EIT3: Was it Necessary?

Fact: since September 11, 2001, the United States government has engaged in the capture, detention (without charge) and/or interrogation of hundreds of people--including at least one citizen of the United States. Some of the "enhanced interrogation techniques" employed on these detainees are believed by many people to constitute torture. Let's assume for the moment that the "is it torture?" question--with all the consequences attached--is settled somehow and the answer doesn't bear upon this discussion. Let's also assume for sake of argument that these methods did result in intel that saved American lives. Disable your morality plug-ins and just answer:

Was it Necessary?

• Yes, for at least two reasons. The first is: we were faced with real life ticking time-bomb scenarios. There were imminent attacks planned on the citizens of the US and we had to secure intel as quickly as possible to stop them. Without use of these techniques, we would have had no other way to prevent another 9/11. The real tragedy in all of this is that there were no successful attacks since 9/11 that we could have prevented--but decided not to, because we wanted to be "soft" on the terrorists we've captured, maybe read them Miranda rights and offer them tea and cookies. This is how Obama wants to treat the terrorists, and he'll reap the whirlwind when a dirty bomb goes off in, say, Chicago. Secondly, we had to let the entire world know that we mean it when we say "any means necessary". We mean business and the terrorists need to know that. Do you think our enemies will treat us kindly when they capture us? Or will they brutally torture us before our inevitable beheadings?
  
• No, we have it on great authority that there were far more productive interrogation methods available that do not in any way compromise our princples. Primary among them: relationship-building. Develop a rapport with the detainees and treat them with respect as human beings. The long-term effects of this approach not only have tactical advantages (such as reliable, actionable intelligence) but also operate strategically (by invalidating the fundamental beliefs and rationalizations of our would-be enemies). We have a body of discussion in this area that comes directly from the mouths of former interrogators. We can also point out that the FBI is really well-equipped with non-compromising interrogation techniques--but they left the building, and in their place the CIA and independent contractors took over, using these Bush administration-sanctioned techniqes without first exhausting all other options. Can you really believe that these methods were truly the option of last resort? That is, can you tell me that the most powerful and sophiticated military and intelligence organizations in the history of our species have their hands completely tied if they can't use the waterboard?
  

This question is meaningless: at least, as stated. Of course it can't be "necessary" in the sense that "there was no other set of methods available in all the imaginings of God and Man that could possibly be employed to achieve any result." That's horseshit. A "fairer" restatement of this question might be more along the lines of "Were these the only techniques that were practically available that produced actionable intelligence in a timely manner that prevented lethal attacks on US citizens?" That is, were all other methods that could be productive and timely completely impractical? Or were all other productive and practical methods insufficient to get the necessary intel in time? And so on.

Imbalanced and Unfair: I give the "Yes" position short shrift on this one. The simple reason is: I have yet to hear any (cogent) arguments behind that position. In fact, most of the "Yes" arguments I've heard are actually answers to the "Was it Effective?" question. When asked if something was necessary and your answer is essentially, "Yes, because it worked", then you're simply not answering the damn question. Example: triggering a global nuclear holocaust may also "work" as a method for preventing future terrorist attacks on the US--in the sense that several people who are in fact planning attacks will become shadows on a few walls--but you're a fucking idiot if you claim that it's "necessary". To scale back, I'll only give you "necessary" if you can argue that there simply were no other options--that this was indeed a last resort.

The Ticking Time-Bomb: Fuck Jack Bauer. There is some strange "24" fantasy that bleeds from the Fox channel to the Fox News Network. Maybe a reallocation of personnel after the writers' strike or something. We are being told (implicitly) that there was a nuke in L.A. and the only way we could disarm it by 8am the following day was to tie some guy to a chair and hit him repeatedly with wall current. I might add here--off the topic of this particular question--that torture in "24" developed a history of misapplication as well. I noticed a theme by season three or so:

Bauer negotiating with an actual terrorist: "Give us the information we need. I can get the President on the phone and give you a full pardon."

Bauer negotiating with someone who becomes suspect but doesn't actually know anything: "Everybody else: leave the room."

End notes: This is mostly a lead up to the real elephants in the room.

Sincerely,
Jack "NFK" Bauer, a real American hero

EIT2: Was it Effective?

Fact: since September 11, 2001, the United States government has engaged in the capture, detention (without charge) and/or interrogation of hundreds of people--including at least one citizen of the United States. Some of the "enhanced interrogation techniques" employed on these detainees are believed by many people--myself included--to constitute torture. Look past this. Forget about whether it was technically torture, whether it was necessary or just or even right. Don't even consider the actual vs. alleged severity of these methods. Just put on your cold, rational thinking caps and answer:

Was it Effective?

• Yes, this interrogation program is the very reason that we have not seen terrorist attacks on American soil since 9/11. Dick Cheney and former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen have told us that there are specific cases (such as the attack planned on the Library Tower in L.A.) where these interrogations led to critical information--information that ultimately saved American lives. In fact, we know that these techniques work from a captured al-Qaeda member, Abu Zubaydah, who told us that members are premitted to tell interrogators everything once they reach the limits of their endurance. And--perhaps most importantly--these techniques send a message to would-be terrorists: If you would be our enemy and seek to harm us, expect the gloves to come off once we grab you.
• No, for starters because we can point to numerous studies and reports explaining that we really don't gain much by getting information via duress. It doesn't follow that people who really have the information we seek will give it up due to these techniques. Moreover, if the incentive is to keep talking, both those who do and those who do not have valuable intel are likely to...well, just keep talking. Which will yield a lot of extraneous information and false leads, with no way to determine which items are worth pursuing. The CIA has wasted plenty of time and money chasing its tail in foreign countries due to the "intel" garnered from this program. We also have trouble believing that these techniques were effective every time they were used--if they were even effective in the first place. How "effective" can your 81st waterboarding be, seriously? Or even your 20th? We can go so far as to say that torture (even the appearance of it) is indeed effective--at making Americans less safe. Our treatment of detainees has been the top al-Qaeda recruiting tool for years, and our standing on the world stage has been eroded. This is a huge foreign policy black-eye for us. Our allies are now less likely to help us protect our interests. Do we really want to go it alone?

This question is not clear: It asks if torture (or "torture-like" or "enhanced non-torture techniques, because we have a good lawyer") techniques are effective. It's up to the respondent to determine what "effective" means--effective at what? There are in fact at least two "whats" that I deliberately confound in the above; I use "Was it effective?" to mean:

1. "Was it effective in procuring timely and accurate intelligence that directly saved the lives of American citizens?", as well as the more general
2. "Was it effective at reducing the risk of lethal attacks against Americans?"
   

This lack of clarity about an apparently simply question illustrates a recurring and critical fault of most contemporary political debate.

End notes: We still lack the information we need to really make an assessment of the efficacy of these techniques. Again, I'm talking about this as a subject divorced from the other questions--whether it was "right" or not, whether the ends justify the means, and so on. I'm not aware of any declassified info right now about specific cases where these techniques gave us actionable information that directly resulted in American lives saved. However, I do think that any claim in the family of "this is why we haven't been attacked since 9/11" is outrageous on its face. How can you possibly know that for certain? Did you visit the parallel universes where Gore won in 2000, the 9/11 attacks still happened, we failed to drown intel out of some guys, AND we were attacked again and again? Okay, sure, maybe you did, but can you honestly tell me--really--that you check on all of those parallel universes?

As a side note, the Thiessen/Cheney claims feel incredibly disingenuous. At least one of them may have had access to the details of real-life "ticking time-bomb" scenarios that were defused with the aid of "enhanced interrogation". But we've yet to get any real reporting on this--we simply don't know. And because their credibility and biases are known quantities, I feel it's reasonable to suspect that may have been no such situations. The classified "memos" that support their argument may not even exist. Or the rest of the intel in these documents may actually be incredibly sensitive--so that it really would be a security risk for the Obama administration to declassify them. Basically, I don't feel these guys should be allowed to defend a position based on information that no one else published (or perhaps even possesses) for the exact same reason that they were allowed to proceed without public scrutiny in the first place: the shroud of secrecy surrounding the Bush administration.

I do generally have trouble with this one. I know in my heart of hearts that if I found myself tied to a chair in some CIA black site, my first words would be something like: "Please list any topic of interest and I will rattle off every damn thing I know about it. You can put the pliers away." But this situation is different. I have no information worth even tying me up for; also, I am a coward.

Not the face!
NFK

Was is Torture?

Fact: since September 11, 2001, the United States government (including intelligence and military agencies, with express top-level permission from the Bush administration) has engaged in the capture, detention (without legal charges) and/or interrogation of hundreds of people--including at least one citizen of the United States. There are still many questions regarding the nature of the so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" employed. This is one of them.

Was it torture?

• Yes, if you adhere to the definition used in the US-endorsed Geneva Conventions. According to this definition, torture is defined to be anything that the Red Cross proclaims to be torture. You can question the validity of the data used by the Red Cross to render this determination; you can even question the validity of the conclusion itself. However, it does not change the facts that the Red Cross has deemed these activities to be torture and this is the very definition of torture within the Geneva Conventions.
• No, because the laws of the US supercede the clauses of the Geneva Conventions for our purposes. There has been a legal analysis of these interrogation techniques (the memo penned by Jay Bybee) that determines that they are not "torture" under the laws of the US. Moreover, it's not even clear that the US laws and the Geneva Conventions conflict in this matter, because the Geneva Conventions may not even apply.
• Maybe, because there seem to be a lot of opinions advanced--both domestically and abroad--that what was done was either torture or at the very least highly questionable. This question stands unanswered--and will remain unanswered until tried in the US court system (which is, after all, our Constitutionally-mandated interpreter of US laws). If the final determination of the courts is that this was indeed torture, the question is settled. If not, then it raises a bigger question: are we prepared to present to the world the argument that the Geneva Conventions apply to the United States only when we say they do?
  

This question is atomic: It only asks whether we're dealing with actual "torture" or not. The answer does not depend upon opinions as to whether "it was necessary" or "it made us more/less safe"--even though I find a great deal of the discussion confounds this seemingly-simple question with others in that vein.

This question is important: As of this morning, I'm still seeing commentary made and conclusions drawn that presuppose the answer to this question.

End notes: I believe that this exact question is one that must be tried within the US court system. I do not have the legal authority to answer it. Here are a few of the billions of people who also do not have the legal authority to answer this question: the callers to the Washington Journal; the pundits, reporters and other talking heads; any members of any "think-tanks"; anyone within a branch of the US military; any member of any US intelligence or defense agency; the US Congress; any members of the current or prior Justice Departments; the underlings of the current or prior presidential administrations; former Vice President Dick Cheney; former President George W. Bush; President Barack Obama; Judge Jay Bybee. The last member of that list may in fact have the legal authority necessary--in the weird event that a specific case is brought before him and he (spectacularly!) fails to recuse himself from it.

Regardless of the outcome, I am forced to recall a maxim of modern (post-Enron) accounting, which goes something like: "The appearance of impropriety is just as bad as actual impropriety."

Since this is an open question, the concise statement uttered by George W. Bush--"We do not torture."--is particularly intriguing. Did he lie? Did he present a fact as determined by a legal expert? Or was he simply stating a personal legal opinion?

Is that a caterpillar in here?
NFK

Why the Tax Codes Rule

A year and a half ago I dumped a grand into a 7-month CD. Just to see. I had the money kicking around at the time, and I was sick of getting sales pitches from the tellers at my Super Friendly Bank, We Love Your Business *smile*!

At their maturity, I had to go and physically close the CD at a local bank branch. Waiting in line, sitting around. Not allowed to close it out using the Interwebs (or even the telephone) technology. And of course I actually went in a few weeks after their maturity, because who has time? Counter-intuitively, closing a CD out a few weeks late results in a monetary penalty--in fact, to clear things up, this penalty is accounted for as an "early withdrawal fee."

Result

• Interest: +$32
• Fee: -$21
• Net gain: +$11
  

Okay, so that was funny. I laughed. At the banker. And left. End of story. I Love Your Business Too *smile*!

Except of course that interest is taxable. I know, the bank sent me an official-looking form and everything. And I thought it would be fun to deduct the fee. But there wasn't a space for it on the 1040EZ...was there?

Comparison

• 1040EZ: 13 lines. Taxes the interest, won't let you deduct the fee.
• 1040A: 48 lines. Same problem.
• 1040: 76 lines...and the fee is finally deductible.

So I upgrade to the full 1040. 63 extra lines, some additional puzzling over the extra instructions and definitions (I'm thorough. Besides, how else would I know if I have a tier 1 RRTA tax withheld? What's a tier 1 RRTA tax?). But with all those extra lines, one of them let me finally fill in my single extra number. Federal taxes defeated.

Ah but that's not all. My state cares about this interest income as well. Does it have a space for it? Why yes it...doesn't. Turns out my bank is actually based in a nearby state, not this one. So I need an extra schedule to correctly claim my interest income. The schedule is a few dozen cryptic lines big. After some consternation, I determine which lines matter. There are 5. In them each, I fill the exact same number: $32. I believe I'm also directed to a separate worksheet to determine one of these lines. In this worksheet, I enter a bunch of numbers, calculate some adjusted gross income figure that's special for the state, do some other gyrations. Perform some min/max reasoning which I would have instantly deduced in one line with the right placement of carats and parens (but actually took quite a bit of decoding: "If line 6 less than line 5 is greater than line 2, but less than $1500, skip lines 7 and 8 and enter line 3 on line 9...").

So much for claiming my apparently out-of-state interest income. The deduction is less work: An additional schedule, and I only have to fill 3 of its 40 lines with the number: $21.

Result

• Net extra financial numbers (compared to 2007): 2
• Net financial gain from these numbers: $11
• Net extra work: over 60 extra federal lines to figure out to skip, two additional state schedules to enclose, scads of additional instructions to decode enough to determine that I can skip them. And the repeated application of the numbers $32 and $21.
  
• Net tax impact of my CD experiement: $0

Happy fucking Tax Day,
NFK