"Donald Rumsfeld once wondered aloud whether we were creating more terrorists
than we were killing. In counterinsurgency doctrine, that is precisely the right
question. Victory in this kind of war comes when the enemy loses legitimacy in
the society from which it seeks recruits and thus loses its “recuperative
power.”
The torture methods that Tenet defends have nurtured the
recuperative power of the enemy. This war will be won or lost not on the
battlefield but in the minds of potential supporters who have not yet thrown in
their lot with the enemy. If we forfeit our values by signaling that they are
negotiable in situations of grave or imminent danger, we drive those undecideds
into the arms of the enemy. This way lies defeat, and we are well down the road
to it."
I have nothing to add.
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