Since he's been there, I tend to defer to McCain on this issue.

McCain says torture did not lead to bin Laden.

Waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques were not a factor in tracking down Osama bin Laden, a leading Republican senator insisted Thursday.


Sen. John McCain, who spent 5 1/2 years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, also rejected the argument that any form of torture is critical to U.S. success in the fight against terrorism.

In an impassioned speech on the Senate floor, the Arizona Republican said former Attorney General Michael Mukasey and others who back those tactics were wrong to claim that waterboarding al-Qaida's No. 3 leader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, provided information that led to bin Laden's compound in Pakistan.

And:

McCain said he asked CIA Director Leon Panetta for the facts, and that the hunt for bin Laden did not begin with fresh information from Mohammed. In fact, the name of bin Laden's courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, came from a detainee held in another country.


"Not only did the use of enhanced interrogation techniques on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed not provide us with key leads on bin Laden's courier, Abu Ahmed, it actually produced false and misleading information," McCain said. He called on Mukasey and others to correct their misstatements.

Note that I said "defer," not necessarily "trust." A person who has been subjected to torture himself justifiably has every reason to oppose torture on every ground.  McCain's experience may make him a poor source to objectively assess the operational value of torture as a method. He may be exactly the wrong person to assess from a utility standpoint whether torture "works." 

I would therefore be interested in hearing more from Panetta.

On the other hand, McCain seems like the right person to assess the larger issues of the "value" of torture since he's been there.  On that level, he might be the right guy to listen to about what torture is, when it occurs and what it does to those associated with it.

Dalai Lama supports killing of bin Laden.

No, really!

Apparently Buddhism is not as pacifistic as we think:

How could the Dalai Lama, who hesitates to harm mosquitoes, endorse killing Osama bin Laden? The terrorist deserved compassion, the Dalai Lama said, but "if something is serious … you have to take counter-measures". The apparent inconsistency here is with idealistic western fantasies of pacifist Buddhism, not with Buddhism itself. The power of those fantasies is so strong that it even affects Tibetans themselves. Some young refugees blame Buddhism for losing Tibet. Saying "we were warriors once," they invoke their history of empire and incorrectly think their ancestors did not resist Chinese invasion. Those fantasies also cause us to fail to appreciate how extraordinary the Dalai Lama is. We take his values as those of a typical Buddhist or a typical dalai lama, and he is neither.


Buddhists work out their values through stories of Buddha's past lives, which show him in myriad roles, such as a battle-elephant or minister defending his besieged city. The following story is analogous to a terrorist situation. It is known throughout northern Buddhism. Communists even used it to rouse Chinese Buddhists to fight in Korea. The Buddha, in a past life as a ship's captain named Super Compassionate, discovered a criminal on board who intended to kill the 500 passengers. If he told the passengers, they would panic and become killers themselves, as happened on a Southwest Airlines flight in 2000. With no other way out, he compassionately stabbed the criminal to death. Captain Compassionate saved the passengers not only from murder, but from becoming murderers themselves. Unlike him, they would have killed in rage and suffered hell. He saved the criminal from becoming a mass murderer and even worse suffering. He himself generated vast karmic merit by acting with compassion.

The story is double-edged. Killing protects others from the horrific karma of killing. At Harvard in April 2009, the Dalai Lama explained that "wrathful forceful action" motivated by compassion, may be "violence on a physical level" but is "essentially nonviolence". So we must be careful to understand what "nonviolence" means. Under the right conditions, it could include killing a terrorist.

Interesting.

Father Baron on the death of Osama bin Laden



Tough words to live by.

"Rashomon-meets-The Blind Men and the Elephant-meets-Keystone Kops.”

The White House's constantly morphing versions surrounding bin Laden's demise seems to have left the category of "sh*t happens" and entered the territory of the surreal.  It seems charitable to cut some slack for early reports from people who weren't present at the event about a factually complicated event before there was an opportunity for a full debriefing of the actual participants.  Nonetheless, it seems that in light of the known "fog of war" problem, professionals would have limited their factual reports to the bare minimum until the debriefing had occured.  Thus, the original reports from a known - not anonymous - White House source that bin Laden died using his wife as a human shield is inexplicable.

But what is really inexplicable, and unexcusable, is the the fact that the White House got the reports of its own involvement wrong.  Unlike the operation, they were actually present at their end and knew that they weren't getting real time information, and whether Obama dithered for 16 hours before authorizing the decision, and that the orders were to kill or capture. 

Michelle Malkin sketches the story changes over the last week.

Toby Harnden of the Telegraph describes "10 ways Barack Obama botched the aftermath of the masterful operation to kill Osama bin Laden":

1. It took nearly three days to decide not to release the photographs. I think there was a case for not releasing the pictures, though on balance I think disclosure would have been best. But whichever way Obama went on this, the decision should have been made quickly, on Monday. By letting the world and his dog debate the issue for so long and then say no made the administration look indecisive and appear that it had something to hide. It will fuel the conspiracy theories. And the pictures will surely be leaked anyway.


2. To say that bin Laden was armed and hiding behind a wife being used as a human shield was an unforgiveable embellishment. The way it was expressed by John Brennan was to mock bin Laden as being unmanly and cowardly. It turned out to be incorrect and gave fuel, again, to conspiracy theories as well as accusations of cover-ups and illegality. Of all the mistakes of the week, this was by far the biggest.


3. It was a kill mission and no one should have been afraid to admit that. Bin Laden was a dead man as soon as the SEAL Team landed. There’s nothing wrong with that but the Obama administration should have been honest about it rather than spinning tales about bin Laden having a gun, reaching for a gun (the latest) and resisting (without saying how he resisted).

And:

5. Obama tried to claim too much credit. Don’t get me wrong, he was entitled to a lot of credit. but sometimes less is more and it’s better to let facts speak for themselves. We didn’t need official after official to say how “gutsy” Obama was. Far better to have heaped praise on the CIA and SEALs (which, to be fair, was done most of the time) and talked less about Obama’s decision-making. And a nod to President George W. Bush would have been classy – and good politics for Obama

And:

8. Obama’s rhetoric lurched from jingoistic to moralistic. During the initial announcement, Obama said that by killing bin Laden “we are once again reminded that America can do whatever we set our mind to”. If Bush had said that, he would have been mocked and laughed at, with some justification. But by today Obama was all preachy and holier than thou saying: “It is important for us to make sure that very graphic photos of somebody who was shot in the head are not floating around as an incitement to additional violence or as a propaganda tool. That’s not who we are. We don’t trot out this stuff as trophies.”


9. Triggering a torture debate was an avoidable own goal. Following on from 3. by discussing the intelligence, the administration walked into the issue of whether enhanced interrogation techniques yielded important information. That was certainly something they could have done without. Politically, it gave something for Republicans to use against Obama.

That said, we should keep in mind that the mission was a brilliant success.

In commemoration of recent events and a look back.

The Onion - 9/11 hijackers surprised to find themselves in Hell.

"I was promised I would spend eternity in Paradise, being fed honeyed cakes by 67 virgins in a tree-lined garden, if only I would fly the airplane into one of the Twin Towers," said Mohammed Atta, one of the hijackers of American Airlines Flight 11, between attempts to vomit up the wasps, hornets, and live coals infesting his stomach. "But instead, I am fed the boiling feces of traitors by malicious, laughing Ifrit. Is this to be my reward for destroying the enemies of my faith?"


The rest of Atta's words turned to raw-throated shrieks, as a tusked, asp-tongued demon burst his eyeballs and drank the fluid that ran down his face.

According to Hell sources, the 19 eternally damned terrorists have struggled to understand why they have been subjected to soul-withering, infernal torture ever since their Sept. 11 arrival.

"There was a tumultuous conflagration of burning steel and fuel at our gates, and from it stepped forth these hijackers, the blessed name of the Lord already turning to molten brass on their accursed lips," said Iblis The Thrice-Damned, the cacodemon charged with conscripting new arrivals into the ranks of the forgotten. "Indeed, I do not know what they were expecting, but they certainly didn't seem prepared to be skewered from eye socket to bunghole and then placed on a spit so that their flesh could be roasted by the searing gale of flatus which issues forth from the haunches of Asmoday."

Well, that's the reason you keep "spares."

Hopefully, the image of OBL using one of his wives as a human shield will make a difference in the propaganda war:

Counterterrorism chief John Brennan told reporters that while bin Laden had vowed to go down fighting, in his last moments alive the master terrorist hid behind a woman.


The woman who bin Laden tried to use as a human shield was killed in the U.S. raid, Brennan said. Whether she shielded him willingly is not known.

Brennan said the woman was one of bin Laden's wives, but defense officials said it wasn't clear whether the woman was a bin Laden wife.

Update:  And maybe bin Laden didn't use his wife as a human shield...and maybe he didn't use any woman as a human shield.

Casuistry and Catholic Guilt...

...or why can't I be totally happy about anything.

It is, I guess, a tribute to the effort of the West to remain civilized that there is any debate about the proper reaction to the news of the death of Osama bin Laden.  Among the full-throated ululations of joy are the occasional kill-joy voices reminding us that bin Laden was, after all, a fellow human being and, moreover, someone who we are commanded to love, even as we recognize that he is our enemy.

Lisa Graas has collected a cross-sampling of the Catholic blogosphere's reaction to the news of bin Laden's assassination.  Included in the sampling is this statement from a "Vatican representative":

Fr. Federico Lombardi, Vatican Spokesman:


“Osama bin Laden – as we all know – was gravely responsible for promoting division and hatred between peoples, causing the end of countless innocent lives, and of exploiting religions to this end.

“Faced with the death of a man, a Christian never rejoices, but reflects on the serious responsibility of each and every one of us before God and before man, and hopes and commits himself so that no event be an opportunity for further growth of hatred, but for peace.”

It is a good that bin Laden is dead, and it is an evil.  It is good that bin Laden is dead because he was a murderer and it is good that justice is done to murderers.  It is an evil because bin Laden was a man with an immortal soul that may very well be starting an eternity of suffering lost to good, and the loss of any soul is a victory of sin and we shouldn't rejoice in the victory of sin.

So, I guess, there ought to be some conflicting feelings about the death of evil man, if only because no one is ever ontologically evil.

If we look for some guidance, we find this issue parsed on a much higher plane than ours in the part of the Suma Theologica not written by St. Thomas Aquinas.  In the Supplement to the Third Part, Question 94, to the question of whether the saints rejoice in the suffering of the damned, St. Thomas' friend Rainaldo de Piperno compiles writes:

 I answer that, A thing may be a matter of rejoicing in two ways. First directly, when one rejoices in a thing as such: and thus the saints will not rejoice in the punishment of the wicked. Secondly, indirectly, by reason namely of something annexed to it: and in this way the saints will rejoice in the punishment of the wicked, by considering therein the order of Divine justice and their own deliverance, which will fill them with joy. And thus the Divine justice and their own deliverance will be the direct cause of the joy of the blessed: while the punishment of the damned will cause it indirectly.

So, we can properly rejoice that good triumphed over evil and that justice was done, albeit a prayer for the soul of Osama bin Laden would also be in order.

It may be a tough line to define, and to adhere to, but that is the way it seems to break.

Full credit belongs to President Obama for rejecting the positions of Candidate Obama and of the "anti-war" movement.

It's fascinating that the succesful execution of bin Laden comes from a targeted assassination based on information obtained through interrogations at Guantanemo Bay.

On the targeted assassination:

The U.S. special forces team that hunted down Osama bin Laden was under orders to kill the al Qaeda mastermind, not capture him, a U.S. national security official told Reuters.


"This was a kill operation," the official said, making clear there was no desire to try to capture bin Laden alive in Pakistan.

This kind of thing has been criticized by the international human rights community:

In the past, such targeted killings have drawn criticism from human rights organizations and others who claim that they violate international law. Co-Conspirator Kenneth Anderson described the debate in this excellent article. It’s unlikely that there will be much criticism of the operation against Bin Laden. However, the broader debate over the law and morality of targeted killings is likely to continue.

Concerning the Gitmo angle:

For nearly a decade, American military and intelligence forces had chased the specter of Bin Laden through Pakistan and Afghanistan, once coming agonizingly close and losing him in a pitched battle at Tora Bora, in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan. As Obama administration officials described it, the real breakthrough came when they finally figured out the name and location of Bin Laden’s most trusted courier, whom the Qaeda chief appeared to rely on to maintain contacts with the outside world.


Detainees at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had given the courier’s pseudonym to American interrogators and said that the man was a protégé of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the confessed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Does this mean that next year Bush will get a Noble Peace Prize?

Obama Bin Laden Killed by American Troops.

About time - and he won't be around to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of 9/11.

Here are the details:

Multiple outlets reporting some or all of these details (links when I get them, pulling together from TV reports):


U.S. Joint Special Operations Command Special Mission Unit (SMU) from the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU — formerly known as Seal Team Six) did the shooting. There were other JSOC spotters on the ground, as well as two special operations helicopters and an unmanned drone overhead.

One of the special-ops helicopters reportedly suffered mechanical difficulties and crash landed onsite. It was destroyed by U.S. forces.

Bin Laden was killed along with two al Qaeda couriers and one of Bin Laden’s adult sons. A woman who was used as a human shield by one of the couriers was also reportedly killed. Several other women were wounded and are reportedly receiving treatment.

The compound was located in an affluent suburb 35 kilometers north of Islamabad and is being described as huge, with a central building many times larger than other houses in the area and ringed by a 12-15-foot tall security wall. The compound reportedly had no incoming or outgoing electronic communications.

Bin Laden had apparently been hiding out in Pakistan, where our allies the Pakistanis couldn't find him.  He was about a mile from a Paki police station.

Mission accomplished. 

America's enemies have to know that they will be hunted down and killed no matter how long it takes.

According to this "Obama credited Pakistan's intelligence services for helping to lead the U.S. to bin Laden."  I guess translated that means the reward got high enough to make it worth someone's while.

Time to get out of Afghanistan and start supporting India.