We Interrupt This Blog For Some Momentary Seriousness
(Government • Global)
Look, I’m just a simple guy with a hoe and a shovel and a web server minding my own business out back, but it appears it’s been left to me to straighten out this moronic argument over whether in fact tortue used by the CIA spooks has kept us all safe from the Dark Side.
Naturally, the front man pushing torture as an effective information-gathering method is Dick Cheney, who once believed that his hunting companion was a small bird and shot him in the face.
For some, that factoid alone will have decided this little debate, but for the rest of you, let me repeat something that I don’t think is said nearly enough:
If you own a dungeon, and capture someone who you think might know something you want to know, but he doesn’t want to tell you, then sure, you can certainly try to short-cut the usual methods of gaining this individual’s knowledge by utilizing what even our last president apparently admits really are torture techniques.
Yeah, you can do that. But think of two things before you do.
1. From time to time our soldiers and spooks are going to be captured by our enemies. That’s just the nature of hot or cold war. It happens. And when it does, it will be a whole lot better for our soldiers and spooks if the captors can’t say with conviction “These are the same guys who burned holes in my brother’s nut sack. Lets use the special socket wrench today.”
2. Consider this from your dungeon victim’s point of view. You are busy burning holes in his nut sack or otherwise causing him so much pain that he is focusing on nothing but what he can do to make it stop. Pretty soon he’s going to start telling you stuff. Which might make you as a dungeon owner swell with pride over your mastery of the black arts and all, but consider: How on earth do you know the guy’s telling the truth? Anything, even admitting false confessions about himself and his family and friends, is better than riding that damn water board another couple hundred times. Therefore, by definition, you cannot trust one word of your victim’s “confession.”
Now, back to your regularly scheduled program.
→ B.Dunn, Apr 23, 2009, 06 08 am
It's a Small World After All
(Global • Verbatim)
Beware the wild cards:
In terms of worst-case scenarios for the Joint Force and indeed the world, two large and important states bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse: Pakistan and Mexico.Some forms of collapse in Pakistan would carry with it the likelihood of a sustained violent and bloody civil and sectarian war, an even bigger haven for violent extremists, and the question of what would happen to its nuclear weapons. That “perfect storm” of uncertainty alone might require the engagement of U.S. and coalition forces into a situation of immense complexity and danger with no guarantee they could gain control of the weapons and with the real possibility that a nuclear weapon might be used.
The Mexican possibility may seem less likely, but the government, its politicians, police, and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and pressure by criminal gangs and drug cartels. How that internal conflict turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state. Any descent by Mexico into chaos would demand an American response based on the serious implications for homeland security alone.
How far down does descent have to go before it reaches the chaos basement? And how much difference, really, is there between a terrorist who wants to kill Americans for the disruptive power the act has, and a terrorist who is willing to kill some Americans in order to preserve has right to turn the others into his pet drug slaves?
There is very little chance the Mexican government will be able to establish integrity in its law enforcement agencies, or bring law and order to large portions of the country, any time soon. Official corruption and ineptitude are endemic in Mexico, which means that Mexican citizens and visiting foreigners will have to face the threat of kidnapping for the foreseeable future. We believe that for civilians and visiting foreigners, the threat of kidnapping exceeds the threat of being hit by a stray bullet from a cartel firefight. Indeed, things are deteriorating so badly that even professional kidnapping negotiators, once seen as the key to a guaranteed payout, are now being kidnapped themselves.
If the definition of insanity lies in taking the same actions or employing the same general approach to a problem for decades, yet expecting a different result tomorrow, then the feds and their Drug Enforcement Agency clearly are insane. Legalizing drugs and creating a state-controlled framework for their distribution would result in a lot of complications and problems. It also would save thousands of lives annually, decriminalize addicts and give them a path to treatment and re-entry into society, and bring a very quick end to the drug trade.
I am way too cynical to believe, as the established legalize-drug movement seems to think, that legalizing drugs will somehow stop multimillion-dollar crime-based organizations from committing crimes. But it will cut off their main American source of funding immediately and make them more vulnerable to disruption.
Meanwhile, thinking people in places like Texas and Arizona, and their congressional, representatives probably ought to be worrying about border security in terms of keeping out the Mexican drug terrorists who now control the cocaine and marijuana trade in most American cities, as opposed to continuing to obsess about whether the lawn-care workers or their families all have updated green cards.
→ B.Dunn, Feb 21, 2009, 09 32 am
