If readers have just four minutes to spare, and want to hear my thoughts on why it is pernicious that the US media has succumbed to suggestions that there ought to be a “debate” about torture in the wake of the death of Osama bin Laden, and also why it is unacceptable that bin Laden’s death should lead to any sort of defense of Guantánamo, then I recommend this interview with Press TV, under the heading, “Info that led to locating bin Laden came through torture?”

This is how Press TV described my analysis, which follows up on themes I discussed in particular in my article, Osama bin Laden’s Death, and the Unjustifiable Defense of Torture and Guantánamo:

Andy Worthington, journalist, historian and author of The Guantánamo Files from London is worried at the suggestion that the information that led to locating Osama bin Laden came through the use of torture.

He told Press TV’s US Desk on Friday, “There is no circumstance in which it is acceptable to open up a debate on torture as has been mentioned in the US media.” 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 »