Most people agree on that principle, in some shape or form; what they don't agree on is how to prioritise protection from terrorism as compared to protection from abusive governments.
I'm reminded that 9/11 would not have happened if the FBI had been granted permission to search the lead terrorist's laptop.
"A maximum U.S. effort to investigate Moussaoui conceivably could have unearthed his connections to Binalshibh. Those connections might have brought investigators to the core of the 9/11 plot. The Binalshibh connection was recognized shortly after 9/11, though it was not an easy trail to find. Discovering it would have required quick and very substantial cooperation from the German government, which might well have been difficult to obtain."
Moussaoui was arrested less than a month before 9/11; that's not much time to chase an international money trail. (And very often the problem isn't that intelligence agencies don't have enough information, it's that they don't make effective use of the information they already have. Also, note that the FBI weren't actually refused a warrant; they never actually applied for one.)
However, the 9/11 Commission goes on to note: "...publicity about Moussaoui's arrest and a possible hijacking threat might have derailed the plot" - something that could have been accomplished very easily with nothing more than they already had.
Sometimes breaking the rules is the best course of action.
Absolutely. I don't think any manmade set of rules can possibly give the right answer for every contingency. I won't say that it is universally wrong to torture somebody, just that if you can't find anybody prepared to risk jail time to do it then the circumstances can't be all that drastic.
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Date: 2008-02-13 09:09 am (UTC)Most people agree on that principle, in some shape or form; what they don't agree on is how to prioritise protection from terrorism as compared to protection from abusive governments.
I'm reminded that 9/11 would not have happened if the FBI had been granted permission to search the lead terrorist's laptop.
The 9/11 Commission was rather less certain of that:
"A maximum U.S. effort to investigate Moussaoui conceivably could have unearthed his connections to Binalshibh. Those connections might have brought investigators to the core of the 9/11 plot. The Binalshibh connection was recognized shortly after 9/11, though it was not an easy trail to find. Discovering it would have required quick and very substantial cooperation from the German government, which might well have been difficult to obtain."
Moussaoui was arrested less than a month before 9/11; that's not much time to chase an international money trail. (And very often the problem isn't that intelligence agencies don't have enough information, it's that they don't make effective use of the information they already have. Also, note that the FBI weren't actually refused a warrant; they never actually applied for one.)
However, the 9/11 Commission goes on to note: "...publicity about Moussaoui's arrest and a possible hijacking threat might have derailed the plot" - something that could have been accomplished very easily with nothing more than they already had.
Sometimes breaking the rules is the best course of action.
Absolutely. I don't think any manmade set of rules can possibly give the right answer for every contingency. I won't say that it is universally wrong to torture somebody, just that if you can't find anybody prepared to risk jail time to do it then the circumstances can't be all that drastic.