Enhanced interrogation by the CIA

As promised – or threatened – the Democrats have released their report on the CIA’s use of enhanced interrogation techniques following 9/11.

I haven’t read it, and probably won’t.

I really don’t care what the CIA did to terror suspects following 9/11.

Muslim terrorists had just murdered thousands of innocent people in the attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the hijacking of Flight 93. The same terrorists were promising to kill as many more of us as they could.

They attacked and killed folks whose only crime was going to work that day or getting on a plane. The terrorists weren’t interested in “fairness,” the Geneva Convention, or human rights. They were only interested in killing as many Americans as possible in the most spectacular way. 

This was not an act of war on the United States. It was an act of terror, committed against a much broader target – Western Civilization.

The terrorists focused on us because they especially despised our American values, our tolerance of other faiths and beliefs, our culture, and our democratic principles. In short, all the things we hold most dear were anathema to them.  A successful attack on us also offered the biggest bang for the buck in worldwide publicity.

So they did whatever was necessary for shock factor and a high body count. They hijacked commercial planes, killed any passengers who tried to stop them, and then flew those planes and their passengers into office buildings killing more innocent people inside.  In the case of flight 93, passengers tried to overcome the hijackers only to perish when this plane hit the ground.

It was a good day for the terrorists. They got what they wanted. 

The wanton slaughter of innocent civilians on 9/11 was a crime not just against us, but against humanity. The perpetrators were monsters who committed premeditated murder, and publicly pledged to commit more such murders of innocents.

Bless George W. Bush for pulling us together when we needed it, and for putting the world on notice that we weren’t afraid, we weren’t intimidated, we were united and would hunt down these monsters, wherever they hid, however long it took. 

First, however, we obviously needed to prevent – by whatever means necessary – another attack by the same or like-minded terrorist organizations.  

This is apparently what we told our intelligence-gathering agencies, and for good reason. We didn’t want another 9/11.  We didn’t want to let these terrorist sociopaths kill even more Americans, especially on our own soil. And so they did what we and Congress asked.     

When our intelligence services swept up some terrorists, dropped some in Gitmo and others in various black ops sites around the world, and subjected them to “enhanced interrogation techniques” most Americans didn’t care. Despite media outing of waterboarding and sleep deprivation as “torture” interrogation tools, most Americans still didn’t care. If anything, most Americans probably felt we were going too easy on captured terrorists.

Of course, there were those at the time who thought we were abandoning our principles by engaging in “torture” as an interrogation tool. They claimed we were violating international law, human rights, and established rules of war regarding the treatment of prisoners. These captured terrorists were also being denied their Constitutional rights.

The majority of Americans weren’t buying it back then. They were okay with dumping suspected terrorists in Gitmo and elsewhere; some would have approved of dropping them into shark-infested waters, to be honest. They were certainly okay with waterboarding these suspected terrorists.  They were okay with harassing them with loud music and sleep deprivation.  They would have been okay with pretty much anything at this time, as long as it helped make Americans safer. 

They ignored the constant whining from enhanced interrogation opponents. They tuned out the common refrains.  “We’re Americans.  We’re better than that. We need to hold ourselves to higher standards.” And also: “If we start acting like them, we’re no better than them.” 

Instead, a lot of us were thinking:  “We’re Americans.  We’re the most powerful nation in the world and now we’re severely pissed.  Your rights as a terrorist?  You have the right to be hunted. You have the right to be interrogated long and hard until you give us what we want.  You have the right to rot in Gitmo until Hell freezes over. You gave up any other rights when you attacked us.”   

Candidly, we wanted to be as safe as possible.  We were willing to do just about anything to be safe.  We were also willing to allow our military, and our intelligence gathering and law enforcement agencies to do whatever they needed to do to make us safe. 

And they did a great job.  Remarkably, they did so with far greater restraint than most of us would have in their place. Yes, terrorism suspects were treated roughly at times, but none were seriously harmed.  Was it unpleasant for the suspects?  Of course, but nobody had electrodes attached to their genitals, were raped, had their fingernails pulled out, or lost fingers or toes – all fairly common interrogation tools where the suspects came from. 

Plus, nobody was beheaded.

I don’t need to read the Democrats’ report to know this.  If any of this had happened we’d have learned of it long before now. 

I didn’t care back then what the CIA did to squeeze information out of the terrorists we captured. And I don’t care now.   

The world is never going to love us. We need to give that up. It’s far better that our friends respect us and our enemies fear us. That’s how the world really works. And that's how we need to conduct ourselves in today's world if we want to be as safe as possible.  

To paraphrase Al Capone:  A kind word and a gun will get your further than a kind word alone.