LAUSR

Methods for improving knowledge and understanding of the distressing subject of interrogation techniques that might be described as torture deserve to be discussed. A review of the book Interrogation, Intelligence and Security was published in this journal. It claimed that this book, which asks how interrogation techniques that might be described as torture came to be used and with what results in three case studies, ‘does not really deal with the ethical issues involved’.1 The claims made by this book review must be contested. It was claimed that ‘[f ]ocusing too narrowly on specific cases can result in missing a more complete picture.’2 To the contrary, researching specific cases in depth can improve our understanding of how and why interrogation techniques that might meet the definitions of torture provided by law are used. Focusing on case studies does not preclude identification of the wider facilitating structures that allow or cause prisoners to be treated this way. With an understanding of the environment, decisions, guidelines (or lack thereof ), training and other facilitating and motivating factors that led to the techniques being used comes an understanding of why they were used. For example, sight deprivation was used to aid interrogation at a Temporary Detention Facility in Basra in September 2003 while beatings were instead motivated by revenge.3 Research has also revealed facilitating factors present in this case such as the institutional forgetting of the 1972 ban on certain techniques.4 The claim that the case study approach means it is difficult to address how controversial techniques came to be used is somewhat contradicted by the more accurate claim that these research methods did produce discussions of how the techniques ‘came to be used in the absence of proper authorisation’.5 Neither does the case study approach preclude the production of informed commentary on what is justifiable or effective. Indeed, addressing a case in depth allows for a wide range of immediate and long-lasting effects to be identified. It is possible to acknowledge that such techniques can be illegal, unethical and unjustified whilst also seeking to evaluate them on the basis of their effects. US President Donald Trump’s comments on waterboarding demonstrate that torture is still viewed as a potential source of intelligence.6 It is precisely this, combined with their objectionable character, that gives value to identifying the results of previous uses of controversial techniques so as to inform future policies on interrogation, guidelines and training. It has been implied that torture being ‘absolutely prohibited in any circumstances’ by law – George W. Bush’s lawyers’ manipulation of that prohibition aside – means that practices that might meet a legal definition of torture should not be discussed.7 Judging legality, however, is not necessarily synonymous with judging ethics. For example, it does not always follow that if something is not expressly prohibited in law it is therefore permissible.8 When ethical issues are defined as ‘questions about how we ought to live and what we ought to do’ it is hard to see how identifying why controversial interrogation techniques were used and with what results is an approach that gives ‘minimal consideration of the ethical debate as to whether the techniques should ever have been used.’9