OCCASIONALLY, apparently unrelated episodes will align to reveal an important truth. So it is with three events reported in the last few weeks. The first happened sometime Wednesday, when another prisoner killed himself at Guantanamo Bay — the fourth suicide since the base opened. As is its wont, the military was tight-lipped, refusing to describe how the prisoner, who was Saudi Arabian, finally escaped from Cuba.
But we know how these things have happened in the past. Last year, three prisoners at the base hanged themselves with strips of knotted cloth ripped from clothing and bed sheets. Each had a ball of cloth stuffed in his mouth, apparently to muffle any reflexive choking sounds as he died.
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For people who have been following these issues, the findings were predictable: The aggressive interrogation techniques adopted by the administration after 9/11 are "outmoded, amateurish and unreliable," as the Times put it. They are a relic of a properly discarded past, abandoned not out of any moral compunction but because of "a more practical critique": There's no evidence they work. Dr. Randy Borum, a Defense Department consultant, noted: "There's an assumption that often passes for common sense that the more pain imposed on someone, the more likely they are to comply." But there is precious little evidence to back it up.
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But more recently, Dearlove has concluded that it is time for "a strategic rethink." Our methods have become counterproductive. Al Qaeda and its viral offspring are thriving, and the position of Britain and the U.S. has become "strategically weak." The problem, according to Dearlove, is that our methods create more terror than they prevent, and it has become "easy for Al Qaeda to recruit its foot soldiers."
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-margulies2jun02,0,7281595.story?coll=la-opinion-center
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