As more information dribbles out, the futility of torture is the inevitable conclusion

Washington Post has an article on the valuable information obtained from the torture of Abu Zubaydah, supposedly an al Qaeda high operative.

Anyone who is willing to consider that the purpose of interrogation is not retribution or revenge, and it is valuable information, would recognize that torture doesn't work. It can even be counterproductive. So, the conclusion of this article should not be surprising. It is, however, something that will force the Obama Administration to either come clean about it, or continue to stonewall as the previous Administration did. There is indication in this article that the Administration is not moving swiftly to clear stuff up. I can understand why, this is going to look back, proof that the US tortured and we will take a hit. And politically it will be hard to prosecute former Bush Administration officials. Maybe Spain will do it for us.

Some excerpts from the article:

In the end, though, not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu
Zubaida's tortured confessions, according to former senior government officials
who closely followed the interrogations. Nearly all of the leads attained
through the harsh measures quickly evaporated, while most of the useful
information from Abu Zubaida -- chiefly names of al-Qaeda members and associates
-- was obtained before waterboarding was introduced, they said.

These revelations could lead to all of the folks we have detained getting off...some probably should, but others, no... nevertheless

Others in the U.S. government, including CIA officials, fear the
consequences of taking a man into court who was waterboarded on largely false
assumptions, because of the prospect of interrogation methods being revealed in
detail and because of the chance of an acquittal that might set a legal
precedent. Instead, they would prefer to send him to Jordan.

Of course, there are others who disagree and I wonder if we will ever get a definitive understanding of this shadowy world..I doubt it if Congress doesn't investigate it.

It's simply wrong to suggest that Abu Zubaida wasn't intimately involved with
al-Qaeda," said a U.S. counterterrorism official, speaking on the condition of
anonymity because much about Abu Zubaida remains classified. "He was one of the
terrorist organization's key facilitators, offered new insights into how the
organization operated, provided critical information on senior al-Qaeda figures
. . . and identified hundreds of al-Qaeda members. How anyone can minimize that
information -- some of the best we had at the time on al-Qaeda -- is beyond me."

It is important to keep in mind that it is not that Zubaydah is innocent, he isn't, though he may not be quite the bad guy he was billed. He did provide significant and useful information, but not because of torture.

Abu Zubaida quickly told U.S. interrogators of Mohammed and of others he
knew to be in al-Qaeda, and he revealed the plans of the low-level operatives
who fled Afghanistan with him. Some were intent on returning to target American
forces with bombs; others wanted to strike on American soil again, according to
military documents and law enforcement sources.

Such intelligence was significant but not blockbuster material. Frustrated, the Bush administration ratcheted up the pressure -- for the first time approving the use of
increasingly harsh interrogations, including waterboarding.

It is disappointing that revelations like this don't create more anger. AIG bonuses paid to execs who had nothing to do with the AIG mess, but were brought in to clean up the mess raises all kinds of anger, but not this.

Why Now? Why admit to it now?

So President Bush, in the presence of his WWII vet father, admits to authorizing torture. No, he doesn't call it that, and with our first (and I hope last) post-modern president, if he doesn't call it that, then it isn't that.



Yet, waterboarding, the technique in question, was used by the Inquisition as a form of cross-examination. According to Ed Peters, a historian at Penn, the Enlightenment lead to a changing view of the technique and it became morally repugnant. I have no doubt that President Bush, had he been alive at that time, would have objected to enlightenment thinking. Waterboarding was used by the Japanese in WWII and its use was brought up in war crimes trials of Japanese leaders. But, we are not innocent of its use, but until now, we did not publicly and officially condone it. US forces learned it from the Spanish and used it in the phillipines at the beginning of the 20th century. Though the soldier who used it was fined, President Teddy Roosevelt excused it.



In WWII the US charged a Japanese officer with using it and he was sentenced to 15 years for waterboarding. In 1968 the Washington Post ran a picture of a US soldier waterboarding a North Vietnamese soldier. The officer was later court martialed. In short, there is a rather long history of US agents using the technique, but when brought to public attention they have been punished. For a history of waterboarding see here.



President Bush admits to sanctioning these techniques with Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. He justifies it thusly:

See, what some don't understand, evidently, is that we're at war, and it's
a different kind of war, where an enemy uses asymmetrical warfare, and they lie
in wait and find a soft spot, ready to attack again. And they're willing to kill
as many innocent people as they can to advance their agenda.

This justification is familiar (from the history linked to above):

Stephen Rickard, Washington director of the Open Society Institute, says that
throughout the centuries, the justifications for using waterboarding have been
remarkably consistent.

"Almost every time this comes along, people say, 'This is a new enemy, a
new kind of war, and it requires new techniques,'" he says. "And there are
always assurances that it is carefully regulated."

And everyone shrugs. Pres Bush said that Congressional Leaders were aware of these events. I believe him. And they all should be prosecuted, but that is not going to happen. We seem unable to live up to our own values. And our people are unwilling, in a democracy, to demand that our leaders do.


What I don't understand is why President Bush waits until know to admit all this. He denied it. Indeed, with the disclosure of Abu Ghraib and all the other "morally repugnant" practices, that he sat by and let arguments be made that these were just the few bad apples, that our top people were still moral. If he doesn't think he did anything wrong, why did he not defend or even protect those people caught, essentially doing what he authorized.?