{"id":13527,"date":"2007-11-08T16:00:34","date_gmt":"2007-11-08T21:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/13527.html"},"modified":"2007-11-08T16:00:34","modified_gmt":"2007-11-08T21:00:34","slug":"forget-the-ticking-time-bomb-scenario","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/forget-the-ticking-time-bomb-scenario\/","title":{"rendered":"Forget the ticking time-bomb scenario"},"content":{"rendered":"

The recent rash of conservatives who’ve publicly announced their support for torture seems to be broken up into two camps: those who support torture in rare, extreme circumstances, and those who think routine torture isn’t worth getting worked up about. Just this week, we’ve seen Cal Thomas<\/a> take up the prior position, and National Review’s Deroy Murdock<\/a> run with the latter.<\/p>\n

Putting aside the cravenness and moral bankruptcy of the torture-is-good crowd, it might be tempting to think of the Cal Thomas\/Antonin Scalia position as some kind of illegal middle ground. Sure, they say, torture isn’t something to be used all the time, but in that ticking time-bomb situation, all bets are off. It’s one of those when-all-else-fails dynamics.<\/p>\n

Except, for the umpteenth time, they’re still wrong. This morning, Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) confronted Air Force Reserve Col. Steve Kleinman, a longtime military interrogator and intelligence officer, with the pending-crisis scenario. Kleinman explained<\/a>, even with the ticking bomb, torture isn’t the right way to go.<\/p>\n

“I’d say [torture would] be unnecessary to conduct our affairs outside the boundaries,” Kleinman replied. His experience “proves the legal and moral concerns to be almost immaterial, because what we’d need to do to be operationally effective” wouldn’t involve torture.<\/p>\n

Which makes sense, considering that U.S.’s SERE instructors teach their students that torture just “Produces Unreliable Information.”<\/p>\n

So while Franks should get an A for effort, Kleinman’s testimony suggests that anyone who’d waterboard in a ticking-bomb case is wasting time that could be used to stop Sheboygan’s imminent destruction.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oddly enough, Franks wouldn’t let it go.
\n
\nWhen the Arizona Republican pressed the point, Kleinman offered a take I hadn’t heard before. We’ve all seen the moral arguments against torture, along with the legal, political, and practical, but Kleinman gave Franks and the committee members a productivity<\/i> argument<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It’s not just what a subject says in an interrogation that an interrogator needs to watch for clues, Kleinman said. The way in which he expresses himself is significant: does the subject fidget? Does he shift in his seat? Does he gesture, or suddenly stop gesturing? All of these non-verbal clues — “clusters, groupings of behaviors,” Kleinman called them — provide interrogators with valuable information to observe what a detainee is like when he’s lying, when he’s being uncooperative, and when he’s being truthful, or a combination of the three.<\/p>\n

But if a detainee has his hands tied, or if a detainee shivers because a room is chilled, then “I don’t know whether he’s shivering because the room is cold or because my questions are penetrating,” Kleinman said. That degree of abuse “takes away a lot of my tools.” It’s one of the clearest explanations in the public record about what torture costs<\/i> professional interrogators in terms of actionable intelligence, as the debate is so often set up as what a lack<\/i> of torture ends up costing national security.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don’t imagine Franks was persuaded — congressional Republicans can be a stubbornly close-minded bunch — but it was helpful for Kleinman to make the case anyway.<\/p>\n

Isn’t it interesting that military professionals, veterans, and interrogation experts always oppose torture, while conservatives who’ve avoided military service seem to think it’s a great idea? I wonder why that is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The recent rash of conservatives who’ve publicly announced their support for torture seems to be broken up into two camps: those who support torture in rare, extreme circumstances, and those who think routine torture isn’t worth getting worked up about. Just this week, we’ve seen Cal Thomas take up the prior position, and National Review’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13527\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}