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No, Bin Laden's Death Does NOT Justify Torture
There's a new meme widely circulating today claiming that torture was
okay after all, because it helped us locate and kill Bin Laden. See this, this, this and this.
As ABC News notes:
The
revelation that intelligence gleaned from the CIA's so-called black
sites helped kill bin Laden was seen as vindication for many
intelligence officials who have been repeatedly investigated and
criticized for their involvement in a program that involved the harshest
interrogation methods in U.S. history.
"We got beat up for it,
but those efforts led to this great day," said Marty Martin, a retired
CIA officer who for years led the hunt for bin Laden.
But as ABC notes in the next paragraph:
Mohammed did not reveal the names while being subjected to the
simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding, former officials
said. He identified them many months later under standard
interrogation, they said, leaving it once again up for debate as to
whether the harsh technique was a valuable tool or an unnecessarily
violent tactic.
Reuters points out:
But
the possibility that detainees who at some point were subjected to
physical coercion later gave up information leading to bin Laden's
discovery is sparking discussion among intelligence experts as to
whether he could have been found without them.
"It
will reignite a debate that hasn't gone away about the morality and
ethicacy of certain techniques," said Richard Haas, president of the
Council on Foreign Relations.
In reality, top interrogation experts (both conservative and liberal) agree that torture is an ineffective interrogation method which leads to false, unusable information:
- One of the Military's Top Interrogators Says Torture Cost Hundreds 'If Not Thousands' Of American Lives
Moreover, the type of torture used since 9/11 was a special type of torture specifically aimed at creating false confessions:
- One
of the Main Sources for the 9/11 Commission Report was Tortured
Until He Agreed to Sign a Confession that He Was NOT EVEN ALLOWED TO
READ
- 9/11
Mastermind: "During ... My Interrogation I Gave A Lot Of False
Information In Order To Satisfy What I Believed The Interrogators
Wished To Hear"
And see this.
Moreover, as I noted yesterday, we didn't need to torture anyone to catch Bin Laden:
According
to the U.S. Senate - Bin Laden was "within the grasp" of the U.S.
military in Afghanistan in December 2001, but that then-secretary of
defense Rumsfeld refused to provide the soldiers necessary to capture him.
This is not news: it was disclosed in 2005 by the CIA field commander for the area in Afghanistan where Bin Laden was holed up.
In addition, French soldiers allegedly say that they easily could have captured or killed Bin Laden in Afghanistan, but that the American commanders stopped them.
***
A retired Colonel and Fox News military analyst said that the U.S. could have killed Bin Laden in 2007, but didn't:
We
know, with a 70 percent level of certainty — which is huge in the
world of intelligence — that in August of 2007, bin Laden was in a
convoy headed south from Tora Bora. We had his butt, on camera, on
satellite. We were listening to his conversations. We had the world’s
best hunters/killers — Seal Team 6 [Note: this is the exact same team
that is credited with killing Bin Laden yesterday] — nearby. We had
the world class Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) coordinating
with the CIA and other agencies. We had unmanned drones overhead with
missiles on their wings; we had the best Air Force on the planet,
begging to drop one on the terrorist. We had him in our sights; we had
done it ....Unbelievably, and in my opinion, criminally, we did not
kill Usama bin Laden.Indeed, a United States Congressman claims that the Bush administration intentionally let Bin Laden escape in order to justify the Iraq war.
Moreover, as I've previously noted, capturing Bin Laden and taking down Al Qaeda was never the real priority:
American historian, investigative journalist and policy analyst Gareth Porter writes in the Asia Times:
Three
weeks after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, former US defense
secretary Donald Rumsfeld established an official military objective
of not only removing the Saddam Hussein regime by force but
overturning the regime in Iran, as well as in Syria and four other
countries in the Middle East, according to a document quoted
extensively in then-under secretary of defense for policy Douglas
Feith's recently published account of the Iraq war decisions. Feith's
account further indicates that this aggressive aim of remaking the map
of the Middle East by military force and the threat of force was
supported explicitly by the country's top military leaders.Feith's book, War and Decision, released last month, provides excerpts of the paper Rumsfeld sent to President George W Bush on September 30, 2001, calling for the administration to focus not on taking down Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network but on the aim of establishing "new regimes" in a series of states...
***
General
Wesley Clark, who commanded the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
bombing campaign in the Kosovo war, recalls in his 2003 book Winning Modern Wars
being told by a friend in the Pentagon in November 2001 that the list
of states that Rumsfeld and deputy secretary of defense Paul
Wolfowitz wanted to take down included Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan
and Somalia [and Lebanon].***
When
this writer asked Feith . . . which of the six regimes on the Clark
list were included in the Rumsfeld paper, he replied, "All of them."
[Note: Clark subsequently confirmed this in a videotaped public speech]***
The
Defense Department guidance document made it clear that US military
aims in regard to those states would go well beyond any ties to
terrorism. The document said the Defense Department would also seek to
isolate and weaken those states and to "disrupt, damage or destroy"
their military capacities - not necessarily limited to weapons of mass
destruction (WMD).Indeed, the goal seems to have more to do with being a superpower (i.e. an empire) than stopping terrorism.
As Porter writes:
***
A senior officer on the Joint Staff told State Department counter-terrorism director Sheehan he had heard terrorist strikes characterized more than once by colleagues as a "small price to pay for being a superpower".
If we had really wanted to get Bin Laden, we would have gotten him in 2001 (indeed, the Taliban offered to turn him over), or 2007.
But
we had "more important" things to do. Specifically, U.S. foreign
policy was focused on regime change in Iraq, Libya and elsewhere, and in
strategic interests not directly related to terrorism.
Postscript: Experts say that torture is unnecessary even to prevent "ticking time bombs" from exploding (see this, this and this). Indeed, a top expert says that torture would fail in a real 'ticking time-bomb' situation.
And, yes ... waterboarding is torture:
- President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, Malcolm Nance (an advisor on terrorism to the US departments of Homeland Security, Special Operations and Intelligence), Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples
(the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency) and many other
interrogation experts and high-level politicians say that waterboarding
is torture
- The United States has always considered waterboarding to be a crime of torture, including when the Japanese did it in WWII (and see this)
- Everyone claiming waterboarding is not torture has changed their tune as soon as they were exposed to even a small dose of it themselves. See this, this and this
But it wasn't just waterboarding:
- Major General Antonio Taguba: Photos Show Sodomy, Rape and Sexual Assault With Wire and Various Blunt Instruments
- "The Sexual Humiliation Of Iraqi Prisoners…Was Not An Invention Of Maverick Guards, But Part Of A SYSTEM Of Ill-Treatment And Degradation"
- advertisements -
+2
not just that but..who would dare cut the military budget now?
this story will unravel. bank on that.
+1. Bingo.
Your right George. Just think of the money Bill Clinton could have saved the nation over the next decade if he would have taken custody of OBL from the Sudanese government.
Give a Guantanamo detainee a nice clean bed, 3 squares and a Koran, prayer rug and a sense of safety and you've guaranteed he'll have no reason to talk.
But give him the Winston Smith treatment, where he thinks he might suffer a horrible death, pain, suffocation, mutilation, or whatever he can imagine, and you give him a reason to cut a deal and talk to you. You have to keep him guessing. Sorry, but it works and there are times - especially during wars - when the good guys (yes, that's us) need to use every tool at our disposal to protect the innocent.
I don't know...
Once we start giving the "WInston Smith" treatment as you say....don't we stop being the "good guys"?
I'd say so....
I guess...since you like to use 1984 references....here's one for you...
War is peace....freedom is slavery.....Love is hate....
WATERBOARDING IS NOT TORTURE . . .
Now that is a True classic of Orwellian double speak if I have ever hear one....
You must be living in a moral fantasy land....a wonderful place where the rules of what is right and wrong only apply to others....and where you can actually convince yourself that you, yourself are not condemable for the same types of crimes that you would comdemn others for...
YOU FUCKING HYPOCRITES!
Even if it did lead to some useful information, including the location of Obama ... dang it, I mean Osama, torture still isn't justified.
I'm glad someone was willing to step up and say so. Thanks GW.
I think I'll go watch "Rendition" and "In the Valley of Elah" again.
The Monica Lewinsky covert BJ Ops were a major contributing factor to disposing of OBL as well.
Scenario:
Your daughter is being held captive by a crazed lunatic. He's already raped her and has her locked up in some hidden location.
Would you A:
Approve of Harry Callahan stomping on his bullet wounds to get him to divulge the location of your daughter? or
B:
Weep over the violation of poor Scorpio's Miranda rights, and promptly file a complaint with the SFPD.
"Well, I'm all broken up about that man's rights."
if it was my daughter, God forbid, then the means to have here brought back to me would be up to me. I would not need Harry or anyone else. But I would do what ever I had to to have her brought back to her loved ones. There would probably be punitive damage too.
+1
Would you A:
Approve of Harry Callahan stomping on his bullet wounds to get him to divulge the location of your daughter? or
you guys didn't answer his question because you know damn well you would pick A
if you have a brain and a set of balls that is
Anyone --- ANYONE --- in the USA who would tolerate torture, or even more despicably, APPROVE of torture, has surrendered the right to call themselves an American. I cannot even believe that this conversation is happening in this day and age. That a practice as barbarically medieval as torture, abandoned by all civilized nations well over a century if not two or three centuries ago, is now being openly debated, approved and (even more shamefully) actively pursued in the USA today is just another sad and disturbing reflection of the ongoing moral and intellectual decay of our contemporary politics, society and culture.
You militaristic statist bastards who mindlessly let yourselves be led by the ring in your sheep-nose by Bush and his chickenhawk neocon warmongering scum into a wildly aggressive, imperialistic and immoral foreign policy that would truly make Hitler proud, and into meekly accepting or even applauding their near-totalitarian police-state domestic restrictions on, and violations of, our fundamental Constitutional and individual rights, deserve to be waterboarded yourselves, every one of you. And then shot as the un-American traitors that you are.
Well said akak, +1 from me to you.
thank you akak. i am getting to the point where it is hard for me to argue with them about this stuff. so many of them are so far behind, it is almost impossible for me, at this stage, to try and communicate with them what is really going on. it is almost too late now.
How can you thank him/her High PLains Drifter? He is suggesting the use of waterboarding????? After saying that any AMERICAN that supports it's use is a traitor???
methinks he was a wee bit sarcastic...turning the tables on the gunslingers like in a good ole western, where you NEVER go for your colt first! That's the legend of Wyatt Twirp...to those who sing..."never let him do to you what you can do to him first"...I think that woman Tina Meana really hated her hubby in the end!
perhaps paz, you should reread his eloquent response. i am not sure what you are talking about. if you have a problem with akak, then take it up with him on fight club.....
Thanks HPD...I reread....and his statement is hypocritical because he is suggesting waterboarding for those who think waterboarding is ok, which means he thinks that he himself should be waterboarded following his circular logic.
Pazmaker (what an ironic name for an advocate of the ultimate brutality of torture), you have very poor reading skills. What I clearly stated is that those who approve of torture DESERVE to be waterboarded and shot --- I did not say anything about actually committing such atrocities against them, merely that their disgustingly barbaric apologies for state-sponsored torture would logically and morally justify them being submitted to the same inhuman policies.
I'm not the one on here that has advocated it you have and not only that you fail to see the fault in your own deranged logic. How can anyone DESERVE something so barbaric?
Again with the reading and/or comprehension problems.
Let me try to clarify what I said so that even somebody as evidently dense and/or dumb as you can understand it: I did not say that those who advocate torture, statist pigs that they are, SHOULD be tortured, merely that due to THEIR advocacy of it, they morally DESERVE to be tortured in kind. To deserve something does NOT mean to necessarily receive or suffer that thing. Do you even understand the difference between "deserve" and "should be"?
How naive AKAK....what a pretty little pretend world you live in!
Not to mention the fact that your entire statement is contradictory in that you suggest those you disagree with should be waterboarded!!
So one must ask....are you for it or against it?
Wow. You cast a pretty wide net for all those 'traitors'. Most in the US have absolutely no idea how expensive life is here...........or how expensive it is to fly planes around the globe 24/7 to monitor air traffic so we can bullshit in peace on this blog. Go and donate your time in a remote place in the world where your ideas make no sense, carry no weight and actually insult 1,000 yrs of tradtion. After they take anything useful from you like your shoes, clothing and your watch, you may be treated worse than a dog. You seem very passionate and genuine about your beliefs but push come to shove, its our tribe against their tribe, they don't respect life the way you do and therefore only respond/respect to what they know, fighting and death. I admire your willingness to be proud the US citizens are not monsters but worry you are not willing to consider what may need to be done to protect it.
i have a great idea. why don't we mind our own business and stay the hell out of other people's countries and do like ron paul says, talk to people instead of fighting with them? do you think this approach may work? peace instead of war, what a novel concept. no expensive toys, no military industrial complex and no accumulated debts to the yids..... my , my , that is sooooooooo earthshattering isn't it?
I could not have said it much better....
That was all good. Apart from the Hitler and shooting people for having different opinions parts.
r u Tom Paine's ghost?
According to the experts - torture is unnecessary even to prevent "ticking time bombs" from exploding (see this, this and this). Indeed, a top expert says that torture would fail in a real 'ticking time-bomb' situation
You need to quit watching FOX network T.V. and flush the bullshit out of between your ears.
Ha! this intellectual thinks Im a republican.
Oh you, of such high moral compass and purity. Quicker would you deny a victim their protection and rights than a criminal. You can care less about everyone else as long as you can feel so good about yourself.
the murder of 3000 innocent american civilians justifies torture. Period.
the were not all americans.
There were Canadians, Englishmen, Mulsims, the list goes on
There are more people suffering, and unheard, who tried to help the victims and clean up the place. Many now regret they even went near it. Collateral damage.
Anyone who can even remotely justify torture is too narrow minded to even, for a minute, suspect that 9/11 and everything since then was orchastrated to muster simpity from the rest of the world and allow the self appointed "world's police" to have at it with the oil rich nations and anyone else who does or even does not stand in their way
Then the murder of far more Iraqi civilians by the US Military would justify the torture of those military personnel. Your "logic," not mine.
check your premise. Iraqi civilians were not targeted during the war. American civilians were the target when the trade center was hit. There is no doubt that iraqi civilians were killed but they were collateral damage, not targets. And at the end of the day, what is considered torture? Is waterboarding torture? Whats the matter? Are you upset because waterboarding gave osama el kaboom a bad deam? Did it damage them menatally? Who cares. What about all the families of 9/11 victims? Dont you think they are totured everyday of their lives?
+1,000,000 (or whatever the estimate of the dead in Iraq are)
Goddamn...there are some real brainwashed fucks on here late at night....
I'd say that many of you need to flush the militaristic propaganda out of their fucking heads...
Joeseph Goebbels never had it so easy in Nazi Germany....you fucking sheep are really silly....
BAAAAAAAA
how about "an accident" then? i do agree "we need one Constitution now." I do not like Gitmo now that we have OBL.
George, how would you feel about torture if your daughter was kidnapped and might die without administering some form of it after everything else has failed? Torture is a tool. It works better on some than others. Psyco-torture works the best, but whatever it takes to get the job done should be our motto. War is dirty, violent, ugly, and sometimes necessary when violence is the only language your enemy understands and respects. Caesar had it right. The only way to meet force is with superior force...or was that Reagan?
According to the experts - torture is unnecessary even to prevent "ticking time bombs" from exploding (see this, this and this). Indeed, a top expert says that torture would fail in a real 'ticking time-bomb' situation
That's a misleading argument, the efficacy of any interrogation method is questionable in a "ticking time bomb scenario" interrogation is a process and the process takes time, whether you use positive or negative reinforcement is largely irrelevant when it is time that is the determining factor of events.
on a long enuff time line...so your argument with it's ticking bomb is not a moral one...its transient phase...not worth the time.
I think the argument generally must revolve around morals and ethics, otherwise torture becomes justified when someone perfects it.
Dead on. GW short circuited this whole discussion by posing the question of torture ONLY from the "efficiency" viewpoint. It is not just a means to an end, it is an expression of man's deep seated values. When you kill someone you take away man's most precious gift received from the heavens...You better have a good reason as what you take you must also be ready to give in return...the pendulum always swings both ways. This is what Socrates asked about Thucydides's account of the Peloponnesian war ...are there two types of justice, one for the victors one for the victims?...Who are we to decide we will NEVER be the victims...In other words : if we want to stay as victors in life we must be as Jesus said... "do unto...
torture is a crime
How would you feel if it was your daughter being tortured to find out the whereabouts of a former boyfreind who might possibly be a terrorist?
Good point....
But see...it aint torture if America does it...
Don't you see...that is the point that is being made by many on here. It aint torture as long as it is being inflicted on some Muslim guy or some poor dirt farmer from a 3rd world nation.
You start tortuing this guys daughter and then you would be considered a monster or a terrorist...or worse...an "Al C.I.Ada".
There WILL be a day when America will regret our arrogence and hubris...I am mostly ashamed of what I have witnessed as out response to 9-11. Most of what we have accomplished can be measured by how much our legal, economic, social and media have changed here in the U.S. since that day (and for the worse I might add)
We have basically allowed the attack (or coordinated sabotage of our nation - depends on who you ask) to totally change our fundamental viewpoints on what is right...what is freedom...what is truth...and what passes for justice. I hear many people bitching about how fucked up our nation is right now...with good cause...but if you really want to know when this ball of shit really started to get rolling...you need look no further back in history than that Tuesday, September 11th, 2001. Most of the major issues we face as a nation can be traced to our response to that day. SHAME
++++
That was for Matte Black's statement above.
We still have to define torture in this country don't you think?
well how about being nailed on a cross like a certain jew called Jesus?
Offhand, I'm thinkin that would be a torturous execution committed for what reason?
Well, how about KSM sawing off another Jews head with a blunt knife...that would be Danny Pearl...and another torturous execution committed for what reason?