Sorry, but I don’t see the problem

Tman sends us a link to an article from The Atlantic Wire which reports that a former CIA interrogator is making claims that the Obama Administration is more brutal than the Bush Administration was when it comes to dealing with our enemies in the war against terror;

“We don’t capture anybody any more,” Rodriguez told 60 Minutes’ Lesley Stahl on Sunday. “Their default option of this Administration has been to … take no prisoners … How could it be more ethical to kill people rather than capture them? I never understood that one.”

Those remarks by Rodriguez have been largely overshadowed by his more controversial defense of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” which is laid out in his new book out today called Hard Measures: How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives. But what was interesting to observe last night was the overlap in views by advocates of enhanced interrogation (a.k.a. torture) such as Rodriguez and opponents of such tactics, like your Glenn Greenwalds and Ron Pauls, who essentially agree on one important point: It’s better to capture suspected terrorists and draw out information from them than assassinate them without due process.

Yeah, well, that’s what happens when the president decides that he’s not going to give the generals the troops they ask for to fight a COIN war and instead wants to listen to Joe Bite Me and adopt his ninja zombie robots strategy. But the upside is that there are more good Islamists, if it’s a zero-sum game.

Since this administration is averse to effective interrogation, they might as well just kill the bad guys instead of having to deal with that sticky warehousing thing in Guantanamo. It might be a tacit admission that “enhanced interrogation techniques” work and not using those techniques doesn’t do much good.

There’s no word from Tony Camerino on how he feels about this yet, but I’m sure you’ll see him clinging to the wagon somewhere along the line.

UPDATE: My mistake, Alexander/Camerino has weighed in and he still blames the Bush Administration on Huffington Post;

The sad truth is that America is morally bipolar. The country that I signed up to defend with my life has become an endorser of torture, an evader of accountability, and a place where the rule of law is arbitrary, especially for government elites who craft torture programs. The accountability we preach to other countries that is so important for a just society is absent in our own when it comes to torture.

But, he doesn’t mention whether or not he likes the idea of killing terrorists instead of making them talk. He still wants to excoriate the Bush folks for stuff that’s said and done.

Category: Terror War