The Effectiveness Of Harsh Questioning Is Unclear?

According to some people on both sides of the political isle, as well as in the media, the effectiveness of harsh questioning is unclear. They say things like, "The systematic, calculated infliction of this scale of prolonged torment is immoral, debasing the perpetrators and the captives," said Philip D. Zelikow, a political counselor to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who reviewed secret Bush administration reports about the program in 2005. "Second, forfeiting our high ground, the practices also alienate needed allies in the common fight, even allies within our own government. Third, the gains are dubious when the alternatives are searchingly compared. And then, after all, there is still the law."

"The Obama administration's top intelligence officer, Dennis C. Blair, has said the information obtained through the interrogation program was of 'high value.' But he also concluded that those gains weren't worth the cost."

So here we have men from both sides giving their reasons why the "harsh" interrogation tactics should not have been used. I take issue with both statements. First, Mr. Zelikow says that such treatment, for a prolonged period, is immoral. Immoral compared to what? Cutting off the heads of innocent people? Hijacking aircraft and flying them into civilian buildings? Sending suicide bombers into crowded marketplaces to inflict maximum damage? Who is he to say what is immoral and what isn't, especially in the face of what our enemy is doing? Also, Zelikow says the gains are "dubious" when the alternatives are searchingly compared, meaning he thinks less-harsh methods may have yielded the same information. Let me ask you this: if you knew something someone else needed to know, which would make you spill the beans, having a stern talking to, or being deprived of sleep, having water poured on your face to make you feel like you were about to drown, and having your head bounced off a piece of plywood (to note, none of which cause permanent damage)? That's what I thought. Parents give their kids a stern talk when they do something bad. Terrorists are not kids, they are murderers or aspiring murderers. The fact that they made it to the interrogation without being killed on the battlefield should be relief enough.

Then we have Mr. Blair of the Obama administration. He says, though the information gained from the interrogations was of "high value," those gains weren't worth the cost. Did the information save even one life? If it did, then the cost was worth it. Simple as that. We are in a war, do we want to win or not?

Nitpicking and Monday-morning quarterbacking have no place in the War on Terror (oops, I mean the "Overseas Contingency Operation"). If we are going to go back and retroactively punish intelligence officials and past Presidents because of steps they took to keep us safe from terrorist attack, why not go even further back and punish those who decided to keep Japanese Americans in concentration camps during World War II? Wasn't that racially motivated? The point is, where do you draw the line? Where does common sense cease and political maneuvering begin? It disgusts me that we are hanging out to dry those in the intelligence community that did what they were supposed to do to keep us from being attacked again. Have we been attacked again since September 11, 2001? No. How then can the effectiveness of the interrogations be questioned? The "folks" in Washington need to stop playing politics with our safety and start realizing that a time of war requires a different kind of thinking and different kinds of actions.