September 11 - We Will Forget

A report was released Tuesday last week on the myriad methods used by the CIA and other intelligence agencies to extract certain information from al Qaeda operatives convicted of terrorism, including prolonged sleep deprivation, exploitation of phobias, and threats against their family members. Sleep deprivation was forced by injected stimulants and mild beatings, and they were forced to stand with their hands bolted to the wall above them for over a week in many cases, with an hour of sleep somewhere in the middle to keep it within CIA rules. Some were locked into small rooms with snakes or bugs or some other object that evoked panic attacks in the subjects. Threats were issued to kill their kids, to do nasty things to their mothers and wives. They would even pin up pictures of their kids in the cell as they described the ways they would kill them.

The backlash against the CIA, and the presidents in office that allowed it, has been quite a sight. News channels and Facebook feeds have been cluttered with this person’s or that person’s opinion on the rough procedures. Former Vice President Dick Cheney was interviewed on Sunday about his views on the interrogations, and he said some things, namely his comments that he "would do it again in a minute," that have him being lambasted by almost every middle-ground or left-leaning individual in the country. Most of them are crying that we violated the terrorists’ human rights by subjecting them to such terrible things. I find it funny, however, that they do not seem to realize their continued freedom to say so is due in no small part to the things we learned from their torture.

And yes, I will say torture. That’s exactly what it was. Why they have to try to make it sound nice is beyond me. They TORTURED captured terrorists for information.

"But why did they have to do such horrible things? There are other ways of extracting information without hurting them. They don’t deserve to be put through that kind of treatment."

I’ve heard a few too many of these type of comments the last couple days, sometimes even from people I consider dear friends (though they might now be of the opposite opinion concerning me), and it’s making me furious. The day after 9-11, we all said we would never forget. We would never forget the suffering of our people as the Twin Towers burned around them. We would never forget the smell of smoke and melting metal, and the screams of dying men and women would forever haunt our dreams.

Well congratulations, America - your memory seems to be even shorter than I thought.

It seems we have forgotten, and quite well, the torture that these al Qaeda terrorists forced our own brothers and sisters and neighbors to endure on the morning of September 11. They didn’t go into it thinking they should maybe make it a quick death, or that they should perhaps destroy a building that was vacant so they could send their message without really hurting anyone. No. Their whole goal was to harm as many people as they possibly could, to make the evil Westerners suffer through their last minutes, or hours, or days. They were thinking about seventy-two virgins and the thanks of Allah.

I’ll tell you what: I hope they burned, on this side of eternity and on the far side. I hope it took those four terrorists just as long to die as the people they set out to kill. And I don’t feel bad for any of their friends who were dumb enough to get caught by the country they were seeking to destroy. I hope they smiled at the irony of American lives being saved by the revealing of their malicious plans, and I hope that a million more of them get the same chance their leaders got to die for their country.

What Americans are failing to realize about this whole torture "scandal" is that if it weren’t for the torture, al Qaeda would still be successfully killing thousands of us. The lives of our own people have been saved by the discovery of plots in the works, and a lot of them coming from the mouths of jihadists trained to resist more gentle forms of interrogation. Give them a reason to fear being caught, to fear us more than they fear missing out on a chance to populate their own planet. And for those who think we should apologize for our brutality and treat our guest terrorists with respect, I will happily pay for your transportation to see if they would do us the same courtesy in their own camps.

September 11 - We Will Forget

have your say