Treatment of the torture issue during the second Republican presidential debate illustrates what’s great and what can go terribly wrong with these presidential face-offs.
With the breathless urgency of a racetrack announcer, Fox News’ Brit Hume spelled out a hypothetical scenario worthy of Fox TV’s Jack Bauer thriller, “24.”
Hume’s plot involved suicide bombers simultaneously attacking shopping malls, captured suspects being taken to the military’s detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and U.S. intelligence agents believing that there are plans for an even larger attack. “How aggressively would you interrogate” the hypothetical captured suspects? Hume asked.
The question triggered a bizarre political version of the old radio show “Can You Top This?”
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said he would tell the interrogators to “use every method.”
“It shouldn’t be torture, but every method they can think of,” he said. Including “water-boarding”? Hume asked. Yes, answered Giuliani.
Rep. Duncan Hunter of California said that to get “information that would save American lives, even if it involves very high-pressure techniques,” he would tell the defense secretary only one sentence: “Get the information.”
Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo: “We’re wondering about whether water-boarding would be a bad thing to do? I’m looking for Jack Bauer at that time, let me tell you.”
That thrilled the crowd. Bauer is a fictional counter-terrorist played by Kiefer Sutherland on “24.” He is known to employ such tools as fire, rope, electric drills and other sharp objects to hasten his interrogations.
Not to be outdone, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney endorsed “enhanced interrogation techniques” and sparked enthusiastic applause with: “Some people have said we ought to close Guantanamo? My view is, we ought to double Guantanamo.”
Ironically, the only person on that stage who was a tortured prisoner of war threw cold water on the Bauer option.
“It’s not about the terrorists, it’s about us,” he said. “It’s about what kind of country we are.”
No applause. That’s what Arizona Sen. John McCain gets for shedding light and not just heat on the question.
Here’s a real-life scenario that the presidential candidates should hear about: Last November, Army Brig. Gen. Patrick Finnegan, dean of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, flew to Southern California to meet with the creative team behind “24.”
Accompanied by three military and FBI interrogators, he described how the show actually was undermining the academy’s classroom lessons with the false message that torture is a jim-dandy idea in the real world.
As investigative journalist Jane Mayer reported in the New Yorker in February, the meeting discussed how the show’s ticking-time-bomb scenario makes a thrilling hour on TV but is virtually unknown in real life.
And it would be a big help, the dean told the Hollywood folks, if “24” at least would sometimes show how torture produces false information and actually damages counter-terrorism efforts.
Entertainment Weekly reported that the show’s top producer, Joel Surnow, has decided to shy away from torture, not because it is an immoral or impractical technique but because it has been overused as a device in his show. That’s showbiz.
As for Guantanamo, researchers at Seton Hall University School of Law went to the trouble last year of reading 517 Guantanamo case files that the Pentagon had released. They found only 8 percent of the detainees were characterized as Al Qaeda fighters and only 5 percent fit President Bush’s description of being “picked up on the battlefield” — or anywhere else — by U.S. troops.
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Instead, 86 percent were handed over to us by Pakistan or the Afghan Northern Alliance for reasons that are not always quite clear. Many were low-level conscripts, drafted into the service of the Taliban regime. None were Taliban leaders of any note. Yet, in return for bounties of $5,000 to $10,000, a lot of suspects were rounded up, their crimes to be sorted out later.
But as congressional leaders debate whether to shut down Guantanamo, Romney wants to double the number of detainees. Who does he have in mind to be locked up?
The uncomfortable truth is that our side has gotten some suspects right but made big mistakes about others in the fog of war. We don’t know how many of the remaining detainees at Guantanamo have actual evidence against them, but there’s a way to find out. It’s called habeas corpus, the fundamental right of individuals to be protected against arbitrary detention without a trial.
Do our presidential candidates still believe in it? All of them need to be asked that question, although in the heat of a presidential campaign I’m afraid of what they might answer. Sometimes the fog of war is nothing compared to the fog of politics.
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Clarence Page is a member of the Tribune’s editorial board. E-mail: [email protected]