Stratfor: Torture and the U.S. Intelligence Failure

April 21, 2009 · Posted in Uncategorized

Stratfor has a very interesting article that examines the context, aims and result of torture as practiced in recent years by US intelligence services.

On the scale of human cruelty, these actions do not rise anywhere near the top. At the same time, anyone who thinks that being placed without food in a freezing cell subject to random mild beatings — all while being told that your family might be joining you — isn’t agonizing clearly lacks imagination. The treatment of detainees could have been worse. It was terrible nonetheless.

But torture is meant to be terrible, and we must judge the torturer in the context of his own desperation. In the wake of 9/11, anyone who wasn’t terrified was not in touch with reality. We know several people who now are quite blasé about 9/11. Unfortunately for them, we knew them in the months after, and they were not nearly as composed then as they are now.

No matter where you stand on the issue of government-applied torture as a means of time-critical intelligence, you ought to give this one a read.

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