Al-Qaeda Torture Vs. CIA Interrogation Methods

Amnesty International has made a huge fuss about enhanced interrogation tactics carried out by the CIA, the greatest protest over the much controversial "waterboarding," a tactic that, it has been revealed, was only used three times against specific al-Qaeda targets that involves inducing a gag reflex with no risk to the interrogated.

The tactic, which is no doubt uncomfortable but cannot quite be regarded as torture, is among many of those that have been utilized to make an interrogated individual uncomfortable enough to talk. For all intents and purposes, despite the claims of some, the water boarding against Khalid Sheik Muhammad (whom I believe most Americans wished they could waterboard themselves) yielded invaluable results that have broken up a number of terror cells across the globe - but nevertheless, like sleep deprivation, it is decried as "torture", along with seemingly any other tactic that warrants information from those not protected by the Geneva Convention.

When is this harsh treatment applied, one wonders? Well if the three cases in which waterboarding has been used can act as any form of precedent - and basic logic dictates it can - it is to be believed that it is done when there is believed to be a potentially imminent threat to American interests that can be extracted via waterboarding.

Comparatively, the al-Qaeda in Iraq methods of torture (which are actually cheaply imported from former Iraqi Army torturers) are used all the more arbitrarily - as American forces continually press further and further into insurgent held neighborhoods, the tactics utilized by Saddam Hussein's thugs are revealed for the world to see, and it is interesting to juxtapose the tendencies of American "enhanced interrogation techniques" to al-Qaeda torture.

Saddam Hussein left as his legacy thousands of hours of video that he seemed to keep in something of a private collection of torture tapes - vintage wines were replaced by vaults of horrific displays of human depravity. As much as one would love to argue that this is simple propaganda, videos of Saddam gazing on gleefully overseeing public beatings, floggings, decapitations, and explosions into "bits" as he put it are readily available across several media forms on the internet today.

To insure that there was a uniform, standardized method to his regime's reign of terror, he insured that his men were equipped with manuals that gave graphic detail into how best to punish dissidents, Shi'ites, Kurds, and other political opponents.

When Saddam fell, his Fedayeen Saddam ("those who are willing to die for Saddam") units found erstwhile allies in the Sharia-obsessed al-Qaeda - and traded with them several of the Ba'ath Party's documents on the inhumane. Some of these were captured in raids across Iraq, specifically around Baqouba and Fallujah. Like the torture chamber that was used to hold Kenneth Brigley and very possibly Nick Berg, al-Qaeda controlled areas were found to be storehouses of the macabre and brutal.

In one such raid, several civilians, including a child, were found in the midst of torture, which included whippings, beatings with cables, and skin incineration with blowtorches. The reasoning behind it was as arbitrary and simple as the basic picture layouts that were given to the torturers themselves - they were people who opposed al-Qaeda in Iraq and their strict, Islamic fundamentalism. Therefore, they were to be made examples of.

This was consistent with al-Qaeda in Iraq behavior, such as when they brutally murdered a police officer and stuffed his body with explosives so as to kill the family when they came to retrieve it.

But what were some of the tactics that al-Qaeda in Iraq used? Surely they couldn't be worse than waterboarding, or so Amnesty International assures.

According to the pamphlet that dates back to the days of Saddam, there are several recommended tactics for torturing a victim - none of which are necessarily intended to extract confessions, simply to extol pain and punishment. Among the first things a reader is introduced to is the advice to use a power drill on the victim's hands. Another is to simply cut the hand off.

Other recommendations include tying the victim to a car and dragging them, or using a scalpel to slice out his eyeball. If this doesn't achieve the desired effect, other possibilities are simple whippings with cables, or using a clothes iron to leave marks on someone's skin. Equally effective is the use of a blowtorch to simply carve out a person's flesh.

Something tells me that with the arbitrary assignment of pain that is seen in these pamphlets that are turning up all over Iraq, waterboarding seems like a much more preferable option.

Sources:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDogtCrgtzM
http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/650.htm
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/11/exclusive-only-.html
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/0524072torture1.html