In what could be the "true colors" move of the entire Bush presidency, George W. Bush announced today that he has vetoed a bill that would ban certain interrogation techniques that have been called torture. These include waterboarding, and the use of electricity and dogs. Why would he do this, you are asking. Well, of course, these techniques have weaned useful answers out of men who clearly have information about attacks that are forthcoming against Americans.
Eh, not really.
I read a book about this a couple months ago that I mentioned in a blog. If you look at the way networks develop in general, you can see that if one person is caught, he will be detached from the group. All of his knowledge of the so-called attack will be minimized and the group will change the plan to eliminate risk that that person will be able to surrender information that will be ket in stopping the attack. They estimate that within 24-48 hours of the capture the information that a detainee gives is rendered useless because he has been disconnected from the network.
We hear the argument often of, "what is torturing one person saves an attack that would have killed thousands or millions?" (i.e 9/11, London, Madrid, USS Cole, etc). The thing is, this had never happened. In reality the only good that has come from an interrogation is the present war in Iraq. Oh, I guess that's not such a good thing. In President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address he said terrorists and al-Qaeda were developing in Iraq. This not-so-true tidbit of information was extracted from a purported terrorist caught in Afghanistan and taken to one of the CIA's secret prisons. Al-Libi delivered a piece of info that, ironically, has led to al-Qaeda's development in Iraq and other global chaos as a result of the US occupation of Iraq.
The point? Ban torture! Tricking yourself into thinking it works doesn't mean it actually works. Members of the House have declared that they will not stop until this bill passes. Let's hope it does, and the innocent can remain free. Because if we torture our suspected terrorists, who will be next domestically?
