Who Can You Believe in the Torture Wars?

[babylonsister]

http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=5&docID=hsnews-000002643554

Who Can You Believe in the Torture Wars?
By Jeff Stein, CQ National Security Editor

Interesting week: An ex-CIA guy, virtually sobbing that torture is not us — “we’re Americans, and we’re better than this” — claims that water boarding nevertheless broke top al Qaeda terrorist Abu Zubaydah in “less than 35 seconds.”

Across town, a tough Army general was expressing admiration for a Saudi program that gives its jihadis a get-out-of-jail free card if they promise never to do it again.

But the big show was former CIA man John Kiriakou, whose message was: torture works.

“From that day on, he answered every question,” Kiriakou said of Abu Zubaydah, captured in 2003. “The threat information he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks.”

“Maybe” is the key word here.

Kiriakou was a Pakistan-based CIA operative who neither witnessed Zubaydah’s interrogation or could have known first-hand how its results were used, unless the agency suddenly violated all its rules for compartmentalizing information.

In any event, Zubaydah’s value had been debunked years ago, even as he was choking on the water forced down his throat in a back room of a Pakistani hospital, according to Dan Coleman, the FBI’s top al Qaeda analyst at the time.

“This guy is insane, certifiable, (a) split personality,” Coleman was telling his bosses in Washington while Zubaydah was being interrogated, as reporter Ron Susskind told it in his much heralded 2005 book, “The One Percent Solution.”

Coleman, now retired, confirmed the same to me last year.

“They got nothing useful from the guy,” he said.

Far from being a top al Qaeda operative, Coleman and other sources said, Zubaydah was more like Osama bin Laden’s go-fer, somebody who booked flights and took grocery deliveries.

Last week, the White House was still insisting he was a player.

more...

[niyad]

1. I don't believe ANYTHING that comes from this admin, and anybody who

defends torture. we are supposed to be better than this.

[Ravy]

2. I say waterboard everyone involved, and see what they say

before we decide which one of them is telling the truth.

[Ezlivin]

3. Uh, how's the investigation on the Anthrax Attacks coming?

Who's being tortured to get the info on that attack?

C'mon, you remember that terrorist attack, right? The one after 9/11. Of course the MSM is all over it....

[magellan]

4. Just have to kick this thread for your reply

SPOT ON.

And I'll add: if torture is so great at getting crucial information, why haven't they caught OBL yet?

[JGShaw]

5. Torture

They are using the threat of catastrophic terrorist attacks against the US to justify torturing. Read Bertrand de Jouvenoul's "On Power." He explains how the plea of necessity has been used for centuries by monoplizers of power to justify nasty actions and motives.