I’m Not Sorry, Either

 

Khalid_Shaikh_Mohammed_after_captureJust up on the website of the Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens’s latest column.  An excerpt:

I am not sorry Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the operational mastermind of 9/11, was waterboarded 183 times. KSM also murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl in 2002. He boasted about it: “I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew,” he said after his capture.

I am sorry KSM remains alive nearly 12 years after his capture. He has been let off far too lightly. As for his waterboarding, it never would have happened if he had been truthful with his captors. It stopped as soon as he became cooperative. As far as I’m concerned, he waterboarded himself.

I’m not sorry, either.

Are you?

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  1. Karen Inactive
    Karen
    @Karen

    Rachel Lu:

    And I’d say there’s one further question: did an unhealthy sort of culture develop around the interrogation programs, to which authorities turned a blind eye?

    No. James Mitchell, who helped develop the enhanced interrogation techniques program, has gone on record as saying that he reported and documented instances where he observed abuse or lines were crossed. Who do you think these people are, anyway? There are plenty of declassified reports that indicate the scrutiny those who performed the EIT’s were put under. If people are so concerned about the CIA crossing a line, maybe they should read them. I guess it’s too much to ask journalists to do a little less pontificating and speculating and more researching.

    • #91
  2. Asquared Inactive
    Asquared
    @ASquared

    One further comment.

    Assuming for the purpose of this conversation that we don’t waterboard our SERE candidates on five separate occasions, does doing so to KSM bring water-boarding to the level of torture?   I say probably not, but I could be convinced otherwise.  BUT you won’t convince me by arguing that the first cup of water is torture.

    • #92
  3. Rachel Lu Member
    Rachel Lu
    @RachelLu

    Karen, the reports on this vary widely. James Mitchell is an interesting fellow, but, obviously not an unbiased party. I’m sure it’s possible to get to the bottom of this, but not quickly or easily.

    However, if the snarky remark about journalists is directed at me… given what I earn as a writer, yes, it’s too much to ask that I be expert on every topic! I’m not getting full-time researcher type money for this stuff (nowhere close!), and I have kids to raise and dinner to get on the stove. Why do you think I come to Ricochet to learn more about things?

    • #93
  4. Totus Porcus Inactive
    Totus Porcus
    @TotusPorcus

    I’m not sorry that the mastermind of 9/11, the plotter of the second wave (I was working in a tall building on a flight path to a major West Coast airport at the time btw), the man who beheaded Daniel Pearl because he was Jewish and bragged about it, was subjected, under medical supervision, to the same form of extreme discomfort “we” inflict on our own soldiers for training purposes, after an extensive Justice Department review to ensure the precise method applied was legal.

    I’m not sorry in the slightest.

    I am completely perplexed by people who use the same word to describe what the North Vietnamese did to John McCain and what I described above.

    • #94
  5. Karen Inactive
    Karen
    @Karen

    Rachel Lu:Karen, the reports on this vary widely. James Mitchell is an interesting fellow, but, obviously not an unbiased party. I’m sure it’s possible to get to the bottom of this, but not quickly or easily.

    However, if the snarky remark about journalists is directed at me… given what I earn as a writer, yes, it’s too much to ask that I be expert on every topic! I’m not getting full-time researcher type money for this stuff (nowhere close!), and I have kids to raise and dinner to get on the stove. Why do you think I come to Ricochet to learn more about things?

    I was referring to journalists that have written on this topic and others that do more navel gazing than reporting and whose shallow opinions get linked on Ricochet more often than I’d like. The whole feeding-the-narrative push in journalism isn’t just on the Left. They’re lazy and blame the government for covering up info that’s widely available. Don’t be insulted, but I don’t consider you in that category, since I thought you were a philosophy prof and writer, not a journalist. I don’t hold you accountable to that standard. But I do think you won’t find a more honest broker about the EIT program than James Mitchell. He agreed to do it knowing that his distinguished career and reputation would count for nothing in the court of public opinion. I find the question you posed deeply troubling and frankly offensive to those in the intel community, because it appears that you don’t consider these people professionals, just some Jack Ryan-wannabes. I don’t think it was intentionally meant to be insulting, but ignorant. But I don’t think it’s because you’re too busy to do research to understand how it works, it’s that those in the media, particularly conservative journalists, are too incompetent to report the facts that are available to them. I’m astounded by how many conservative journalists in D.C. don’t bother to understand the missions of the federal agencies they report on and how those agencies implement and operationalize those missions.

    • #95
  6. Rachel Lu Member
    Rachel Lu
    @RachelLu

    Oh, I’m not insulted. There’s certainly nothing wonderful about being classified as a journalist! I just wondered since, you know, it was my comment you were responding to.

    But I do think we have to get over being “offended” by people asking these sorts of questions or considering whether our governmental agencies may have systematic problems. Yes, we’re questioning people’s professional integrity. Because it’s necessary! Certain sorts of work are important enough, and ethically perilous enough, that we need them to be put under some degree of public scrutiny. Again, as conservatives we should easily understand that governmental power is apt to be abused. So it sounds nice, but is ultimately morally irresponsible, to say simply, “Well, these people are patriots, so it would be terrible to ask hard questions about how they do their work.”

    • #96
  7. Karen Inactive
    Karen
    @Karen

    Rachel Lu:Oh, I’m not insulted. There’s certainly nothing wonderful about being classified as a journalist! I just wondered since, you know, it was my comment you were responding to.

    But I do think we have to get over being “offended” by people asking these sorts of questions or considering whether our governmental agencies may have systematic problems. Yes, we’re questioning people’s professional integrity. Because it’s necessary! Certain sorts of work are important enough, and ethically perilous enough, that we need them to be put under some degree of public scrutiny. Again, as conservatives we should easily understand that governmental power is apt to be abused. So it sounds nice, but is ultimately morally irresponsible, to say simply, “Well, these people are patriots, so it would be terrible to ask hard questions about how they do their work.”

    Questioning someone’s professional integrity is no different than calling them a liar. If you are going to call them liars, than you better darn well know what you’re talking about and have the facts to back it up. I don’t think I ever suggested not asking hard questions, but one must be informed, and I don’t think your question was. It’s not acceptable to say, “I think the people running this program that I know nothing about are doing it wrong, so they must all be jagweeds.” I know that there are many people charged with our country’s secrets that accept they will be insulted by ignorant and uninformed people. They don’t care enough or can’t respond to accusations, but that doesn’t mean we can question their integrity with impunity. For the people who do the dirty work of keeping us safe, we owe them more than mere speculation. I’d just as soon not know what the CIA is up to since an EIT session is a spa day compared to renditions or death by drone for that matter. Question away, but do these people the courtesy of at least presuming that they are professionals, because they are.

    • #97
  8. Asquared Inactive
    Asquared
    @ASquared

    Rachel Lu: But I do think we have to get over being “offended” by people asking these sorts of questions or considering whether our governmental agencies may have systematic problems.

    It depends on what the “questions are”.

    You say in your article that

    Sometimes it is necessary to cause pain, discomfort, or inconvenience to others by way of pursuing important ends. However, I cannot respect a person’s humanity while deliberately maiming him, or acting in such a way as to leave him psychologically broken.

    It is PRECISELY this line that the EIT sought not to cross

    It concludes that torture is only: extreme acts according to the Convention Against Torture; that severe pain (a requisite for this definition of torture) is “serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death”; that prolonged mental harm is harm that must last for “months or even years”; …

    It describes the CIA practices, and reminds them how those practices are applied in such a way “to ensure that no prolonged mental harm would result from the use of these proposed procedures”.

    In your piece, you also say

    The prisoner’s fortitude and vulnerabilities must both be carefully weighed. Sometimes an interrogator might miscalculate in ways that are minimally culpable, or not culpable at all. After all, people occasionally misjudge their own strength in ways that lead to permanent harm. It’s too much to ask that intelligence agencies preserve dangerous prisoners from even the smallest possibility of risk.

    The authors of the protocols explicitly agreed with this.

    It clarifies that a medical expert will always be present “to prevent severe physical or mental harm[.]”

    In other words, it’s not up the interrogator to decide when to quit, it’s up to the medical expert whose sole job is to say “when”.

    If you read the memos, it’s VERY clear that the authors took GREAT pain to follow exactly the guidelines you laid out in your article.

    That is not to say there is no possibility that the guidelines were broken, either by an over-zealous interrogator or a medical expert who let it go too far.  But the guidelines match up perfectly with your article (as near as I can tell).

    In fact, it is the guidelines and the precautions in them that are precisely why I feel so comfortable saying that if the guidelines were properly followed, water-boarding is not torture.

    It’s perfectly fine to ask question and to distrust the government, but it’s not OK to write that entire piece without acknowledging that the EIT memos tried to strike the VERY balance you were trying to argue for in your piece.

    (NB: and this is a post that I feel could not have possibly worked in 200 words.)

    • #98
  9. Asquared Inactive
    Asquared
    @ASquared

    Asquared: It depends on what the “questions are”.

    Sorry, never got around to finishing this thought  (and since I was already over 200 words in last past, thought I would create a new one).

    So, since the process was explicitly and carefully designed to avoid crossing the lines into what you describe as torture, any “questions” should be about whether the process was followed or show evidence that they weren’t followed in a specific instance.

    To make vague attacks on the professionalism of our interrogators without any evidence that they acted outside the guidelines is, well, unprofessional.

    • #99
  10. Rachel Lu Member
    Rachel Lu
    @RachelLu

    Actually my piece didn’t attack anyone, and I bent over backwards to point out the seriousness of work of the CIA. Going through the line-by-line of EIT memos would also be perfectly appropriate; feel free to write your own piece doing that.

    I have actually read some of the Senate report, which does make it sound as though there was a fair amount of incompetence in the EIT program, along with numerous troubling examples of practices that do not seem to fall within the EIT guidelines. The report may not be accurate; I understand of course that it was heavily politically motivated. Even people who were quite close to the situation (like John Yoo) still seem to be trying to figure out how much of the report is accurate and what the situation the ground really was. If he isn’t sure, I definitely don’t think it’s unreasonable for people like me to *ask questions* about what really happened and why, and (as in that piece) to make some generalized remarks about salient moral questions.

    Obviously most people who work for the government (in the CIA or in any other capacity) would prefer that the public regularly give them the benefit of all doubt. They would be pleased if it were agreed to be unseemly for anyone outside the organization to question its ethics or efficacy, unless he was superbly well-informed and in possession of reams of reliable evidence to back up any *possible* implication of blame that might be inferred from the question. That, however, is not actually a reasonable standard. And if anyone were to such a deferential standard to any governmental body *except* security and military-related organizations, conservatives would mock him to the skies.

    • #100
  11. Asquared Inactive
    Asquared
    @ASquared

    Rachel Lu: Actually my piece didn’t attack anyone, and I bent over backwards to point out the seriousness of work of the CIA. Going through the line-by-line of EIT memos would also be perfectly appropriate; feel free to write your own piece doing that.

    That’s fine, and I agree with this comment to a point, but your piece leaves the impression that the government never asked the questions you asked and never address the concerns you raised in your piece, when they explicitly did.

    It’s your piece.  I’ve already written my rebuttal to it.

    Rachel Lu: I have actually read some of the Senate report, which does make it sound as though there was a fair amount of incompetence in the EIT program, along with numerous troubling examples of practices that do not seem to fall within the EIT guidelines. The report may not be accurate; I understand of course that it was heavily politically motivated.

    I won’t read the Senate example of partisanship, but I have downloaded, and will read, the Constitution Project’s report on torture.  I will not be surprised if I find that people broke the rules.

    That won’t change my view that the people who wrote the so-called “torture memos” went to great lengths to address the specific concerns that you raise in your piece.  People who broke the rules should be punished, but the guidelines in the EIT memos prescribe a process that falls well short of torture.

    • #101
  12. Karen Inactive
    Karen
    @Karen

    Rachel Lu:They would be pleased if it were agreed to be unseemly for anyone outside the organization to question its ethics or efficacy, unless he was superbly well-informed and in possession of reams of reliable evidence to back up any *possible* implication of blame that might be inferred from the question. That, however, is not actually a reasonable standard. And if anyone were to such a deferential standard to any governmental body *except* security and military-related organizations, conservatives would mock him to the skies.

    A reasonable standard for whom? The average citizen? the part-time blogger? the journalist? I think that’s a very reasonable standard for anyone who wants to be taken seriously as a professional journalist.Your position is the very reason that a lot of conservative “news” sites aren’t taken that seriously by the federal sector. It’s really not that challenging to discover the mission of any federal agency and how that mission is implemented and operationalized. You could talk to the people that implement the mission! – something the Senate report failed to do and something the conservative media rarely bother doing. And if you want reams of reliable evidence, check out the GAO.

    • #102
  13. Rachel Lu Member
    Rachel Lu
    @RachelLu

    Asquared:

    Rachel Lu: Actually my piece didn’t attack anyone, and I bent over backwards to point out the seriousness of work of the CIA. Going through the line-by-line of EIT memos would also be perfectly appropriate; feel free to write your own piece doing that.

    That’s fine, and I agree with this comment to a point, but your piece leaves the impression that the government never asked the questions you asked and never address the concerns you raised in your piece, when they explicitly did.

    I don’t think that’s implied in any way. I specifically mention that there are carefully-crafted guidelines, though I don’t go into detail about what they are. I also make clear that my own suggestions on this point are broad and in no way exhaustive.

    The public is currently having a conversation about torture. I offered my thoughts on the general subject, which is a perfectly legitimate thing to do. I didn’t comment on the CIA’s level of guilt or innocence, because that issue is currently fraught with controversy and I didn’t feel qualified to offer a diagnosis. But I don’t think anyone could reasonably walk away from the piece doubting that 1) I think the CIA’s mission is serious and difficult, and 2) I recognize that some people within and connected to the organization are have made a sustained effort to set responsible ethical standards.

    Karen, I’m sorry you’re disappointed with the standards of research in conservative journalism, but I’m not the person to raise the bar. I’m not even a journalist, remember? Just a philosopher-mom who offers periodic opinions and commentary. Interviews with high-ranking officials and extensive paging through government archives are well beyond the scope of what I get paid to do. Call the Washington Free Beacon if you think you have a job for an investigative reporter.

    • #103
  14. Asquared Inactive
    Asquared
    @ASquared

    Rachel Lu: I specifically mention that there are carefully-crafted guidelines, though I don’t go into detail about what they are.

    I went back and re-read the entire article and I did not see any reference to carefully crafted guidelines.

    The closest I found was this sentence

    We should be pleased that our Justice Department gives such careful attention to these issues, because it generally shows that efforts are being made to avoid torture.

    Which is followed by this paragraph

    We also need to recognize that in many cases, a rule book is no substitute for a prudent and humane interrogator, who has an individualized sense of a particular prisoner’s moral and psychological state. This is frightening because, realistically, intelligence operatives aren’t perfect. Sometimes they make bad prudential decisions. Sometimes they make bad moral decisions. There is no fail-proof way to enable them to do their jobs without opening the door to harrowing mistakes.

    This paragraph ignores the most important part of the guidelines, which is that it is not up to the interrogator to decide where the line is. There is an independent medical expert present whose sole responsibility is to draw that line.

    Your piece asserts that we are putting the power of deciding where the line is solely in the hands of the interrogator when, under the guidelines, that power is carefully placed in another’s hands, ie not the interrogator.

    I would agree that adding a medical expert is, in and of itself, not foolproof, but your piece misleads on where the responsibility lies.

    • #104
  15. Rachel Lu Member
    Rachel Lu
    @RachelLu

    Ah, well! I’m sure that’s very far from the worst of my journalistic and personal failings.

    • #105
  16. Asquared Inactive
    Asquared
    @ASquared

    Rachel Lu:Ah, well! I’m sure that’s very far from the worst of my journalistic and personal failings.

    LOL.   reminds me of a comment I made recently in the 5,000 word limit thread

    Asquared:

    FWIW, I’m a failure in many areas of life. I’m not worried about being called a failure for not being able to condense a given thought into 200 words

    • #106
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