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| In defense of waterboarding |
| 2007-12-24 |
| Mark Bowden, Philadelphia Inquirer No one should be prosecuted for waterboarding Abu Zubaydah. . . . When captured in Pakistan in 2002, Zubaydah was one of the world's most notorious terrorists. The 31-year-old Saudi had compiled in his young life 37 different aliases and was under a sentence of death in Jordan for a failed plot to blow up two hotels jammed with American and Israeli tourists. The evidence was not hearsay: Zubaydah was overheard on the phone planning the attacks, which were then thwarted. He was a key planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, was thought to be field commander of the attack that killed 17 U.S. sailors on the USS Cole, and was involved in planning a score of other terror attacks, successful and unsuccessful. He was considered to be a primary recruiter and manager of al-Qaeda training camps. He was, in short, a highly successful, fully engaged, career mass murderer. Think back to those pictures of workers crouched in windows high up in the burning World Trade Center towers, choosing whether to jump to their death or be burned alive. This was in part Abu Zubaydah's handiwork. At the time of his capture in 2002, just six months after the Sept. 11 attacks, there was strong reason to believe Zubaydah knew virtually the entire organizational structure and agenda of al-Qaeda around the world. He was supervising ongoing plots to kill hundreds if not thousands of people. He was, for obvious reasons, disinclined to share this knowledge. Subjected briefly to waterboarding - less than a minute, according to published reports - he became cooperative and provided information that, according to the government, resulted in preventing planned attacks and capturing other key al-Qaeda leaders. In the six years that have passed since the Manhattan towers collapsed, we have gained (partly through the interrogation of men like Zubaydah) a much clearer understanding of al-Qaeda and the threat it poses. While the chance of further murderous attacks is always with us, it is fair to say few of us feel the same measure of alarm we did then. The diminishment of this threat is at least in part due to the heroic efforts of the CIA, the military, and allies around the world in targeting terrorist cells. In the process, the menace of Zubaydah himself has deflated. Today, he is just another little man in a orange jumpsuit at Guantánamo. Our national concern has shifted from stopping him to figuring out what to do with him. And to second-guessing what was done to him. . . . Go read the rest of it. |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #3 Here are my thoughts, for what they're worth: We don't want waterboarding, but sadly we do need it. Drawing and quartering is torture. Disembowling is torture. Acid drips are torture. Drilling is torture. Tying someone down and breaking one bone after another is torture. Flaying someone alive is torture. Hanging a guy by his ankles over a lit barbeque is torture. Rap is torture. Waterboarding is astonishingly effective kids stuff. I'll bet five minutes after his 24 second waterboarding session that murderous Zubaydah could have stood up just fine and continued his terrorist "activites" without missing a beat or a good night's sleep. And all without a mark on him. I've been in worse vehicle accidents and nobody cried for me. Not even me! Screw it. If these guys want to play by rules that make waterboarding a need, then that's the game they choose to play (it's probably part of the reason they seem to get off playing by the rules they do - so let's make it official and accomodate them!). Heck, I can't even back out of a gambling debt and these guys want to back out of getting killed or waterboarded as a result of their terrorism? Not a chance in hell! If they don't want to risk being 1% as uncomfortable as that guy they beheaded or barbequed or raped in front of his family, then they can put on uniforms and follow the genevea conventions and fight like men. I don't like torture either, but I wouldn't put waterboarding even close to torture. I don't know what all the fuss is about. It's like people who benefit from animal testing crying about animal testing. The world should be divided into two camps. Those who are OK with waterboarding and those who don't. If they are OK with waterboarding, then they get the benefit of the information gleaned from its application. If they are not OK with waterboarding, then they can just suffer the results of not having that info. The hard thing is it won't be long before those who don't go along with waterboarding are living in a pretty messed up world compared to those who go along with it. I think the problem is that people can't separate the need for it from the desire for it. Nobody in their right mind would desire to live in a world that necessitated waterboarding some folks. Problem is, we need it. Making waterboarding go away won't make the bad stuff in the world go away with it. It just emboldens the bad elements and makes them worse. If I choose to throw in a little waterboarding all of a sudden deserving folks start living better and longer, and some I see muslims out doing things to prove to the next muslim that they are muslim enough. From simple stuff like banging their head on the floor a bit harder, to beating themselves harder with the sword or flail, to screaming about every little insult to allah, to beheading or killing the infidel in a way that is more cruel than the next guy could think of. I have no intention of throwing away waterboarding so I can prove to the next westerner that I am "good enough" by whatever murky standard I feel they use to measure whether or not I deserve to be among them. I am confident that I do. |
| Posted by: gorb 2007-12-24 17:07 |
| #2 Excellent editorial from a fellow who has thought long and hard about torture and its moral implications. He wrote a superb, long piece in the Atlantic Monthly a few years back which expands on the point that he makes in this piece in the Inquirer. An excellent example of how torture yields information that can be used in an operational way is (and I skirt Godwin's Law here) that of the French Resistance and the Gestapo. The latter frequently tortured Resistance operatives, and from the information gained would roll up resistance networks and foiled operations. Ghastly business, then and now, but the Gestapo did this because -- it worked. I don't like waterboarding. I think it's torture. I don't think we should ever use information gained from torture in any legal proceeding whatsoever. But if waterboarding Zubaydah saved some innocent lives, then I'll turn my head the other way, cough quietly, and thank the good Lord that someone is tougher than me. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2007-12-24 14:16 |
| #1 You do what has to be done. Has always been thus. But you CAN'T GET CAUGHT. How is it that nothing can be kept secret anymore? |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2007-12-24 10:58 |