My take on the torture thing and even drones is: If we're going to get into assassination and torture, the second question is the morality, but the first is the effectiveness of it.
Robert BaerI don't trust American intelligence. You look at the torture report from the Senate: People inside the CIA are saying that it doesn't work, and we're getting the information not from torture, but simply from questioning people.
Robert BaerIf you want prisoners to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear – never to see them again – you send them to Egypt.
Robert BaerThere is a tendency in any conflict, especially in a democracy, to fight the enemy you can, not the enemy you should.
Robert BaerThe first suicide bombing that entered my consciousness was the Beirut embassy bombing. It was very personal. I'd been in the embassy and I knew most of the people in the station who were killed in the bombing. So you take the personal aspect of it and the mystery of who the bomber was and the fact that a small group of people could drive us out of a country that was absolutely key to the United States, and what was behind this... The fact that they've been able to hide the embassy bombers' identities for all these years tells me we're up against a very capable movement.
Robert Baer