Post- 9/11 Interrogations

This week's release of information about the CIA's torture glosses over something fundamental about the interrogations.

Kurt Eichenwald, in 500 Days: Decisions and Deceptions in the Shadow of 9/11 recounts how American interrogators worked at Guantanamo Bay. Reading it, I was struck by how odd their assumption was about the folks they'd captured. The prisoners at Guantanamo were - most of them - soldiers of some kind. Many were from Afghanistan, a place where 92% of the people don't even know about 9/11. (This is not a place where the average person watches the evening news or surfs the Internet for investigative reporting. And where - between Russians and the Taliban - they've had their own atrocities to deal with.)

Imagine that al-Qaeda soldiers captured some American soldiers, took them to an island in the Middle East, and interrogated them about Bush's secret plans for fighting Islam or details about Cheney's underground bunker. It wouldn't even matter if these al-Qaeda interrogators were polite when they asked questions of the American soldiers. It would still be stupid. It wouldn't matter if the al-Qaeda interrogators offered the Americans access to American football games and BBQ or tortured them. No kindness or threat would change the fact that these men were ignorant of what al-Qaeda wanted to know.

These prisoners at Guantanamo Bay were largely low-level soldiers who were nonetheless interrogated daily, as if they had great secrets to reveal. They didn't. The men working at Guantanamo were under pressure to produce results and they tried everything from kindness to threats to torture and nothing worked for the simple reason that the men they'd captured didn't know anything useful.

As with so much in the wake of the Bush Administration's reaction to 9/11, the folks executing policy were struggling to build a skyscraper on a foundation of reinforced cardboard. Even on a good day, when you're given an impossible task, what you try may be unreasonable. And on really bad days, what you try may be immoral.

The Deification of the Dead

Those of you offended by irreverence may want to skip this post, but I'm starting to get seriously annoyed at the deification of the dead from 9-11.

Today family and volunteers read the names of the victims of 9-11 in New York. Obama went to the Pentagon and said, "In pursuit of Al Qaeda and its extremist allies, we will never falter."

Nonsense. All of it. Every year, about 2.5 million Americans die. Some violently. Some in stupid accidents. Some gracefully of old age. Some from treatable diseases and some of bad treatment. There are two things true of this: deaths usually leave grief in their wake and over time people move beyond that grief.

If you lost a loved one on 9-10 in an auto accident or to cancer or homicide, your grief is private and you have the option to dwell on their death or to move on each year as the anniversary comes. You are not forced to engage in the pageant of national mourning for cameras each year, as you would be if you had lost a loved one on 9-11 to a terrorist attack.

The people who died in those buildings were no different in character than the roughly 20 million Americans who have died since that event. Some were rich and some poor. Some were annoying and some calming. Their families have already received an inordinate amount of money from Congress for having had the wisdom to lose their loved one in a national tragedy rather than something less outrageous.

I flew today on 9-11 and pulled into the gate in San Diego at 9:11 east coast time. Maybe I just had too much 9 11 today. I now return you to the mainstream media and people like Rush Limbaugh and Keith Olbermann, suave media experts who are smart enough to save their outrage for easy targets, like politicians.

The Turds in Northern Iraq

Bernard once again felt obligated to dine with his sister Mattie and to bring me along as a buffer. Bernard intentionally chose a place with a confusing menu. "She gets so distracted by the foods she doesn't know, she sometimes forgets all about sharing her political opinions with me," he said. His subterfuge worked - but only for awhile.

“Of course there are problems in Iraq. It’s all because of those Turds in the north,” she abruptly announced, folding her hands as if this settled the matter.

“Is she talking about the Shiites?" I whispered to Bernard, feeling confused.

"No. I think she's confusing the Turks and Kurds," he whispered back. "Who?" Bernard asked Mattie.

“I’m sure I heard Bush say it was the Turds in Northern Iraq who were intentionally de-stabil-i-tating the country.”

“Hm," mused Bernard. "I doubt that it’s the Turds.”

“Well, I don’t know who they are," Mattie tossed her head. "But they’re probably the same people working in those Slurpee stores. They always have those foreigners with thick accents behind the counter and I know they’re just here to spy on us. I don't like them. I mean, if they didn’t have bad intentions, why else would they call them 9-11 stores?”

“I think they are called 7-11 stores, named after their store hours,” Bernard sighed.

For a moment, Mattie paused, looking confused. Then she shook her head. “That can’t be right. They’re open 24 hours.”

"So, you think that they're terrorist?" I asked.

"Of course."

"Well," I turned to Bernard. "That does sort of make sense. Heart disease is the number one killer and those stores don't exactly sell fresh vegetables."

Suddenly, Mattie smiled, "Oh look - it's my gypsy sandwich."

"Who had the gyro?" asked our waiter as he stepped up to the table.