When Torture is the Only Option

Los Angeles Times ^ | 11/11/2005 | DAVID GELERNTER

[SirLinksalot]

When torture is the only option ...

DAVID GELERNTER

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN's proposed legislation incorporating into U.S. law the Geneva Convention ban on mistreating prisoners. The bill, which bans cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment, passed the Senate 90 to 9. To say it's got momentum is putting it mildly.

But President Bush says he will veto the bill unless the CIA is exempted. Vice President Cheney has led the administration's campaign for the exemption. It's a hard sell; pro-torture politicians are scarce around Washington.

But of course you don't have to be "pro-torture" to oppose the McCain amendment. That naive misunderstanding summarizes the threat posed by this good-hearted, wrong-headed legislation. Those who oppose the amendment don't think the CIA should be permitted to use torture or other rough interrogation techniques. What they think is that sometimes the CIA should be required to squeeze the truth out of prisoners. Not because the CIA wants to torture people, but because it may be the only option we've got.

McCain's amendment is a trap for the lazy minded. Whenever a position seems so obvious that you don't even have to stop and think — stop and think.

SNIP

Michael Levin published an article challenging the popular view that the U.S. must never engage in torture. "Someday soon," he concluded, "a terrorist will threaten tens of thousands of lives, and torture will be the only way to save them."

Suppose a nuclear bomb is primed to detonate somewhere in Manhattan, Levin wrote, and we've captured a terrorist who knows where the bomb is. He won't talk. By forbidding torture, you inflict death on many thousands of innocents and endless suffering on the families of those who died at a terrorist's whim — and who might have lived had government done its ugly duty.

[andyk]

In 1995, the Philippine State Police captured an al Qaeda agent. They knew he was planning some terrorist act, but didn't know what. So they tortured him--the old-fashioned way, right out of the movies with putting out cigarettes on his testicles, breaking his ribs, the whole brutal nine yards. It took two weeks and finally he broke, revealing a plot to hijack 11 airliners. By exposing and unraveling the plot, the torture saved hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives, so it was clearly justified.

This is from a piece written by Jack Wheeler titled "Interrogating KSM". It's a couple of years old, so it's a little hard to find. I've seen it on several sites, so I'll include it in its entirety here. In case anyone is curious where I pulled the text from, it was this horrendous site. At the least, it seems to be an interesting hypothesis. bigeasy, I pinged you because you had eruditely referred to KSM in a previous post.

Jack Wheeler

With the capture of top al Qaeda terrorist Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (known as "KSM"), getting him to disgorge the contents of his brain quickly and truthfully is critically necessary before his network has a chance to vanish undercover.

What, then, would the most efficient and effective form of interrogation be? In 1995, the Philippine State Police captured an al Qaeda agent. They knew he was planning some terrorist act, but didn't know what. So they tortured him--the old-fashioned way, right out of the movies with putting out cigarettes on his testicles, breaking his ribs, the whole brutal nine yards. It took two weeks and finally he broke, revealing a plot to hijack 11 airliners. By exposing and unraveling the plot, the torture saved hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives, so it was clearly justified.

The ethics of torturing KSM should not be an issue. As a practical matter, the question is: How to torture him in such a way that it takes hours, not days or weeks, for him to break; and when he does, you know for sure he is telling the truth.

To start, you don't want to use a so-called truth serum like thiopental sodium. It acts by confusing your memory so much you forget who is your friend and who is your enemy. So you think the interrogator is your friend and you talk--except you can't think or remember clearly. No, you want KSM to be thinking and remembering with crystal clarity.

The best lie detector--although it's not used as such--would be a medical brain-scanning device called a functional MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging). Light years in effectiveness beyond a polygraph, an fMRI scan can distinguish--instantly, in real time--when someone is lying as opposed to telling the truth, as different regions in the brain would light up.

So here's what to do.

Fly in from the United States and set up an fMRI at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, where KSM is being held, and do three things: Place KSM under the fMRI brain scanner; put him on a mechanical respirator; and give him an injection of a paralytic drug called succinyl choline chloride (SCC).

SCC, used as a veterinarian anesthetic, causes muscle paralysis by blocking neuromuscular junction. It causes immobilization without affecting the central nervous system, such that KSM cannot move, yet he is fully conscious and there is no analgesia (pain relief). Injection by an M.D. anesthesiologist of SCC into the nerve tracts leading to the diaphragm will paralyze the muscles needed for breathing. KSM can think, remember, and talk, but he cannot breathe. The mechanical respirator breathes for him. Without the respirator, he would quickly suffocate and die.

The respirator is a CPAP, a Continuous Positive Airway Pressure unit used for treating sleep apnea, with a nasal mask. The unit itself is placed in an adjacent room with a long hose, as no metal can be around the huge magnets of the fMRI. The unit will force air via the nasal passageway into the lungs. His mouth is free and clear to talk.

Now the interrogation begins. KSM is asked a series of questions to which the answers are known (e.g., Are you a Muslim? Would you like a drink of pig grease?). If he lies, the respirator is turned off. Few experiences are more terrifying than that of suffocation. After a sufficiently terrifying period of suffocation, the respirator is turned back on, the question is asked again, and the process repeated until he tells the truth. Once you have the regions in KSM's brain clearly distinguished that light up when he is lying or telling the truth, the serious questioning starts. It will not take long, an hour or two at the most, before KSM is singing like a full chorus of canaries.

After all useful information has been extracted from his brain, KSM should be informed that he will now be killed after his body is smeared with pig fat, that his dead body will be handled by women, and all other actions taken that prevent a Muslim from entering heaven upon death so that he dies believing he will never get the heavenly wine and virgins, but will burn in Hell instead. Upon his execution, there should be no physical remains. The body should be cremated and the ashes scattered to the winds.

Then, the word can be spread. All members of al Qaeda must know that once captured, their terrorist brethren will betray their comrades and that their fate will be ashes and Hell. The only way to win the war against terrorism is to terrorize the terrorists into giving up their evil jihad.

Jack Wheeler is president of the Freedom Research Foundation and editor of ToThePointNews.com.

[Republic of Texas]

When torture is outlawed, only outlaws will have torture.

[Txsleuth]

I agree with you...and I am getting more and more angry with the Senators that voted for McCain's amendment...

NOW..he is going on every single TV show and radio show, hawking his book about "heros"...but, bragging about this...

NOW...doncha know that Al-Zarqawi is just tickled pink to have this blowhard doing this??

[secretagent]

Thanks for the book review - "The Interrogators" sounds good.

[bray]

I see no difference between InSane and Kennedy when it comes to underiminging the CIC and our military. We are at war and which means this is putting our soldiers at risk so a bunch of politicians can feel good about themselves. These are the worst terrorists and only understand one thing.

Pray for W and Our Troops

[Txsleuth]

I just watched a debate on Fox between Martin Frost and John Kasich....and they were debating whether Bush had chastized the dems in his Veteran's Day Speech yesterday...

FIRST, Frost said that Bush shouldn't have singled out the dems as undermining our troops because.."NO DEMOCRAT had ever said anything to undermine the war""...I couldn't believe he said that...

THEN, he said that he was still in the House when the vote for the war was brought up....and he said that he KNOWS that Bush lied about the need to go to war....

Worse though, John Kasich, who was also in the House as a Republican, sort of agreed with Frost that Bush was TOO HARD in his speech on the democrats.....grrrrrrrrrr

[Txsleuth]

ping....check this out..

[Txsleuth]

Are you ready for another round of debate tonight?? LOL

[TigersEye]

Buncha traitors IMO and I'm dam sick of 'em.

[concretebob]

Thank you..but see Post 17..I had this one early..

[Txsleuth]

OOOPS....sorry, I didn't go back all the way in the thread, like I should have.

Oh, well...I thought I was getting you to a thread that wasn't so..."boisterous"...LOL

[JNL]

But....I don't quite agree with the whole traitor angle and ya know what it doesn't play anymore.

The speech while good was badly timed and there will be a price. While we spend the whole weekend patting ourselves on the back the DEMS are re-grouping and are gonna hit back hard and guess what they are gonna say:

"You just called 50-60 % of Americans traitors because they think the war is going badly"..."We were wrong to support this war (see pretty boy Edwards play out this meme) and our intelligence was not what Bush had.

The whole traitor thing is growing tired. Sure we can all sit here say it and feel pretty good but in the end we are speaking to an empty room.

Rather than pushing the facts (Bush tried badly but it all got lost in this "you are against us (not a true American) if you don't support us" garbage.

Overall I gave the speech and the new hard hitting direction an F.

Hit with facts and back it up.

[TigersEye]

I thought that Veteran's Day was great timing for the speech. (I'm assuming that you were referring to Pres. Bush's speech.)

"You just called 50-60 % of Americans traitors because they think the war is going badly"...

First of all I don't care if it's 95%. Secondly, I didn't call anyone a traitor for saying the war is going badly. I was referring to the treasonous bastards who keep pushing the lie that "we were lied into this war." Thirdly, the war isn't going badly the treasonous press simply refuses to report the successes that are happening there. If all of these people were put up against a wall and shot tomorrow I wouldn't shed a tear.

I only heard excerpts of "the speech" so I can't comment on it.

[GGpaX4DumpedTea]

"You're trying to pin him down with facts and get him to be specific instead of just making random ambiguous accusing statements lacking logic and reason."

Yup, shame on me! And you know, so far I have no reply from 'Mr Disgusted'. Guess he just doesn't want to be logical and reasonable. :)

[GretchenM]

There is a vast difference between Ho Chi Minh's thugs torturing John McCain just for the sake of torturing him along with their other prisoners,
and American operatives or allies using rough techniques to extract information that will prevent thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of others from being killed.

[concretebob]

Thanks for the effort..you're one of the "good guys"..IMHO

[lawnguy]

Mitch Rapp uses it to good effect.

[Txsleuth]

Thank you...and I appreciate you pinging me to really interesting threads...

[Txsleuth]

I have to go with Tigerseye here....

Bush knows that the troops over in Iraq and elsewhere get the news...and he knows that all they have seen and heard for the last few weeks is the dems wanting more and more investigations into the "lies" that took us to war in Iraq...

Would you want even one troop, over in Iraq, or even getting ready to go to Iraq, to question every single second if their CIC was a liar...which in that case, would mean that he didn't care that over 2000 of their compatriots died for a "lie"???

They need to be reassured that their fight is a righteous fight...and who better to let them know how much it means to America and our security, than their CIC???

[LPM1888]

I'm not concerned about terrorists, I'm concerned about America. When we start using the tools of dictators and fascists we are lost. This has to stop now.