Many experts say it was “the most serious terror plot in the U.S. since Sept. 11, 2001,” said The San Diego Union-Tribune in an editorial. Last week, federal authorities charged former Manhattan doughnut-cart vendor and Afghan immigrant Najibullah Zazi with planning to attack transit systems and sports stadiums with homemade bombs stuffed into backpacks. Zazi, who allegedly confessed that al Qaida had trained him in Pakistan, was caught with bomb-making instructions, a cache of volatile household chemicals, and incriminating equipment. But although two men were arrested with him, authorities say that at least three co-conspirators—and perhaps more than a dozen—remain at large. That sounds something like the “ticking time bomb” scenario that arises every time we debate the morality of torture, said Michael Crowley in The New Republic Online. The idea that authorities might physically abuse Zazi to get his accomplices’ names appalls me. But then I imagine “how I would feel if a bomb kills someone I know on the New York subway next week.”
So is it “time to break the waterboard out of storage?” said Jeffrey Toobin in Newyorker.com. “I think not—and not just because it’s illegal.” The Justice Department has been tracking Zazi for months, tapping his phone calls and e-mails. So the government probably already knows the identities of his cohorts. Torturing or harshly interrogating Zazi would only make it impossible to try him and other suspects in any U.S. court of law. And let’s say we torture Zazi, only to have a bomb explode anyway, said A. Serwer in The American Prospect Online. Liberals would predictably argue that this proves torture doesn’t work, while conservatives would just as predictably respond that we should have used even harsher tactics. Must we rehash this tired debate “every single time there’s news of a potential terrorist attack?”
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