If I understand Mr. Krauthammer correctly, torture is acceptable and legitimate if the authorities only resort to it when confronted with the now proverbial «ticking time bomb scenario».
After all, if you arrested a suspect who you were convinced held vital information about an imminent 9/11-like attack, would you not torture him if need be to save lives?
Hence, MM Bush and Cheney were fully justified in resorting to «enhanced interrogation techniques» (the less squeamish among us simply call it torture) in order to prevent further attacks upon the homeland….
The major weakness of this argument is that it is disputed by…former Bush administration officials. Lawrence Wilkerson , the former chief of staff of Secretary Colin Powell, wrote the following in the Washington Note:
Its (the Bush-Cheney torture program) principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at preempting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al Qaeda.
He added that by the beginning of 2002, we had al Qaeda pretty much on the run.
The priority had turned to other purposes, and one of those purposes was to find substantial contacts between al Qaeda and Baghdad in order to justify what had become the administration’s obsession after 9/11, the invasion of Iraq.
Maj. Paul Burney, an army psychiatrist at Guantanamo, confirmed Wilkerson’s version:
Even though they were giving information and some of it was useful, while we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between aI Qaeda and Iraq and we were not being successful in establishing a link between aI Qaeda and Iraq. The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish this link ... there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results.
And until the Bush-Cheney administration had the necessary information to confirm the al-Qaeda-Saddam link, the torture would continue.
An al-Qaeda suspect, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi (who, incidentally, died a few days ago in his Libyan cell, apparently a suicide…) was water boarded, at the VP office’s request, according to Wilkerson, because he had failed to confirm that much needed link. Needless, to say, al-Libi eventually did tell his interrogators what they wanted to hear.
As a result, based on these revelations, President Bush claimed in an October 2002 speech, that Saddam trained al-Qaeda militants in Iraq in the manufacture of biological and chemical weapons.
Much to his later chagrin, Colin Powell repeated the accusation in his famous UN presentation in February 2003.…We now know how reliable al-Libi’s information was. In fact, al-Libi later repudiated these claims, indicating that they had been prompted by the abuse he had been subjected to…
So much, for the «ticking time bomb scenario»…
Furthermore, this justification, this argument in support of torture is essentially contradictory…
We are told that, because time is of the essence, and because the bomb is ticking, we have no time for rapport and confidence building. We need to get the vital information as quickly as possible…
Yet, torture takes time.
The two principle torture techniques utilized by the Bush-Cheney administration have been sleeplessness and water boarding…Some seven to eleven sleepless days are required to break the will of these detainees….
Furthermore, Abu Zubaydah was water boarded 83 times, and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed 183!!
How many ticking time bombs could have gone off while these interrogators kept some detainees awake and water boarded the others?
How many?
Hence, if the information obtained is unreliable ( the al-Libi case demonstrated that a detainee, in the end, will say next to anything to stop the pain, particularly what his interrogators want to hear, and that the latter are incapable of distinguishing between fable and truth…), and slow in coming as well, what is the point of the torture program?
Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent who initially interrogated Abu Zubaydah according to the standard Informed Interrogation Approach, said the following to the US Senate Committee on the Judiciary last Wednesday:
A major problem (with the torture program) is that it is ineffective. Al Qaeda terrorists are trained to resist torture. As shocking as these techniques are to us, the al Qaeda training prepares them for much worse – the torture they would expect to receive if caught by dictatorships for example…In addition the harsh techniques only serves to reinforce what the detainee has been prepared to expect if captured. This gives him a greater sense of control and predictability about his experience, and strengthens his will to resist…. A second major problem with this technique is that evidence gained from it is unreliable. There is no way to know whether the detainee is being truthful, or just speaking to either mitigate his discomfort or to deliberately provide false information…A third major problem with this technique is that it is slow.
In addition , according to Soufan, the program badly undermined FBI-CIA cooperation, as the former refused to participate in such an interrogation process. The FBI Director Robert Mueller told the CIA, we don’t do that.
Finally, Soufan concluded that many of the claims made in the memos about the success of the enhanced techniques are inaccurate. For example, it is untrue to claim Abu Zubaydah wasn't cooperating before August 1, 2002. The truth is that we got actionable intelligence from him in the first hour of interrogating himIn addition, simply by putting together dates cited in the memos with claims made, falsehoods are obvious. For example, it has been claimed that water boarding got Abu Zubaydah to give up information leading to the capture of Jose Padilla. But that doesn't add up: Water boarding wasn't approved until 1 August 2002 (verbally it was authorized around mid July 2002), and Padilla was arrested in May 2002. The same goes for KSM's involvement in 9/11: That was discovered in April 2002, while water boarding was not introduced until almost three months later. It speaks volumes that the quoted instances of harsh interrogation methods being a success are false.
What remains of Mr. Krauthammer’s claims?
That MM. Cheney, Krauthammer and the other torture apologists are now doing their utmost to defend torture is not surprising. Torture’s alleged effectiveness is their ultimate argument, as the ethical and legal ones have already been lost.
«Yes», they claim, «maybe we went too far, but it was for your own good, and we succeeded in protecting you…»
If only that had been one of their main preoccupations as of January 2001!
For, on whose watch were three thousand innocent and hapless individuals killed in the worst terrorist attack in US history?
Finally, that Mrs. Pelosi and other Democrats, along with, let us not forget, the entire Republican party, did not have the courage to denounce and repudiate the Bush-Cheney torture program is unfortunate and deeply disappointing, but that in no way exonerates MM Bush and Cheney: they were leading this country, and it was their program from beginning to end. Would they have shelved it had Mrs. Pelosi publicly denounced it?
As for doing nothing to cut off the funding, imagine the outcry, among Republican ranks, and their supporters in the op-ed pages, had she had the aplomb to make such a suggestion!!!
What would have been the charge, Mr. Rove, treason, coddling terrorists, and reading them their rights instead of dealing with them vigorously?
Mr. Krauthammer is no doubt jesting with us…
But no rational arguments will ever convince the torture apologists that abusing detainees is anything but patriotic…
To conclude, there is but one way to get to the bottom of this: an independent commission, with subpoena powers, to examine the torture interrogation program in all its aspects….
I nominate Mr. Krauthammer to lead it…Who, then, would be bold enough to dispute its findings?
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