Mistakes Were Made - Carol Tavris [137]
15 Charles Krauthammer made the case for the limited use of torture in “The Truth about Torture: It’s time to be honest about doing terrible things,” in The Weekly Standard, December 5, 2005.
16 Remarks of Condoleezza Rice at Andrews Air Force Base, December 5, 2005, as she was departing for a state visit to Europe.
17 William Schulz, “An Israeli Interrogator, and a Tale of Torture,” letter to The New York Times, December 27, 2004. A year later, the Times reported the case of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, a former Al Qaeda leader, who was captured in Pakistan by American forces and sent for “questioning” to Egypt. The Egyptians sent him back to the American authorities when he finally confessed that Al Qaeda members had received chemical weapons training in Iraq—information the Americans wanted to hear. Later, Libi said he made the story up to appease the Egyptians, who were torturing him (with American approval). A Times editorial in the aftermath of this story (December 10, 2005) noted that “torture is a terrible way to do the very thing that the administration uses to excuse it—getting accurate information. Centuries of experience show that people will tell their tormenters what they want to hear, whether it’s confessing to witchcraft in Salem, admitting to counterrevolutionary tendencies in Soviet Russia or concocting stories about Iraq and Al Qaeda.”
18 An anonymous sergeant describing the handling of detainees in Iraq in a Human Rights Watch report, September 2005; reprinted with other commentary in “Under Control,” Harper’s, December 2005, pp. 23–24.
19 Riccardo Orizio (2003), Talk of the Devil: Encounters with Seven Dictators. New York: Walker & Company.
20 Louis Menand, “The Devil’s Disciples: Can You Force People to Love Freedom?,” New Yorker, July 28, 2003.
21 Timothy Garton Ash, “Europe’s Bloody Hands,” the Los Angeles Times, July 27, 2006.
22 Christensen and Jacobson, Reconcilable Differences, p. 291; note 1.
23 For a thoughtful analysis of the social and personal costs of forgiveness that is uncritical and premature, letting perpetrators off the hook of responsibility and accountability for the harm they caused, see Sharon Lamb (1996), The Trouble with Blame: Victims, Perpetrators, and Responsibility. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
24 Solomon Schimmel (2002), Wounds Not Healed by Time: The Power of Repentance and Forgiveness. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, p. 226. Psychologist Ervin Staub, himself a Holocaust survivor, has been studying the origins and dynamics of genocide for many years, and most recently has devoted himself to the project of reconciliation between the Tutsi and Hutu in Rwanda. See Ervin Staub and Laurie A. Pearlman (2006), “Advancing Healing and Reconciliation in Rwanda and Other Post-conflict Settings,” in L. Barbanel and R. Sternberg (eds.), Psychological Interventions in Times of Crisis, New York: Springer-Verlag; and Daniel Goleman (2006), Social Intelligence, New York: Bantam Books.
25 Broyles told this story in a 1987 PBS documentary, “Faces of the Enemy,” based on the book of the same title by Sam Keen. It is still available on VHS and DVD from PBS.
CHAPTER 8
Letting Go and Owning Up
1 All quotations are taken from the transcript of Oprah’s show, January 26, 2006.
2 ”Wayne Hale’s Insider’s Guide to NASA,” by Nell Boyce. NPR Morning Edition, June 30, 2006. The full text of Hale’s e-mail to colleagues is available online.
3 Reagan’s defense started out well—”First, let me say I take full responsibility for my own actions and for those of my administration”—but then he added a series of “but they