Greg Miller on the CIA’s Failure to Evaluate Torture
Just when I’d pretty much decided that the LA Times was useless, they run a front-page article today by Greg Miller that hits the sweet spot of my current obsession with torture justification: CIA reportedly declined to closely evaluate harsh interrogations.
April 27th, 2009 at 6:53 am
Well, golly gee, maybe they didn’t do a study to determine what wasn’t working because the interrogations were working, they have said 60% of what we knew about the enemy command structure came from these interrogations. Numerous plots were foiled. No successful attack on American soil. Why would you study what isn’t working about something that is working?
April 27th, 2009 at 11:29 am
shcb, you lost all credibility by supporting the concept of American torturers pulling out fingernails.
Are you sure they said 60% and not 51% ? Wrong-wing math strikes again.
Thankfully, the debate now is far above the knuckledragging quasi-intellect of neanderthal GOPs who provide cover for clearly illegal, immoral and highly UN-American acts of torture.
For those slow on the uptake, the question is not whether torture yields information, the question is why in the world American leaders would adopt such an illegal policy when it is known by experts to be far LESS effective than conventional interrogations and on top of all that it badly undermines greater goals such as promoting democracy, winning the hearts and minds of oppressed peoples, and gives tin-pot dictators the rationale that their torture of American persons is little different than American CIA torturers of their own people.
Heaven or hell? Torture is one of those issues that sorts out where you are going after this life.