John McCain Stands Up

Perhaps the most disgusting aftermath of the killing of bin Laden has been the re-emergence of the Torture Crew from the Bush Administration led by former Vice President Dick Cheney. This is driving professional interrogators and intelligence operatives crazy because they feel this demeans the sophistication and care of their painstaking work over the last several years to locate bin Laden and raises the prospect that all that would come to naught if proponents of torture ever return to power in the United States.

Today in the Washington Post, John McCain entered the debate and reiterated his opposition to torture because it violates American law and values. He notes that prior to the location and killing of bin Laden the issue seemed to have been a definitional debate and , of course, a moral one. Having been tortured himself, Senator McCain knows of what he speaks and he comes clearly down on the side that "enhanced interrogation" techniques adopted by the Bush Administration were torture.

But McCain's op-ed is particularly important on the utilitarian argument. Is torture a justifiable means for gathering intelligence? If you have heard the barrage of former Bush administration officials lately,you might be inclined to answer affirmative.

But McCain dispels this nonsense. he takes on Judge Michael Mukasey's claim that "the intelligence that led to bin Laden...began with a disclosure from Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who broke like a dam under the pressure of harsh interrogation techniques that included waterboarding. he loosed a torrent of information--including eventually the nickname of a trusted courier of bin Laden." As McCain notes, "That is false."

McCain asked CIA Director Leon Panetta for the facts. He said that the trail to bin Laden did not begin with a disclosure from Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times. The first mention of Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti as well as a description of him as a significant member of Al Qaeda, came from a detainee held in another country, who we believe was not tortured. None of the three detainees who were waterboarded provided Abu Ahmed's real name, his whereabouts or an accurate description of his role in Al Qaeda.

McCain goes on to document that KSM produced false and misleading information. He told interrogators that Abu Ahmed had moved to Peshawar, got married and ceased his role as an Al-Qaeda facilitator--all of which was false. According to Senate staff work, the best intelligence gained from a CIA detainee--information describing the courier's real role and his relationship to bin Laden--was obtained through standard, non coercive means.

McCain relates his own experience of being tortured, saying that it sometimes can produce good intelligence but often it produces bad intelligence because a person will say anything he thinks his captors wants to hear if he believes it will relieve his suffering. With McCain, he revealed the role of the starting defensive line of the Pittsburgh Steelers in creating strategy for the Vietnam war. In this case,consider Al Libbi's confessions under torture about the alleged link between Saddam Hussein and bin Laden--something that was absolutely false--and was used to justify a war that cost thousands of lives and trillions of dollars.

To add insult to injury on the Bush Administration, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson appeared again last night on television and was asked what the Bush Administration did after Tora Bora to get bin Laden. He responded that from his time in the Administration and his familiarity of classified material he didn't get a sense it was a priority--in fact it was about 12th of the priorities of the Bush Administration.

As of yesterday, news was that Senate Republicans are going to raise the issue of "enhanced interrogation" with both Leon Panetta and General Petraeus during their confirmation hearings. They want to bring it back.

McCain makes one more salient point. There was at least one consolation of bin Laden's long evasion of justice--He lived long enough to witness the Arab Spring, which is a complete repudiation of his violent ideology.