My opinion is purely normative, but in my estimation, saving American lives was worth the marginal costs to Americans involved in these activities. I do not believe that the marginal costs are trivial. I have taken a few quotes from an officer who participated in torture during Argentina's dirty war reported by Andrew Grahm-Yool in "State of Fear," Eland, London & Hippocrene Books, New York. Argentina is not the United States. The torture was more severe and applied more generously to a larger range of people by less trained interrogators, but I believe there are enough parallels to make the quotes suggestive of marginal costs to those in service to the United States.
On motives, in which the quote suggests that interrogators lost human sympathies, perhaps due to cognitive dissonance.
Don't give me that nonsense about human rights. That is just a political slogan. We were the real defenders of rights. We fought for a way of life, for society without subversives...On torture,
...I never tortured. Torture is inflicting pain for personal pleasure. I dealt punishment to my enemy, under orders from my superiors. And if you want to know, we all get to the stage when it becomes a game; the subversive knows that. You are playing to get things out of him. Time is on your side, but you cannot give him time, because then he will gain on you as you begin to realise what you are doing. I am working to break him as quickly as possible. You feel sorry to cause pain, but you work quickly. You don't look a his face, even when you put the prods in the mouth; you keep their eyes covered. The secret is not to look at their eyes. The other secret is do not draw blood.On the interrogators,
The younger men seemed to be much, much harsher. They were given authority over the subversives, and they made it power over life and death.On the age of the interrogators,
[They were] very young. Conscription age boys who had signed on as regulars, young corporals...They had to be stopped from giving punishment, because they would have left the investigators with nobody to question...The young are all extremists--in their ideals, their violence, their moods. They don't know caution or care.On the cost to the interrogators,
Once, when I went to the military hospital, the doctor said that the army had employed 150 psychologists in 1978 and 1979 to treat young officers who had operated against the subversives. I don't know if it is true.David Rivkin and Lee Casey, who served in the Justice Department under George H.W. Bush, and were U.S. delegates to the U.N. Subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, write of the care that interrogators took to protect the long term health of detainees ("The Memos Prove We Didn't Torture," Wall Street Journal, April 20, 2009).
But when you are told something like that, there is always a root of truth in it. The young officers had to be taken care of, because not all could be allowed to leave the service. Some had to be promoted.
The four memos on CIA interrogation released by the White House last week reveal a cautious and conservative Justice Department advising a CIA that cared deeply about staying within the law. Far from "green lighting" torture -- or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees -- the memos detail the actual techniques used and the many measures taken to ensure that interrogations did not cause severe pain or degradation.I believe that the careful monitoring was of greater benefit to the interrogators than the detainees in reducing the psychological costs of interrogation.
Interrogations were to be "continuously monitored" and "the interrogation team will stop the use of particular techniques or the interrogation altogether if the detainee's medical or psychological conditions indicates that the detainee might suffer significant physical or mental harm."
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