A reader writes:
I was an officer that ran interrogator teams in the Marine Corps from 2001-2004.
Reuel Marc Gerecht uses the biggest fallacy in all of the torture debate–the ticking time-bomb fallacy. He assumes that an ideologically driven terrorist like KSM or Abu Zubaydah would answer the questions truthfully even under torture when all he had to do was withstand for 4 days to let 9/11 happen. This is absurd.
They would withstand because they are so close to the "finish line."
Even more likely though, assuming that KSM was captured on 7 September, would be to give us thousands of leads (which he did anyways when he was captured) with a little truth at the core and we would go ragged chasing them all down while the terrorists boarded the planes without a problem.
Bottom line, the ticking time-bomb scenario is just not a justification for torture of an ideologically motivated person who has immense incentive to withstand and disseminate false information. Finally, there are other methods that could "break" KSM in the above scenario like the shock of capture and some thoughtful, sophisticated tricks that are certainly not torture and in the Army manual.
The Dish 