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We tend to think of them as separate events — the Gulf War of 1990-1, the Desert Fox bombing campaign in 1998, the Afghanistan War, the Iraq War, the drone campaigns in Yemen, Pakistan and elsewhere, and now the war on Islamic State.

But future historians will no doubt give all this a single name — perhaps the Great Near Eastern War, which America has been fighting now for nearly a quarter of a century.

At the start, it was not hard to identify with the Americans. Saddam Hussein had no right in morality or international law to annex Kuwait in 1990. The United States had a right — perhaps even a duty — to extirpate al Qaida from Afghanistan after 9/11.

But as Tuesday’s Senate report on the CIA’s use of torture reminded us, the Great Near Eastern War took a horrible turn.

Not only were the objectives of the Iraq War farcical (eliminating a non-existent stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, bringing freedom to Iraq), the methods it employed were indefensible.

Waterboarding. Beatings. Mock executions. Something called “rectal feeding”.

One man was threatened with the rape of his mother.

Others were, in plain language, murdered.

There were suggestions in the Senate report that the CIA’s reign of terror was something of a rogue operation. Details were withheld from then-Secretary of State Colin Powell because the Bush administration worried that he would “blow his stack” if he knew. The White House, and certainly Congress, were never briefed fully or in a timely way.

But this is surely overstated. Many of the torture program’s grisly details leaked into the public domain over the years. They were well known to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and to many journalists.

One of the most curious episodes in this ghastly affair was described in a recent book by New York Times reporter James Risen, Pay Any Price: Greed, Power and Endless War. The Senate report merely confirmed and elaborated the details:

This was far from being a secretive, rogue program. The American Psychology Association actually changed its code of ethics so that its members could participate in torture and not risk getting drummed out of the profession.

The CIA’s torture methodology was designed in part by two psychologists, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen. Prior to the Afghanistan war, they had been training military personnel on how to resist torture if captured.

Their program was aimed at preparing soldiers and pilots for the kinds of torture employed once by North Koreans and North Vietnamese on American captives. It was part of their doctrine that torture was effective not in extracting the truth, but in ‘breaking’ men so that they would tell lies — in many cases for propaganda purposes.

But when the opportunity arose, Mitchell and Jessen inverted their own teachings and sold themselves as experts on how to extract information through what was euphemistically called “enhanced interrogation”. What Americans had once suffered at the hands of their enemies, they now inflicted on them.

Mitchell and Jessen billed the CIA $81 million for ‘psychological services’ during the life of the CIA’s ruthless interrogation program.

This was far from being a secretive, rogue program, in other words. According to Risen, the American Psychology Association actually changed its code of ethics so that its members could participate in torture and not risk getting drummed out of the profession. Such is the corrupting power of the Great Near Eastern War.

Barack Obama cancelled the CIA’s torture program right after he was elected. But he vastly expanded the drone programs of the CIA and the U.S. military. Effectively, the Bush-era policy of capture-and-torture was replaced with a program of killing suspected terrorists with missiles — and inevitably killing their families, friends and neighbours along with them.

And no one can honestly say that the drone program eliminates more terrorists than it creates with its attendant havoc and bloodshed.

The same can be said of Canada’s participation in the current war on Islamic State. The Harper government says one of its aims is to curb terrorism here at home. But it is just as likely to inspire home-grown terrorists — and perhaps even attract others from elsewhere.

It’s not hard to claim the moral high ground — as the Harper government has done — when confronting the depravity of Islamic State. But that’s a low bar to cross.

The truth is the Great Near Eastern War has been fought for murky ends, using shameful means, with uncertain results.

We should have no part of it.

Paul Adams is associate professor of journalism at Carleton and has taught political science at the University of Manitoba. He is a veteran of the CBC, the Globe and Mail and EKOS Research. His book Power Trap explores the dilemma of Canada’s opposition parties.

Follow Paul Adams on Twitter @padams29

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