Outgoing CIA director Michael Hayden defended the use of enhanced interrogation techniques including waterboarding.
ABC News’ Luis Martinez reports: CIA Director Michael Hayden offered a spirited defense of the agency’s controversial detention and interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding, which Attorney General nominee Eric Holder characterized today as “torture.” Hayden said the techniques provided extremely useful information about al Qaeda and have led to repeated successes against the terror network.
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Hayden was not CIA Director at the time that the enhanced techniques were legally authorized for use at secret CIA prisons, but he offered a strong defense nonetheless. “I am convinced that the program got the maximum amount of information. Particularly out of that first generation of detainees.”Referring to 9-11plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and al Qaeda financier Abu Zubaydah, Hayden said he couldn’t conceive of another way for them to have provided useful intelligence, “given their character and given their commitment to what it is they do.”
“You can’t say it didn’t work. It worked,” Hayden said in a wide-ranging farewell interview with reporters at the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Va.
Let’s put aside the question of legality and morality and address the question of effectiveness. Our friend Silke at Hooah Wife is always arguing that “torture”, as she calls it, does not work. We have spirited debates on this issue and others. I have often argued that our intelligence agencies would have to be sadistic to use techniques like that if they did not work and I do not believe that we are a sadistic nation. The CIA is only interested in getting truthful, actionable intelligence and if these techniques were not effective or even counterproductive as Silke says, they would not have been used at all. Director Hayden is probably in the best position to vouch for its effectiveness and has reaffirmed it in this article. I don’t know how you can argue against the facts of success. I think many who argue that these techniques don’t work do so in hopes that you will be swayed by the passion and force of their argument because of their strong distaste for the techniques used. There is a tendency when liberals don’t have the facts on their side that if they say something loud enough and often enough that it will eventually be accepted as truth. I will concede that there are some ethical and political issues worth debating, but I just can’t buy the argument against its effectiveness especially when it is contradicted by the premier intelligence expert in the country.
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