Saturday, December 22, 2012

"Zero Dark Thirty"

The real question that may  result from this film is not "Is torture effective?" (click here for official site)

The sincere question is what difference did the intelligence make? 

Wasn't there a courier involved and it is premature to comment on a film I haven't seen yet. But, my understanding is the knowledge of a courier, which we know is a fact, was the key element in finding Osama bin Laden. Right? He was sitting in his personal compound in Pakistan near a military university, using thumb drives and giving orders to the rest of his network.

Supposedly, that fact lead to his death at the hand of the USA Seal Team. 

Why did it take so long? What difference did torture make in the immediate war? If torture was the reason the late Osama bin Laden was found, so what? It wasn't until President Obama was in office that he was finally killed in a military operation that also captured all the information he was operating on from that compound.

Obtaining information from a maniacal mass murderer's personal documents and records that claimed the lives of nearly 3000 Americans, of which most were innocent civilians, was nearly more important than the death of bin Laden himself. What happened? Because the 911 War was nearly a decade old before any of this took place. 

So, if the USA insists torture is effective as per a Hollywood film, the real message is SO WHAT. The information was not leading to the end of the war.