Ken Robinson | BIO
Former Special Operations and Intelligence Officer
"In war, truth is the first casualty." Aeschylus said it 2500 years ago. Yet we are rediscovering this lesson all over again in the debate over torture.
Yesterday, President Obama signed an executive order unequivocally stating that the United States will not condone torture of any human being.
Period.
For years, there will be partisan arguments on both sides of this opposition to torture, some claiming it is Pollyannaish and giving up the only effective tool we have at our disposal.
But people on both sides seem to have forgotten a key detail – the truth.
And the truth is - torture doesn't work.
Last June, 15 former interrogators and intelligence officials (including me) met in Washington, DC to confront the Bush Administration with a truth we've learned from more than 350 years of experience between us - that torture is not only against international law, it is simply "ineffective and counterproductive."
We released a set of findings including this: "The use of torture and other inhumane and abusive treatment results in false and misleading information, loss of critical intelligence, and has caused serious damage to the reputation and standing of the United States. The use of such techniques also facilitates enemy recruitment, misdirects or wastes scarce resources, and deprives the United States of the standing to demand humane treatment of captured Americans."
"There must be a single well-defined standard of conduct across all U.S. agencies to govern the detention and interrogation of people anywhere in U.S. custody, consistent with our values as a nation," we wrote.
"There is no conflict between adhering to our nation's essential values, including respect for inherent human dignity, and our ability to obtain the information we need to protect the nation."
We shared this expertise - learned the hard way, in the field - with Presidential campaign advisors and members of Congress. But our efforts were drowned out by heavy partisanship, from otherwise good men who were unwilling to listen to reason - or to experience.
Today, it's a new day. Besides the unquestionable fact that torture does not provide reliable intelligence, it has been rejected because it is not who we are as a people.
Yet many remain unconvinced. If you are among them, please consider this: from a purely intelligence perspective – we must understand that interrogations have only one purpose, to illicit "accurate information," which when analyzed and processed becomes "intelligence."
Intelligence is an art, not a science, and will never be a policy panacea, a cure-all for the threats against us.
The most important use of the Presidents Daily (intelligence) Brief is to inform, and enable a presidential executive decision. That decision is often made in the face of a ticking clock, and the fog of uncertainty. That's why the primacy of intelligence ceases at the oval office door, and judgment must prevail.
There will never be perfect intelligence, but there may be perfect decisions. And when there are imperfect decisions, they will likely be traced back to "imperfect intelligence."
Do you really want the President of the United States making strategic decisions, impacting millions of people, based on a tortured person saying anything - and everything "just to make the pain stop?"
In Roman mythology, Veritas (truth) was the goddess, who hid deep in the bottom of a holy well because she was so elusive.
We've learned through recent American history just how elusive the truth can be. But there is no question that when a nation selects torture as its shield, it sets the conditions for never finding the truth, and potentially even burying it.
Today, the nation stepped back, onto the right side of history.
Editor’s note: Ken Robinson is now working as a writer and executive producer in Hollywood. Check out the 14-minute film he worked on in association with Human Rights First called "Primetime Torture." It explores the way torture and interrogation are portrayed on TV.
© 2010 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
| Advertise with us | About us | Contact us | Help | Advertising Practices
The "Bullying: It Stops Here" town hall
Anderson answers your questions
The art of booking guests
It doesn't matter if other countries do not follow the rules of the Geneva Convention. Torture is wrong, no matter how much we want justice and "intelligence." America does not need to stoop to their level. Two wrongs do not make a right.
The Geneva Convention does not apply to Osama Bin Laden and his group of merry men. Lets be real folks. Waterboarding was a training technique used by our elite military forces. Putting someone in a cold or hot room for long periods of time or scaring them with rats and dogs how is that torture?
Cutting a mans hand or finger off now that is torture. Taking a blow torch to a person's feet that is torture. Driving a plane into a high rise and forcing someone to jump 70 stories to their death now that is torture.
Obama and his thugs should be run out of this country for what they have done in the last three days. We have done so much and after nearly 8000 people have died and thousands more wounded for the war on terror and this joke of a president walks in and steps on the graves of our brave men and women.
Shame to Obama. Shame to him!
If torturing tends to extract more false information, misleading information, irrelevant information, and finally zero information vis-a-vis actual intelligence, then perhaps its time for the US to head back to the old drawing board to find a new methodology for obtaining intelligence. At least they can now set an example for the rest who are bound by international laws such as Geneva and the UN Convention against Torture.
This is a positive step in the direction of complying with the notion of "American Exceptionalism"– an idea which holds that American culture and values are exceptional and should set the example for the international community to follow (the Human Rights approach– read Michael Ignatieff) Many international laws are championed by the US–still the same country seems to often step away from the rules that it sets.
Does anyone really think other countries will follow our lead in foreign affairs? Or are we bringing a knife to a gun fight?
Torture is wrong on all accounts. But you are really fooling yourself if you think that everyone out there sticks with the Geneva Convention! When all is said and done terrorists and the like have no use for laws and don't go by them. If you think that they would capture one of our men and not torture them for info then you are sadly mistaken!! They would do that and more.
No..it's not right for us to torture anyone but to think that it's not being done anywhere else is pure naivety.
Cindy...Ga.
I tend to agree with this. I find torture to be a step backwards in our culture's evolution. However, what other methods of crucial information extraction does the nation have at its disposal, for when it really matters? There's no agenda here, this is a genuine question...