Now that Cheney has Tipped His Hand
Of course, YOU knew he was bullshitting all along that the torture techniques saved millions of lives. You knew he was waging an information war--now of course, Cheney signals that the program of which torture was merely the tiniest insignificant part, is what yielded the high value goods. The torture part was ancillary...
So all he was ever trying to do was give his handful of diehard extremist supporters some talking points to use in his public defense. You figured as much. Of course, the collateral victim in this act of political obfuscation is the discussion about how to engage jihadists and terrorists who cling to dangerous and bizarre belief systems, both foreign and domestic, in the manner that is most efficacious with respect to both learning what they know, and defusing them from further attempts to commit or conspire to commit violent acts of terorism.
Remarkably, the folks who seem to have had the greatest success with this are the Saudis, and not only do they have a consistent track record, but they have been at it for quite some time.
It's clearly complicated, both socially, politically, and psychologically. Any young loser in Saudi Arabia can become a Jihadist and get instant heroic status, and that is a part of the problem. That is also why trying to deal with the problem using the old typical authoritarian ways of dealing with hostiles and renegades, is probably the least effective way of defusing the situation. Violence and torture will reinforce the psychological framework that motivated the Jihadist in the first place, it will not only confirm all their notions about the evil natue of the infidels, but the very act of enduring this 'evil treatment' at the hands of the faithless will elevate them into that heroic martydom that they sought to begin with. No good information can come from it, and no deradicalization, either. The only thing that comes from it is further recruitment back home.
Really, the question boils down to this: Do you want the violence to stop, or do you want unending vendetta?
In the past few days we have heard that Cheney ordered torture to establish a link between al Qaeda, and now Cheney admits that there was never a connection between Iraq and al Qaeda. There seem to be some inconsistencies in his story.
June 2, 2009 2:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
I suspect that Cheney would claim that consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. However, I think both of these stated claims are true without contradicting one another. He tortured people to force them to say that there was a link between Saddam and al Quaeda, AND he knew all along there was no link.
Ruthlessness is a virtue in Cheney's world.
June 2, 2009 3:14 PM | Reply | Permalink