Tortured Statistics


You remember the stand-up line about lies, right? What are the three kinds of lies? Little lies, big lies, and... (slight pause) ...statistics! Now, unlike Robert Johnson, who claimed he got his licks from selling his soul to the devil down at the crossroads, I would like to give the credit for that bit to the poor Mississippi sharecropper who came up with it first, but I can't, because I really don't know her name. But here's an interesting lie -- er, I mean, statistic: a February 2008 poll found that 70% of Americans asked would approve of torture if the information from the torture could prevent a terrorist attack. So now the torturer-in-chief has a statistic that he can point to which seems to say that 7 out of 10 of his countrymen, whether they approve of him or not, approve of his methods.

How easily can you tell a lie with statistics? Do you really think 7 out of 10 citizens in the U.S.A. approve of torture? I don't think so. There is something I do wonder about, though, and it's a question for guys who are MWK (married with kids) if the wife cooks for the kids -- "Would you beat your wife if you knew it would make her cook more nutritious meals for your children? Yes or no?" And my survey doesn't count those who don't answer the question, but simply walk away in disgust. For those who say "no" I have a follow-up question -- "Do you really not care about what your wife feeds your children?" And how troubling would it be if perhaps 30% of American MWK men who answered my survey indicated that they cared so little about their children's nutrition that they would not beat their wives in order to improve it!

"But wait," you say, "there's something wrong with the question!" And indeed, there is. I've heard columnist Mark Shields say that Americans are the most practical people on the planet, so if you want to get a majority "yes" answer to almost any quesion, just ask, "Would you do x if it works?" Most Americans would do x, y, z and even mc squared if it works. I do take my hat off to that 30%, though, who wouldn't approve torture even if it did work.

And how do I know torture doesn't work? Well, even though I wasn't in Salem in the 1690s, I think I can safely say that none of the women there actually turned themselves into cats or birds, and I also feel reasonably certain that not one of them had carnal relations with the devil. So why did they confess to things they didn't do? Maybe they were willing to say anything to stop the pain.

Torture proved very effective, then, at getting people to confess to the sin of heresy during the Spanish Inquisition, and to the sin of witchcraft during the Salem trials. The torturers probably believed they had done a good job of finding the heretics in Spain or the witches in Salem. It makes you wonder about what a slippery hold torturers have on reality, and do they need these unreal confessions to keep their world from falling apart in the face of, say, reason and fact? Of course the fine tradition of using torture to get false confessions didn't start with the Spanish Inquisition or end with the Salem witch trials. "A" list dictatorships and "C" list banana republics continue to rely on it as one of their favorite power tools.

Cruel and unusual punishment does have one other use besides false confessions, though -- it makes the tortured very angry, if they can survive. If you want people to hate you, in a deep and lasting way, torture can make that happen. To get some idea of how that feels, check out The Road to Guantanamo. The film follows three British citizens who went to Pakistan in October of 2001 for a wedding, took an unwise side trip to Afghanistan, got rounded up in the wide net cast by U.S. forces, and ended up in our wonderful little tropical torture camp.

Besides giving you an up close and personal idea of how it feels to be tortured, the film also makes one other thing clear -- how stupid torturers are. These three British prisoners wondered why the Americans would try to get them to confess to being in an Al Queda training camp at a time when they were in England. They knew that the Americans could have found out the truth with a few phone calls. And are the people who work for our govenment, and in our name, really so lazy and stupid? It seems so -- at least as long as the BushCheney crew is doing the hiring.

Or maybe they're really very smart -- much smarter than the rest of us. Maybe they have a very special talent for finding the witches and heretics among us, but for my money, I wouldn't bet on it.



Post script: Just as I was finishing this piece the story appears on the news that the torture (or enhanced interrogation, if you prefer) methods used by Americans at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo come straight out of the Mao-era Communist China torture playbook. The Chinese used these techniques to get false confessions from captured American soldiers. As I was saying above...

7/15/08