Bloodthirsty Liberal

I guess we went and done a bad thing—a combination of bad things actually:

The top Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to trial has concluded that the U.S. military tortured a Saudi national who allegedly planned to participate in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, interrogating him with techniques that included sustained isolation, sleep deprivation, nudity and prolonged exposure to cold, leaving him in a “life-threatening condition.”

“We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani,” said Susan J. Crawford, in her first interview since being named convening authority of military commissions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February 2007. “His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that’s why I did not refer the case” for prosecution.

…

“The techniques they used were all authorized, but the manner in which they applied them was overly aggressive and too persistent. . . . You think of torture, you think of some horrendous physical act done to an individual. This was not any one particular act; this was just a combination of things that had a medical impact on him, that hurt his health. It was abusive and uncalled for. And coercive. Clearly coercive. It was that medical impact that pushed me over the edge” to call it torture, she said.

…

“For 160 days his only contact was with the interrogators,” said Crawford, who personally reviewed Qahtani’s interrogation records and other military documents. “Forty-eight of 54 consecutive days of 18-to-20-hour interrogations. Standing naked in front of a female agent. Subject to strip searches. And insults to his mother and sister.”

Okay, enough. I can’t take it anymore. You can peel off my fingernails with a pliers, but leave my sister out of it. I won’t argue whether this is torture or not—even Crawford implies that the point is debatable—but I’d just like to know more about whom we supposedly tortured:

Qahtani was denied entry into the United States a month before the Sept. 11 attacks and was allegedly planning to be the plot’s 20th hijacker. He was later captured in Afghanistan and transported to Guantanamo in January 2002.

…

“There’s no doubt in my mind he would’ve been on one of those planes had he gained access to the country in August 2001,” Crawford said of Qahtani, who remains detained at Guantanamo. “He’s a muscle hijacker. . . . He’s a very dangerous man. What do you do with him now if you don’t charge him and try him? I would be hesitant to say, ‘Let him go.’ “

Gee, thanks for that, Susie. Because we all know what happens when you do say “let him go”:

61.

That’s the number of jihadi recidivists who returned to their terror-waging ways after being released from Gitmo.

Go ahead and leave your bets on what the number will be a year after Barack Obama takes office.

You have to read between the lines to figure out that we may have learned this guy’s intentions from the very “aggressive” and “coercive” techniques Crawford decries. Should he have been on a leash, forced to do stupid pet tricks? No. But if such treatment led him to confess his past and intended crimes, who are you to say we were wrong?

Ask yourself that next time your child boards an airplane.