Posted by
Always To The Right on Tuesday, August 25, 2009 2:58:53 PM
As Allahpundit noted last night, both sides are claiming vindication after the release of CIA documents on enhanced-interrogation techniques long sought
by former Vice President Cheney. The memos don’t detail which
particular techniques were most effective, but the most “enhanced” of
them certainly gets specific recognition for its effectiveness.
Waterboarding played a role in loosening the tongues of Abu Zubaydah
and Abd al-Nashiri, but the CIA was reluctant to specifically claim it
as the sole reason for gaining more intel. With Khalid Sheikh
Mohammed, they had no such reservation (via Power Line and Weekly Standard)
The report contradicts what FBI interrogator Ali Soufan wrote in April.
At the time, Soufan wrote about Zubaydah specifically that he felt
normal interrogation methods would have worked on the terrorist, and
that EITs weren’t necessary for him or anyone else. The CIA’s
experience negates at least in part Soufan’s assertion that “[t]here
was no actionable intelligence gained from using enhanced interrogation
techniques on Abu Zubaydah that wasn’t, or couldn’t have been, gained
from regular tactics.” Part of Soufan’s argument was that Zubaydah
would eventually have given up the same information, and the EITs only
sped up the process. However, getting actionable intel on pending
attacks quickly was certainly a major motivating factor, as well as
quickly assessing al-Qaeda’s structure and financing. Waiting several
months to get that information may have made it moot.
With KSM, the CIA clearly believes that they never would have gotten
his intel in time without the specific use of the waterboard. That
vindicates what Cheney has said all along — that the waterboard and the
other EITs prevented terrorist attacks in the US and did significant
damage to AQ. In effect, Cheney and apparently the CIA called Obama’s
bluff, with the agency finally getting the other side of the argument
on EITs in the open. EITs and specifically the waterboard saved
American lives without costing the terrorists being interrogated any
lasting physical damage.
Are we to believe that the men who killed 3,000 men, women, and
children were so sensitive that those threats would leave them
psychologically scarred for life — but mass murder didn’t? Will the
DoJ now prosecute police officers who blow smoke in subjects’ faces,
either inadvertently or deliberately, during interrogations? Isn’t
this defining torture down to an absurd level? If anything, it shows
that the statutes governing torture are ridiculously vague.
And how many American lives is it worth to prevent this? 10,000?
5,000? Your family’s? Like it or not, those were the stakes in the
weeks following 9/11.