Waterboarding and The Tapes
As a follow-up to Calling Waterboarding What It Is - Torture, I've learned (through a reader) that Pulitzer-prize winner James Risen's State of War (p. 187) corroborates Gerald Posner's claim that Abu Zubaydah was linked to both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
This provides an understandable reason for destroying the tapes, one far more embarrassing than waterboarding: a terrorist suspect who implicates two "allies."
Interviewed on CNN on Tuesday, the former agent, John Kiriakou, admitted that his knowledge is second-hand:
[The] CIA decided to waterboard the al Qaeda operative only after he was "wholly uncooperative" for weeks and refused to answer questions. All that changed -- and Zubayda reportedly had a divine revelation -- after 30 to 35 seconds of waterboarding, Kiriakou said he learned from the CIA agents who performed the technique...
[Zubayda] reportedly gave up information that indirectly led to the the 2003 raid in Pakistan yielding the arrest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, an alleged planner of the September 11, 2001, attacks, Kiriakou said.
Thus this source isn't quite the blockbuster one that ABC implied. Kiriakou is not a primary source. He is not a witness, he is passing along hearsay. Perhaps that is why the CIA has decided not to prosecute him for revealing classified information.
Another reader insists that "U.S. interrogation techniques are NOT torture, period." I ask this reader to argue with the Kiriakou, not me. I was merely quoting him and his assessment that waterboarding=torture.
On CNN, Kiriakou continued to insist that the Justice Department and the White House approved waterboarding as an "interogation technique" in 2002.
On this subject, the nation seems to be divided (yet again): do the ends justify the means, especially given the research that show us that the only time torture "gets people to talk" (ie, give up "valuable" secrets versus tell the interrogator what he wants to hear) is in Hollywood.
Doubt that? Tell it to Higazy.
Comments
What research? Research by big pacifists who go into the research with a predisposed idea that waterboarding is wrong and work backwards to come to the conclusion they wanted all along?
Yes, the ends justifies the means.
C
Well, I thought that torture had a specific definition in the dictionary. I looked it up and it is not that simple, but there is a legal one:
http://www.icrc.org/web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/html/69MJXC
So the question is simple: if waterboarding causes intense pain, it is torture. My own experience of nearly drowning in a swimming pool tells me that a suffocation feeling causes intense pain. So I have to conclude that it is torture.
From what I understand in the US debate, the US administration has declared that torture was not a legal mean that could be used by US forces to get information. Ergo, waterboarding shouldn’t be allowed.
Now, does the end justifies the means. My point is that it does not. It is a simple ethical issue, and the answer is clearly no (again referring to authorized sources such as major modern philosopher like Popper or Levinas).
Now, should democracies follow ethics? That is a good one… I think so, but many people have made arguments against this. All I can tell is that democracies are based on the rule of law. And the rule of law in the USA, just like in most democracies, is that torture is illegal even in times of war. So I guess that it makes the ethical debate irrelevant. Unless someone proposes to change the law.
But then it would create another issue: if democracies such as the USA or France want to use their moral ground (which they clearly do and publicly advertise), they can’t on one side denounce dictatures such as the one of Saddam Hussein or of the Myanmar junta (which use torture and jail without trial, for instance) and use the same practices to reach their goals. It is not only counter-productive, but it is also damaging their standpoint.
Chuck said:
Yes, the ends justifies the means.
Hello Chuck!
You have now justified the actions of terrorists. They mean exact like this!
Hello, Walter — your comments suggest you are very wise.