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Hawkins writes: "Over four years after President Obama promised to 'look forward, not backward' regarding the CIA's brutal treatment of captives under the Bush administration, the issue has not gone away."

A sign protesting torture. (photo: Reuters/Jason Reed)
A sign protesting torture. (photo: Reuters/Jason Reed)


The Terrorism That Torture Didn't Stop

By Katherine Hawkins, The Nation

10 November 13

 

ver four years after President Obama promised to "look forward, not backward" regarding the CIA's brutal treatment of captives under the Bush administration, the issue has not gone away. The torture debate may fade from the headlines for weeks or months at a time, but it always come back. Last year the trigger was the release of Zero Dark Thirty. A few weeks ago, it was Abu Anas al-Libi's capture, shipboard interrogation and transfer to the United States for trial. Later this year, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) will vote on whether to begin declassification of its 6,000-page report on the CIA's detention and interrogation of terrorism suspects.

Often, debates about torture focuses on whether it leads to high-profile counterterrorism successes: the killing of Osama vin Laden, the capture of high-level suspects like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the disruption of terrorist plots against Los Angeles or London. The public evidence suggests-and according to Democratic senators, the SSCI report will definitively prove-that defenders of "enhanced interrogation" have greatly exaggerated the role that torture played in these events.

In all the debates about whether torture "worked," though, there is another part of the record that is almost always forgotten: the attacks that torture did not prevent. There are no documented cases of "ticking time bombs" being defused by torture. But there are Al Qaeda plots that were not stopped, even when suspects with knowledge of the conspiracy were being brutally interrogated in CIA custody- a fact that has never been fully reported.

READ MORE: The Terrorism That Torture Didn't Stop


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