During his first days in detention, senior al-Qaeda operative Khalid Sheik Mohammed was stripped of his clothes, beaten, given a forced enema and shackled with his arms chained above his head, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. It was then, a Red Cross report says, that his American captors told him to prepare for "a hard time."
Over the next 25 days, beginning on March 6, 2003, Mohammed was put through a routine in which he was deprived of sleep, doused with cold water and had his head repeatedly slammed into a plywood wall, according to the report. The interrogation also included days of extensive waterboarding, a technique that simulates drowning.
Sometime during those early weeks, Mohammed started talking, providing information that supporters of harsh interrogations would later cite in defending the practices. Former vice president Richard B. Cheney has justified such interrogations by saying that intelligence gained from Mohammed resulted in the takedown of al-Qaeda plots.
But whether harsh tactics were decisive in Mohammed's interrogation may never be conclusively known, in large part because the CIA appears not to have tried traditional tactics for much time, if at all. According to the agency's own accounting, Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times during his first four weeks in a CIA secret prison.
What did we gain from this treatment? According to the same article, the CIA alledges three specific success from this torture: the identification of alleged "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla; the discovery of a "Second Wave" attack targeting Los Angeles; and the break-up of the Indonesian Jemaah Islamiya cell, an al-Qaeda ally. Other CIA analysts and Obama administration officials dispute these successes, but assuming everything adds up, at what cost was this information obtained.
Well, we certainly can't say that the United States never tortured anyone in its care. Every statement by Bush and Cheney to the contrary is now shown to be a bold-faced lie. Now only did we torture this man, but we engaged in a systematic course of torture of detainees while failing to utilize any established methods of interrogation beyond saying, "Tell me what you know."
On some level, I have to be thankful that that the Dirty Bomb plot was uncovered. That plot involved detonating an explosive in downtown DC that would spread radiation, in addition to any immediate damage done by the blast. If the plot had been successful, I could be dead right now, or dying of radiation-induced cancer. I would rather that information have been obtained by more traditional techniques though.
I worry that this will put our soldiers and other operatives further in harm's way. After all, Al Qaeda operatives cut off people's heads in response to a cartoon depicting a Muslim religious figure. What will they do in retaliation for forced enemas, water-boarding and inflicted head trauma?
I do not envy President Obama's position. On the one hand, if he declines to prosecute those involves, it sends the signal to the world that the US condones these techniques, even while publicly disavowing them. If he seeks prosecution of those involved, including the former President and Vice-President, he risks fracturing the country in ways that might not heal for years or even decades.
The best way to avoid this predicament in the future is to ban these techniques entirely.
