Akron
Beacon Journal...
Descent into torture
Monday, May 09, 2011
‘Enhanced interrogation’ didn’t aid the search for Osama bin Laden in a
decisive way. It diminished the country’s moral authority
Not long after word arrived about a Navy SEAL team slaying Osama bin
Laden, the debate resumed about the use of ‘’enhanced interrogation,’’
or torture, during the presidency of George W. Bush. John Yoo, a former
Justice Department official whose legal memos claimed room for torture
in the fight against terrorism, saluted President Obama for the daring
operation and then gave credit ‘’to the tough decisions of the Bush
administration.’’ Liz Cheney, daughter of the former vice president,
offered a similar assessment.
Did torture deliver bin Laden?
Thankfully, as this chapter in the debate has played out, the consensus
has been reaffirmed: Torture, in the form of such techniques as
waterboarding, slamming prisoners into walls, hanging them in brutal
positions or depriving them of sleep for as long as 180 hours, did not
yield information worth the price, the country abandoning principle and
international conventions, diminishing its moral authority.
More, the descent into torture became a recruiting tool for al-Qaida
and its allies in Islamic extremism.
U.S. Sen. John McCain emerged from a briefing on the bin Laden mission
last week and repeated his denunciation of techniques like
waterboarding and then shared: ‘’So far I know of no information that
was obtained, that would have been useful, by ‘advanced interrogation.’
‘’ He added that published reports indicate that ‘’some of the key
people who knew about this courier denied it.’’
The courier, of course, proved key to locating bin Laden. Word of his
possible presence first surfaced in 2002 and 2003, a network like
al-Qaida reliant on many couriers to conduct its business. McCain had
in mind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the chief planner of the Sept. 11
attacks, arrested in March 2003, and subsequently waterboarded 183
times. He provided false information to his interrogators. Abu Faraj
al-Libi, another high ranking al-Qaida operative, arrested in 2005, did
the same regarding the courier.
Hasan Ghul, an al-Qaida operative, captured in Iraq, relayed in 2004
that bin Laden did have a trusted courier. The New York Times reported
last week that the CIA said Ghul was not waterboarded. He actually was
‘’quite cooperative.’’
During the next seven years, the intelligence community pulled together
and analyzed the accumulating bits and pieces of information, four
years ago learning the actual name of the courier, two years later, his
general location, and then in August tracking him to bin Laden’s
compound. A fair question to ask is: If the torture was so necessary
and effective, why wasn’t bin Laden nabbed in 2003 or 2004?
In 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively shut down the ‘’enhanced
interrogation,’’ ruling that the prisoners must be treated humanely in
accordance with the Geneva Conventions and other legal and treaty
obligations. By that time, too, the country had begun to grasp the
shortcomings of torture, even Bush officials alert to how the likes of
Abu Ghraib and the prison at Guantanamo Bay seemed to create more
Islamic extremists than the American effort was discouraging, capturing
or killing.
Weigh the evaluation of Glenn L. Carle, a retired CIA officer who
oversaw the interrogation of a high-level detainee in 2002. He told the
New York Times last week that the torture ‘’didn’t provide useful,
meaningful, trustworthy information.’’ He understood that some defended
the practice, but ‘’everyone was deeply concerned and most felt it was
un-American and did not work.’’
With the killing of Osama bin Laden, the apologists for torture have
asserted that the ends justified means. What they lack is proof that
torture was decisive, that information could not have been obtained in
other ways. This debate hardly is new. George Washington rejected
torture. So did Abraham Lincoln (the survival of the country at stake).
They and many others saw the immense moral cost, that Americans must
not engage in such means.
Read it at the Akron Beacon Journal
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