Given what has been happening in
the world lately, Marc A. Thiessen's article that came under the title:
“Waterboarding's role in identifying a terrorist” is flabbergasting. It was
published in the Washington Post on December 8, 2014.
Thiessen is telling a long story
of intrigues having to do with the CIA torturing people to extract from them
information that led to other people – who, in turn, led to yet other people –
that were then captured and brought to justice. And it is this ultimate end (or
maybe not so ultimate,) says the author of the article, which justifies the
means of torture that were employed to bring about the long chain of events.
There is one problem with this story; however, it does not rise to the level of
the “ticking time-bomb” theory. And you know what? it does not even pretend to.
You see, the idea of torture as an
acceptable means to an end, is an import from Israel
that was introduced to America
by the CBS program 60 Minutes a number of decades ago. This is when the world
was abuzz with reports that the Israelis were using savage methods of torture
on the Palestinians to extract information from them. And so, the Israelis
called on 60 Minutes to come and do a segment on them so that they may explain
their thinking to an America
that needed to be “educated” on the subject. And this is when the Israelis
unveiled their theory of the ticking time-bomb.
They said that if you become aware
there is a time-bomb planted somewhere, and that it will kill a large number of
people when it goes off, you catch the terrorist that planted it and torture
him till he tells you where he planted the bomb. The Israelis never gave an
incident that matches this description because in real life, things do not happen
this way. And the CIA example that Marc Thiessen is describing does not match
this description either. In fact, he is happy to report – not that some
time-bomb was diffused before it exploded – but that some guy was brought to
justice years after the torture that led to him. Thus, to Thiessen, employing
torture on someone as a means to bring another one to justice, justifies the
original torture. And that's his new Jewish lesson to America .
But wait a minute, the Thiessen
story does not even end as “happily” as that because the guy that was supposed
to represent the end of the line was never captured, says the Washington Post
author. All what happened was that a “Be on the Lookout” was issued on him, and
the lookout remains in effect to this day. Meanwhile, no bomb went off, and
there is not the pretense that a timer attached to a bomb is ticking somewhere
in America
or elsewhere in the world.
And while this is the truth of the
matter according to Thiessen, he still celebrates what he considers to be a
victory because: “It has obviously been many years since CIA officials
extracted those initial leads … But it was CIA interrogations – including
waterboarding – that made it possible to identify and target [the man that got
away] in the first place.”
Because of this, he chides Senator
Feinstein for saying that “nothing of value came from the CIA's
interrogations.” Also, he fails to put into the correct perspective the reality
that “releasing the report at such a sensitive time posed an unacceptable risk
to U.S.
personnel and facilities abroad.”
Instead of drawing the lesson that
torture is a savage act that can turn into a two-way street, and that the
Israeli “education” of America
was a bad thing that must never again be repeated, he tells Feinstein to use a
face-saving excuse to bury the truth.
Burying the truth is a lie. And
that, my friend, has always been a big part of the Jewish education of America . No
wonder America
is in such a mess having been subjected to half a century of Jewish teachings.