...In Morocco in 1942, an air force officer, Captain Delmas, had warned Paul Aussaresses: "Do you know what you risk in entering the special services?"
"Yes, my captain, I risk being killed."
"My poor sir, when you are killed, you are relieved, because you may be tortured before you are blown away. Torture, you see, is less merciful than death."
Captain Paul Aussaresses subsequently was briefed by the Chief of Police of Algiers, in 1955.
"Imagine for an instant that you are opposed to the concept of torture and you arrest someone who is clearly implicated in the preparation of a terrorist attack. The suspect refuses to talk. You do not insist. A particularly murderous attack is launched. What will you say to the parents of the victims, to the parents of an infant, for example, mutilated by the bomb to justify the fact that you did not utilize all means to make the suspect talk?"
"I would not like to find myself in such a situation,” Aussaresses responded.
"Yes, but conduct yourself always as if you will, and you will see which is the most difficult: to torture a confirmed terrorist or explain to the parents of the victims that it is better to allow dozens of innocents to die, than to make one who is culpable suffer."
After a moment of meditation, Aussaresses cast aside his last reservations, concluding that no one had the right to judge him, even if his responsibilities forced him to conduct disagreeable actions, and he would never have any regrets.
Aussaresses, then 35 years old, was the intelligence official in charge of liquidating the Front Liberation Nationale (FLN). The FLN was conducting a savage insurrection that targeted the French colonists (Pied Noir) in Algeria. Many Pied Noir had already been terrorized, assassinated, or mutilated. ...
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