Sexual Torture.... Yeah, Right

I'm a big fan of the Volokh Conspiracy -- it's one of the best blogs out there, especially for legal analysis. But it also does a pretty good job of analyzing and breaking down news "reporting", especially when the errors are the egregious type of crap that we see in the press all the time. Eugene Volokh nails some misreporting by the Guardian in this post. The Guardian's article seems to have a rather broad definition of "sexual torture". I copied the first paragraph of the article below, followed by the supposed instances of "sexual torture" detailed here...

An American soldier has revealed shocking new details of abuse and sexual torture of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay in the first high-profile whistleblowing account to emerge from inside the top-secret base.

...Among the most shocking abuses Saar recalls is the use of sex in interrogation sessions. Some female interrogators stripped down to their underwear and rubbed themselves against their prisoners. Pornographic magazines and videos were also used as rewards for confessing.

In one session a female interrogator took off some of her clothes and smeared fake blood on a prisoner after telling him she was menstruating. 'That's a big deal. It is a major insult to one of the world's biggest religions where we are trying to win hearts and minds,' Saar said.

A couple points are in order. Volokh is probably right that some of the tactics detailed here are questionable. I personally have little in the way of objection to porn magazines or stripped-down interrogators -- neither constitutes an abuse of the prisoner in question. If he doesn't want to see a half-naked woman, he can shut his eyes. I'd argue that the case is more close to the line on rubbing against prisoners or smearing blood on them. I can see the case against these. But none of this, in my opinion, qualifies as "sexual torture." By this definition, Victoria's Secret engages in mass acts of minor sexual torture when they mail their catalogs to any place where a Muslim male may see them.

Exaggerating the nature of what's taking place isn't necessary to inform us and allow us to make our own decisions as to whether the interrogation techniques are overboard. Inform the American people and let us make the decision. We may have varying opinions as to what's right and what's wrong, but trying to fool those of us less likely to object to what's going on isn't going to result in anything good.

Finally, there's Saar's point that we're trying to win hearts and minds in the Muslim world, and that Guantinomo isn't helping. I won't dispute the latter part of the point, but the former is one that needs to be put in context. Yes, we're trying to win hearts and minds, but the point of our detention and interrogation policy is not to win hearts and minds -- it's to detain terrorists and obtain information from them. The key question to ask is not whether the tactic in question will help us win hearts and minds -- letting people go in a mass release might accomplish that, but would also place all of us in danger.

The key questions are ones that involve the question of what's right and what's wrong -- what we as a society are willing to accept from our military leadership and the troops who follow their rules. We set the rules, within the context of legal structures -- the latter are important, but so's a sense of morality. Put it this way -- smearing the fake blood on the prisoner may or may not violate the Geneva Convention, but I would expect an argument that it's still not right regardless. And that's a good argument to have.

I think a large division exists between those who are infuriated by the abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanimo, and those who view these as the type of problems that occur when you're fighting a war. I tend to fall into the latter camp, but I understand why the other side (within reason) thinks of these as serious problems that need to be solved. I just disagree as to the nature of the problems -- they tend to view them as systemic and serious, while I view them as isolated and generally not as severe as they are portrayed.

I think the vast majority of American people were upset at what happened at Abu Ghraib, but don't particularly feel a great degree of pain about it. The public humiliation of prisioners is wrong -- but the constant attempts by some on the left to draw moral equivalence between Abu Ghraib and the terrorist attacks on civilians where people were injured and killed tend to lose the moderates who might be willing to listen to the case at hand and appreciate it.

Put rather bluntly, we live in a culture where convicts in the justice sytem go to prisons where they really are subject to varying degrees of physical and mental abuse (including rape, which would easily qualify as sexual torture). That's a terrible thing. Someone peeing on the Koran is bad, but nowhere near as awful by comparison. Both are wrong, but exaggerating the latter will not make it the former. Calling Guantanimo a "gulag" is another example. Using the term "sexual torture" in this case is the latest sample of the hysteria of the left.