Torture

What to make of Mark Bowden's epic piece in The Atlantic, on torture? I suppose that it depends on what one wants to get out of it. If you're looking for a big-think piece that explains how to right the wrongs of Iraq, you're going to be disappointed. If you're hoping for a full-throated denunciation or defense of torture, the piece isn't for you. But if you're looking to read a well-written piece of narrative journalism explaining how coercion is used in the real world, you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Bowden is writing to enlighten and inform, rather than to drive home a specific policy message. This isn't like a PG-13 movie, where the audience gets a moral lesson drilled into their heads before leaving the theatre. It's filled with a lot of stories like this one, of a CIA agent interrogating a Lebanese national after the Beirut embassy bombing:

"'I sent him back to his cell, had water poured over him again and again while he sat under a big fan, kept him freezing for about twenty-four hours. He comes back after this, and you can see his mood is changing. He hasn't walked out of jail, and it's beginning to dawn on him that no one is going to spring him.'

Over the next ten days Hall kept up the pressure. During the questioning sessions he again kicked Nimr out of his chair, and both he and the Lebanese captain involved cracked him occasionally across the shins with a wooden bat. Finally Nimr broke. According to Hall, he explained his role in the bombing, and in the assassination of Lebanon's President. He explained that Syrian intelligence agents had been behind the plan. (Not everyone in the CIA agrees with Hall's interpretation.)"[Emphasis mine]

To the extent that Bowden's piece does reach a policy conclusion, it tries to draw the line between "torture" and "coercion." Torture is the medieval styles of inflicting pain -- the rack, and its many descendants -- and it is reprehensible. Coercion relies on psychological pressures to break the victim. Leaving the prisoner standing for long periods of time, denying them food and proper rest, and even giving them mind-altering drugs like heroin or LSD. These, according to Bowden, are proper and necessary measures used to defeat America's enemies.

But I'm not sure if I see the clear red line that Bowden envisions. Both "coercion" and "torture" damage an individual's mind and body. One we reconcile ourselves to "coercion," I don't see how we could still see "torture" as this barbaric, evil practice. If an interrogator believes that a subject has valuable information and his "coercive" techniques fail, will he feel any moral compunction against resorting to direct physical violence? How and why?