The new movie “Zero Dark Thirty,” the Boston Society of Film Critics’ pick for best picture of the year, is still not playing in theaters here. But the film, which tells the story of the hunt for Osama bin Laden, is already generating a lively debate. In early scenes, the movie depicts Al Qaeda suspects undergoing “enhanced interrogation” techniques, including waterboarding, and leaves open the suggestion that these aggressive measures may have been responsible for uncovering information about bin Laden’s whereabouts. The film’s producers acknowledge that, like many docudramas, “Zero Dark Thirty” takes some liberties. But this liberty serves to reinforce a dangerous fiction — one that needs to be called out.
The Senate Intelligence Committee, which is finalizing its three-year, 6,000-page investigation into alleged torture by government interrogators, has determined that coercive interrogation techniques did not provide the information that led US forces to bin Laden’s hideout. These harsh tactics, promoted by some officials in the Bush administration including former Vice President Dick Cheney, are nonetheless being romanticized in some circles as crucial tools in the fight against terrorism. And “Zero Dark Thirty” could help to rewrite history. It’s especially alarming because misperceptions about the effectiveness of waterboarding, the simulated-drowning technique that is no longer part of interrogators’ repertoire, could easily lead to its revival.
Comments
What a shameful editorial. The use of waterboarding has most certainly provided a wealth of intelligence that has helped us defeat the terrorists. For the Globe to revive a story from the Bush years like this, is to prove its editorial childishness. No one cheered at the use of the technique; but in the early days of the war on terror, the Bush administration took extraordinary steps to gather intelligence, and they were very successful. Yes, there is no doubt that some of the intelligence used to find Bin Laden came from these efforts. The attacks on the technique are purely political, and the Globe is once again showing how far it will go to keep its war Bush alive, 4 years after he left office.
Shameful is an American advocating for the use of torture when it's been established that the "intelligence" gained is not reliable. Perhaps Senator McCain was not speaking from experience when he condemened it....wait, he knows all about it. When we become like them, we lose our souls. But it's illuminating to hear what a true conservative believes in matters of basic morality and ethics.
It's a movie.