First, it shows the degree to which these interrogation techniques were carefully governed by legal guidance. The real torturers of the world don't worry about such things.
Second, it shows how constrained such techniques were, such as waterboarding being limited to 20 or 40 second intervals, or playing on a terrorist's fear of insects by telling him they put an insect in the confined space he was being held but in fact it was a harmless caterpillar. So now terrorists know, even if they are subject to such techniques in the future, that they are often a ruse to play on perceived, rather than real, fears.
And we are learning, now that Bush administration officials feel they can speak about the interrogations, that they were very helpful. For example, as late as 2006, half of the actionable intelligence we had on al Quaeda came from these interrogation techniques.
How many lives were saved, at the expense of hurting and scaring some murderous terrorists?
If your child was held by a terrorist, and the government captured his accomplice who might know information about your child's location, would you want these techniques applied to the terrorist to help rescue him?
If your answer is "no", I doubt you'd think that if you were actually confronted with such an awful situation.
No comments:
Post a Comment