How Many American Lives Were Lost Because of Torture?

By BJ Bjornson

The torture-apologists are working themselves into a lather today over reports that water-boarding KSM prevented a terror attack on the Library Tower on the west coast.  Timothy Noah helpfully debunks that story by noting that the Bush administration had already claimed to have disrupted said attack as much as a year before KSM was even captured.  And as Ron noted earlier, even if this story were true, that’s no guarantee that the information couldn’t have been acquired without the torture.

And far more to the point is that we also know that the torturing of captives by the U.S. cost American lives.  For those with a short memory, (or in the case of the apologists, a selective one), may I point you to the words of the man responsible for tracking down Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq.

I know the counter-argument well -- that we need the rough stuff for the truly hard cases, such as battle-hardened core leaders of al-Qaeda, not just run-of-the-mill Iraqi insurgents. But that's not always true: We turned several hard cases, including some foreign fighters, by using our new techniques. A few of them never abandoned the jihadist cause but still gave up critical information. One actually told me, "I thought you would torture me, and when you didn't, I decided that everything I was told about Americans was wrong. That's why I decided to cooperate."

Torture and abuse are against my moral fabric. The cliche still bears repeating: Such outrages are inconsistent with American principles. And then there's the pragmatic side: Torture and abuse cost American lives.

I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me -- unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans.

So even if the story about preventing another 9/11-type attack was accurate, we would have only broken even on the number of American lives lost and saved by these torture tactics.  Since it isn’t, the balance sheet is heavily weighted to the lost column.

Torturing and abusing prisoners resulted in the deaths of thousands of American soldiers. Still think its worth it?

Comments

[The Pale Scot]

Kill him! ? Then torture him!

Send him to Detroit!.

No! No! Not Detroit!

from Fistful of Yen.