FUNCTIONAL COERCION

"more than a dozen plots - a dozen al`Qaeda plots to kill people were stopped because if the information they got from coercive interrogation."

Hot Air has a video from the O'Reilly factor in which ABC chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross relates what his CIA contacts told him about coercive interrogation. In a surprise to no one, he notes that it works. Here's a partial transcript:

O'Reilly: Now you say that the CIA broke 14 top Al`Qaeda leaders. 14, is that correct?

Ross: Yeah, 14 high-value leaders they have kept in secret prisons and they have used these "coercive techniques." They had a whole...

O'Reilly: On all 14?

Ross: All 14.

O'Reilly: OK this is Khalid Shiekh Mohammed... all these guys. Now all 14 were coerced, and the worst thing that they did to them according to your report was waterboarding.

Ross: Right, that is the most, the harshest of treatment...

O'Reilly: Now the waterboarding broke all of these guys?

Ross: Not in every case, some of them before even they got to that point...

O'Reilly: And most of them gave it up within seconds of being waterboarded, correct?

Ross: 20, 30 seconds, which is the most people can take of that technique, its that

O'Reilly: So in all 14 cases, coercive interrogation methods - which are being debated in the Senate right now - and you said all 14 cases, according to your report, they gave it up. Now, the opposition, you just heard it, Human Rights Watch, the ACLU, they say it's garbage, they told them what they wanted to hear, it wasn't true. Is that true?

Ross: That has happened in some cases, where material they've given has not been accurate, has been essentially to stop the torture, in the case of Kalid Shiekh Mohammed the information was very valuable; particularly the names and addresses of people involved in al`Qaeda in this country and in Europe, and in one particular plot which would involve an airline attack on the tallest building in Los Angeles known as the Library Tower.

O'Reilly: Well, in fact you say that more than a dozen plots - a dozen al`Qaeda plots to kill people were stopped because if the information they got from coercive interrogation.

This is a significant revelation from a major media source: the CIA's secret prisons and coercive techniques that some refer to as torture... work. They get the job done, they save lives, they get us information to fight and stop terrorism.

As Wretchard at the Belmont Club puts it:

One of the most pernicious fallacies peddled in the debate over coercive interrogation -- or torture -- as you would have it, is that duress is absolutely useless is providing any kind of intelligence. According to this point of view, coercive interrogation is just pointless cruelty. And those who advocate it are simply looking for excuses to engage in fruitless sadism.

But the real moral dilemma arises from the fact that coercion can produce intelligence information. If it were useless, as some commentators claim, there would be no dilemma. It is precisely because innocent lives can occasionally be saved by recourse to coercion that this problem is the devil's own. Therefore the correct approach must be to acknowledge the fact that we will have to pay in blood and treasure for not using certain techniques.

He goes on to make the point that people have to admit that the system works, but that they seek to be morally superior to the ones who would use such a thing. He points out the argument must include something like this:

"Even if their life and limb depend on finding an IED planted along a route and the bombmaker were in their custody, they would hazard the journey rathar than ask him roughly, because that is the American Way."

Wretchard concludes with this point, indicating the level of squeamishness and the attitude that must be taken to oppose our efforts to fight terrorism:

Nothing argued above is advocacy for torture or even coercive interrogation. It simply lays out the problem facing anyone who must pay a very high price for something needed equally badly. Do we need information about our enemies? Then unfortunately we must resort to skullduggery, some degree of coercive behavior, wiretapping, espionage and deceit -- none of them gentlemanly activities -- to obtain this information. Do we find the price too high? Then very well, we will refuse to pay and take our chances. Or take such chances as we feel we can risk. But never, never should we deceive ourselves into thinking we can fight the enemy without war or question him as we would a guest at a dinner party.

Commenters at Belmont Club had this to add to his thoughts:

According to the Arizona Senator, if we try terrorists we have to give them access to all evidence against them even if it is top secret. It isn’t good enough to share secret evidence with dedicated military defense lawyers who have the appropriate security clearance. We have to share it with the defendants themselves. Senator McCain’s sense of propriety demands no less.

Never mind that we have learned from experience that detainees can communicate with their fellow terrorists around the world under cover of attorney/client privilege by using treasonous or gullible private attorneys. This means that any secret information shared with a detainee is compromised.

But what is national security when weighed in the balance against John McCain’s moral vanity?

The same calculus mandates that we expose CIA interrogators to liability for using any interrogation technique the “international community” might deem degrading.

It isn’t good enough for interrogators to stop short of torture and McCain doesn’t want to decide what is good enough.

He doesn’t want Congress to define by statute what Americans understand to be the limits of acceptable interrogation.

Those limits have to be as vague as possible so anti-Americans at home and abroad have every opportunity to claim we have violated them

he stated justification for McCain’s exaggerated concern with terrorist rights is incandescently idiotic and impossible to take seriously. McCain and his merry band tell anyone who will listen that we have to adhere strictly to the most expansive interpretations of the Geneva Conventions because if we fail to do so our soldiers will be abused when they fall captive.

This defies rational response. McCain might as well be arguing that if we follow the course he proposes the Easter Bunny will bring us lots of treats.
-by doug


The arguments against coercive interrogation are so absurd that some of their famous promoters are either treasonably dishonest or dumb as rocks. I keep running into:

"...the danger that our enemies will not treat our troops well."

John McCain should know better, but Mr. Arizona Narcissist (who graduated near the bottom of his Anapolis class) has never been too bright. The only opponent of consequence we have fought who sort-of paid attention to the Geneva Conventions was Nazi Germany - and they didn't do a good job of it. The argument is amazingly specious, and it shows Colin Powell is a dishonest SOB, John McCain is an idiot, the MSM are on the other side (well, we knew that anyway)...

"...it will bring us down to their moral level."

So a little waterboarding or other ccercive techniques (which we use in training on our own troops, myself included) brings us down to the moral level of 7th century savages who behead reporters, intentionally kill thousands of civilians, and in general behave as the spawn of the devil?

"...it doesn't work."

Anyone who has been to SERE school in the last 40 years knows better. Anyone who has paid attention to the patterns of our successes against Al Qaeda knows better.

"...we will lose support in the world."

Support? What support? If our friends only support us when we hobble ourselves at great cost in American lives, then I suggest they deal with Islamofascism and Jihadism all on their own. Screw 'em.

"...it starts us down a slippery slope."

Every moral choice involves drawing a line on a slippery slope - only the moral coward insists on staying comfortably back from the edge.

"...sadists torture people. Dictators torture people. We will be just like them."

Errr... oh really? That passes for logical thought in elite eastern schools these days? (not to mention that we aren't talking about torture).

"...it constitutes cruel and unusual punishment."

You say, what? We don't interrogate as punishment. Come back when you learn what the issues are.

"...it ignores international law."

Well, a European judge held that Common Article Three requires each prisoner have a private toilet (among other things). Is THAT a law we want to be party to? Europe may be suicidal, but only half of America is. We certainly don't want our American interrogators under threat of having such logic turned on them (as McCain and Powell find so important).
-by John (Useful Fools)


Good post, Wretchard, but you need not go over-wobbly on the point. I would be neither a dentist nor an executioner, but thru private and public funding I gladly support these folk to do my dirty work.

King David couldn't build the temple because he had to do dirty work (shedding of blood). But yet he was a man after God's own heart.

CH Spurgeon said that he didn't worry about being consistent with himself, only about being consistent with God's Word.
-by Zionist Bootlicker


"not to mention that we aren't talking about torture"

- john

Though there's no longer any use pointing this out to those who insist that coercive interrogation, as well as some non-coercive approaches, are synonymous with torture.

The fact remains that the threat of coercion is in most cases more effective in weakening or breaking resistance than its employment. But the threat is not credible when sources are aware, as often they are, that coercion is strictly limited or completely out of bounds in questioning.

We have so telegraphed our good-guy intentions in this regard that a potent psychological tool has been diminished and, in many circumstances, forfeited altogether.
-by trish


How does an interrogator know he has the right person to be 'coercing'? What is the result of torturing a person who doesn't know what you think they know? Do you quit after some point? Or does the person die without divulging what he doesn't know? Who gets prosecuted for torturing the wrong person? The torturer? The agent who captured the guy and told everybody that he knew what he didn't?

[/devils_advocate]
-by Ferdnan_Braudel

We should never ask any American agent to do what we would not do ourselves.

wretchard:

Isn't that why we pay taxes, so as to pay gov't agents to go to nasty places and deal harshly with mean people, so that we don't have to do it ourselves?

The sheeple who have some semblance of understanding of what the operators are up against don't have any qualms about interrogation techniques. That so many do is evidence of the huge disconnect in perceptions of reality between the flock and the sheepdogs.
-by Cannoneer No. 4


John,

It is immoral to torture a person. That's it fullstop.

Even if you reject the notion that it is immoral to torture someone because the are 'guilty' (i.e. they are in fact a terrorist) you end up torturing innocent people because there is no due process to determine their innocence or guilt.

Are you ok with torturing American citizens? How do you feel about torturing an individual who has committed no crime but might have knowledge of the comings and goings of a person of interest? As a poster in another thread asked 'does the information desired trump the innocence of the person to be tortured'?
-by Ash


Fernand_Braudel (and ash): The existence of these thorny questions (and others like them) is not the problem. The failure to have ready answers for these questions is the problem.

Cannoneer: you seem to be talking past Wrechard's point. It's wrong to set up an interrogation policy that makes us feel good, while expecting those charged with carying it out to deliver results that can only come from violating the policy.

Fabio: We don't need to give our playbook to the bad guys. But we DO need to have a playbook.

ash said "It is immoral to torture a person. That's it fullstop."

To which I respond, I am glad that you live in a world of black and white. Where some things are absolutely wrong, and others are absolutely right (though I am not certain we agree on which is which).

However you seem to be having some issues with your visual acuity. This issue is not composed of a solid mass of either black or of white. There is a more intricate pattern here to be discerned. Uncross your eyes and perhaps you will see it.
-by El_Heffe



Torture is against the law. As ash would say, "That's it fullstop." It is against the law for ALL intelligence officers and other US personnel. This was the case before 9/11. It is the case now. It shall in all likelihood remain so in the future.

So in a way, the questions as phrased are moot.

Coercive questioning can and frequently does have its own problems but coercive questioning, as permitted under the US Code, is not torture.
-by trish

"It is immoral to torture a person. That's it fullstop."

If you are part of a group that kidnaps my wife or child, I will have no moral inhibition about causing you severe, crippling pain to find out where they are. If you do the same thing to my relatives' or friends' and their kids, the same holds.

Once someone crosses that line and begins to violently violate people's rights, the rules change.

Thats it, fullstop.

There are people out there that have no conscience and zero empathy that live to take and kill. The only way to reach them is through pain or deadly force and sometimes not even then.

Its very dangerous to apply humane standards to those who are not humane. In fact, its immoral.
-by Red River


What I was leading to in my previous comment is the same thing I said about this issue many months ago:

(1) Certain war crimes exist (like nuclear terrorism) which merit the use of torture on suspects to prevent.

(2) Torture of the innocent is immoral.

(3) Intelligence gathering is imperfect and what may appear to be a terrorist suspect from (1) may in fact be a innocent from (2).

(4) The synthesis of (1), (2), and (3) above requires that an interrogation system exist wherein an interrogator who believes that a war crime is about to be committed and believes that torturing a suspect is the only way to prevent it in time may perform (1) if and only if he is willing to stand in the dock for the crime of committing (2) if it turns out in court that he tortured an innocent person, or a person who never had the information that could prevent the war crime.

With such a law, interrogators would have to document their actions in (1) and would have to weigh the personal risks of (2) even as they did their duty to the country. A jury would have to weigh their personal safety in avoiding (1) even as they did their moral duty to convict and punish when (2) was committed.

This kind of law would put torture issues under a case-by-case basis and under the review of the people as represented by the jury.

-- This is how I resolved the moral dilemma months ago, and I remain convinced of it's morality and security benefits to this day.
-by Ferdnan_Braudel

One of the problems that some have in thinking this through is a sense of moral equivalence. They say "what if someone tortured you for information!" as if what I have to say is going to be the same as finding out information to prevent another massacre of civilians like the Breslan school or the World Trade Center.

The reason you do things matters as well as what you do - if you hit someone because you think it's funny to watch them bleed and cry, you're horrible and that act is immoral. If you hit them to stop them from stabbing an infant with a gaff, then you've done something moral and proper. That's something critical to remember in this discussion.

Over at Hot Air there were a few comments as well, including these:

Allah,

I have to take issue with your title in which you call the CIA’s interrogation techniques “torture techniques.” I don’t know if you saw the second season of “24″ but the very first scene of the first episode included a man who was tortured for information. He was strapped to a table, I think, and his feet were in bags of what I assumed was acid and various parts of his body where terribly beaten and bloodied. I think even some of his teeth were pulled out.

That is torture. Having water poured over your face to mimick the sensation of drowning may be scary as hell, but it’s not torture.
-by kimpriestap


For those that ask the question, “what’s the difference between us and them if we torture?” I ask what result is expected. We torture to gather information that will save the lives of civilians inside and outside of the US. It will also save the lives of our military. They torture just to make the person feel pain before they murder them.

I view it as a unfortunately necessary device in this war to gather information. As a christian, I hate the idea of it but when I weigh the pain of one person against the lives of thousands, it’s pretty obvious what we need to do.
-by Benaiah


All you guys worrying about us ‘becoming like them’; let me ask you a question. How do you feel about the firebombing at Dresden? What about the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Dresden was a purely civilian target and we burned it down. Why? To break the will of the enemy. Does it make us worse than the Nazis? They never bombed one of our cities. The japanese only killed around 3-4000 in their bombing attack.

Yet we nuked 2 cities. Why? To save lives. But did that make us worse than them? Some say yes. Many say no. Many more don’t bother to think abou it. Well during the course of the ‘let’s give terrorists the bill of rights’ debate I did. We did those things because it was war and we were trying to win. We weren’t worrying about give and take and becoming worse than them. We already knew we were better than they were. We were trying to win the war and stop the fighting. They started it.

Many you guys have slipped into moral equivalency and don’t even realize it. We’re not just picking up arabs at random and throwing them in the pokey and shoving red hot pokers up their collective a$$es. We are in a war. We are trying to get information on a very adaptive, clever enemy who knows how to play our societal weaknesses like a bloody violin.

I don’t advocate needless cruelty, although I think most of these guys deserve to be put in stocks and let all the 9/11 and military familys come by and beat 10 kinds of sh*t out of them; I think we need to let the professionals decide what works and what doesn’t. We all sit here ‘well, waterboarding is on the line for me’. What the hell do you know about the effectiveness of waterboarding that you haven’t been told? What do I know? Let the professionals decide what is necessary. Give them limits (the ones I’ve seen interviewed know how far they can go), but let them tell us what is effective.

Putting all this touching feely horsecrap ‘we’re no better than them’ around it is a waste of time. We are better than them. We are a peaceful generous society that got groin kicked by a bunch of 3rd world radicals with nothing better to do than inflict their pathetic world view on us. Pressing them for information to defeat their attacks does not make us worse or even remotely like them. They attacked us. They wouldn’t be sitting in our prisons if they hadn’t forced us to war. We need to stop screwing around and get to winning it.
-by austinnelly


I long to relive the days when the press and an entire political party did not actively work to undermine the effectivess of intelligence collection. That’s one part of the Clinton years I can deal with.

It still baffles me that this question is being publicly debated. The average U.S. citizen does not need to think about this shit. For many years things happened in the background that those-in-the-know just turned a blind eye to. Why? Because it worked. Because 90% of those receiving this treatment were certified scum-bags. Yes, I agree that it’s a terrible shame for the other 10%. But guess what, the 90% likely saved more lives than the worth of the 10%. It’s moral math. It’s sh*tty, but true.

On the subject of waterboarding, why should we ban a technique that we use on our own service? That’s simply retarded. If someone can’t distiquish the difference between drowning and simulated drowing, they need to be sterilized for the good of the nation.
-by natesnake

What we need is a set of legislation that gives the government and the military the clear tools to use to get what we need to fight terrorism without crossing the line into something evil. Making someone really uncomfortable for 20-30 seconds does not, in my book, cross that line.

Remember: the test for torture cannot be "what I'd rather not experience." That covers imprisonment, fines, and a run up mount Currahee with full pack and weapon. Torture has to at least be worse than what we expect soldiers to go through in the process of training and ordinary days in the field of combat.

*UPDATE: Via Baseball Crank, this keen insight from Megan McArdle:

[I]f you think that the things the Bush administration is doing could, in the future, help less benign governments to seize horrifying power -- well, I'll agree with you, but only if you also acknowlege that the same could be said for every president since Hoover, and that in fact FDR takes the gold prize for Doing Things That Could Be Used to Install a Dictator. Indeed, FDR is probably the closest thing this country ever came to having a dictator, and we can thank a lot of fast tap-dancing by the Supreme Court and the Senate for not getting us closer still. If FDR doesn't terrify you, then you will have a very stiff uphill battle explaining to me why Bush does.

Torture, War on Terror