Sometimes, Torture Does Work

August 31st, 2009 By: Michael van der Galien | Tags:

The Washington Post:

After enduring the CIA’s harshest interrogation methods and spending more than a year in the agency’s secret prisons, Khalid Sheik Mohammed stood before U.S. intelligence officers in a makeshift lecture hall, leading what they called “terrorist tutorials.”…

Speaking in English, Mohammed “seemed to relish the opportunity, sometimes for hours on end, to discuss the inner workings of al-Qaeda and the group’s plans, ideology and operatives,” said one of two sources who described the sessions, speaking on the condition of anonymity because much information about detainee confinement remains classified. “He’d even use a chalkboard at times.”

Read the entire article. It proves that KSM would never have spoken to his interrogators if he hadn’t been subjected to so-called enhanced interrogation techniques.

Torture isn’t ‘good.’ Sure, but what if it saves thousands of lives? What if torturing one man helps the government safe ten lives?

Additionally, anti-torture extremists have to be aware of the fact that one prisoner isn’t the other. CIA agents say, for instance, that many Islamic terrorists believe they can cooperate at a certain moment without feeling guilty about it. As one of those agents explained: “Once the harsher techniques were used on [detainees], they could be viewed as having done their duty to Islam or their cause, and their religious principles would ask no more of them. After that point, they became compliant. Obviously, there was also an interest in being able to later say, ‘I was tortured into cooperating’.”

Which leads us to the following conclusion: the debate about torture isn’t as black and white as the anti-torture extremists would like us to believe.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Technorati
  • SphereIt
  • NewsVine
  • TailRank
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon

This website uses IntenseDebate comments, but they are not currently loaded because either your browser doesn't support JavaScript, or they didn't load fast enough.

  1. LauraNo
    August 31st, 2009 at 16:11
    Reply | Quote | #1

    Thinking that torture is illegal is not extremist. Torture IS illegal. I don’t know why you feel the need to spin the facts in such a way that you can call people with opinions names. It does not matter what information was or was not gleaned. If I kill someone who bugs me, guess what? It will work! They will stop bugging me. I will still have dirty hands and a moral blot on my soul. And it will be illegal.

  2. Tully
    August 31st, 2009 at 17:06
    Reply | Quote | #2

    Continual conflation of “torture” with “enhanced interrogation techniques” which legally were not “torture” per the relevant statutes. Yawn.

  3. Doomed
    August 31st, 2009 at 17:36
    Reply | Quote | #3

    I agree that torture should be illegal and that it should never be used by the United States.

    The debate continues to be enhanced interrogation.

    Many believe its torture. Many believe its not. We all know where thats led us. Another Jimmy Carter purging of the CIA to make far left liberals happy.

    I just have to post this……..it made me spit my coffee out on the keyboard literally when I read it.

    From Wiki on Right Wing Authoritarianism.

    In roleplaying situations, authoritarians tend to seek dominance over others by being competitive and destructive instead of cooperative. In a study by Altemeyer, 68 authoritarians played a three hour simulation of the earth’s future entitled the Global change game. Unlike a comparison game played by individuals with low RWA scores, which resulted in world peace and widespread international cooperation, the simulation by authoritarians became highly militarized and eventually entered the stage of nuclear war. By the end of the high RWA game, the entire population of the earth was declared dead.

    Now if the world consisted of all LOW RWA people….there would be world peace. If it all consisted of high RWA people there would be global destruction.

    Betcha cant guess whose running Guantanamo and which type the prisoners are?>

Comments are closed.

PoliGazette Comments Policy

PoliGazette encourages comments from all viewpoints, especially those that disagree. Comments submitted must, however, adhere to the following standards. Comments that violate these standards may be edited or deleted without notice at the sole discretion of the editors. Commenters who repeatedly or egregiously violate these standards or who attempt to argue publicly with editors regarding the comments policy may be banned from commenting further.

(1) Comments should address the substantive content of the post. Comments that repeatedly or blatantly misrepresent the content of the post or of others' comments are not welcome. Comments that respond to something other than which the contributor or commenter may have said are irrelevant and should not be posted.

(2) Comments should avoid vulgarity as well as racial, ethnic, religious, or sexual bigotry.

(3) Comments should not personally attack the character, personal integrity, or professional reputation of any PoliGazette contributor or of other commenters.

(4) Comments should reflect the contributions of the commenters themselves and should not include extensive cut-and-paste reproductions of others' words except insofar as necessary to supplement the commenter's own arguments. Link spam, trackback spam, and propaganda spam will be instantly deleted.

(5) Public figures are considered open to all substantive criticism of their policies and statements. Comments that present objectively false factual information about public figures (i.e. "Obama is a Muslim") or that attack public figures by attacking their families are not welcome. Comments that merely repeat slogans for or against a candidate without engaging in substantive comment are not welcome.

Questions or challenges to these policies or their application should be directed to the editors by email only.