Torture and the Truth (AGAIN)

Gripped by a fear that a secret conspiracy of evil doers killed children, destroyed food supplies, and, eventually would cause the destruction of civilization, the battle against terror used any means necessary to extract information from those it suspected of practicing evil. Torture was the order of the day.



Why? Well, because torture led to the highest form of truth—which was not evidence, but rather, confession. Hundreds of years of legal theories had led to the imposition of Roman law, in which the words forced from the lips of wrongdoers equaled justice, because justice was getting at the truth, and, once truth had been extracted, further evil could be prevented. 

And so, torture led to moments like this:

Many  hundred thousand good-nights, dearly beloved daughter Veronica. Innocent have I come into prison, innocent have I been tortured, innocent must I die.

Charles Krauthammer would no doubt have been pleased had he witnessed the methods used to extract Junius’s confession. As Junius tells it:

For whoever comes into the witch prison must become a witch or be tortured until he invents something out of his head and—God pity him—bethinks him of something. I will tell you how it has gone with me. When I was the first time put to the torure, Dr. Braun, Dr. Kotzendorffer, and two strange doctors were there. Then Dr. Braun asks me, “Kinsman, how come you here??? I answer, “Through falsehood, through misfortune.?? “Hear, you,?? he says, “you are a witch; will you confess it voluntarily? If not, we’ll bring in witnesses and the executioner for you.?? I said, “I am no witch; I have a pure conscience in the matter; if there a thousand witnesses, I am not anxious, but I’ll gladly hear the witnesses.?? Now the chancellor’s son was set before me … and afterward Hoppfens Elsse. She had seen me dance on Haupts-moor … I answered: “I have never renounced God, and will never do it—God graciously keep me from it. I’ll rather bear whatever I must.?? And then came also—God in highest heaven have mercy—the executioner, and put the thumb-screws on me, both hands bound together, so that the blood ran out at the nails and everywhere, so that for four weeks I could not use my hands, as you can see by my writing … Thereafter they first stripped me, bound my hands behind me, an drew me up in the torture. [strappado] Then I thought heaven and earth were at an end; eight times did they draw me up and let me fall again, so that I suffered terrible agony…

And this happened on Friday, June 30, and with God’s help I had to bear the torture … When at last the executioner led me back into the prison, he said to me, “Sir, I beg you, for God’s sake confess something, whether it be true or not. Invent something, for you cannot endure the torture which you will be put to; and, even if you bear it all, yet you will not escape, not even if you say you were an earl, but one torture will follow after another until you say you are a witch…

For Krauthammer,

A terrorist is by profession, indeed by definition, an unlawful combatant: He lives outside the laws of war because he does not wear a uniform, he hides among civilians, and he deliberately targets innocents. He is entitled to no protections whatsoever.

For Krauthammer, torture is justifiable to protect the common good. That is, when torturing someone extracts a piece of information that prevents further evil from being perpetrated.

What Krauthammer refuses to acknowledge—anywhere in his apologia for torture—is the possiblity that anyone pulled off the street, and subjected to the barbarism of the torture chamber, will, by most accounts, eventually confess to anything to get the pain to stop. (An interesting historical footnote: Witchcraft hunters noted that women were more likely to be able to withstand torture than men were.)

And then, we have this gem by by torture apologist John Gibson:

Interrogation Techniques U.S. Uses Are Not Torture

Here it is: The special interrogation techniques that were used on the 9/11 plotters we had in secret CIA prisons — the techniques erroneously called torture by Human Rights Watch and others — those techniques work.

They worked on all 14 of these 9/11 detainees and each of those detainees gave up valuable information as a result of those techniques.

They were the items I described earlier in the week, including induced hypothermia, belly slaps, and sound assaults. And here's the big one: waterboarding.

People call it torture. As Ross described it, waterboarding sounds unpleasant, and since no one could stand it for longer than a couple minutes, I might say very unpleasant. But I hardly think it is torture.

Yes, we're Americans and we don't torture. These special interrogation techniques are not torture and they work.

Let's hope the deal between the president and Sen. McCain today allows American interrogators to continue to use techniques which have proven to work.

Especially since they are not torture. Not, not, not torture.

I'm publicly challenging Mr. Gibson to endure waterboarding. I'd like to ask him a few questions about his proclivity for raping little boys. He doesn't rape little boys? How long do you think it would take Mr. Gibson to confess to such? Shall we start a pool? I'll draw up squares.

Under torture, Junius confesses to all manner of things. And while we may laugh at the absurdity of a belief in spirits that fly at night, devil worship, and magically removing men’s penises, the dangers of witchcraft, according to preachers such as Bernardina do Siena was that God would be so angered by the toleration of witchcraft that he would “destroy the cities,?? as he had promised to do repeatedly in the Old Testament.

With the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the constant threat of Muslim invasion; with the periodic outbreaks of Black Plague (which in 1348 wiped out one-third of Europe’s population); with the constant reiteration of the ritual murder/blood libel accusations against Jews; with only one in five children making it to adulthood and a large percentage of women dying in childbirth, the world was a frightening place. If a few innocents had to be tortured in order to protect the common good, well, so be it. Krauthammer has no problem with that. But then again, Krauthammer has probably never read the kind of letter that those who are tortured smuggle out of prison to make contact with their loved ones.

“Now, dear child, here you have all my confession, for which I must die. And they are sheer lies and made-up things, so help me God. For all this I was forced to say through fear of the torture which was threatened beyond what I had already endured. For they never leave off with the torture till one confesses something; be he never so good, he must be a witch. Nobody escapes, though he were an earl…

Dear child, keep this letter secret so that people do not find it, else I shall be tortured most piteously and the jailers will be beheaded. So strictly is it forbidden … Dear child, pay this man a dollar … I have taken several days to write this: my hands are both lame. I am in a sad plight…

Good night, for your father Johannes Junius will never see you more. July 24, 1628.

If 400 years later, we can look back on the confessions extracted under torture and understand that none of it was true, why, oh why, is is so fucking hard for someone like John Gibson to understand how pornographically twisted his thinking on this issue is?

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