Facing up to the question of torture.

• Author: Reed, Warren
• Position: Articles
• Pages: 52(4)

The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either--but through every human heart. --Alexander Solzhenitsyn The concept of torture sickens most people, not just because they see it as repugnant but also for the reminder it provides that barbarism is never far below the surface. Yet, remarkably, in democratic societies there is little sustained interest in issues like "rendition"--rendering prisoners to countries where they can "legally" be tortured--and in the goals and expectations of interrogation, in the screening processes whereby candidates are selected, and in the value of the ultimate product.

While images of Iraqi detainees being abused by laughing Americans with cameras inside Baghdad's Abu Ghraib Prison are for most of us etched in our memories, few people understand that the detainees involved there were not being interrogated. Rather, they were being "softened up" for interrogation. Imagine what happened later in that process. Many of the detainees in the prison had been plucked off the street at random, following the lazy old principle that for every hundred you grab, two or three might know something useful.

Many aspects of torture and interrogation go unexamined. Least considered would be the following two dimensions: the methods that actually produce worthwhile results, and how the practitioners themselves are affected.

As any balanced person who has been in intelligence or the police can tell you, it is only carefully planned and persistent questioning that ever produces information of value. Rather than duress or torture, it's usually incentives, rewards and old-fashioned empathy that win results. Fundamentally, it's a psychological and intellectual battle of wits and wills between the interrogator and the target. Only when a form of trust and respect emerges do things start to happen.

But when the system demands the opposite approach be taken, as it did at Guantanamo Bay, then more than stress and strain come to the fore. Moral dilemmas arise for some, while for others--and not necessarily just those with psychopathic tendencies--satisfaction is readily derived from cruelty and the brutal exercise of power.

An interesting and disturbing insight into this world came in December last year when US Army private, Brandon Neely, who had served in Iraq, spoke publicly about what he saw at Camp X-Ray when posted to Guantanamo Bay. He confirmed that he and his...