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1) Let’s get right to it. Do you support torture?
Let me say what I do support: When it comes to high value targets in the war on terror, wannabe evil-doers who possess or might possess important information, I support any measures necessary to extract that information.
2) So you support torture! I am gobsmacked and filled with heartache.
There you go again, making erroneous conclusions without really knowing what you’re talking about. What is commonly considered torture – the rack, breaking kneecaps, bamboo under the finger-nails - is useless for extracting actionable information. Such techniques can get the victim to confess to anything under the sun but if it’s intelligence you seek, they’re not very helpful. And if you read a book like “Confessions of an Innocent Man” which details the hell a North American went through in a Saudi Arabian prison, you know these techniques spring from deeply sadistic souls, not committed professionals.
3) But I watch Jack Bauer on “24” and see him getting everything he needs by brandishing a pistol and with a judiciously placed blow. What gives?
It may have escaped you, but “24” is not a documentary, nor is it a scholarly inquiry on effective interrogation techniques.
4) So what does the actual scholarship say?
The key to gathering information is to disorient the subject. If you disorient the subject enough, he lets go of his secrets. Discomfort is actually much more useful than pain.
5) What’s the best way to get information?
Unquestionably water-boarding.
6) Gosh, I live in an intellectual broom closet and determinedly try to avoid any enlightenment on this subject. Please, please, please – don’t tell me what water-boarding is.
No dice. In water-boarding, the subject is strapped to a board with his feet above his head. A sheet of cellophane is placed over his face. Since the technique has existed and been used successfully for centuries, cellophane wasn’t always the face-covering tool of choice. It used to just be a cloth. The interrogator pours water over the cellophane. This triggers a gag reflex. The prisoner feels like he’s drowning. He feels that way because the combination of everything causes supreme disorientation. If one speaks with intelligence agents who openly used this technique like the French, Germans or Russians, they swear by it. It also works quickly. The rumor is that Khalid Sheikh Muhammad broke in under a minute.
7) But Amnesty International and the left say the information gleaned from this technique is unreliable. Is it?
Amnesty International is either confused, dishonest or both. Some people do say it’s unreliable. But the undeniable consensus is that water-boarding is an extremely productive interrogation tool.
8) That’s a very clinical way of putting it. Why don’t you go have yourself water- boarded and see how you like it.
No thanks. I’m sure I wouldn’t like it. I’m sure it’s extremely unpleasant. Does it rise to the level of “torture”? That’s for each individual to decide.
9) What do you think?
I don’t care. If some body of linguists or semanticists convened a weekend retreat in Cambridge, impartially studied the issue and labeled it torture, I still wouldn’t care. The welfare of terrorists is not my concern. Even if all the Jack Bauer-type crap you see on “24” was the best way to go, I’d still be okay with it.
10) But it’s not just terrorists. It’s suspected terrorists. Surely that bothers you.
It does. It’s inevitable that innocent people will be subjected to this kind of treatment. But this is war, and in war we make moral compromises. For example, normally we don’t like to kill people. In war, we try to kill people by the thousands. That Amnesty International guy that I was on TV with last night kept whining that we wouldn’t be having any of this if it weren’t for 9/11. Duh. If we weren’t at war, we could comfortably remain in the moral sphere that we aspire to. But right now, that’s not an option.
11) But we didn’t do stuff like this in World War II, did we?
I don’t know. But I do know we fire-bombed Dresden. I know we dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I know that in doing these things we knowingly engaged in actions that killed tens of thousands of innocents. When you’re at war, moral compromises are part of the deal.
12) But tell the truth – you and the others who support the measures we’re talking about, including the president, don’t seem particularly broken up about these so called “moral compromises.”
With you, I always tell the truth. Look, it’s a grim reality. It stinks that we have to do this. It would be nice if all those Jihadist lunatics would give up on their dreams of a global caliphate and leave us alone. I think what we have to do is clear, so I’m unbothered by the administration’s direction.
13) But wouldn’t you like to have a president who is more bothered by (or at least cognizant of) such things?
Definitely not. Bush 41 was so bothered by the ugliness of war that he enshrined the Powell Doctrine and refused to topple Saddam. People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men are ready to do violence on their behalf. I’d rather these rough men not be contemplating their navels and flagellating themselves over doing what needs to be done.
14) Now I know you’re on a little bit of a high because you debated this issue on TV last night. How’d it go?
The guy I was debating, the head of the local chapter of Amnesty International, had three points he kept raising. They were Abu Ghraib was bad, Bush is bad, and giving field-agents carte blanche to torture is bad. Since all three of these were irrelevant and just partisan talking points, I didn’t really address them.
15) How do you see the politics of this playing out?
The Democrats hate this issue. Abu Ghraib, which truly was a national disgrace, didn’t move public opinion because the public just doesn’t care about the welfare of these people. The fact that a guy like Sherrod Brown, one of the most liberal members of the House who’s running to become one of the most liberal members of the Senate, supported the bill tells you that the smart Democrats don’t like this issue one bit.
16) Smart Democrats? Heh.
Heh indeed.
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