Huh? It’s kind of hard to keep hush-hush a raid into another country without their consent that results in a helicopter being destroyed. I suspect anyone who knew about the OBL house would know something happened before we had a chance to proces any intelligence gathered. Even if they did not know where he was, a black ops raid on a house that stirred the anthill as badly as this did would certainly spook the rest of al Qeda. They would have scurried with or without boasting. I’m sure some had contacts in the Pakistani intelligence (so the popular wisdom goes) so they would have had warning right away that something had broken open. The only real mystery is whether any of the “dead” are sitting in cell in Cuba.
If, as I have heard, the key piece of evidence was accidental transmission of GPS coordinates, that does not lead us to any other locations unless al Kuwaiti was in the habit of powering on his GPS-generating satellite phone in every sensitive location he went to; assuming any one person knew all the sensitive spots of the high command.
I have a contrary view. I think bin Laden’s actual whereabouts were secret except for a very few people, likely only those al Kuwaiti couriers. Everyone else went through them. Otherwise, it would not have stayed a secret for very long, if a dozen al Qeda and two dozen Pakistani security knew about it. To many leaky holes, too much reward money. The trick to keeping a secret is to keep it secret. Likely all anyone else knew was that he was somewhere in the Pakistan-tribal-south Afghanistan area.
From what I read, it was acquired afterwards, so the house was not on the roster of organization assets, even if there was one. The less anyone knows about the whole organization (cell structure) the safer everyone is. That has been elementary training since long ago.
In the end the torture was useless, because it told them no more than they knew without torture.
I still think all those supposed threats of orange or red were bogus stories made up under torture to keep the interrogators happy. Until someone decides to declassify what the threat really was, I suppose speculation is all we have.
I’ve honestly never understood the concept that torture can never provide reliable information. I’ve said it isn’t a good way to gather general intelligence, but it can be a great way to get specific information when you know that a person knows something specifically that you need to know, and where you can immediately or very quickly verify whether or not they are lying.
As a fanciful example, imagine I break into your house because I know you keep a safe loaded with $500,000 in cash. You aren’t willing to part with it easily, so I tie you up and tell you I’m going to subject you to repeated electric shocks until you reveal the combination. Is it not reasonable to expect I’m eventually going to get 100% accurate information that I’m looking for? You can tell me all the false combinations you want but I’m going to know immediately and you’re going to get tortured further.
Why would you assume that? I’m going to say most people directly involved in going after bin Laden don’t want to tell us anything, pro-torture or not. Who is it that was truly involved in his capture that is even saying much of anything?
Realistically torture is historically used to solicit confessions, and typically in scenarios where the torturer doesn’t really care at all if the person is guilty or not–they just want the person to say they are.
However you can still use it to get answers to questions you care about in certain controlled situations. (For example if you’re a home invader wanting a homeowner to open up a wall safe.)
Wow, I suggest you don’t watch the news if that kind of thing can make you throw up. I didn’t have any reaction at all to Abu Ghraib.
First, because they always brag about their successes because there are so few. No successful intelligence operation stays under wraps for very long. They need to claim success frequently, and bring forth an actual success once in a while in order to keep wasting money, violating our rights, making money drug trafficing, and failing at their job.
Second, because they are desperate to justify their actions. The torturers, whether the hands operatives or their taskmasters, will spend the rest of their lives in fear of prosecution or persecution for their actions. In their mindset, showing useful intelligence obtained through torture would justify their actions. Of course they felt their actions were justified in the first place simply because they were torturing our enemies.
The flaw in your example is this: We don’t know where the safe is, what type of lock it has, whether there are other safes, if the safe is booby-trapped to explode if a wrong combination is entered, or a huge number of other variables.
I watch five hours of news a day. I suggest you look at the Abu Ghraib photographs more closely. It was the stupidest possible move by a group of moronic bullies, the only possible result of which was to convert opponents into sworn blood enemies.
But there are also things which are not admissable but are nonetheless useful. So it does not follow that anything which is inadmissable is also pointless.
I’m not sure whaat you’re saying here. Are you claiming that valid information was obtained WRT incriminating KSM (but rendered useless by its inadmissibility) but WRT nothing else? Why would that be?
I don’t think either of these points are anything other than conjecture. How do you know they always brag about their successes? That’s talking about evidence not available to us, it’s essentially a black box.
I don’t know that a large number of these individuals are desperate to justify their actions–the vast majority of them are unaccountable to the public because we do not and will not ever know their names. Some of the higher up political appointees and even higher up intelligence bureaucrats have gone on to say stupid stuff on Fox News and such in retirement, but I don’t think that is evidence of all the stuff you’re saying here.
Not saying you’re wrong, either, but you’re basically making an assumption that isn’t supportable by any evidence I’ve seen.
How is that a flaw? Their being criminals is irrelevant to my point, I was only talking about the practical efficacy of torture and the concept that universally, torture can never give valid information.
For some reason lots of people who are ideologically opposed to torture are desperate to believe that torture can never yield viable results, even in hypothetical scenarios where “any unbiased rational observer” would admit it could yield viable results. If you’re ideologically opposed to torture on moral grounds, the efficacy argument should be irrelevant as your moral convictions on whether something is right or wrong shouldn’t be based on whether that action is useful vs. useless.
My only point was there are definitely situations where I think any logical observer would agree torture could yield valid information. Specifically scenarios where there are “known unknowns.” If I know a safe is hidden in this guy’s home office, because of inside information from the cleaning lady who saw him open it one day, then I know there is a combination that I don’t know, but the owner does know. I can use torture to get that information.
gaffa’s reply is facetious by the way. If me and some compatriots have you tied to a chair in your house and are torturing you, it is irrelevant whether or not the safe might be rigged to self destruct its contents, lock permanently if you enter the wrong combination or etc–because we have physical possession of you any attempt to lie to screw us out of the contents of the safe would result in vast physical pain for you, and likely death. I think very few people would be willing to die to protect the contents of a home safe.
I agree. It is impossible to prove with the available evidence. So is the conjecture that we’ve obtained useful information through torture, because nobody has provided evidence that it has. I can only look at the possible circumstances for that and consider which is more likely. Either torture works and the evidence to prove it is covered up because we want people to believe it is true, but don’t want to totally convince them. Or because torture doesn’t provide useful information. You make the call.
I don’t think intelligence gatherers have any particular desire one way or the other to prove torture works. Maybe higher up bureaucrats do, or people looking to get on Fox News, or people in politics looking to justify controversial policies. Actual intelligence agents though, I suspect if they can get reliable information they are happy to get that information whether we know their methods work or whether we think they are useless. I don’t think it’s easy to know or even possible to know without classified information if America has retrieved useful information from torture.
However in general torture definitely can retrieve useful information, see: this. In that case some robbers wanted a home safe opened, the homeowner declined, they tortured his wife with a hot iron, the safe became opened. It definitely got what they wanted and worked for them.
So your proof that torture produces useful intelligence information is that psychopathic criminals use it to steal money in home invasions? That’s general proof?
If you’re comfortable with your government behaving no better than the characters in the movie Funny Games…
The principal fault with the “Ticking Bomb” fallacy is this: You never want only one piece of information from a prisoner.
Humane methods can turn enemies into informants. Inhumane ones can only produce intransigence. I’ve been working on the Wikipedia page for Juan Pujol, aka Garbo the Spy. He was unique, in that he deliberately set out to become a double agent, but Britain had a couple of dozen double-agents, all of whom had started out as enemy spies. Through humane methods, all were turned into useful sources of information and conduits for counter-intelligence.
Watch this interview with Jack Cloonan, retired FBI interrogator. He reduced an al Qaeda member to tears just by letting him talk to his sister on the telephone.
By the way, I note that not one torture defender has answered my Mafia comparison. Again, the American and Italian governments defeated an evil, multinational criminal organization and did not have to dive into a cesspool to do it.
Yes, it is general proof. Why does the fact they are psychopaths effect the efficacy of their techniques? I’ve already pointed out the argument that “torture doesn’t get good information” isn’t a moral argument, so morality has nothing to do with that proposition.
Oh, I think anyone who knows anything about interrogation agrees that making friends with the subject is far and away the best method of creating a long term intelligence asset or getting them to freely give you all extraneous information.
Has nothing to do with the more or less absurd claim that you can’t get an accurate answer to your direct question via torture.
The safe-combination is a variant on the ticking-bomb argument. A simple, testable single piece of information can be gotten out of someone with sufficient persuasion - plus the victim’s knowledge that the information is testable, and if wrong, will result in rounds 2 and more of the same treatment or worse.
For simple, short-term-unprovable information, or information you cannot be sure the person even has, denial and misdirection work just as well. So “enhanced” interrogation is no more useful than regular interrogation.
Besides, what under “find Bin Laden” questions falls in the category of “ticking bomb, need answer NOW!” to justify torture?
People also will say whatever they think their interrogators want to hear. Maher Arar - Wikipedia A canadian citizen, Mr. Arar confessed under torture to attending an Al Qeda training camp, even though there is no evidence or timing that could justify this. After a year of torture, even Syria concluded he was not a terrorist; Canada paid $10M for its complicity and stupidity; the USA still insists he is a terrorist and is on their no-fly list, since to admit their mistake would open them to liability too.
I don’t have a “side”, I’ve just simply stated it is possible to get the information you want via torture. I proved it with my linked news article. Someone wanted a safe combination, they tortured someone, they got the safe combination. I don’t have a side or even a claim–I have an absolute proof.
I’m not saying torture is wise, moral, or even generally very effective, I’m just saying the position that you can never get valid information from torture is so easily demonstrated to be false that it’s laughable.