There are many arguments to be made pro and con about the Enhanced Interrogation Techniques we used on high value al Qaeda terrorists. I have made many of the pro arguments and will continue to do so, especially regarding waterboarding. It is not torture and using it on barbaric swine like KSM saved American lives. One of the con arguments is that it didn't do that, well here is former CIA Director stating explicitly that it did and laying out the moral case opponents must be prepared to make. (h/t TWS) I didn’t quite defend all the [enhanced interrogation] techniques. I certainly didn’t defend waterboarding. Remember, I said earlier [in the interview] that George Tenet made the tough decisions that I thank God I didn’t have to make. People ask me, “Well, what would you have done?” and I say, “I thank God I didn’t have to make that decision,” and that’s as far as I go. What I did was point out that whatever you may think of this, it worked and we did indeed get life-saving intelligence out of it. So the point I would make to folks who say, “I don’t want you doing this, and it doesn’t work anyway,” I would point out, “Whoa. Stop. The front half of that sentence, you can say; that’s yours, you own that, ‘I don’t want you doing it.’ The back half of that sentence is not yours. That’s mine. And the fact is it did work. So here is the sentence you have to give. ‘Even though it may have worked, I still don’t want you doing it.’ That requires courage. That requires you going out to the American people and saying, ‘We’re looking at a tradeoff here folks, and I want you to understand the tradeoff.’” I can live with that tradeoff. I can live with the person who makes that tradeoff. Either way. That’s an honorable position. But I felt duty-bound to be true to the facts. That is the moral choice that many on the left will say they are perfectly content to make, and which I consider moral cowardice. If you have KSM in custody and he tells you (as he did) that there are upcoming plots to kill us, and when you ask what, when and where, and he says you will have to wait and see, well I believe you have an imperative to act. I believe that failure to do whatever is necessary to gain that information from him, is moral cowardice, and that your own desire to remain morally pure does not outweigh the call to save innocents. I will have a long piece about this coming out shortly, but it is nice to see the Admiral demolish the lie that waterboarding did not save lives. It did, and if we fail to do it in a future case, the lives of any innocents will be on the consciences of those who can't stomach harsh treatment for murderous scum. It doesn not make us like them, we will not be doing it to advance a religio-political ideology. We will do it to save lives. No comparison there at all.
Read the complete post at http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Blackfive/~3/48bF-oizfF0/the-ethical-dilemma-over-waterboarding.html
Posted
Jul 06 2010, 06:03 AM
by
BLACKFIVE