Bin Laden’s Death Reanimates Torture Apologists

[KoKo]

Bin Laden’s Death Reanimates Torture Apologists
By: David Dayen Monday May 2, 2011 2:30 pm


(photo: Shrieking Tree)

As soon as we started talking about torture on the level of efficacy, i.e. whether torture “worked,” it was inevitable that we’d have a day like this. The AP reports that intelligence from secret CIA prisons first uncovered the name of the courier which eventually led to the bin Laden compound. The information came from either, or both, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Faraj al-Libi, according to current and former officials.

Current and former U.S. officials say that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, provided the nom de guerre of one of bin Laden’s most trusted aides. The CIA got similar information from Mohammed’s successor, Abu Faraj al-Libi. Both were subjected to harsh interrogation tactics inside CIA prisons in Poland and Romania.

The news is sure to reignite debate over whether the now-closed interrogation and detention program was successful. Former president George W. Bush authorized the CIA to use the harshest interrogation tactics in U.S. history. President Barack Obama closed the prison system.

So this debate will be opened once again. Tyler Cowen kicks it off, saying “The moral and the practical do not always coincide, and perhaps we should be celebrating just a bit less.”

There’s an assumption made here that there exists a store of information that can only be gained through torture and not other means. There’s another assumption that all information gained through torture is correct. There’s a third assumption that this particular speck of information about the courier, which was refined and added to through detective work over time, was definitively gained through an act of torture. None of these assumptions have been proven.

But I agree with Kevin Drum that they’re not particularly relevant. The efficacy of torture is a kind of parlor game that you can play, but torture is not illegal because it does or does not work. It’s illegal because it’s a crime against humanity. It has been used over time by the worst regimes the world has ever known to debase and humiliate and destroy enemies. Civilized nations the world over have rejected it as a tactic. And they didn’t take a poll about whether or not it works when they rejected it. They rejected it because they have souls.

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[underpants]

1. Yep all over Fox, talk radio, the other MSM and into talking points reading for the water cooler

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1017746