Pain, Purpose, and Precedent: Models for Obama’s New Interrogation Program in Ireland v. U.K.

• In Event: Responding to a Legacy of Torture: Reconciliation, Reform and Retribution in Obama's First Year

Abstract

President Obama’s executive order to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center and ban interrogation methods not in compliance with the Army Field Manual has been described by some as the “end of the War on Terror” as we have known it. However, it remains unclear if and how those who authorized and used illegal interrogation methods will be prosecuted. This presentation anticipates that the unfolding public debate on this issue will pivot on the question of how to assign culpability when various harsh interrogation tools, each judged legal in isolation, are used in concert synergistically in such a way as to constitute torture (this was essence of Susan Crawford's legal finding in the al-Qahtani case). To gain insight on this phenomenon, I analyze a proximate international case: Ireland v. United Kingdom (1978), which investigated whether British interrogations of IRA suspects using the so-called “five techniques” constituted torture. The legal records associated with this case, including conflicting judgments by various international courts, shed light on how certain legal criteria for determining torture carry important entailments. For example, when independently authorized harsh techniques are combined to create a torture "mosaic," who bears culpability? The interrogator? The local commander? Or perhaps the high official who originally approved the set of techniques? These questions raise vexing issues of symbolicity, intentionality, and design — issues especially ripe for rhetorical analysis.

Author

• Michael Vicaro, Univ of Pittsburgh