Hey, all those Verschärfte Vernehmungen (“enhanced interrogations”) don’t actually seem to be doing us any good:
WASHINGTON — As the Bush administration completes secret new rules governing interrogations, a group of specialists advising the intelligence agencies argue that the harsh techniques used since the 2001 terrorist attacks are outmoded, amateurish, and unreliable.
The psychologists and other specialists, commissioned by the Intelligence Science Board, make the case that more than five years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Bush administration has yet to create an elite corps of interrogators trained to glean secrets from terror suspects.
While billions are spent each year to upgrade satellites and other high-tech spy machinery, the specialists say, interrogation methods — possibly the most important source of information on groups like Al Qaeda — are a hodgepodge that date from the 1950s, or are modeled on old Soviet practices.
Amazing. We’ve literally gone Soviet. But they were so competent in so many ways!
Now, it wouldn’t matter if we had gotten anything useful out of these techniques. They’re still completely immoral. In fact, their very illegitimacy makes them ineffective: If you’ll do anything to get someone to talk, no surprise when someone will say anything to get you to stop.
In a rather bad poem — reflecting in its way the disorientation and despair of its time — Auden pronounced the 1930’s a “low dishonest decade.” Our conduct in prosecuting the so-called “war on terror” makes me feel similarly — that our age itself is corrupt, that we have thoroughly sold out all that which did indeed make the United States exceptional — for a mess o’ pottage, for the desire to go to the wall with political “tough talk”, for the sheer rock-headed inability to think of anything better to do.
I think that by and large, we don’t even realize what trouble we’re in. It’s a moral problem, and the problem is us.
These people are TAPPED. We’d be better off going with buying out locals. Tell us where bin Laden is and you get a free house for you and your family on Long Island. Do we do that? Do we do it enough?
i just heard on the radio that yet another guantanamo prisoner has committed suicide. so bush’s torture methods do seem to be effective, at least, in stripping people of their will to live. proud, brave america.
…people rounded up and taken to Guantanamo years ago would have any information as to what al Qaida is up to now, or where the senior leadership (particularly bin Laden) is now. I would presume that the use of torture techniques on Gitmo inmates is just for the purpose of obtaining information. I also presume that at this point in time that is wrong, and the purpose is primarily sadism.
of being sadists. Do you really believe this?
You know damn well that raj is not tarring all military people with the same brush. Are some of them sadistic? Are you kidding me?
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You’ll say anything to avoid the central issue: That torture is revolting, immoral, we’re doing it, and you like it.
Immoral, perhaps not. Would I do it? Under certain circumstances, yes. Would I like it? No.
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Maybe Gitmo interrogation techniques are ineffective. Maybe they’re not, and they yield important information which has led to plots averted and lives saved. You don’t know for sure. Then how can you be so absolutist?
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Would you kill someone in self-defense? Similar question.
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Can you answer it with only a yes or no?
self defense is not comparable to torture. one employs self defense after having been attacked by someone demonstrating murderous intent. it happens during or after a display of mortal violence. however, imrpisonment and torture at guantanamo has happened without the guantanamo prisoners (or many of them anyway) having attacked anyone.
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to answer your last question, yes.
…some of them are. Abu Ghraib appears to be only one example. Gitmo, too.
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Sadism doesn’t stop with them, however. It also extends to those who authorized Verschaerfte Vernehmungen, and to those who knew about it, but didn’t stop it when they were in a position to do so.
Your Boston Globe/NYTs citation is written by reporters with an agenda and published by a news outlet with one too. It?s obviously a leaked ?study? or else its authors would be known. The piece cites only ?specialists? and ?psychologists? and ?study participants? ? no names, so the article?s credibility is zero.
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The real moral problem is not us but the Islamofascists who continue their attempts to kill us (Americans, Jews, non-believers.)
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Progressives’ collective denial that there’s anything about global terrorism to worry about is another problem, as is feeding those lowlifes held in Gitmo chicken a la orange.
saying torture is wrong = “denial that there’s anything to worry about”.
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Sometimes you bring up tough points, Shep. Now you’re just trolling, and for the worst possible cause.
I’m not equating a torture-is-wrong belief with a denial of “a problem with Islam.” But the two are certainly interconnected.
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If you don’t believe there’s a problem, then aggressive interrogation techniques seem like torture.
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On the other hand, if suicidal jihadists are planning to hijack a plane from Logan or blow up a synagogue in Brookline, and you had in custody someone who knew of those plans, what would you do? How far would you go? What moral responsibility do you have to uncover their plan and save lives?
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Harvard Law prof Alan Dershowitz belives there?s a moral justification for torture if lives are at stake, although what his definition of torture is I can?t say. But aggressive ?interviewing? of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed probably saved lives. Why is this bad?
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On the other hand, the no-torture, civil-rights-for-terrorists absolutists may end up getting people here in the US killed.
…the names of the specialists and psychologists who were advising the Intelligence Science Board, why don’t you contact the Intelligence Science Board and ask them? Maybe you can even get a copy of the ISB report on which this news report was based. It is not necessary for every news report to report the minutiea on which the news report is based.
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The issue, which you apparently wish to avoid, is not whether terrorism exists on an international scale, but whether torture is a useful device for controlling it. According to the ISB, apparently not.
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Irrespective of that, apparently, international terrorism is not engaged in by a unified organization, but a number of cells, and it is highly unlikely that persons who were captured who may have been associated with one cell, would know what other cells were up to, much less whether other cells existed.
It’s their responsibility to give the complete story, not just leak a fuzzy “study” by unnamed sources.
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It’s obvious as long as the “conclusions” support your political point of view, reporting the facts, in this case, naming a single name or citing sources, is “minutiea” [sic].
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That’s intellectually wimpy. Raj, if you want to defend these reporters, you do the research.
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The NYT has become a megaphone for political opposition to the Bush administration. It long ago ceased being the Paper of Record.
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BTW, are you a terrorism expert? How can you claim “it is highly unlikely that persons who were captured who may have been associated with one cell, would know what other cells were up to, much less whether other cells existed”? Some bad guys captured know a lot.
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That was the case with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
You wrote
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It?s obviously a leaked ?study? or else its authors would be known. The piece cites only ?specialists? and ?psychologists? and ?study participants? ? no names, so the article?s credibility is zero.
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The post more than suggested that it was either written by or based on information provided to the Intelligence Science Board, which is a US government agency. (Do some checking, if you don’t believe it.
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Now, I challenged you, that, if you want to know the specialists, psychologists and/or study participants who were involved in the production of the report, to contact the ISB and ask them. Now you say that you want me to do that for you. I’m not interested having the names of those people–for at least the reason that I will have no idea who they are, even if I do have their names. But you seemed interested in knowing who they were.
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So I interpret your refusal to follow through with my suggestion as an indication that you really don’t want to know who the participants were. And that you just wanted to kvetch.
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BTW, regarding your complaints about the NYTimes having an agenda in connection with the Bush malAdministration, maybe they do. But you conveniently forget that the NYTimes also had an agenda against the Clinton malAdministration. Their lousy reporter Jeff Gerth trumpeted the Whitewater non-scandal early in the Clinton malAdministration. That led to the appointment of the special persecutor, despite the fact that any wrongdoings in connection with their investment in Whitewater ended before Clinton took office.
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Also, no, I am not a terrorism expert. But organizations are intentionally organized in a cell structure specifically for the purposes I mentioned. On the other hand, international terrorist groups were probably not centrally organized–the cells were probably locally organized, and linked themselves up haphazardly, if they linked themselves up at all.
“I think that by and large, we don’t even realize what trouble we’re in.” This is so true. Day after day I hear people speaking with authority, out of hatred and fear, having never reflected upon the deeper implications of what they say. You hit the nail right on the head: “our age itself is corrupt.” It began with the assault on education and free thought by the right wing in the 1970s, and we are now reaping the whirlwind.