On Thursday, the New York Times, having played a major part in creating a buzz in the United States about the role that torture and the existence of Guantánamo played in locating Osama bin Laden, with an article on Tuesday entitled, “Bin Laden Raid Revives Debate on Value of Torture,” resolutely stepped back from the result of suggesting that there were even grounds for a “debate” — given that the use of torture is illegal (as well as morally corrosive and unreliable) — by publishing an excellent editorial decisively condemning the “immoral and illegal behavior” of torture apologists after 9/11, including Berkeley law professor John Yoo, who, as a lawyer in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel in 2002, “twisted the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions into an unrecognizable mess to excuse torture” in what will forever be known as the “torture memos.”

The Times also recognized torture as “immoral and illegal and counterproductive,” and stated that, although torture may produce some useful information — amongst all the lies that, for example, plague the military assessments of Guantánamo prisoners that were recently released by WikiLeaks — “most experienced interrogators think that the same information, or better, can be obtained through legal and humane means.”

I would prefer that the last line had read “experienced interrogators have absolutely no doubt that the same information, or better, can be obtained through legal and humane means,” and I would also have preferred the Times‘ editors not to have claimed that the use of torture has led to America’s “inability to hold credible trials for very bad men” — presumably a reference to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his alleged co-conspirators in the preparation and execution of the 9/11 attacks — when the truth is that Attorney General Eric Holder was convinced that a federal court trial could proceed, but was prevented from doing so for nakedly political reasons. Read the rest of this entry »

With the reported assassination of Osama bin Laden, one of the most alarming responses has been a kind of casual and widespread acceptance that the death of America’s number one bogeyman would not have been achieved without the use of torture, and without the existence of Guantánamo.

This is wrong on both fronts, as Jane Mayer of the New Yorker explained in response to an early manifestation of the story, put out by torture apologists Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol:

It may have taken nearly a decade to find and kill Osama bin Laden, but it took less than twenty-four hours for torture apologists to claim credit for his downfall.

Keep America Safe, an organization run by former Vice President Dick Cheney’s daughter Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol, released a victory statement today that entirely failed to mention President Obama, but lavishly credited “the men and women of America’s intelligence services who, through their interrogation of high-value detainees, developed the information that apparently led us to bin Laden.” Read the rest of this entry »

Just four months before the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the reported death of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan ought to signal an end to the “War on Terror” declared by the Bush administration in the wake of the attacks — the “war” that led to “extraordinary rendition,” the establishment of secret American torture prisons around the world, and the imprisonment without charge or trial, and, initially, without any rights whatsoever, of 779 prisoners at Guantánamo, 172 of whom remain.

The reported death of al-Qaeda’s leader also ought to signal an end to the “war” that led to the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, the drone attacks in Pakistan and elsewhere, and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan civilians and of nearly 6,000 US soldiers, but it is unlikely — extremely unlikely, I would suggest — that anything significant will happen, apart from increased security alerts in the West, and — though let us hope not — some sort of terrorist reprisal.

A preservation of the status quo or even an attempt to ramp up the rhetoric of the “War on Terror” — along the lines of Hillary Clinton’s announcement that “the fight continues and we will never waiver” — would be, to put it mildly, a great, great disappointment, as the death of bin Laden ought to bring about, at the very least, an end to America’s occupation of Afghanistan and its expansion by drone attack into Pakistani territory. Read the rest of this entry »