Ban Torture

Wednesday night, Jon Stewart interviewed Ronald Kessler who promoted his book The Terrorist Watch: Inside the Desperate Race to Stop the Next Attack. Here’s a transcript of their discussion about interrogation techniques and waterboarding:

Jon: What do you think of the more coercive stuff, the waterboarding and such?

Ronald: I think it was fine in that particular situation. Most of the time the CIA does not want to use waterboarding, they want to use cooperation. But in that case there was a threat that there would be a second wave of attacks. These guys were not talking, they had to get information, and they did, and they stopped plots that would have killed millions of people.

Jon: Does that hurt or help us in the long run?

Ronald: I think, in the long run, if we protected ourselves from another attack, that’s the most importing thing

Jon: Is it?

…

Jon: But the thing about waterboarding that always struck me is, even if it saves some lives, do we give up too much of our soul to do that? Because isn’t the measure of a country how it handles itself in difficult times, not in easy times? It’s very easy to say we abide by the Geneva Conventions, until we found out somebody wants to hurt us, and then, hey man, everybody for themselves.

Ronald: Well, the Geneva Conventions actually allow this because these people are not regular military people in uniforms.

Jon: Geneva Conventions allows you to waterboard people who don’t wear uniforms?

Ronald: Yeah, because these are people who behead people, they don’t abide by Geneva Conventions.

Jon: That might be a technicality. I’m not sure the spirit of the Geneva Conventions is like, hey look, if they don’t have a hat, do whatever you want.

Ronald: Our own special operations forces are in fact subjected to waterboarding as part of their training.

Jon: Because they might have it done to them…

Ronald: Exactly. And it’s not torture in the sense that it’s painful, that’s what torture is defined as. It’s harsh, it’s scary…

Jon: That’s an argument that’s hard to make. Drowning someone is torture… One more thing. The only point I was going to make is we prosecuted the Japanese for waterboarding our soldiers in World War II.

Ronald: It was a different kind of waterboarding, it actually involved…

Jon: What, do we waterboard on Tempurpedics? What do you mean? How different? What kind of water?

Ronald: Using real water as opposed to just covering them in cellophane and giving the impression, but the important thing is…

Jon: So this is like the mock apple pie of waterboarding that we do, not a real type waterboarding thing…

Ronald: …and actually it was only used three times, and not since 2003. Now they’re not going to use it anymore, so it really is moot. The important thing is… we have not been attacked. It’s because of these measures, it’s because of the Patriot Act, even though that’s demonized…

Jon: It’s hard to point to causation because they’re so secretive. I mean it’s… what they’re saying is trust us, it’s because of this, even though a lot of the other things you’ve found out about us have turned out to be less than credible.