Right on.

~Zoo

I have read a very interesting article by STRATFOR two weeks ago that was talking about the whole torture process, the morality involved and the utility it brings to intelligence gathering effort.

First of all, the hypothetic situation that: "Do you torture a man if you know he has the bomb that will come off in the next hour?" is a very, very, very restrint situation. If you do know that:

1) There is a bomb that will go off

2) The general area where it will explodes

3) Who knows about it

4) The time it will explode

You already won the intelligence war; your intelligence network worked perfectly. Torture will simply be a mean to quicken the inevitable. If you do have the time to deal with the guy, it's usually much more efficient to show the guy all that you know, and tell him that he will never leave his cell anyway.

But those kind of circumstances are not common. In the aftermath of 9/11, the USA Intelligence agencies panicked, because they were caught unaware. The general intelligence network had been on sleep duty since the end of the cold war, and weren't paying much attention to groups like Al-Qaeda. But when AQ striked, they realised that they had a new ennemy that they didn't understand. They didn't understand the motivations, their means nor their objective.

Everybody was afraid right after 9/11, and for good reasons. The lack of information about the ennemy and its capability (specially knowning that AQ was reknown for it's 1-2 attacks) forced USA and its allies to resort to... less than mighty means. Yes, torture. They needed to understand the workout of the islamic terrorist organisations, and they did. The counter-terrorism effort is now much, much, much more efficient at dealing against those organisations, because we understand them a lot more now.

But in the meanwhile, torture passed from an emergency measure to a regular routine. It has became common place for U.S. intelligence agencies to resort to these means to gather information. And we aren't talking about life-or-death intelligence, we are talking about basic intelligence gathering. There are much more efficient (both in term of the quality of the information, and the PR involved) ways of using prisoners when you are doing routine interrogation.

So, am I in favor of banning torture for our intelligence missions? No. Nor I am in favor of banning nuclear weapons. It's a tool that has its uses, both in the extreme measures and as a dissuasive when you get into "intensive" interrogation. You can use it as a treath. But same than nuclear weapons, it should not be the norm. It should be exceptional. In times of pure crisis or when time is the essence - but then again, if you know the points 1, 2, 3 and 4 of what I wrote up-there, you have a pretty good intel network, don't you think?

To torture effeciently, you need to know who knows.

Artisym seems to ignore the fact these interrogations did work.  They stopped a Sept. 11 style attack that was planned for L.A. 

Now just imagine for one second if this attack had became reality, guess who would be blaming Bush again for "not doing enough".

While I do know that the US's intelligence services managed to stop that attack, I am curious to know how you are certain that torture was involved in getting the proper intelligence.

If I remember right, they had managed to capture the mastermind behind 9/11 attack, and they got some more info out of him, right?

The left says that we can’t torture because we need to be the “moral” leaders in the world, which is funny considering they usually chastise people who talk about being moral.

Priceless high commentary...I wish I had said it.

"The U.S did not need these tactics to fight and defeat the nazis. The U.S did not need these tactics to win the cold war."

And we don't need an orange peeler to eat an apple.  Sheeesh.

Read all the comments before commenting...okay?

Quickly, we must round up a group of liberal musicians to sing out against this injustice!

At what point do you stop? The person you're torturing might be guilty, and torturing them might help save lives, but equally they might be innocent, and you're torturing an innocent person without any 'reward/payoff' as a result.

Lets say that approximately 30% of people living in one particular neighbourhood are criminals. You could lock up everyone in that neighbourhood, and as a result prevent a lot of crime. You'll also be unfairly punishing innocent people. Similarly if you lower the threshold for proving someone is a murderer you'll likely catch a lot more murderers, but also have a lot more innocent people caught up and wrongfully imprissoned for a crime they didn't commit.

With crime+punishment a balance must be struck between the need to prevent crime (and punish criminals), and the need to protect innocent people being wrongfully punished.

Thats really the difference. There are those of us who think this is a law enforcement issue and then there are those who think that this is war. If you think the act of 911 was merely a crime and not an act of war, then your argument is valid.

Read the  article.

KSM was captured, and would not talk, not at all.  After being waterboarded for a bit, he started talking.  His info helped stop those attacks. 

From former POW's that now run the school. You seem to forget that everything done at those schools are approved by the Congress, not the President. The school I went to was a bit before SERE it was just called E&E escape and evasion. So the Congress has approved this stuff since the 70's I was in the military in the 70's it may have been around before that but I know it was around at least that long, and not one Congressman or Congresswoman or Senator had any objection to it being used on our people but now it is too harsh to use on people that want to kill Americans.

Also please site what war crimes tribunal were water boarding was prosecuted?

its cite, not site.

but good luck asking a liberal for citations on their "facts"... for them a "fact" is anything they heard from a fellow liberal which is slanderous to the US, israel, or any other free democracy.

Isn't there something called truth serum that sort of makes torture pointless?

No.

There are three drugs that have an effect but all have been beaten in various degrees, oh, and the side effects are not that good. Brain damage, mental trauma, permanent lost of memory to name a few. The U,S, considders the use of those drugs torture.

only on TV.

Just like israel has magic anti rocket forcefields that they just choose not to use.