Something to consider

Recent reports say that the Jan 13 attack on the Pakistani village of Damadola did indeed claim lives of several high level Al Qaeda operatives, even though it appears to have missed the biggest prize, Al Qaeda #2 Zawahiri.

As Dan Darling puts it:

I have a Weekly Standard piece on the death of Abu Khabab coming out pretty soon, but for those who are interested here are all of the al-Qaeda leaders who have been listed as being killed in Damadola at present according to media reports:

Abu Khabab al-Masri (WMD committee head)
Abd Rahman al-Masri al-Maghribi (al-Zawahiri's son-in-law, al-Qaeda commander)
Abu Ubeidah al-Masri (Kunar operations chief)
Marwan al-Suri (Waziristan operations chief)
Khalid Habib (southeastern Afghanistan commander)
Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi (southwestern Afghanistan commander)

Add to that Maulana Faqir Mohammed and Maulana Liaqat (local leaders of the Tehrik Nifaz-e-Sha'riah Mohammed, apparently) and it looks like that was quite a dinner they had planned. I would have settled for nailing Khabab alone, but this looks like the biggest single decapitation strike on the al-Qaeda leadership since Tora Bora.

One of the early questions was what put US and Pakistani intelligence on to this village in the first place. Today there was an interesting report that partly answers that question:

Al-Qaeda's second-in-command met his deputy last year at a house hit in a recent U.S. missile strike in which at least four of the terror network's operatives may have died, Pakistani intelligence officials said Saturday.

Ayman al-Zawahri, the apparent target of the Jan. 13 attack, met his deputy, Abu Farraj al-Libbi, in Damadola early last year, a security official said on condition of anonymity, adding that Libyan-born Al-Libbi told Pakistani interrogators of the meeting after his capture in May 2005.

"His statement was later verified, and we were able to confirm that al-Zawahri visited Damadola," the official said. "We have intelligence reports that Ayman al-Zawahri visited the house of one Bakhtpur Khan months before what happened last week."

Al-Libbi was another significant success, and here we find that he provided Pakistani interrogators with information that made Damadola a place worth watching.

I note this to ask the following question. Do you think al-Libbi talked because of the soothing, gentle ministrations of Pakistani intelligence, or do you think al-Libbi was, uh, vigorously encouraged to talk?

In the past few months I had a number of posts (here and here, for instance) describing some intelligence successes that the Coalition Forces chose to tell us about. Many of those captured were in the hands of Iraqi security forces. Same question. Do you think those terrorists provided the information they did, information that led to other captures, simply because their Iraqi captors asked nicely?

The issue of torture is not one that should be dismissed lightly. It is worth adhering to some moral standards. I am not advocating that we start ripping off fingernails and murdering children before their parents' eyes.

But, in this war on terror, some very bad people have been captured or killed because some other very bad people were put in some uncomfortable situations. Is it right? Is it wrong? Is it fighting fire with fire?

Part of the debate does involve defining just what is torture, and what is not. This Boston Globe article sums up past debates on this point.

Let us just keep in mind though. We face an enemy that doesn't bat an eyelash in murdering innocent men, women and children. We must not become our enemy, but we must fight them.