A Renewed Debate

Today, the AP announced that the Pentagon has said that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has confessed to masterminding the 9/11 attacks in a secret military tribunal in Guantanamo Bay. This will undoubtedly re-spark the torture debate. Supporters will exclaim that Khalid confessed, so torture is an effective tool and must be considered. Let us examine that statement. A very good initial examination of this question comes from Jed Babbin in The National Review - even though he proceeds into an ill-conceived attempt to separate techniques such as sleep deprivation from "torture", and then a rambling discussion regarding chemical-assisted interrogation. However, in sticking to the parts of the article that are worth reading, Babbin references the initial torture debate, after the initial capture of Khalid. Pat Buchanan rushed in headlong, writing that though "positive law prohibits it…the higher law, the moral law, the Natural [law] permits it in the extraordinary circumstances such as these." ... Under the dizzy Dershowitz (Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz) theory, the Constitution and federal law should be changed to allow torture of terror suspects when authorized by a court approving a "torture warrant," in the manner of a search warrant or a wiretap order. Here, we have both Right and Left wing pundits supporting torture. However, the effects and value of torture is very suspect. The important part of the Babbin post is the following: Consider both Khalid Sheik Mohammed and the newly captured Yasir al-Jazeeri, another high-ranking al Qaeda operative. Neither should be tortured, and not just for moral reasons. Torture is no foolproof method of extracting information from the unwilling. You are as likely to get Mohammed to confess to the Kennedy assassination as you are to get useful information from him under torture. People will say anything to stop the pain. And now, we have a confession - made in a secret military tribunal with no non-military witnesses present. Is this the "national security" value we get from lowering ourselves to the baseness of torture? What, exactly, does a confession, coerced or not, gain us? I expect our leadership to trumpet this confession as a major victory in the war on terror, and will most likely use the confession against Khalid in his military tribunal (pseudo-trial). As in Saddam's "trial", the verdict will almost assuredly be guilty, the sentence capital, and Khalid will be executed on evidence that was coerced from him by US military personnel in Guantanamo. And the improvement to our national security will be ... nothing.