FDD

In Defense of Waterboarding

Mark Bowden, author of “Blackhawk Down” and a longtime student on interrogation methods says that “No one should be prosecuted for waterboarding Abu Zubaydah.” He notes that waterboarding certainly does not inflict pain – in that sense, it is not torture in the physical sense. Instead, it inflicts fear. Is there a valid distinction? He doesn’t quite say. But he adds:

People can be coerced into revealing important, truthful information. … prisoners have throughout recorded time. What works varies for every individual, but in most cases, what works is fear, fear of imprisonment, fear of discomfort, fear of pain, fear of bad things happening to you, fear of bad things happening to those close to you. Some years ago in Israel, in the course of investigating this subject exhaustively, I interviewed Michael Koubi, a master interrogator who has questioned literally thousands of prisoners in a long career with Shin Bet. He said that the prisoner who resisted noncoercive methods was rare, but in those hard cases, fear usually produced results. Fear works better than pain. … It is an ugly business, and it is rightly banned. The interrogators who waterboarded Zubaydah were breaking the law. They knew they were risking their careers and freedom. But if the result of the act itself was a healthy terrorist with a bad memory vs. a terror attack that might kill hundreds or even thousands of people, it is a good outcome. The decision to punish those responsible for producing it is an executive one. Prosecutors and judges are permitted to weigh the circumstances and consider intent.

Which is why I say that waterboarding Zubaydah may have been illegal, but it wasn't wrong.

Bowden’s look at “what was allegedly done to Zubaydah, and why” is here.

 

The Most Useful and Idiotic?

Vanessa Redgrave has long been a woman of the far left. Like too many others of that ideological persuasion, she is now also sympathetic to militant Islamism.

More here.

The “Useful Idiots” of Hollywood

James Zumwalt writes:

As we struggle against an extremist mindset effectively using our Western freedoms against us to win an ideological war, Hollywood assists the enemy. …’

The world has witnessed the violent reaction of Muslims to any criticism of Islam -- a sensitivity observed by Hollywood in limiting its defamatory attacks to non-Islamic religions only. …

It is sad our Hollywood elites fail to see the harm their movies do to our country in the Muslim world today. … The ultimate role they play is of Vladimir Lenin’s “useful idiots” -- Westerners naively aiding an ideology opposed to the very freedoms they so freely exercise -- a role he came to greatly appreciate during his ideological struggle with the West.

More here.

Too Tough? (CM)

Stuart Taylor writes in National Journal:

Should it be illegal for CIA interrogators to try to scare the man into talking by yelling at him? By threatening to slap him? By pretending to be from Egypt's brutal intelligence service? What about turning up the air conditioner to make him uncomfortably cold? Or denying him hot food until he talks, while giving him all the cold food he can eat?

These methods would all apparently be illegal under a rider that the House-Senate conference committee added to the annual intelligence authorization bill. It would bar the CIA from using any interrogation practice not authorized in the Army field manual's rules for military interrogators. This would mean prohibiting almost all forms of coercive interrogation, including many potentially effective techniques that come nowhere near torture and are now clearly legal.

More here.

How Do Nations Die? (CM)

Mark Steyn writes:   

Not by war or conquest, but by a thousand trivial concessions, until one day you wake up and you don't need to sign a formal instrument of surrender because you did it piecemeal. 

More here.   

The Enduring Primacy of National Security (CM)

The Wall Street Journal editorializes that Senators Joseph Lieberman and John McCain have been

stalwarts on Iraq, even when it became unpopular, and despite paying a political price for it. Mr. McCain also argued persuasively for the changes in strategy now known as the surge. In his Friday visit with us, the Senator spoke with authority on all manner of foreign policy. He is a hawk in the Reagan mold on Iran, the larger Middle East and overall defense spending.

Our guess is that this national security record is the main reason for his own political surge. With the success of General David Petraeus's counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq, even some conservatives have taken to arguing that foreign and military policy will become less important in 2008. We doubt it. This is still a post-9/11 country, and voters know they will be electing a Commander in Chief in a world that is as dangerous as it was during the height of the Cold War. In an election against any Democrat next year, Mr. McCain would have little trouble winning the security debate.

More here.

Can We Rely on the NIE? (CM)

Former French intelligence operative Claude Moniquet makes these points:

·         U.S. intelligence services have so far failed to predict the nuclearization of a single foreign nation.

·         They foresaw neither the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 nor the collapse of the Soviet Union two years later.

·         In Afghanistan, during the 1980s, while other friendly services, among them the French, urged the CIA to support more "moderate" tribal chiefs in the fight against the Red Army, the agency relied on the enlightened advice of its Saudi friends and supported the most extreme Islamists. U.S. troops are fighting and dying today for that blunder.

·         The report's most controversial conclusion -- that Iran ceased its covert nuclear program -- is based on the absurd distinction between military and civilian. Iran itself admits -- no, boasts -- that it continues enriching uranium as part of its "civilian" program. But such enrichment can have only a military purpose.

·         With this sleight of hand, though, the intelligence services effectively sabotaged the Bush administration's efforts to steer its allies toward a tougher position on Iran. ·         Paris in particular won't be amused about what appears almost like a betrayal. President Nicolas Sarkozy took a great political risk when he turned around French foreign policy and became Europe's leading opponent of a nuclear Iran. He even warned of a possible armed conflict with Iran -- not the most popular thing to do in France.

·         The agencies say in the report that they don't "know" whether Tehran is considering equipping itself with nuclear arms. …With their multibillion-dollar budget, one might certainly expect the agencies to "know" these sorts of things.

·         What everybody "knows" -- and not only those in the intelligence community -- is that Tehran has made it pretty clear that it wants nuclear arms and that it has very concrete plans for their deployment: to erase Israel from the map. Everybody also "knows" that nuclear arms would make the Islamic Republic almost untouchable, turning it into a regional superpower that could dictate its will on the Gulf states -- the world's suppliers of oil and gas. And everybody "knows" that this is an unacceptable prospect for the Gulf countries, practically forcing them to get the bomb as well. Over time the Middle East, not a very stable region, would become completely nuclearized.

More in this Wall Street Journal op-ed. 

NIE Fallout (CM)

Rafael L. Bardaji, who directs one of the best think tanks in Europe, writes:   

By considering Iran’s nuclear programme to have been halted, the NIE has called an end to a great number of things. First and foremost is George W. Bush’s policy of suffocating the Teheran regime by exercising greater political pressure and imposing stricter sanctions. ….   

Second, the NIE has stripped the White House of its main reason for pushing for further sanctions on the UN Security Council. If securing these sanctions was always going to be a tricky matter, now the balance has clearly swung in favour of those who advocate a more conciliatory approach to Teheran. Very soon the Russians will authorise the delivery of fissionable material for the Busher reactor and nobody will be able to firmly oppose them.   

Third, the NIE has blown away the incipient intra-European consensus regarding policy towards Iran. Whilst London and Paris had remained united in their belief that it was necessary to continue punishing the Ayatollah regime in economic, financial and technological terms, Germany, the European country that has the strongest trade links with the Islamic Republic, has never been that enthusiastic about imposing further sanctions.   

More here.

Be Wise on Kosovo (WP)

From the American Thinker:

Over the past few months a number of Western leaders, including senior United States figures, have lent their support to separating the province of Kosovo from the Republic of Serbia, based on the fact that a majority of the inhabitants in the province, ethnic Albanians, wishes this to be done.

The U.S Secretary of State and European top diplomats have been working on the assumption that the ultimate outcome of the crisis should be to see another new Republic emerging in the Balkans from the rubble of former Yugoslavia. Their participation in the UN-sponsored negotiations, along with Serbia, Kosovo, Albania and Russia, has been heading toward the endpoint of breaking one nation state's territory into two states, ignoring the historical context, consequences, and important principles, with far-reaching unpleasant consequences when these principles serve as precedents elsewhere.

Lebanon's Officers Under Terror Attack? (WP)

On December 12, a top Lebanese Army commander, Brigadier General Francois Hajj, was killed in a Terrorist bombing in the suburb of Baabda southeast of Beirut.  Hajj, 54, who was close to army commander Michel Sleiman and tipped to be his successor, was killed along with his bodyguard in a rush-hour blast. This was the first assassination of a high ranking officer of the Lebanese Armed Forces in decades. The first set of questions is: Why was he murdered, who may have perpetrated this terror attack and what could be the consequences of this dramatic development?

1) General Francois Hajj was born in the Christian town of Rmeish in southern Lebanon. His home village had a history of resistance against Terror forces since the late 1960s. Many of its inhabitants enrolled in the Lebanese Army over the past decades. A number of them were involved in opposition to the Syrian occupation and Hezbollah. Hajj joined the Lebanese army Academy in 1972 and graduated in 1975. He also commanded the Special Forces brigades (Maghawir) before he was promoted to LAF operation chief. According to many sources in Lebanon, he was selected to become the next commander of the Lebanese Army. Hence, the assassination aimed at preventing Francois Hajj from being appointed by the next President, yet to be elected, as the top military man in Lebanon. General Michel Soleiman, who has been nominated by the majority coalition in Parliament for the Presidency was grooming Hajj to become his successor. In addition the slain commander had in past months and years refused to accept Hezbollah’s exclusive areas of control in south Lebanon and in the Bekaa valley. Moreover he was credited for coordinating the Lebanese Army offensive against the Fatah Islam Terror group in Nahr al Bared camp in north Lebanon over the summer. The strike can be understood as a message to the Lebanese Army not to attempt to confront terror groups in the future, including Hezbollah.

Bad Faith (CM)

The Wall Street Journal editorializes:

After three days of screaming headlines about the CIA destroying videotapes in 2005 of the "harsh" interrogation of two terrorists, it now comes to light that in 2002 key members of Congress were fully briefed by the CIA about those interrogation techniques, including waterboarding. One member of that Congressional delegation was the future House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi.

The Washington Post on Sunday reported these series of briefings. While it is not our habit to promote the competition, readers should visit the Post's Web site and absorb this astonishing detail for themselves as reported by Joby Warrick and Dan Eggen in "Hill Briefed on Waterboarding in 2002: In meetings, spy panels' chiefs did not protest, officials say."

Porter Goss, the former chair of the House Intelligence Committee who later served as CIA director from 2004 to 2006 is explicit about what happened in these meetings: "Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing. And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement."

Shadow Government? (CM)

Bret Stephens writes:

Iran didn't abandon its nuclear weapons program. On the contrary, it went public with it. It's certainly plausible Tehran may have suspended one aspect of the program--the aspect that is the least technically challenging and that, if exposed, would offer smoking-gun proof of ill intent. Then again, why does the NIE have next to nothing to say about Iran's efforts to produce plutonium at the Arak facility, which is of the same weapons-producing type as Israel's Dimona and North Korea's Yongbyon reactors? And why the silence on Iran's ongoing and acknowledged testing of ballistic missiles of ever-longer range, the development of which only makes sense as a vehicle to deliver a weapon of mass destruction?

Equally disingenuous is the NIE's assessment that Iran's purported decision to halt its weapons program is an indication that "Tehran's decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach"--an interesting statement, given that Iran's quest for "peaceful" nuclear energy makes no economic sense. But the NIE's real purpose becomes clear in the next sentence, when it states that Iran's behavior "suggests that some combination of threats of intensified international scrutiny and pressures, along with opportunities for Iran to achieve its security, prestige and goals for regional influence in other ways, might--if perceived by Iran's leaders as credible--prompt Tehran to extend the current halt to its nuclear weapons program."

Silent Majority? (CM)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali writes:

    It is often said that Islam has been “hijacked” by a small extremist group of radical fundamentalists. The vast majority of Muslims are said to be moderates.

    But where are the moderates?

More here.

Bin Laden and Future Jihad in Europe (WP)

From the World Defense Review:

What is interesting about the latest audio message of Usama Bin Laden, carried by al Jazeera, is its delayed argumentation. Strangely he is trying to convince the Europeans – seven years later – that they are wrong to follow the United States into Afghanistan.

In his speech – regardless of the ritual investigative questions regarding the location, technology and other details – the central issue appears to be his growing concern with the European role in Afghanistan, and, perhaps through it, the potential growth of that role in the fight against the forces of Jihadism worldwide. Indeed as a reader of the Jihadi strategic mind, I feel that the speech writers (Bin Laden himself or his "advisors") are looking ahead in their perception of future European involvement in the so-called War on Terror. And as al Qaeda's war room has showed in the past, they are skilled at anticipating trends.

Don't we remember how in February 2003, a Bin Laden audio called on the Jihad fighters to begin heading to Iraq, "for Baghdad, the second capital of the Caliphate would be falling into the hands of the Kuffar (infidels)," way before the US Marines brought down the Saddam statue in April.

In a sense, this is how I read this new Bin Laden tape: He is asking the Europeans to leave the battlefield of Afghanistan now, because he is projecting that events may push the nations of Europe to expand further their involvement overseas. The hidden message in his speech is by far greater than the words aired on al Jazeera, or even the entire text his followers are claiming the Qatari-funded channel "didn't air." We'll come back later on the al Qaeda/al Jazeera labyrinth. The question now is about the essence of the message.