No torture needed to thwart 9/11 attacks.
It didn't require torture to foil the worst terrorist attack on American soil.
It didn't require water boarding, extraordinary rendition, or the rounding up of thousands of innocent people--stripping them of their rights and abusing them in detention camps for years on end.
None of that was necessary. Because the intelligence that could have helped thwart 9/11 was right there in that August 2001 presidential daily briefing titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S". It even mentioned the idea that Al Qaeda would hijack planes and fly them into buildings in major U.S. cities.
That was actionable intelligence that could have, at the very least, heightened the attention and readiness of our Defense Department. (It makes me wonder why the Bush administration and the Pentagon seemed so absolutely dumbstruck the day of the attacks.)
So if it didn't require torture to garner that kind of information, and it does seem like that was the motherload of actionable intelligence, what did it require?
A President and Vice President that took the threat seriously enough to disrupt their month-long summer vacations.
Add up all the intelligence that has been garnered through torture since 9/11 and it doesn't even come close to the intelligence, the warnings, the ultimate "heads up" that was handed to Bush and Cheney on a silver platter that fateful summer.
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So why was torture undertaken then? Here's my take. Torture does not produce reliable information because when you are tortured you will do and say anything to make the torture stop. The more you are tortured the less reliable the information will be. In other words, torture produces false information. Knowingly spreading false information is disinformation. Disinformation is propaganda. Therefore torture is always used not to get reliable information but generate propaganda used by amoral authoritarian regimes to manipulate and control the gullible. After 9/11, torture was used on mostly innocent people to fabricate the false link to Iraq to justify the war there. Millions die and undergo unimaginable suffering so a few psychopaths can experience more power over others.
May 3, 2009 10:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
That has only two serious problems:
Torture sometimes works.
No false confessions were achieved to link Iraq with AQ (at least not publicly released and used as propaganda).
GIGO.
It's also possible that Bush&Co were looking for unfabricated true links to Iraq... similarly to how they scrambled around looking for WMDs after the fact.
May 4, 2009 2:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
Looking for WMD, and leaving warehouses full of explosives to be looted, and later used for roadside and car bombs.
I think the Keystone Cops could have done better.
Do you ever get the feeling, the Bush years have ruined the American spirit? I have so much mistrust; I don’t think trust will ever come back. Someone born today will have to be reminded, but how? How do you express how totally inept our leaders were? Or how WE THE PEOPLE allowed …
May 4, 2009 7:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
It certainly is a stain. I hope the "fabric" of the American spirit is more resilient than that (than being ruined).
May 4, 2009 1:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good point
I have a shirt that has one heck of a nasty stain. I’ve tried everything to get it out.
It’s still a good shirt to wear around the house, painting and cleaning up after the dog, but; I’d be ashamed to wear it in public or on the world stage.
May 4, 2009 8:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, but take it to the "cleaner" and the stain might lift right out! :-)
May 5, 2009 1:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
Torture only works in manufacturing propaganda. It never works in securing valuable information. This is part of the reason torture is forbidden by the Geneva convention and why competent/truthful/conscionable interrogators never use torture. The Iraq/al-Qaeda link with 9/11 came from the torture of Ibn al Sheikh al Libi in Eqypt. This is the "evidence" Secretary of State Colin Powell used when he spoke before the United Nations Security Council in February 2003.
May 4, 2009 9:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
All testimony (confession is testimony not evidence) is suspect whether obtained under duress or not. If it's not corroborated or otherwise evidenced it's not to be relied on, torture or not.
I'm quite willing to accept "Powell and Bush lied to us" as a description. I just object to overstated cases which are anti-pragmatic, in an arena where pragmatism is the difference between autocracy and something like democracy.
May 4, 2009 1:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
could you simplify what you're saying? I'm not sure I understand your meaning.
May 4, 2009 7:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Gary - I don't disagree that we had information which might have prevented 9/11. But when you have KSM in your custody and there's threats of future attacks, you need to use severe interrogation methods to get out what possible information you think is available. These men were responsible for killing thousands of Americans and we thought there might be thousands more dead.
Whether or not we had intelligence to prevent 9/11 has really nothing to do with how we should have treated KSM and others like him.
May 4, 2009 8:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
We disagree on many things, MCB, and I think that's healthy. I've been wanting to ask someone with your views this question:
Why is it against the law for nations to torture?
May 4, 2009 8:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think it's against the law to torture people because those types of acts are extremely cruel and inhumane. But I don't consider what the US did to its prisoners as torture. I consider torture to be more in line with what some of our enemies do to their prisoners. Saddam Hussein's mass graves, Islamic militants beheading Nick Berg, etc. al Qaeda uses techniques like electrocution, blow torches, meat cleavers, and electric drills on their prisoners. Those are the acts I condemn. On a scale of 1 to 10, those acts are an 11 and what we've done to our prisoners is somewhere closer to the middle.
May 4, 2009 9:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
i don't believe the law offers a sliding comparative scale on the treatment of detainees.
In other words, the law doesn't allow for a "comparatively speaking, waterboarding is not as evil or inhumane as chopping someone's head off, therefore, it's okay" type of logic.
I don't find "as torture goes, these guys had it relatively easy" as a morally justifiable argument.
If waterboarding is torture when other nations do it to American prisoners, and we have prosecuted those from other nations who have done it to American prisoners, then it is torture when we do it as well.
May 4, 2009 9:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
When people did it to Americans, was it exactly the same method as what we did to our prisoners? I doubt all waterboarding is created equally.
Whether it's a sliding scale or in isolation, I think the things we did to these terrorists were completely justified. I don't believe they were severe enough to be considered torture.
May 4, 2009 10:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
The CIA had already declared war in Afghanistan, prior to the attack on our Nation 9/11.
Was torture prevalent then? Or did we allow the Turks and others to do our dirty work.
What idiot in America, failed to heighten the alert status having declared war. Then expect the enemy not to attack the base of operations of the enemy. What part of Wonderland did our leaders come from? Did they think briefing memos were such a waste of time? They wouldn’t dare attack us?
Is it possible an EGOtistical mentality was prevalent? How dare a student question her highness? How dare the public try to bring to trial those involved with torture, when all “we were doing was keeping America safe?” That’s not all you were doing! You were making enemies. After the torture do you think they’ll love us? Will there sons avenge?
May 4, 2009 8:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
They already want to kill us. They already hate us. Our interrogation methods won't make them any crazier than they already are.
May 4, 2009 9:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
"you need to use severe interrogation methods "
No (you try nice stuff first, and second, and...), and KSM was waterboarded in March 2003 if I recall correctly, as Bush&Co were making last minute plans to attack Iraq (or after the invasion).
Sept. 2001 ............ March 2003
This looks very bad from your point of view of stopping an imminent threat, and it looks bad for Cheney et al as there was no reason to believe KSM knew any details of Saddam's defenses in Iraq in 2003 which might be relevant to protecting invading "coalition" troops. This makes the interrogations highly suspect as being primarily to seek last minute justifications for the invasion, and not at all about protecting US soil or domestic persons.
Then mid-March Bush thought he had Saddam nailed, dropped a bomb and missed, and had to go all out.
May 5, 2009 3:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm saying cmatrix is overstating the case.
May 5, 2009 3:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
Apparently they tortured in hopes of getting a connection between Al Quaida and Iraq. That was before the Iraq War. Guess what? They tortured but apparently never got actionable intelligence to that effect!
May 4, 2009 8:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
By the time they got around to KSM they were already fully over-committed to military action.
May 5, 2009 5:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
You are right TheraP that they tortured in hopes of getting a connection between Al Quaida and Iraq. The Iraq/al-Qaeda link with 9/11 came from the torture of Ibn al Sheikh al Libi in Eqypt. This is the "evidence" Secretary of State Colin Powell used when he spoke before the United Nations Security Council in February 2003. This was the actionable intelligence they got which resulted in the Iraq invasion. This "intelligence" turned out to be completely false information coming from a tortured individual saying anything he could to make the torture stop. Torture is used for propaganda not truth.
May 6, 2009 1:55 PM | Reply | Permalink