Counterfactual: A Curious History Of The C.I.A.’s Secret Interrogation Program -- New Yorker
On September 11, 2006, the fifth anniversary of Al Qaeda’s attacks on America, another devastating terrorist plot was meant to unfold. Radical Islamists had set in motion a conspiracy to hijack seven passenger planes departing from Heathrow Airport, in London, and blow them up in midair. “Courting Disaster” (Regnery; $29.95), by Marc A. Thiessen, a former speechwriter in the Bush Administration, begins by imagining the horror that would have resulted had the plot succeeded. He conjures fifteen hundred dead airline passengers, televised “images of debris floating in the ocean,” and gleeful jihadis issuing fresh threats: “We will rain upon you such terror and destruction that you will never know peace.”
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My Comment: This review is essentially an argument against the touted success of the CIA torture/interrogation program.
As to what is my take .... torture has been used throughout history because of its success rate ... not its failure rate. But having said that, has it been effective as a tool in the war against terror? Hmmmm .... I have my doubts. Information probably has been obtained through coercive techniques, but has information been obtained to stop an attack .... count me as one who is on the fence on this one.
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