America is better than torture (Sagan | Amarillo TX Times)

[struggle4progress]

Greg Sagan

... Former Vice President Dick Cheney is making the rounds of everyone who will listen to press his claim that "enhanced interrogation techniques" work. Reports entering the mainstream media suggest that these techniques include waterboarding, sleep deprivation, long periods in so-called "stress positions," close confinement with insects, being slapped into a wall while bound, hooded and suspended by the neck, and simulated execution.

Mr. Cheney has even called on President Obama to do something former President Bush, apparently with Mr. Cheney's active support, would not do, which is to declassify CIA and other materials that speak to the efficacy of these techniques. Mr. Cheney is apparently convinced that these techniques "kept America safe."

This is an easy claim to make, and it's true so long as we ignore both Sept. 11, 2001 and the loss of more than 4,000 of our fighting men and women in Iraq since we invaded. Since the possibility of a terrorist attack using commercial airliners flown into buildings on American soil was known to our government at least one month earlier, one could plausibly argue that torture is still no substitute for paying attention to the intelligence gleaned from other methods. But the claim reminds me of the very old saw about the guy standing on a corner snapping his fingers. Someone comes up and asks him what he's doing, and he says, "Keeping the elephants away." The passer-by says, "You're crazy. There isn't an elephant within a thousand miles of here," to which the first guy says, "See? It works."

As to whether enhanced interrogation techniques, and especially waterboarding, are torture, it seems to me all we really have to do is consult history. Some of the methods that constitute "enhanced interrogation" have been with us since at least the Inquisition, and we all know what a crowd pleaser that was ...

http://www.amarillo.com/stories/052609/opi_sagan1.shtml

[democrank]

1. The issue isn`t whether or not torture works.

It`s a war crime.