There is a trade-off between our values and our security

Kevin Himmler

Considering that KSM masterminded the mass murder of 3,000 people and was planning to killing thousands more, a little water dribbled down his nosey-wosey was the least he could expect. Obama is going to have to learn learn the hard way that Al Quaeda don't play softball.

Andy

Torture: the best example of winning the battle but losing the war.

GeoffH

Don't believe it.

Subjects simply reveal what the torturer wants to hear just to get him to stop.

Thiessen is a liar or a fantasist. Or simply an evil deluded man.

Name Rank Number Date of Birth

@James: It is perfectly possible to oppose torture but support the right of professional interrogators operating under close legal and medical scrutiny to apply coercive techniques to specific subjects.

Conflating that proposition with physical mutilation of political opponents by untrained, unsupervised torturers as an arbitrary instrument of government policy is a convenient ruse by totalitarian governments and the useful idiots in human rights campaigners, and a delberate systematic attempt to undermine democratic states. And not only does it undermine our security, as well as exposing our crisis of confidence when seeking to make the case: more ruinously, it does nothing to prevent those *genuine* torture regimes, nor to help their victims.

There is a moral difference between making someone *fear* they will drown and *actually* drowning them. Similarly, making someone stand for six hours or subjecting someone to sleep deprivation is *not* morally equivalent to physical mutilation or electrocution or any of the panoply of techniques well-documented as state policy in countries like Saddam's Iraq, Iran, China, etc. But once the media space has been dominated by agencies wishing to assert that there *is* an equivalence, it is very difficult to dissuade the public from making the mental leap automatically.

And sadly it's far easier for HRW and the UN to focus on the soft targets like the UK and the US than to hold any Middle Eastern kleptocracy to account.

Ray

And what if, in order to relieve the pain of torture, the suspect had simply ejaculated a whole load of untruths or half-truths that had thrown the CIA completely off the scent?

In this respect (and as the French discovered in Algeria), torture fails as often as it succeeds in eliciting information.

Meanwhile, the United States is demonised in the eyes of all right-thinking people on account of it.

THX1138

The Hitch didn't last long with

"a little water dribbled down his nosey-wosey"

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/video/2008/hitchens_video200808

and he's a tough old coot.

I advise you all to watch this video.

Chris

GeoffH is spot on. There is no such thing as evidence gained by torture. The torturer just gets told what they want to here. We shouldn't be having this discussion. Years ago sensible people realised that torture was pointless, unnecessary and completely unnacceptable. The Thiessen is, of course, a liar and a charlatan. We, or rather the US, should be putting these people in prison.

Conservative Cabbie

Chris and GeoffH

"The torturer just gets told what they want to here"

That may be true of confessions, but doesn't apply when considering intelligence gathering. As the report said, the waterboarding led to a 17 man terrorist cell. That's substantive information.

I oppose the death penalty, but never lost any sleep over Saddam's execution. similarly, whilst I don't like torture, the fact that KSM has had to suffer just a little of the horrific suffering he dealt to so many lives probably makes me sleep a little easier.

George Laird

Dear James

In my opinion Marc Thiessen is nothing more than an apologist for criminals.

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

Ben

Hard to prove that there would have been an attack in LA, really. In fact it's unprovable. Sticking to the facts, there has not been another homeland attack since 9/11. Is this genuine success due to information gained by torture? I don't know, and those who might would not be believed by most of us anyway, who oppose the use of torture empirically. Witness the silly and uninformed insults to Thiessen because of his Bush affiliation. It's a fact though: no 9/11 repeat, despite the evident desire to pull it off. And Al-Qaeda do not indeed play softball.

Bailey

Mr. Forsyth

Would you still feel pride in your values if, by chance, a dirty bomb went off in London?

Are you willing to sacrifice YOUR friends, YOUR family and YOUR countrymen for that value?

Think about it seriously - Could you look into your daughter's or your son's eyes and say, 'I will sacrifice you?'

Aparrently so, if I am to take you at your word.

I have to confess that I would be under no such compulsion to worry about that value if such a situation presented itself to me. If I knew that a person had information that might save thousands of lives....I would do ANYTHING, if it were in my power, to save them.

Call me a barbarian if you like...I don't mind.

You see, I have this human instinct that us hard to supress - to protect one's own from harm.

THAT used to be a VALUE itself.

You have chosen to elevate your enemies discomfort for the lives of your children.

That must make you feel just wonderful.

Forlornehope

Senator John McCain has more right to be listened to than most on this:

"Anyone who knows what waterboarding is could not be unsure. It is a horrible torture technique.

People who have worn the uniform and had the experience know that this is a terrible and odious practice and should never be condoned in the U.S. We are a better nation than that."

Not Quite Hayek

It does make me wonder about how this signals to enemies that they can take things to another level when interrogating our assets.

That's not to say that they don't, but that it perhaps signals that torture is a reasonable and normal component of the interrogation process- whether the victim has useful information or not.

GeoffH

CC: "That may be true of confessions, but doesn't apply when considering intelligence gathering. As the report said, the waterboarding led to a 17 man terrorist cell. That's substantive information"

I don't believe it.

I've no doubt that that any 'evidence' that torture works is a figment of its supporters' imaginations.

And any 'finds' will be use for a post-factum justification even where there's no link.

Thiessen and the Bush gang are/were simply unscrupulous liars.

Or perhaps we should waterboard them - Thiessen first - to find the 'truth'?

There could be no possible objection could there, if it works?

David Parker

Torture is not a philosophical issue, where there is any absolute right or wrong, but primarily an issue of degree and urgency.
On the one hand an interrogator may have intelligence about the existence of an imminent terrorist plot, potentially threatening many lives. In such a situation I believe that any degree of violence against a single individual would be morally, if not legally justified, but only if it could subsequently be shown (even post mortem) that there was compelling evidence that there were genuine grounds for believing that the prisoner was privy to important evidence which might have assisted the authorities in preventing this attack.

This is, of course, totally different from the situation where suspected, or even known, terrorist prisoners, are being interrogated purely for the purpose of gaining information about their activities or organisations, in which case no form of torture or duress ( including threats against family or relatives) should be either morally or legally justified.

All of this,of course,assumes that we are operating under a (so called) democratic system of government, which is prepared to accept and abide by agreed international standards of conduct, which sadly, clearly no longer includes that discredited organisation which now comprises the United Nations.

Conservative Cabbie

GeoffH

"There could be no possible objection could there, if it works?"

Well i would argue that there is a difference between being an unscrupulous liar and being an evil murdering terrorist, but that's just me.

It is easy to pontificate on torture when you don't have any responsibilities for national security. I suspect you would be less certain of your opposition if you were tasked with protecting your country from almost certain attacks. I'm sure you would be even less confident if your freinds, colleagues, families were at risk. It is good that you are safe enough to criticise from your ivory tower, but you may want to give a thought to those who are protecting you and the difficult (and probably unimaginable for most of us) choices they have to make.

wonderfulforhisage

Do ends justify means? Not in my book - ever.

Alex of the Center

Did you see how dirty KSM was when they arrested him!? I think the CIA was just trying to get him cleaned up with alll that dunking....

GeoffH

CC. The point is the choices are NOT difficult.

Torture is a diversion used by those who 'know' the guilty and just can't be arsed to secure the evidence by legal means.

And stop that wilful sneering about it being "easy to pontificate on torture when you don't have any responsibilities for national security".

We are all supposed to be moral beings. Cloaking security forces in some kind of 'national security shining armour' simply does not absolve them of behaving within the rule of law and all international conventions.

Or do you propose we bring back the thumbscrew, rack, and all other mediaeval instruments the used so righteously by, amongst others, Thomas Cromwell and before him, Cardinal Wolsey?

Verity

Or do you propose we bring back the thumbscrew, rack, and all other mediaeval instruments the used so righteously by, amongst others, Thomas Cromwell and before him, Cardinal Wolsey?

Geoff H - What a truly illiterate, Sixth form argument.

You clearly are not widely read on Islam, but the terrorists are following instructions from Mohammad. The whole world has to be made Islamic by suasion or the the point of the sword. Story. End of.

The murderous aggression is not ours. It is theirs. They are on a holy mission and they're going to get their reward in heaven - their reward being 72 virgin retreads and rivers of wine. This aggression against the West has been going on for 1400 years and now, with Western technology, they have the ability to commit mass murder.

In all the previous essays against our civilisation, the West had its head screwed on. Nothing's changed. Just as they use Western technology and advanced techniques to try to conquer us, so we must defend ourselves with whatever means are available.