Going back a couple justifications
Has anyone else noticed that in all the attempts to justify torture, we still haven't heard of a single credible attack that was prevented?
For so long, torture defenders cited "the ticking bomb," and yet all public evidence seems to indicate that all the "interrogation efforts" yielded were, at most, more names., however their relative value is debatable.
Even Cheney's comments don't seem to cite actual plots averted.
For so long, torture defenders cited "the ticking bomb," and yet all public evidence seems to indicate that all the "interrogation efforts" yielded were, at most, more names., however their relative value is debatable.
Even Cheney's comments don't seem to cite actual plots averted.
posted by mikevotes at
7:24 AM
5 Comments:
I see three possibilities: 1) Al Qaeda isn't the enemy they claimed/the threat wasn't as imminent. 2) Any such attack threats are still classified. (I find that hard to believe as much as the Bushies tried to scare.) 3) The Bush efforts to grab Al Qaeda never really caught the right people.
By
mikevotes, at 7:36 AM
In line with your #1, I wonder if there simply wasn't information to be had... no big looming plots. Just names of more haters and such.
I reject #2 out of hand because Cheney/Bush have demonstrated their full willingness to "leak" classified information to advance their political ends. Indeed Cheney developed a whole "legal" theory around the privileges of the VP to classify/declassify any information based upon his royal whim.
The whole Cheney/Bush torture quest was motivated by visceral emotion: fear, hatred, jingoism, insecurity. It was first about payback ("we'll teach these MFers a lesson!") and then about actually getting information.
My response to the "ticking time-bomb" is, how do you know there's a ticking time-bomb in the first place?
Lastly, we should not get sucked into a discussion about whether torture "works" or not. It doesn't, but it's moot. The argument is, even if you presume it works, it is demonstrably not the ONLY interrogation method that works, so why go there?
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-epm, at 8:03 AM
I don't know on the cause. I'm prone to believe 1 and 3. Nothing real in the works and they never really penetrated Al Qaeda enough.
As for motivations, see the post above. As for ticking time bomb, see the post below.
We'll never know all of this, but there's something that smells even funkier about the motivations as we get more detail.
By
mikevotes, at 8:15 AM
4) Al Qaeda is an idea.
By
Anonymous, at 9:11 AM
There's a fair argument for that, but for purposes of discussion, I tend to use Al Qaeda to refer to that directly connected group that considers themselves Al Qaeda.
By
mikevotes, at 10:17 AM
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