Memo To Handwringing Short-Twisters
The lefties have their shorts in a twist about the CIA “torture” memos. The latest is the revelation, contrary to an earlier report, that the terrorists to whom this was applied didn’t cave within seconds and start spilling the information that prevented “dozens of attacks,” but were treated to repeat applications over a period of a month, 183 applications of water in the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, 83 in the case of Abu Zubayadah. The only other person to be waterboarded by the CIA, Cole plotter al-Nashiri, apparently spilled a lot quicker.
NYT: AQ = tougher mofos than we thought! OK, that’s not exactly how they said it:
The release of the numbers is likely to become part of the debate about the morality and efficacy of interrogation methods that the Bush administration Justice Department declared legal even though the United States had historically treated them as torture.
Yeah, well, quite apart from the fun parts about three top AQ guys getting dunked repeatedly, the memo in question makes interesting reading: notes extensive limitations on the use of waterboarding and other measures, and includes a lot of legal opining on precedents.
Lefty outrage cherry-picking fails to note the CIA’s assertion that this was done solely for the purposes of extracting actionable intelligence from high-value subjects, not for purposes of punishment or extracting confessions, and that a great deal of actionable intelligence reportedly was obtained. Also fails to note that, in accordance with CIA guidelines, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who apparently was subjected to the most extensive dousing, demonstrably suffered no lasting physical or pyschological harm, nor was much cowed by it, given that in recent appearances before a military tribunal, he not only remained a proud and defiant terrorist, but was actively trying to manipulate the behavior of other members of his cell in Guantanamo.
At this point it is all academic, as the practice is no longer in use, and the current administration has declined to attempt a prosecution, perhaps having recognized that it is more productive to focus on combating al-Qaeda and its offshoots than engaging in Ed Norton “Fight Club”-style beatdowns on ourselves, particularly when you consider the potential of political collateral damage.* Here’s an interesting one from NYT, mulling why no one gets worked up about Predator hits that actually kill innocent bystanders, as opposed to dunkings that six years ago caused some brief discomfort to three people. It’s a heat of battle vs. helpless captive thing, NYT informs. That and, I’d suggest, the fact of who is giving the orders when those triggers are pulled nowadays. They could never get enough of denouncing collateral damage in the old days. In other deep, abiding mysteries to occupy a few idle Sunday morning hours, we could also gaze deep into our navels and ponder the lack of lefty concern about any number of gross human rights violations by extreme Islamists.
* Needless to say, there is no mention in any of this of who besides the Bush admin was onboard with the enhanced interrogations. The Obama admin may well recognize, beyond the damage that would be done to US intelligence-gathering by prosecuting agents on highly debatable points of law when they acted in accordance with DOJ legal opinions, that it would shine a light on the broad support such measures enjoyed within the political leadership at the time, and that today, while pleasing the extreme anti-war left, could otherwise have negative political repercussions. Here’s Mark Bowden and my own earlier thoughts on the subject.
Topics: Intel, Obama, al qaeda
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 8:56 am on Sunday, April 19, 2009
6 Responses to “Memo To Handwringing Short-Twisters”
Leave a Reply
Trackback URLYou must be logged in to post a comment.
April 19th, 2009 at 9:43 am
[...] Crittenden has a Memo To Handwringing Short-Twisters ……Here’s an interesting one from NYT, mulling why no one gets worked up about [...]
April 19th, 2009 at 9:43 am
[...] Crittenden has a Memo To Handwringing Short-Twisters ……Here’s an interesting one from NYT, mulling why no one gets worked up about [...]
April 19th, 2009 at 11:13 am
The fact that repeated waterboarding proved necessary certainly suggests that the effects are not durable, doesn’t it? Nor, it seems, would it qualify as a credible threat of imminent death or permanent disability. In short (contra shorts!), the repetitions actually speak more to the position that waterboarding is not torture, than the opposite.
April 19th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
[...] opinion re-stated By datechguy There is a lot of talk both about the memo concerning interrogation and the decision not to prosecute people involved [...]
April 19th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
Do you suppose the NYTimes gets this wound up every time they have to deal with a mouse in the pantry?
“Even when the victim is a figure like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the 9/11 plotter, torture carries a vicarious chill.”
Not really, I say feed him to the pigs, and feed the bacon to his minions.
“Imagine a Hellfire missile coming through your roof. You die in a burning pile of rubble. Isn’t that torture?” Not quite, Dr. Rejali responds. “The people you’re killing with a Predator,” he said, “are not detained and helpless.”
Dr. Rejali is wrong about that. When the missile is in the room you are as detained and helpless as you can possibly be. Talk about drawing meaningless distinctions.
Like I said, feed them all to the pigs. Let God sort it out.
April 20th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
“Here’s an interesting one from NYT, mulling why no one gets worked up about Predator hits that actually kill innocent bystanders, as opposed to dunkings that six years ago caused some brief discomfort to three people…”
LOL. The liberals get all worked up about a few terrorists getting water thrown in their faces and don’t get all worked up about a hundred thousand Japanese civilians getting burned alive in the Tokyo firebombing because the Bush adminstration approved the interrogation methods, and Roosevelt approved the firebombings.
It’s not what they do, it’s who does it.