"Waterboarding used 266 times on 2 suspects" says the headline. Oh, but wait, I thought the Bush administration said it only waterboarded a handful of times. Turns out my memory is faulty: Gen. Michael Hayden, Bush's final CIA director, said last year that waterboarding was used on only three suspects. He didn't say how many times waterboarding was used on those suspects. Now we know.
Former CIA agent Philip Giraldi, writing on the American Conservative's blog, and who believes waterboarding should be used in rare instances, says:
That our government authorized procedures that most of the world thinks to be war crimes is undeniable. The question becomes what kind of accountability should there be, if any. Should the guy who attached the electrodes be tried or the guy who ordered the electrodes to be attached? There is no simple answer to that, but much of the information now coming out goes beyond disturbing. The NYT article detailing how the torturers went about their work complete with visitors from CIA headquarters watching the procedure was chilling. And the torture went on in spite of the judgment of the local station chief in Thailand that the victim had no more information to give. Somehow the videotaping and record keeping is reminiscent of the meticulous records that the Soviets and Nazis kept on what they did to their victims. And the article also describes how the torture did not produce any usable information. So the whole thing was really idiotic. That we engaged in war crimes for nothing would seem to be the only possible conclusion and the senior officers and White House people who drove the process should be held accountable for being stupid if for nothing else.I for one would like to know how this happened.
Me too. How is it that even after the CIA station chief on the ground told his superiors that the terrorist being tortured had said all he knew that the CIA kept on torturing the guy? What does that tell us about what we were really up to? Was it really a "necessary evil"?
That can't be undone, obviously, but if we don't try to understand how and why that happened, what will our refusal to look at our deeds, and what was done in our name, say about the American soul? "Yes, but they are terrorists," is not much of a defense.
You don't think waterboarding is torture? Read Christopher Hitchens, who submitted to waterboarding to see what it was like. Excerpt:
I could have hugged him for saying so, and just then I was hit with a ghastly sense of the sadomasochistic dimension that underlies the relationship between the torturer and the tortured. I apply the Abraham Lincoln test for moral casuistry: "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong." Well, then, if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.
Video of Hitchens being waterboarded after the jump:
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We shouldn't torture because it is evil.
Necessary evil? Still evil.
Lesser of two evils? Evil again.
Just say you're fine with blood on your hands and that you accept the techniques of the Nazis because of 9/11 and be done with it.
We shouldn't torture because not only is it evil, it's useless in terms of getting usable information as opposed to false information invented to stop the torture. Since apparently some people don't care about the first, it's necessary to point out the second - especially when people argue that "it saves lives".
Richard, the thought of torturing someone is abhorrent to me, and I also think we ought to abide by international law, and I don't know if torture works (and I doubt if anyone here really does either) and I don't want our own soldiers tortured in return. For all those reasons I oppose the practice.
But to say that someone who favors torturing mass murderers and would-be mass murderers in hopes of saving the lives of innocent people is "fine with blood on their hands and accepts the techniques of the Nazis" strikes me as a pretty significant failure of the human heart.
Rod, I read several of your pieces on torture and wanted to let you know that I've linked to several of them in my last blog post.
http://wwwdemocracity.blogspot.com/2009/04/best-kept-secret-in-washington.html
What is obvious is that if the tables had been turned, this 7th-century savage KSM would have been chopping our heads off while making a video of it. Irresponsible grandstanding on the left is to be ignored, these people don’t know -or don’t want to know- what it takes to keep America safe... nor do they understand the nature of the enemy, apparently.
And waterboarding is not a near-drowning technique- the subject is never in danger of drowning. Water boarding is not torture- there is no physical harm to the subject.
Kahlid Sheikh Mohammed is a BAD guy, wouldn’t talk, and was taunting US interrogators with “you’ll see”… so they obtained valuable info from him using this technique, which we now find-out prevented a 9/11-scale attack on Los Angeles. Who cares how many times it took?
It was up to him how long before he decided to cooperate, didn’t have to be this way- looks like he clung stubbornly to a bad decision.
http://reaganiterepublicanresistance.blogspot.com
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