Plus, he’s from the CIA, that bastion of democratic values, so of course wouldn’t think of lying or distorting the facts to suit the agenda of a secretive agency with massive amounts of blood on its hands that it wishes to cover up or justify.
Simply because a thug tortured someone and says the person broke and gave information does not make it true, especially, coming as it is from an agency known to murder, kidnap, torture and routinely lie. Nor, of course, does he mention how many others were tortured who were innocent and thus had no information to give.
Even if it is true, the ends do not justify the means. Torture is illegal– and when we cross that line, we lose the high moral ground we’re trying to protect.
Andrew Sullivan has been making the case that torture, more often than not, results in false confessions and bad intelligence. That’s the pragmatic argument against, but he’s also fully aware that to stoop to such inhuman methods dehumanizes us.
The questionm arises: what if 9-11 could have been prevented by torture? Would I save 5,000 lives by torturing one or two bad men? Absolutely not. Because it’s a slippery slope: what if I could prevent terrorism by killing their families? Suspending habeus corpus? Eliminating the right to privacy? Pretty soon, we’re no longer a democratic nation– and the terorists would have accomplished their (stated) goal.
My home state’s motto is, “Live free or die,” and I fully believe that. Freedom entails risk, and as much as I hate to see anyone become the victim of a terror attack (foreign or domestic), I believe that’s preferable to institutionalizing our own brand of thuggery.