The above posted discussion of CIA involvement with Gaddafi brought me to consider the practice of extraordinary rendition as a tactic of the War on Terror. Proponents of the tactic argue that terrorists don’t deserve the conventions and treaties that govern the civilized world like The Geneva Convention because their barbarians who think nothing of killing thousands of people. Furthermore, they argue that the operatives we capture have intelligence value that can prevent another terrorist attack against the United States and our allies throughout the world.
I take the opposite view, with all due respect to the well intentioned advocates of extraordinary rendition. If we gain intelligence through these means whose to say its’ of any operational value? Lets take water boarding as an example, the notion of putting a towel over someone’s face and then submerging them in water to simulate the feeling of drowning.
My objection here is quite basic: If you’re a suspected terrorist and you believe your being drowned, your going to confess to anything the interrogators want just to relieve yourself from that situation…whether its’ true or not. You may have actionable intelligence or just fabricated crap made up to make the pain stop. In a world where success or failure is often measured in milliseconds, I’m not willing to take the risk.
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