Or Maybe Not…

Unjustifiable Means: The Inside Story of How the CIA, Pentagon and the US Government Conspired to Torture – Mark Fallon (Regan Arts)

16 years after the events of September 11, 2001 and 7 years after Navy SEAL raid that led the death of that events mastermind, Osama bin Laden seems like an odd time for the release of a book calling into question the enhanced interrogation techniques employed during the War on Terror. My only guess is the comment by President Donald Trump that he would bring back waterboarding and with some Trump-esque bravado, “and worse” is what spurred the publication of Unjustifiable Means: The Inside Story of How the CIA, Pentagon and the US Government Conspired to Torture, from former NCIS investigator Mark Fallon.

Fallon, like so many others before him, makes the claim that the U.S. Government’s so-called enhanced interrogation techniques; sleep deprivation, stress positions, being forced to stand for long periods, exposed to extremes in temperature, isolation and waterboarding amount to torture. Fallon, again like so many before him, throws around things like the Geneva Convention’s prohibitions against torture and claims that so-called “torture” does not work, in producing actionable intelligence. Naturally, Fallon’s role as an insider in the war on terror, will have liberals falling all over themselves to foist “expert” status on him.

In the end, what Unjustifiable Means, amounts to is nothing more than one man’s opinion about whether or not the enhanced interrogation techniques amount to torture or not and if they produce the desired results. It’s easy to claim that they don’t work for any number of reasons, most notable is that our secret keepers can’t really lay specific claims to successes without revealing the instances where it clearly worked and the techniques that worked without broadcasting to the enemy the details of the process.

We do know with CERTAINTY, that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of the events of 9/11, was subjected to waterboarding among other approaches and in the process gave up the fact that bin Laden communicated from his Abbotabad hideout through a pair of couriers. That knowledge led to tracking those couriers back to bin Laden’s location, which in turn led to the Navy Seal raid that brought about his demise. Even the three major liberal networks, ABC, NBC, CBS, along with the Washington Post, Time and Newsweek among others concede this point.

As to torture and the Geneva Convention; I hardly think that even long periods of hot or cold conditions, sleep deprivation or being forced to stand for long periods, amounts to torture in the face of what journalists, military personnel or contractors have been subjected to by comparison. While I could never ask the question, I doubt if journalist Daniel Pearl would label that torture. The Geneva Convention claim is ridiculous on its face. Even Fallon himself concedes in the book, that this is a different kind of enemy and to think that terrorists could or would become signatories to an international treaty is absurd. I would bet that the folks who did sign that prohibition would strongly frown on beheading and burning prisoners alive.

While I do salute Mr. Fallon for his service, I am left to wonder when he claims that in his experience the most effective way to garner information and intel from a prisoner is to “develop a relationship” with them. He neglects to spell or give any detail on exactly what that process looks like and how it works. Faced with a life or death situation, I wonder how quickly that process would work and exactly how effective it is when the person you want to develop a relationship with would dearly like to cut your head off if given the chance.