a suspect is withholding information or lying about what they are saying. Evidence shows that people who are trained as interrogators become more likely to believe others are lying to them. This makes them less capable of detecting a lie compared to the rest of us.
O'Mara states that torture is “ineffective, pointless, morally appalling, and unpredictable in its outcomes”.
"Torture as an interrogational theory and practice is a complete and utter failure."
The severe stress from physical and psychological torment will impair recall and promote the use of information the torturer is asking about, into their answers. Torture assaults the core of who we are. The integration of our social, psychological and neural functionality gets twisted and broken and people will do anything, and say anything, just to get the torturer to stop. The negative psychological effects do not only apply to the tortured, but also the torturer who is greatly affected by what they have done.
References:
- Why Torture Doesn’t Work The Neuroscience of Interrogation
- The neuroscience of interrogation: Why torture doesn’t work
- Why Torture Doesn't Work
- Torture
- Beyond torture: The future of interrogation
- Why Torture Doesn't Work
- Finally, Science Beginning to Prove Torture Doesn’t Work
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