Did torture work? (II)

Roque Nuevo says:

No, there is no evidence that torture works. And there is no evidence that it doesn’t work, either.

The main problem with all the critiques of this latest torture stuff is that they all ignore the most important information we got out of KSM and others by using these methods. Peter Bergen alludes to this:

KSM then provided a wealth of information about al Qaeda’s inner workings as well as details about past and future plots. [My emphasis]

The main problem with all the critiques of this latest torture stuff—including Bergens’ own—is that they all ignore this most information we got out of KSM and others by using these methods. Like George Friedman writes (subscription required):   

In the wake of 9/11, anyone who wasn’t terrified was not in touch with reality. We know several people who now are quite blasé about 9/11. Unfortunately for them, we knew them in the months after, and they were not nearly as composed then as they are now.

Sept. 11 was terrifying for one main reason: We had little idea about al Qaeda’s capabilities. It was a very reasonable assumption that other al Qaeda cells were operating in the United States and that any day might bring follow-on attacks. (Especially given the group’s reputation for one-two attacks.) We still remember our first flight after 9/11, looking at our fellow passengers, planning what we would do if one of them moved. Every time a passenger visited the lavatory, one could see the tensions soar. […] For the government, however, the problem was having scraps of intelligence indicating that al Qaeda might have a nuclear weapon, but not having any way of telling whether those scraps had any value. The president and vice president accordingly were continually kept at different locations, and not for any frivolous reason.

This lack of intelligence led directly to the most extreme fears, which in turn led to extreme measures. Washington simply did not know very much about al Qaeda and its capabilities and intentions in the United States. A lack of knowledge forces people to think of worst-case scenarios. In the absence of intelligence to the contrary after 9/11, the only reasonable assumption was that al Qaeda was planning more — and perhaps worse — attacks.

Collecting intelligence rapidly became the highest national priority. Given the genuine and reasonable fears, no action in pursuit of intelligence was out of the question, so long as it promised quick answers. This led to the authorization of torture, among other things. Torture offered a rapid means to accumulate intelligence, or at least — given the time lag on other means — it was something that had to be tried.

Friedman concludes,

The endless argument over torture, the posturing of both critics and defenders, misses the crucial point. The United States turned to torture because it has experienced a massive intelligence failure reaching back a decade. The U.S. intelligence community simply failed to gather sufficient information on al Qaeda’s intentions, capability, organization and personnel. The use of torture was not part of a competent intelligence effort, but a response to a massive intelligence failure.
Bush was handed an impossible situation on Sept. 11, after just nine months in office. The country demanded protection, and given the intelligence shambles he inherited, he reacted about as well or badly as anyone else might have in the situation. He used the tools he had, and hoped they were good enough.[…] At a certain point, the emergency was over. U.S. intelligence had focused itself and had developed an increasingly coherent picture of al Qaeda, with the aid of allied Muslim intelligence agencies, and was able to start taking a toll on al Qaeda. The war had become routinized, and extraordinary measures were no longer essential. […]
If you know that an individual is loaded with information, torture can be a useful tool. But if you have so much intelligence that you already know enough to identify the individual is loaded with information, then you have come pretty close to winning the intelligence war. That’s not when you use torture. That’s when you simply point out to the prisoner that, “for you the war is over.” You lay out all you already know and how much you know about him. That is as demoralizing as freezing in a cell — and helps your interrogators keep their balance.

As for the Knapp piece you cite, his criteria is,

In order to say that torture works, according to me, and according to Lowry, it has to have produced actionable intelligence that was not and could not have been obtained any other way.

How on Earth can anyone ever find “evidence” of such an assertion, which evidently rests upon an “imaginary history,” i.e., what “could have happened” otherwise? Where is the logic in this?

The logic, and the facts, tell a different story: the CIA interrogators couldn’t get the actionable intelligence out of KSM. That’s why they asked for authorization to use the enhanced methods. That’s why Bush/Cheney authorized them. That’s why we’re having this discussion in the first place.

Insofar as KSM goes, Knapp says,

it does appear to be true that Mohammed didn’t begin producing until after the torture stopped.

Or, as Knapp says, as part of the “classic good cop/bad cop routine.” Therefore, to take a page out of Knapp’s (and so many others’) book, Where is the evidence that the “good cop” routine would have worked without the preceding “bad cop?” Common sense says that without the “bad cop” there is no “good cop.” Without the torture, there would have been no rapport to exploit later, etc etc.

Knapp also goes for the “just talk” fallacy in reference to the Heathrow plot and so forth:

If you read the IG report, you will find that yes, these plots were asserted. What’s less clear is whether these plots actually existed.

Again, we’ll never know the answer. Why? Because our enhanced coercion of KSM (and other things) disrupted such plots so that they never got past the “just talk” planning stage. This is of course Cheney’s whole point.Report