What is the purpose of “torture”?
WaPo misses the point:
The ghosts of interrogations past have come back to haunt the Bush administration. This week, the legal officer supervising the military trials at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, dismissed capital charges against Mohammed al-Qahtani, who allegedly would have been the 20th hijacker during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks had he not been prevented from entering the country. The decision has been widely reported as a serious setback for the administration’s quest to bring terrorists to justice.
al-Qahtani was “threatened,” “stressed,” “questioned” and “humiliated.” These are, we are told, “inhumane acts.” And though he lives, unlike the victims of 9/11, al-Qahtani is reportedly a “broken man.” Boo-hoo.
Let’s say we did break him. If the government is therefore unable to prosecute him, so what? We did not interrogate him to collect evidence for trial. We interrogated him to extract information that could be used to prevent another terrorist attack.