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In Defense of Waterboarding

Mark Bowden makes the case. Philadelphia Inquirer:  

No one should be prosecuted for waterboarding Abu Zubaydah.

Several investigations are under way to find out who ordered the destruction of CIA interrogation videotapes, apparently an effort to cover up evidence of torture. Leaving aside for a moment the wisdom of destroying the tapes, I’d like to take a look at what was allegedly done to Zubaydah, and why.

When captured in Pakistan in 2002, Zubaydah was one of the world’s most notorious terrorists. The 31-year-old Saudi had compiled in his young life 37 different aliases and was under a sentence of death in Jordan for a failed plot to blow up two hotels jammed with American and Israeli tourists. The evidence was not hearsay: Zubaydah was overheard on the phone planning the attacks, which were then thwarted. He was a key planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, was thought to be field commander of the attack that killed 17 U.S. sailors on the USS Cole, and was involved in planning a score of other terror attacks, successful and unsuccessful. He was considered to be a primary recruiter and manager of al-Qaeda training camps.

He was, in short, a highly successful, fully engaged, career mass murderer. Think back to those pictures of workers crouched in windows high up in the burning World Trade Center towers, choosing whether to jump to their death or be burned alive. This was in part Abu Zubaydah’s handiwork.

At the time of his capture in 2002, just six months after the Sept. 11 attacks, there was strong reason to believe Zubaydah knew virtually the entire organizational structure and agenda of al-Qaeda around the world. He was supervising ongoing plots to kill hundreds if not thousands of people. He was, for obvious reasons, disinclined to share this knowledge. Subjected briefly to waterboarding - less than a minute, according to published reports - he became cooperative and provided information that, according to the government, resulted in preventing planned attacks and capturing other key al-Qaeda leaders.

In the six years that have passed since the Manhattan towers collapsed, we have gained (partly through the interrogation of men like Zubaydah) a much clearer understanding of al-Qaeda and the threat it poses. While the chance of further murderous attacks is always with us, it is fair to say few of us feel the same measure of alarm we did then. The diminishment of this threat is at least in part due to the heroic efforts of the CIA, the military, and allies around the world in targeting terrorist cells.

In the process, the menace of Zubaydah himself has deflated. Today, he is just another little man in a orange jumpsuit at Guantánamo. Our national concern has shifted from stopping him to figuring out what to do with him.

And to second-guessing what was done to him. Waterboarding is a process by which a detainee is strapped down and forced to ingest and inhale water until he experiences the terror of drowning. It is not torture in the traditional sense of inflicting pain; it inflicts fear, intense, visceral fear, without doing physical harm. It is a method calculated to straddle the definitions of coercion and torture, and as such merely proves that both methods inhabit the same slippery continuum. There is a difference between gouging out a man’s eyes and keeping him awake, and waterboarding falls somewhere in between.

You’re gonna want to read the whole thing. Bowden notes that, contrary to popular misconception, coercive methods can work, and are justifiable in our national defense. Only one fault in an otherwise excellent commentary.

It is an ugly business, and it is rightly banned. The interrogators who waterboarded Zubaydah were breaking the law. They knew they were risking their careers and freedom. But if the result of the act itself was a healthy terrorist with a bad memory vs. a terror attack that might kill hundreds or even thousands of people, it is a good outcome. The decision to punish those responsible for producing it is an executive one. Prosecutors and judges are permitted to weigh the circumstances and consider intent.

Which is why I say that waterboarding Zubaydah may have been illegal, but it wasn’t wrong.

So what about next time?

Allah the Almighty, the Merciful, etc., and Crittenden the Insignificant endorse Waterboarding here. Pelosi’s endorsement here, Waterboarding OK.

Here’s a thought. Re interrogation techniques, real-time war intel, etc., how about we keep it on a need-to-know basis under executive and congressional oversight, and leave the recriminations until the war’s over.  It may require politicians to start acting in the nation’s long-term security interest, rather than their own narrow, hypocritical political interest, but it’s worked before.

(You’ll know Bowden as author of Black Hawk Down.  Also a very nice guy. I met him at a church in Cambridge in March 2004, at a reading of Things Worth Fighting For, the late Michael Kelly’s collected work.)

Topics: GWOT, Intel

  Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:49 pm on Sunday, December 23, 2007

6 Responses to “In Defense of Waterboarding”

1. blogagog Says:
   December 24th, 2007 at 3:35 am

   The correct thing to do is outlaw waterboarding, and then do it anyway if you suspect it might save lives.

2. MikeH Says:
   December 25th, 2007 at 3:30 am

   Sure, I’m positive that you’ll go to jail in a heartbeat in order to save your fellow man. There are a whole range of things that we can make illegal so people can martyr their freedom in the cause of their fellow man. Then we will feel so good about ourselves by not admitting that we have to use them. You should be jumping at the chance to show your commitment to freedom by accepting a position as an interrogator.

   Alternatively, why not just make the processes legal and admit that the war that you’re in isn’t as tidy as you wish it would be. While you’re at it you might also admit that the political agenda that argues against the interrogation procedures would allow the wahabbi infection that has been festering for decades and the Shia infection to continue to fester unchecked. It’s not as if they were widespread, they’re only in Indonesia, Pakistan, Thailand, India, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, The West Bank, Egypt, Algeria, The Philippines, Europe, Canada, Sudan, Somalia, and a couple of other places. That’s not a whole lot. You could argue them away by just ignoring them. That’s a trick that the media uses effectively.

3. Purple Avenger Says:
   December 25th, 2007 at 4:48 pm

   …or just be honest and admit that its not as bad as portrayed because we do it to our own people all the time in training.

4. TheFrog Says:
   December 25th, 2007 at 6:13 pm

   Or so you say.
   Every piece of evidence you cite is protected and redacted by an administration that has provably lied to us. You want me to believe that because you say so that virtually anyone may be subjected to torture as long as you really, really think it is true. And anyone doubting your account is simply a treasonous moron.
   Without oversight, you have NO argument whatsoever. You are just one of the many elite imperialist that threaten our culture - the very fear that drove our founding fathers to demand checks and balances in our constitution.
   So I say to you - Just SHUTUP. You’ve done enough damage to our freedoms and heritage, you treasonous moron.

5. rxfxworld.blogspot.com Says:
   December 25th, 2007 at 6:51 pm

   Apologists for torture like Mr. Bowden like to think
   they can get away with the following (from his screed): “While the
   chance of further murderous attacks is always with us, it is fair to
   say few of us feel the same measure of alarm we did then. The
   diminishment of this threat is at least in part due to the heroic
   efforts of the CIA, the military, and
   allies around the world in targeting terrorist cells.”

   I may be one of the few(I doubt it’s a few) who feel an even greater measure of concern and fear. Not only do I feel less secure regarding future terrorist attacks because of the plain intentions of people like Zabaydah, nor only on account of the work of the Bush administration which has periodically exhorted us to be very afraid but on account of the pro-torturers like Mr. Bowden whose macho arrogance has served our enemies well while at the same time as he encourages us to emulate them, undermining the very fabric of our decency and democratic ideals, the very reasons for us to be willing to protect our country.

   Let us remember that the first “terroiristes” were a governing group bent on destroying dissent. These were the French Jacobins who in the name of patriotism during the French Revolution wrote the final chapter to the Rights of Man with erection of the Guillotine!

6. Jules Crittenden » Water Over Dam Says:
   February 6th, 2008 at 9:06 pm

   [...] In Defense of Waterboarding. It gets Mark Bowden’s vote, and mine. [...]

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