“KSM, an accomplished resistor, provided only a few intelligence reports prior to the use of the waterboard, and analysis of that information revealed that much of it was outdated, inaccurate or incomplete,” according to newly unclassified portions of a 2004 report by the CIA’s then-inspector general released Monday by the Justice Department.
[F]or defenders of waterboarding, the evidence is clear: Mohammed cooperated, and to an extraordinary extent, only when his spirit was broken in the month after his capture March 1, 2003, as the inspector general’s report and other documents released this week indicate.
Over a few weeks, he was subjected to an escalating series of coercive methods, culminating in 7 1/2 days of sleep deprivation, while diapered and shackled, and 183 instances of waterboarding. After the month-long torment, he was never waterboarded again.
“What do you think changed KSM’s mind?” one former senior intelligence official said this week after being asked about the effect of waterboarding. “Of course it began with that.” …
Mohammed was an unparalleled source in deciphering al-Qaeda’s strategic doctrine, key operatives and likely targets, the summary said, including describing in “considerable detail the traits and profiles” that al-Qaeda sought in Western operatives and how the terrorist organization might conduct surveillance in the United States.
Tortured question. I don’t think there’s any doubt that pressure can persuade someone to reveal a secret, especially if there is a way to check on key elements of the story. The only real controversy is whether the waterboarding that U.S. interrogators applied to three terrorists, with the full knowledge of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, was torture.
It sure looks like torture, but KSM reportedly is fine today, and the interrogation method remains in a gray area. If most of us agree it is torture and that it should be illegal, why doesn’t Congress pass a law clearly making it illegal?
Frank Warner
Being only against physical disfigurement of terrorists or causing other physical harm for the purposes of extracting information, this seems like a huge pile of good news to me.
Is it torture? If it is, we certainly put that silly old leftist saying that "torture doesn't work" to rest.
Is it instead just a valid interrogation technique? If so, then we should certainly keep doing it. It saves lives!
Some might say, "If we do this, then we are no better than the terrorists!" If someone says this to you, you should slap them, and call them a fool. Because anyone equivocating extreme discomfort with murder or maiming is indeed a fool.
A better question, Frank, is "Why doesn't congress stay the hell out of it and let the good guys get the job done?"
Posted by: Kevin | August 29, 2009 at 10:02 PM
Here's my take on this. I really don't care what was done to KSM in particular. He is a beast who deserves to be roasted slowly over an open pit. If we can get information out of him in the process, all the better. However, (you knew there had to be "however", didn't you) the problem is that somebody on our side has to decide to do such a thing. If one of the good guys is in a position to decide such a thing, maybe that decision can be executed a time or two more, maybe against people I would say, hey why them? I think it's wonderful that KSM got a little of what he would like to dish out, but I'm not happy that some flesh and blood person in our own ranks was able to issue and execute those orders.
This is like that interminable argument, why didn't somebody just kill Hitler and derail the whole NAZI thing? Assuming it would have worked that way, we're dealing with hard calls. Where do you draw the line. You got bad guys all over the place. Which ones are you gonna go after, how do you justify the choices and how do you keep them from returning the favor.
Pat Buchanan thinks we screwed up by getting involved in WWII. I think he's nuts, but he's able to marshal an argument. Some folks think the Civil War was just as avoidable, that we could have avoided the conflict and ended slavery as well. If we only knew how to accomplish such miracles ahead of time.
All these evaluations require a subtlety that is beyond the current capability of our resoundingly complex and stunningly inept government.
I believe in checks and balances. I believe that there should be no single group who can impose their opinions as policy on the rest of us. That's part of the American civic compact. Caesar follows the rules. We think there needs to be tradition, procedure, process, some sort of broadbased sharing of power and consultation on decision making. And politics needs to be pursued in the context of trust. I trust that reasonably fair elections will take place. I trust that the high officials of my government will try to do the right thing (in spite of appearances to the contrary.)
If bombing the nuclear infrastructure of Iran, for instance, will be judged in the future as the thing that should have been done, then we need to find a way that the government could actually muster the authority and expertise to decide such a thing and to do such a thing.
Since the government hasn't figured a way to present decision requests to the citizenry in a sufficiently digested and enlightening way, delegation of authority and some sort of deferential acknowledgment of that delegation is necessary. We hedge that frightening loss of control by forcing our leaders to adhere to the Rule of Law.
Laws, unfortunately, are stupid, inflexible, non-dynamic -- little algorithms of enforceable commitments. Why does anyone go along with them? We go along, no matter how stupid laws might be in a particular circumstance, because everyone else does so and because the predictability of process makes us comfortable that society will treat us fairly, too.
Leaders, otoh, stuggle against the strictures, constantly frustrated that they can't take the obvious and necessary steps.
Godel's incompleteness theorem tells us that there will never be a set of laws that can operate rationally under all circumstances. I believe that the only cure is to create a flexible, dynamically responsive body of actual people to supplement the letter of the law and provide the necessary insight and authority to deal with fuzzy logic situations.
Easier said than done, I guess, but that would be the only circumstance where I would be willing to allow the government to exercise the Jack Bauer mode of decision making.
Posted by: jj mollo | August 29, 2009 at 11:40 PM
JJ, you've pretty much explained why the Congress, the majority of which sounds opposed to waterboarding, doesn't bother to clear up the controversy and outlaw waterboarding outright.
They want the flexibility. Such a law would have to ban a few other things that a Democratic president might want to use, too.
Beyond that, there's always the element of the absurd in wartime rules. The rules allow us to shoot KSM for fighting out of uniform, but, some people say, those same rules don't let us dunk him.
Posted by: Frank Warner | August 30, 2009 at 02:16 AM
The problem with Congress is that nobody trusts them -- for good cause. I'm not entirely sure why it happens that way, but the consequence is that the politicization problem remains. We need a group to which we can delegate our trust.
Posted by: jj mollo | August 30, 2009 at 10:19 PM