A wonderful article written by Alan Dershowitz, one of the more clear headed Democrats on National Security, in the Opinion Journal today about the use of interrogation techniques that may make people cringe…but may be needed someday:
Most Americans–Democrats, Republicans, independents or undecided–want a president who will be strong, as well as smart, on national security, and who will do everything in his or her lawful power to prevent further acts of terrorism.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans may watch Michael Moore’s movies or cheer Cindy Sheehan’s demonstrations, but tens of millions want the Moores and Sheehans of our nation as far away as possible from influencing national security policy. That is why Rudy Giuliani seems to be doing surprisingly well among many segments of the electorate, ranging from centrist Democrats to Republicans and even some on the religious right.
~~~Consider, for example, the contentious and emotionally laden issue of the use of torture in securing preventive intelligence information about imminent acts of terrorism–the so-called “ticking bomb” scenario. I am not now talking about the routine use of torture in interrogation of suspects or the humiliating misuse of sexual taunting that infamously occurred at Abu Ghraib. I am talking about that rare situation described by former President Clinton in an interview with National Public Radio:
“You picked up someone you know is the No. 2 aide to Osama bin Laden. And you know they have an operation planned for the United States or some European capital in the next three days. And you know this guy knows it. Right, that’s the clearest example. And you think you can only get it out of this guy by shooting him full of some drugs or waterboarding him or otherwise working him over.”
He said Congress should draw a narrow statute “which would permit the president to make a finding in a case like I just outlined, and then that finding could be submitted even if after the fact to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.” The president would have to “take personal responsibility” for authorizing torture in such an extreme situation. Sen. John McCain has also said that as president he would take responsibility for authorizing torture in that “one in a million” situation.
Although I am personally opposed to the use of torture, I have no doubt that any president–indeed any leader of a democratic nation–would in fact authorize some forms of torture against a captured terrorist if he believed that this was the only way of securing information necessary to prevent an imminent mass casualty attack. The only dispute is whether he would do so openly with accountability or secretly with deniability. The former seems more consistent with democratic theory, the latter with typical political hypocrisy.
There are some who claim that torture is a nonissue because it never works–it only produces false information. This is simply not true, as evidenced by the many decent members of the French Resistance who, under Nazi torture, disclosed the locations of their closest friends and relatives.
The kind of torture that President Clinton was talking about is not designed to secure confessions of past crimes, but rather to obtain real time, actionable intelligence deemed necessary to prevent an act of mass casualty terrorism. The question put to the captured terrorist is not “Did you do it?” Instead, the suspect is asked to disclose self-proving information, such as the location of the bomber.
~~~This brings us to waterboarding. Michael Mukasey, whose confirmation as attorney general now seems assured, is absolutely correct, as a matter of constitutional law, that the issue of “waterboarding” cannot be decided in the abstract. Under prevailing precedents–some of which I disagree with–the court must examine the nature of the governmental interest at stake, and the degree to which the government actions at issue shock the conscience, and then decide on a case-by-case basis. In several cases involving actions at least as severe as waterboarding, courts have found no violations of due process.
The members of the judiciary committee who voted against Judge Mukasey, because of his unwillingness to support an absolute prohibition on waterboarding and all other forms of torture, should be asked the direct question: Would you authorize the use of waterboarding, or other non-lethal forms of torture, if you believed that it was the only possible way of saving the lives of hundreds of Americans in a situation of the kind faced by Israeli authorities on the eve of Yom Kippur? Would you want your president to authorize extraordinary means of interrogation in such a situation? If so, what means? If not, would you be prepared to accept responsibility for the preventable deaths of hundreds of Americans?
Listen, you can forget Iraq as being a issue for the 2008 Presidential election. This election will be decided on the issue of terrorism, national security and to a lesser degree, taxes. Not one of the Democrat rivals have an advantage on those issues and these are the issues which make Rudy Giuliani a most formidable candidate.
The leftwing nutcases would have us never lay a hand on a terrorist. No matter what. Say we have intelligence that a nuke is about to go off and have one of the conspirators in custody. He won’t say a word and we know its about to blow. Yes, sounds like a episode of 24 but no one should say it could NEVER happen. The left would not want the guy touched because of the “we will become as bad as they are” argument to which I call BULLS&*T. Add in the fact that their loved one is smack dab in ground zero and you will get a little different answer I believe.
Under no circumstances should waterboarding be used for any run of the mill reason. But there are definitely scenarios where that technique should be used. It is ignorant and foolhardy for this Congress to try and tie our hands behind our back by proclaiming it illegal instead of looking at the “worst case” scenarios and THEN writing laws. You cannot assume that this “worst case” event will never happen.
9/11 should have taught us all this.
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The cartoon is in very poor taste. We live in the here and now – not 1969. The issue with Kennedy was litigated and dealt with. it is old news. but I guess if you have NOTHING to work with, why not beat a dead horse.
That’s right Tom: Senator Kennedy left Mary Jo Kopechne to drown in that car as the air slowly leaked out of the compartment in the back seat. Instead of summoning the policy from nearby houses, he returned to the scene of the drunken party where the other young girls were still entertaining his friends. None of them summoned the police. Instead, Kennedy went back to his hotel and went to bed.
Then, he used the power of his family’s name and his dead brother Jack’s memory to summon help. But not help for Mary Jo who had been found dead. He summoned the heavyweights of the Democrat Party to help save his career and keep him out of jail. He even went so far as to have Massachusetts state officials “renew” his driver’s license which had expired.
For more, see:
http://mikesamerica.blogspot.com/2007/09/senator-larry-craig-resigns.html
It’s all old news of course. But then so are the Clinton scandals. And yet, we learn that when Democrats are held to a lower standard of accountability than they daily demand of everyone else, they are likely to repeat their crimes.
And in the Kennedy family we see that this pattern of privilege and being above the law has been passed down to the latest generation (ever heard of Patrick Kennedy?)
Teddy’s hypocrisy and total lack of accountability is absolutely relevant to this discussion!
That’s a tight use of asking for torture. First it assumes that a person in the know is caught. Then it assumes the person will tell the truth. Then it assumes the case can be cracked in time. Human intelligence is just not that good. With enough suspects and time, it’s possible to come up with examples where torture worked.
The Germans might have gotten intellegence through torture, but they tortured thousands of people at any one time, had thousands of soldiers to follow up on leads and this information wasn’t used to stop specific attacks but the information was used to flush out some cells in an area the Germans occupied. It sure didn’t stop the French Resistance.
The Soviet Union, China and the Middle East all have tortured people to try and stop even “minor” corruption but corruption thrives in those areas (including the area occupied by the former Soviet Union).
It’s just much easier to catch bragging terrorists talking on the phone or the internet, looking for their recruiters and fund raisers, shutting down their training camps and stopping the weapons supplies to them. Even those tasks have been a problem for the intellegence community.
Torture has proven to be highly effective at combatting witchcraft. Witches will confess when torture is correctly applied. They will also give up the names of other witches including the notoriously difficult to locate “sleeper” witches. Torture can and should be used when authorities believe that witches are about to spring a satnic plot sometimes known as the “ticking spell” scenario.
When the North Vietnamese tortured McCain they realized that torture was really only effective in getting a confession, and that was all they expected.
You’re all off base. Waterboarding isn’t torture. We don’t torture and we use waterboarding, so that isn’t torture. Mukasey doesn’t know if it’s torture or not. If it’s torture, then it’s illegal, but it’s not so it isn’t. Only the big brains in government can know if we use it or if it’s torture. We punybrains can’t be trusted with that information because the terrorists might find out and learn to resist our attempts to torture them, except it’s not torture.
That’s basically your case, right Curt?
No where in my post did I say whether WB is torture or not. My point was even if it IS torture in no way shape or form should the use of it be prevented in situations like the ones I described.
Got it?
Everyone else seemed to get it but not you….shocker.
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Jennifer Garner and Geena Davis
Anyone who is wondering whether waterboarding is torture should run out today and rent The Long Kiss Goodnight, a 1996 thriller and favorite B movie of mine starring Geena Davis and Samuel L. Jackson. It’s got an interesting version of