Amerikaanse martelingen hadden niet primair als doel om informatie los te krijgen

Het ging vooral om ‘exploitatie’, dat wil zeggen het creëren van informanten en propagandamateriaal:

As the Senate Armed Services Committee Report on torture (released over 5 years ago, in far less redacted form than tomorrow’s summary will be) makes clear, the Bush regime embraced torture not for “intelligence” but for “exploitation.” In December 2001, when DOD first started searching for what would become torture, it was explicitly looking for “exploitation.” […]

And as a footnote explaining that reference makes clear, “interrogation is only one part of the exploitation process.”

Some other things exploitation is used for — indeed the very things the torture we reverse-engineered for our own torture program was used for — are to help recruit double agents and to produce propaganda.

And we have every reason to believe those were among the things all incarnations of our torture were used for. We tortured in Abu Ghraib because we had no sources in the Iraqi resistance and for some reason we believed sexually humiliating men would shame them into turning narcs for the US.

En verder:

[…] it raises the really horrible possibility that Cheney pushed torture because it would produce the stories he wanted told. It would be difficult to distinguish whether Cheney believed this stuff and therefore that’s what the torture produced or whether Cheney wanted these stories told and that’s what the torture produced.

Als dit vergezocht klinkt, lees dan het hele verhaal.

Overigens brengt marteling het levensgrote risico met zich mee van valse bekentenissen. Iedereen met een beetje historische kennis weet dit.

Maar wat altijd wel werkt, is dat het slachtoffer psychisch en moreel wordt gebroken. En zo iemand, kun je uiteraard ‘exploiteren’ op een manier die je het beste uitkomt.

Maar dat doet er natuurlijk allemaal niet toe, want ‘America is awesome’.