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The Case For Torture

There’s a man in Pakistan who has just been captured. He’s the new al queada operations minister, atleast he was until he was captured. He’s new because each of his predecessors have been killed or captured or simply gone missing. He’s had the job for about 2 years.

'Operations manager' means he’s the one who signs off on terror missions and makes the money appear in the right hands for the right people to make things happen.

This guy is the ultimate ‘merchant of death’.

In his head sits the names, dates and places of the al queada terror cells that carry out such actions on people, largely as of late mostly Arab Muslim people.

This man has been on the run every day for the past 15 years. Every day in a different bed, every day fearing that some element of his organization will betray him. Every creak in the floor, every headlight on a passing car could be the one with the ISI about to break down the door, and now they have.

Right now, he’s sitting across the table from a rather large Pakistani Intelligence officer. This man sitting across from the intelligence officer has masterminded two foiled attempts to kill the Pakistani President. The intelligence officer knows that the man sitting in front of him is his ticket to fame, and he is not about to let him slip out of his hands now.

Now, Fast forward into the future...

Before he was captured in Pakistan, Abu Faraj al-Libbi coordinated and delivered the funds and plans for explosives to al queada operatives in the United States for use in a spectacular terror operation that would exceed the 9/11 plan. These plans involved the destruction of schools and malls simultaneously across America. It was a bold plan. It was Al Quedas equivalent of the “battle of the bulge”. They put all they had into it, they used every operative in every city they could and they struck all at once with nothing more sophisticated than car bombs and sniper rifles.

In one hour, the death toll was in the thousands. The police were overwhelmed by the firepower and the State Govenors were incapable of calling out the National Guard as their troops were largely overseas in Iraq. At the end of the day, the cost in lives was higher than 9/11. The country was traumatized to its core. Martial law was declared in several states. The call for internment camps for Muslims was heard from all corners of the country. The climate of fear brought the economy to a standstill and the country was plunged into a full out depression. As a result of their loss of markets in the US, the Chinese economy was in full collapse. The Communist government began to lose control and the country began to resort to warlord-ism. Millions were killed in the resulting chaos.

One man, with less than 500 men and a million dollars at his command created a plan that plunged the earth into darkness.

Now, back to the present...

Only this time, you are the ISI officer. The man that sits in front of you has a plan in his head that will drop the world into chaos. He knows the plan, the operatives, the times and the dates. He is the only man in the world with all of this information; all of his terror cells think that they are the only ones in action. Many of the cells are unaware of any of the other cells, even if they are in the same town.

You don’t know that there is a plan. You also don’t know that you have just 24 hours to break him and get the information that you don’t even know he has so that you can stop the plan that you dont know about. To you, its just another “muscle job”. The man across the table looks at you, wondering how long he has to live. He is hoping not that he will live, but that he will be killed quickly. He wonders what you know. He wonders who turned him in. In some ways, he is relieved. He just wants to end it quickly. He just has to last 24 hours.

The fate of the world now rests in your hands. The hands of a mid-level Pakistani civil servant, who is underpaid, overworked and constipated, and the clock is ticking…

Posted @ May 04, 2005 08:13 PM | Current Affairs