Torture is US

There has been much hand wringing in the US media over the past couple of weeks in response to revelations about torture techniques, or enhanced interrogation if you prefer the Bushism, used by the CIA during the recently abandoned and unlamented Global War on Terror. An article in the op-ed page in today's New York Times demands that the newly released CIA memos be investigated and those responsible brought to justice, so that America can reclaim its soul. The hypocrisy of it is appalling.

American culture is built upon a powerful mythology, most of which is dependent upon a very subjective, if not creative, historical perspective. If America does not torture, why has the Central Intelligence Agency had a training manual for torture techniques since the 1980's? The reality is that hooking up a man's scrotum to a car battery is as American as Mom's apple pie.

The Harvard University of systematically inflicted pain is the US Army's School of the Americas, at Fort Benning, Georgia. This is where torturers from Guatemala to Chile have received their tuition. General Pinochet's infamous detention centres were responsible for the 'disappearance' of some 130,000 people during his regime and survivors have documented their horrific suffering in those cells, often remarking upon the silent American standing in a corner. Even Saddam Hussein employed Langley to train his secret police in the fine art of the rubber hose, back in the days when Donald Rumsfeld was a pal. The number of other authoritarian regimes who have tapped CIA expertise to terrorize their peoples is too long to list.

In the Viet Nam war, US interrogators would commonly take three Viet Cong suspects up in a helicopter, then throw two of them out the door to their deaths. They found that the third man invariably talked. During the many US incursions into Latin America in the first half of the twentieth century, their military often reverted to medieval techniques to suppress popular resistance to Washington's client regimes. Go back as far as the Spanish American War of 1898 and you can read about the unsavory methods applied by US Marines to captured Philippine guerrillas fighting the American occupation of their country. In truth, torture has been standard operating practice in the US military and intelligence services for generations, with the full knowledge and approval of their political leadership. George W. Bush was simply the first president to let the veil drop.

The righteous indignation of the American media is a sham. Not only does the United States torture, it is arguably the world's most enthusiastic proponent of coercive physical abuse. The preference of Americans to maintain their pretensions of nobility rather than confront the inconvenient truth is understandable, but it does them no credit and it will not stop the torture.