February 6
Monthly Ethics Forum:
³Tortured Times for American Values²
David Irvine, Brigadier General, U.S. Army (retired)
7:00-8:30 p.m., Faculty Seminar Room (LC 243)
Utah Valley State College¹s Center for the Study of Ethics will feature
Irvine at the Monthly Ethics Forum February 6 from 7-8:30 p.m. in the
Faculty Seminar Room, LC 243.
David Irvine is a Salt Lake City attorney. He was commissioned in the U.S.
Army Reserve as a strategic intelligence officer in 1967 and retired as a
brigadier general. He taught prisoner of war interrogation and military law
for 18 years for the Sixth United States Army Intelligence School.
Irvine will address the topic ³Tortured Times for American Values.² A former
instructor of prisoner of war interrogation and military law for the Sixth
U.S. Army Intelligence School, Irvine taught soldiers interrogation
technique and law.
Sought-after as a speaker and commentator, Irvine has been a strong voice
against unlawful torture and rendition in the U.S., the policy of sending
prisoners needing to be interrogated to countries where torture during
interrogation is legal.
³It¹s a timely and relevant topic,² said David R. Keller, Director of the
Center for the Study of Ethics and associate professor of philosophy at
UVSC. ³All students, faculty, staff and community members should be
concerned about this issue. As difficult as it is to talk about, we can¹t
deal with difficult moral issues by ignoring them.²
As it is standard practice at the Center for the Study of Ethics¹ forums,
Irvine¹s remarks will be followed by an open dialogue between Irvine and
forum attendees. ³We want to have an open and informed discussion,² Keller
said. ³All of us will benefit by addressing the issues at hand, engaging in
dialogue with one another, entertaining different points of view and
arriving at a conclusion about what the best public policy is.²
The only of its kind in Utah, the Center for the Study of Ethics is a
national leader in the movement of ethics across the curriculum--taking on
ethical issues in such diverse fields as nursing, computer engineering,
computer science, biology and business. ³The Center¹s mission is to bring
ethics out of the ivory tower of philosophy and into the professions,² said
Keller. ³We help students and professionals think of the ethical dimensions
of their work, whatever their work may be. Often there is not one clear
answer. The Center helps foster critical thinking about ethics, which will
help in making ethical decisions on very complex topics found both in one¹s
personal life and on the job.²
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Presidential candidates and where they stand on torture
David Irvine
Salt Lake Tribune
December 15, 2007
The retired generals and admirals sitting around the table at a recent
meeting were an impressive group.
The Marine four-star who chaired the sessions had been the commander in
chief of U.S. Central Command. An Army three-star had been the director of
the Defense Intelligence Agency. A rear admiral had been the Navy's judge
advocate general. There were Marine and Army infantry division commanders.
There was an Army brigadier psychiatrist and a commander of the Pacific
Fleet's submarine forces.
This was not a gathering of flower children. The 15 flag officers were in
Iowa as a representative group of about 50 retired admirals and generals who
have worked for the past two years to oppose the use of torture by the
military and the CIA.
This group had successfully lobbied Congress in 2005 to pass the
anti-torture McCain Amendment by veto-proof majorities in both the House and
the Senate, only to have President Bush attempt to exempt himself from the
law's reach by issuing a signing statement carving out a presidential
exception.
The generals had asked for individual discussions with presidential
candidates of both parties in an effort to educate them about the insidious
effects of American torture on national security, its threat to the safety
of our troops, its inconsistency with the nation's moral standards and
values, and its unreliability as a means of gathering actionable
intelligence.
All of the Democratic candidates have accepted the officers' invitations.
Among Republicans, only Gov. Mike Huckabee accepted (Sen. John McCain's
opposition to torture and waterboarding is clear).
At an Iowa press conference, Huckabee said, "Waterboarding is torture, and
torture violates the moral code of Americans and jeopardizes the country's
security. We should aggressively interrogate terrorism suspects and go after
those who seek to do the country harm, but when we go to the point of
violating our own moral code, then instead of advancing our country, its
safety and our security, we in fact jeopardize it."
As the only Mormon in the room, I found myself regretting that Mitt Romney
had declined the invitation. It was evident from Huckabee's comments that
his faith had informed his revulsion for torture. He also took torture an
important step further:
"What we don't get is reliable information. What we do get is a challenged
soldier who has participated in something that goes against not only his or
her own moral code but against our own sense of justice in this country."
I wished that Romney had said it. It's hard to know what he thinks on this
defining topic. He's said he opposes torture, but he declines to say what
techniques, like waterboarding, constitute torture - the same position taken
over and over by President Bush even as real torture goes on under his nose.
Romney has also said that "we ought to double Guantanamo," that "enhanced
interrogation techniques have to be used," and that "to apply the Geneva
[Conventions] in Guantanamo is very strange."
The issue goes beyond the political "gotcha games" of debates, where it is a
temptation to prove who can talk the toughest in what becomes a dangerous
race to the bottom. Many Utahns seek careers in military intelligence and
the CIA. Brigham Young University is a "target-rich" recruiting zone. Utah
is home to the Army's largest collection of linguists and interrogators.
Beyond the fact that torture just doesn't produce reliable information, what
becomes of those who do the "wet work" of waterboarding or the other means
of torture which can destroy both minds and bodies? What kind of person
would ever seek out the job description of "rackman" or "thumb-screwman"?
Who'd want to be that guy's spouse in a marital argument? How does that
person ever explain her job to her kids?
This question, in fact, underlies a significant policy debate. The CIA
director argues that the agency should not be required to follow the
strictures of the Army Field Manual on Interrogation because CIA
interrogators are "older and more mature" than the average military
interrogator.
That argument, of course, misses the point, which is that the ravages of
mental instability common to torturers do not diminish or abide because of
age. If anything, maturity causes the enormity of evil to be more acutely
perceived and pathologically manifested. It also begs the question of what
happens when we torture the wrong person.
The examples of the latest National Intelligence Estimate finding that Iran
stopped its nuclear weapons research years ago, and the missing WMD in Iraq,
tell us that the process of identifying those who might know the location of
a ticking bomb is guesswork at best.
*******************************************
A Free Pass on War Crimes?
David Irvine
Salt Lake Tribune
August 20, 2006
We often read about soldiers in Iraq getting killed or wounded. It is
uncommon to read about captured American soldiers, but guarded reports
in mid-June of two soldiers captured, "mutilated" and killed have recently
been confirmed in more chilling detail: They were tortured, castrated
and beheaded.
The barbarity of such atrocities is incomprehensible. The depravity of the
perpetrators may have dictated that outcome regardless, but the tragedy
invites hard questions. Have our policies toward Muslim prisoner treatment
so devalued American lives that the capture of U.S. soldiers is now viewed
as payback time?
Imagine, after Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and the Army's several hundred reports
of prisoner abuse and torture, what might be different if Pfc. Jessica
Lynch's convoy had come under attack today, three years later. Would she
have received medical care and physical protection? Could the Army, today,
credibly demand the protections of the Geneva Conventions in her behalf?
For soldiers in Iraq and their families, the "what-ifs" are all too grim and
real, which makes the latest proposal of this nation's attorney general
incredibly bizarre. Alberto Gonzales is now urging Congress to water down
the War Crimes Act of 1996 and carve out its Geneva Convention prohibitions
against inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners.
As proposed by Mr. Gonzales, everything that has been done at Guantanamo and
Abu Ghraib (except murder and rape) would not be a war crime. However, since
the exact language is still evolving, the true objective is unclear. Is this
a back-door attempt to nullify the McCain anti-torture amendment which
received overwhelming congressional support last year? Is it an effort to
shield top military commanders and Cabinet officials from prosecution for
war crimes?
If the real objective is to carve out immunity from prosecution for
administration officials (going back to 2001) for war crimes that they may
have ordered, the effort could fail because of the jus cogens doctrine under
international law. No matter what Congress might do, jus cogens (higher law)
does not recognize any country's effort to adjust its laws in order to
sanction outrages that the rest of the world deems to be crimes against
humanity. Principles of universal jurisdiction still allow any nation that
obtains personal jurisdiction over an alleged war criminal to prosecute that
defendant for war crimes.
Mr. Gonzales says he's concerned about "rogue prosecutors" in the United
States who might target someone like, say, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller (who
was responsible for "Gitmo-izing" Iraq). However, Gen. Miller's greater
exposure to potential jeopardy might be from travel abroad after he retires.
What makes this misguided project so dangerous is that whatever its purpose,
the legislation takes center stage at a moment when America's Middle East
foreign policy is teetering on the edge of disaster.
At this delicate moment, the attorney general, who seems to be speaking for
the White House, is announcing to the world that the United States intends
not to be bound by Common Article 3 (so-called because it appears in all
four Conventions) to which we previously bound ourselves and which most
other nations accept as international law.
As if soldiers risking their lives are not already in enough jeopardy, this
remarkable announcement, that the United States should abandon a
central Geneva Conventions protection for prisoners, is unfathomable.
If sexual degradation and humiliation is acceptable for Muslim prisoners,
the inescapable consequence will be that such inhumanity is not a
war crime if the prisoners are American. If this really is White House
policy, it is singularly cavalier toward soldiers and their families. It
either assumes that our enemies in Iraq or elsewhere will follow Geneva more
rigorously than we do, or that they are so ruthless that American prisoners
should expect to be tortured, castrated and beheaded, no matter what.
The latter assumption is inconsistent with the CIA's experience in the
Soviet-Afghan war. In the early stages of that conflict, lives on all sides
were brutally cheap, and the Mujahadeen were not Geneva signators.
Nevertheless, the CIA managed to persuade the Afghans that Soviet pilots'
lives were worth trading. A tough bargaining business gradually brought more
humane treatment on both sides, and American dollars paid for the
repatriation of many Soviet prisoners and bought valuable U.S. access to
captured technology.
Columnist Tom Friedman recently said, "This administration has absolute
moral clarity - and zero moral authority in the eyes of the rest of
the world." He attributed that gloomy status to Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib
and the fact that no one in our senior military or civilian leadership
has been held to account for those stains on American honor.
Britain's former spymaster, Sir Richard Dearlove (head of MI-6 and "M" to
007 fans), has warned, "America's cause is doomed unless it regains the
moral high ground." He was referring to the Cold War reality that
intelligence recruits from Eastern Bloc nations were drawn to the West
because there was both undisputed moral clarity and moral authority in the
struggle against Soviet totalitarianism.
The Supreme Court's Hamdan decision should have ended Mr. Gonzales' efforts
to be cleverly creative about fundamental issues of morality and the law of
war. America will never reclaim lost moral high ground if this
administration continues to insist that Geneva Convention prohibitions
against inhumane and degrading treatment should not apply to Muslim
prisoners in our custody.
Jack Clooney, a retired FBI counter-terror expert noted, "Not everyone
understands the fine points of democracy, but everyone, everywhere,
understands hypocrisy."
It may be difficult to see what will pass for victory in Iraq, but it is
easy to measure what trashing the Geneva Conventions has already
earned us.
*****
David Richard Keller, Ph.D.
Utah Valley State College
801.863.6363
http://davidkeller.us/
