Scott Spiegel

Liberals have been howling over the media’s claim that Osama bin Laden’s killing has “renewed” the debate over enhanced interrogation techniques, when any sensible patriotic American surely recognizes these as unconscionable acts of barbarism (though shooting an unarmed man in the face is apparently still acceptable).

In fact, any sensible patriotic American understands that such techniques are justified, indispensable tools for intelligence gathering in a war against Islamist savages who don’t respect the Geneva Conventions or any other international law.

But liberals love trying to confuse us with the two controversies surrounding EITs: their humaneness and their efficacy.  So if they can’t convince normal Americans that splashing water on a terrorist’s face—a technique carried out on our own special forces as part of their training—is an unspeakable atrocity, then they simply switch subjects and claim that EITs aren’t effective.

Just how ineffective are EITs?  Well, Pakistani-born, al Qaeda devotee Hassan Ghul experienced them several years ago at a CIA “black site” prison in Poland, and pretty soon he was singing like a canary about the alias of a trusted courier to bin Laden at his Abbottabad compound.

Ghul wasn’t waterboarded, but al Qaeda operations chief Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was.

Liberals, who are naturally only concerned about our well-being, soberly inform us that waterboarding and other forms of “torture” do not lead to reliable information—that detainees simply lie in order to make the interrogation stop.

That’s OK!  It turns out that our intelligence agencies are sharp enough to deal with just such a contingency.

Mohammad and his successor Abu Faraj Libbi separately lied about the name of the courier Ghul had provided.  The fact that two top al Qaeda members had fabricated a key piece of evidence clued U.S. intelligence officials in to the fact that it was important, which eventually led to the discovery of the courier’s name—and the location of bin Laden’s compound.

Liberals’ lethal push to use only “humane” interrogation techniques recalls the joke about the drunk looking for his keys under the lamppost, even though he didn’t lose them there, because the light is better.  (“Why are we politely querying the al Qaeda operations chief in a comfy lounge after his dinner of free-range chicken with mango chutney at Camp Gitmo?”  “Because it’s more humane that way.”)

Here’s an analogy liberals may comprehend: What do enhanced interrogation techniques and embryonic stem cell research have in common?

Answer: We don’t engage in enhanced interrogation techniques because we know for sure that they will immediately work, or exactly what information we will obtain from them.  We do it because we know there may be valuable intelligence to be gained by interrogating key members of prominent terrorist networks.

Similarly, scientists don’t propose carrying out embryonic stem cell research because they know for sure that it will immediately lead to life-changing breakthroughs and cures for fatal diseases.  They do it because they know there may be valuable information to be gained by carrying out this type of research, in addition to the less controversial adult stem cell research.

Some conservatives argued that the newly elected President George W. Bush was right to single out embryonic stem cell research as a particularly insidious technique that should not, unlike thousands of other research techniques, receive renewed federal funding.  These commentators boasted about the wisdom of his decision after adult stem cell research seemed to yield more promising treatment potential than embryonic stem cell research.

As any real scientist knows, the reason you do research is because you don’t know what you’re going to find.  If you downplay one area of research because it conflicts with your religious views, and that area proves less fruitful than a better-funded, less religiously problematic area, then it’s not because you had an open mind beforehand.

What if embryonic stem cell research someday takes off like wildfire and leads to numerous promising cures?  Will the same conservatives still insist it was wise to limit federal funding to adult stem cells decades ago?

We know that EITs indirectly led to information that helped identify bin Laden’s location.  What if we knew that waterboarding directly, demonstrably, inarguably produced the critical intelligence in this operation?  Would liberals still condemn the technique as “torture” and call Bush a war criminal?

EITs are used to fight terrorism; stem cell research is used to fight disease.  Like stem cell research, EITs must be attempted without prejudgment about their effectiveness if the goal is to save human lives.

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Related articles

• Missing The Point: It Doesn’t Matter If Torture “Works” (outsidethebeltway.com)
• White House: Debate Over “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” Is Moot (swampland.time.com)
• Rumsfeld: Mistake to end enhanced interrogation (cbsnews.com)
• Bring back waterboarding, says Cheney – AFP (news.google.com)
• Role of Enhanced Interrogation in Finding Bin Laden: What We Actually Know (propublica.org)

The New York Times recently published an editorial titled “In the Spirit of Openness.” It begins, “When he was vice president, Dick Cheney never acknowledged the public’s right to know anything. Now, suddenly, he has the full disclosure bug.”

How did Cheney catch this “full disclosure bug”? Could it in fact be an allergic reaction to some recent event or another—I don’t know, say, the Obama administration’s censorious partial disclosure of the enhanced interrogation memos with all of the spoilers blacked out?

The Times mocks Cheney’s statement that the decision to release the memos “inspired” him to ask the CIA to release full transcripts of the interrogations. Might “inspired” be a euphemism for “forced”?

The Times continues: “Mr. Cheney was not being entirely honest… and his logic is confounding. If releasing the memos leaves this country open to a devastating terrorist attack… imagine the potential harm from revealing all of the secrets gleaned from the three most ‘high value’ terrorists captured since Sept. 11, 2001.”

Let’s examine Cheney’s supposed breakdown in logic. Releasing the memos, which detail the nature and limits of the U.S.’s enhanced interrogation techniques, inarguably makes our country more vulnerable to attack, because it increases terrorists’ understanding of our methods and what is needed to resist them.

In contrast, Cheney’s suggestion of releasing the interrogation transcripts to show that these techniques worked reaffirms our commitment to using them, no matter what naysayers like Obama claim. Releasing the transcripts blunts critics’ self-destructive accusation that these techniques are too harsh to be used by our military, and must be exposed as scandalous; releasing the transcripts reveals a boob like Obama to be irrelevant. It is the equivalent of saying, “Don’t listen to that strange guy babbling in the corner—that’s just our crazy uncle talking to himself again.”

The Times insists that releasing the interrogation transcripts will disclose information about intercepted terrorist plots. So? Didn’t the terrorist networks planning these attacks already know about them, by definition? Hasn’t the Bush administration expounded in great detail on numerous foiled terrorist schemes, including novel methods terrorists have attempted, such as shoe bombing and assembling liquid explosives in-flight?

The terrorists are the ones who will be the least surprised by the transcripts. The people who will be most surprised are Americans who have been lulled into accepting the left’s diatribe about the techniques being “inexcusable,” “contrary to our values,” “against the American way of life,” etc. These voters are bound to change their minds once they learn precisely how successful those techniques have been at keeping them safe for the past seven-and-a-half years—which is why the Obama administration is keen on their not receiving this information.

What is especially galling is that Obama is the one feigning full disclosure, by releasing the interrogation memos, but having the Justice Department black out sections that show how the interrogation techniques worked. This would be like a newspaper’s editor-in-chief (1) preparing a company memo chronicling how a senior journalist violated newsroom standards by quoting an anonymous source, (2) blacking out the part of the report showing that the journalist corroborated the source’s information with other named, credible sources, and (3) claiming the journalist did not engage in “full disclosure.”

To the Obama administration, “full disclosure” apparently means “showing the parts that could be embarrassing for Bush and Cheney, and blotting out the rest with a Sharpie.”

Cheney originally preferred, justifiably, not to declassify the memos. He knew that doing so would reveal important information about our intelligence-gathering techniques, which the enemy could then better resist by understanding the limits and precautions incorporated in those techniques—e.g., “throwing” a detainee up against a “wall” made of rubber so as not to cause internal injuries, using a collar while doing so to prevent a detainee’s neck from being broken, employing a simulation of drowning that can be performed many times over a short period with no permanent harm. Once the Obama administration blew the lid off these memos, Cheney realized the only way to defend these techniques was to reveal how successful they had been in gathering intelligence.

The Times piece smarmily concludes, “We can’t imagine how such an investigation [of the interrogations] can move ahead without Mr. Cheney’s testimony. But given the former vice president’s new devotion to full disclosure, we’re sure he’ll be happy to comply.”

A thought experiment: Suppose the techniques had not been effective, or that their effectiveness had been debatable. Would Cheney now be chomping at the bit to have the interrogation transcripts released?

Suppose that the techniques had been effective. Would the Times still object to Bush and Cheney being able to use these transcripts to defend their actions, if releasing this evidence were the only way they could acquit themselves of spurious charges of violating the law?  (Of course The Times would, but bear with me.)  Given Cheney’s push for full disclosure of the transcripts, one can only assume the evidence will back him up, and that those who call his bluff will look like fools.

Openness for openness’ sake, no matter what the consequences for intelligence gathering and Americans’ safety, is suicidal. Openness for the sake of rebuilding the perception of our military as strong and unyielding, and disproving scurrilous accusations by ignorant politicians who fail to practice openness themselves, is eminently sensible.

There is confounding logic being thrown around here, but not by former Vice President Cheney.