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CIA torture: The tactics are not surprising or unreasonable in the wake of 9/11

The United States is the Great Satan.

The Statue of Liberty is a syphilitic whore.

CIA employees are minions of the devil.

And the current congressional report professes that CIA tortured and imprisoned the innocent. Even worse than the torture, according to the report conclusions, it was done to no useful effect – that is, all of the excesses were performed without obtaining the type of actionable information sought by interrogators to prevent terrorist attacks or lead to the capture of terrorists.

If true, a damning indictment, perhaps demanding widespread prosecution of any and all involved, at every political and bureaucratic level from the most lowly testicle-twister to the series of CIA directors that implemented these programs and their political masters.

But does anybody care? That is, does this change the opinions of any observers regarding what the United States is doing and where and how it is being done? Are global opinions currently at such a nadir regarding the United States that critics can blithely charge Washington with anything and everything from creating HIV/AIDS or SARS or Ebola, and find believing audiences?

Within the United States there are vitriolic domestic critics of every element of U.S. foreign policy since 9/11; they are so implacably hostile that they willingly advance any level of calumny to damage foreign policy efforts.

But, as is so often the case with every dramatic accusation, there are “Wait a minute” ripostes. In this case:

• The Report was written entirely by Democrats with no love for the CIA; and

• The investigators did not meet with any senior CIA figures (the series of directors heading the Agency since 9/11).

The countercharges by these senior CIA figures are furious and equally predictable. Essentially, they say their actions were not illegal and interrogation provided invaluable intelligence. So we are in a “he said/he said” circumstance. Has truth been the first victim? Did extreme interrogation measures, like torture, produce valuable intelligence? And by whose definition?

But it doesn’t matter. The Report and the CIA’s critics are enjoying a good wallow in political correctness 13 years after 9/11. Releasing it now immediately after the November election is liberal Democrats' last gasp before Republicans control the Senate.

It is increasingly difficult for many to recall the intensity of emotions felt immediately after that terrorist attack persisting for years afterwards. (On a personal note, it was a decade before I awakened in the morning without a mental image of the burning/collapsing twin towers.) It was a bolt-from-the-blue, conceivable only in fiction, assault designed and implemented by “ragheads” that most didn’t believe could successfully operate a food cart at Superbowl. Scrambling about like a stirred-up anthill, we had no idea when or where the next attack would come. We believed al-Qaida was a centipede-equivalent with a hundred shoes still to drop: A cargo plane seized at a remote airfield? An Oklahoma City-type truck bomb created from fertilizer and diesel fuel? Suicide bombers in Grand Central Station at Christmas?

But comparable terror did not reoccur at least not in the US. In England, in Spain, in Russia, and endlessly in Israel, terrorists generated terror.

And countries suffering terrorist assaults are less critical of the mechanisms employed to deflect future assaults.


Opposing veiwpoint: David Kilgour

CIA torture: Regardless of the reasoning, we must be better than this


Another observation/perspective deserves note. Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib were not Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Deaths in custody were trivial. Nor did the United States round up and incarcerate its Muslim-Islamic residents. Ironically, one of the results from the controversy over handling terrorists is that, with rare exceptions, they are no longer captured. Instead, we kill them with Predator drone strikes, foregoing the intelligence (and the controversy associated with obtaining it).

Moreover, the United States population supports the CIA and its interrogation techniques. A Rasmussen poll concluded that by 69 to 23 per cent, respondents preferred to keep the interrogation methods secret. And a recently released Washington Post poll supported CIA interrogation methods (59 to 31 per cent); believed they provided valuable intelligence (53 to 31 per cent); and that the report was unfair (47 to 36 per cent) even while recognizing interrogation amounted to torture and the CIA misled US government officials and Congress. Finally, by 58 to 39 per cent, they believe future torture is justified.

One might recall 19th century naval hero, Stephen Decatur’s, toast: “Our Country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but right or wrong, our country!”

Still true.

(Photo via CBS News)

David T. Jones is a retired State Department Senior Foreign Service Career Officer who has published several hundred books, articles, columns, and reviews on U.S. - Canadian bilateral issues and general foreign policy. During a career that spanned over 30 years, he concentrated on politico-military issues, serving as advisor for two Army Chiefs of Staff. He has just published Alternative North Americas: What Canada and the United States Can Learn from Each Other.