The Torturer's Dilemma: Analyzing the Logic of Torture for Information

York Times, 09/12/2005) Insofar as this intelligence made the administration more convinced of the
wisdom of the war against Iraq, it also bears some responsibility for the massive costs, reputational,
human and fiscal, of that invasion, as well as the surge in anti-American sentiment in the Middle East
and around the world, and the subsequent recruiting boon for al Qaeda itself. 109
If the costs of having accepted this information were so dire, then how can we explain the
administration's apparently unquestioning acceptance of it? Why did the administration take the word
of a man under torture? It might be argued that the administration had no interest in the truth, but was
merely searching for a rationale for a war it was already committed to – thus the story's veracity had no
importance. This seems unlikely on balance: if the administration were interested in fabricating
evidence of the Iraq regime's links with al Qaeda for domestic purposes, it could easily have done so
via a member of the Iraqi exile community like Ahmed Chalabi without bringing in the controversial
element of torture. Moreover, the administration did not need this intelligence to gain UN backing for
the war for the simple reason that it did not particularly need that backing: the administration had
already claimed authority to invade Iraq under UN Resolution 1441, and was perfectly willing to go to
war even without the UN's blessing, as indeed it eventually did. 110 Using a deliberately false story
gained through torture that – once revealed – risked international and domestic support for the war in
Iraq and the President's own reelection unnecessarily and for little gain would have been deeply
irrational. It is far likelier that the administration felt that the information must have been true – and
had it been, it would have strongly justified the use of armed force.
And yet there was considerable controversy over al-Libi's veracity even before the invasion
began: an analysis of al-Libi's statements by the Defense Intelligence Agency argued, for several
reasons, that the story of Iraqi WMD support to al Qaeda was deeply problematic – al-Libi left
important holes in his story, seemed not to know important names and dates that would have
corroborated his account, which ignored the severe unlikelihood of Saddam's secular regime arming an
Islamic revolutionary movement “it cannot control.” (DITSUM 044-02) Moreover, this analysis also
argued that there was good reason to think that al-Libi was “intentionally misleading the debriefers:”
109 The war in Iraq has been estimated to have cost the US approximately $751 billion by 2010 in direct appropriations,
according to the Congressional Research Service (Belasco, p.2), and over $3 trillion by 2008 (as a “conservative
estimate”) in economic costs, according to economists Joseph Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes. (Washington Post,
09/03/2008) On the war's effect on al Qaeda's recruitment, see IISS, 2003.
110 See the news conference by Pres. Bush (USA), Prime Minister Blair (UK), Prime Minister Aznar (Spain) and Prime
Minister Durao Barroso (Portugal) on March 16 th 2003. (New York Times, 17/03/2003)
130