A Quote by Bret Stephens
I am sorry that Mr. Cheney, and every other supporter of enhanced interrogation techniques, has to defend the practices as if they were torture. They are not.
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I was a big supporter of waterboarding. I was a big supporter of the enhanced
interrogation techniques.
Enhanced interrogation is not to be considered lightly, but the use of enhanced interrogation techniques does not require moral people to abandon their beliefs. Rather, it is precisely during these difficult times that one's beliefs about life, justice and mercy become indispensible.
It's convenient how everyone who supports waterboarding and torture, or "enhanced interrogation techniques" as they like to call it, have never experienced it themselves. Yet everyone who has, myself included, are firmly against it.
It is not an opinion that "enhanced interrogation techniques" are torture. It is a legal fact. And it is also a legal fact that the president is a war criminal.
Well, the role of our "allies," in my view, is a scandal. 53 other countries cooperated in the kidnapping, "extraordinary rendition," of suspected terrorists to black sites where they were administered enhanced interrogation techniques, which by the way is a direct, literal translation of "verschärfte Vernehmung" right out of the Gestapo manual.
I do support enhanced interrogation techniques. Obviously their value is shining through with respect to the bin Laden killing.
President Bush will go down in history as the torture president. He has now defied a majority of Congress to allow the use of interrogation techniques that any reasonable observer would call torture.
I mean the fact is that some of this information that we have found out that led to Usama bin Laden actually came from these enhanced interrogation techniques.
I worked for George Bush. I'm proud to have worked for him. I think that a lot of the most controversial things we did, that people didn't like and - and criticized us for, things like the terror surveillance program or the enhanced interrogation techniques, were things that allowed us to save lives.
In my book, I detail the critical information we obtained from al Qaeda terrorists after they became compliant following a short period of enhanced interrogation. I have no doubt that that interrogation was legal, necessary and saved lives.
We knew that if the photos of CIA officers conducting authorized EIT (enhanced interrogation techniques) ever got out, the difference between a legal, authorized, necessary, and safe program and the mindless actions of some MPs (military police) would be buried by the impact of the images.
I am sorry to be so blunt, but I do not see much ambiguity here. [Barack] Obama was late to affirm the Egyptian revolution as a democratic movement, and even then he was eager to have installed those military leaders who were known for their practices of torture. And now he is quick to make allies with the Muslim Brotherhood for tactical reasons as well (though earlier that same administration stoked Islamophobic fear about that very political party).
If we have to do enhanced interrogation on terrorists, then I can live with that.
I think enhanced interrogation saved lives.
While the notion that torture works has been glorified in television shows and movies, the simple truth is this: torture has never been an effective interrogation method.
The Iraq War is the largest strategic blunder in U.S. history … On every level - moral, strategic, military and economic - Iraq was a failure. And it was you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who started this war. It is you who should pay the consequences.
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