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War Criminals Try to Evade Prosecution By Pretending Torture Was Vital to Getting Bin Laden ... When It Actually Delayed the Hunt for YEARS
Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and John Yoo were all instrumental in implementing the U.S. torture program.
So it is no surprise that they are now pretending that torture helped get Bin Laden. See this, this and this.
They're trying to avoid war crimes prosecution.
As I noted in 2009:
Cheney was the main architect of the torture policy (according to the number 2 man at the State Department and others).
So of course he would defend torture - he's trying to keep his behind out of the defense chair at a war crimes tribunal.
Cheney defending torture is exactly like Charles Manson appearing on all of the news shows defending murder as a public policy.
Matthew Alexander - a former top Air Force interrogator who led the team that tracked down Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - agrees:
"These guys are trying to save their reputations, for one thing," Alexander said. "They have, from the beginning, been trying to prevent an investigation into war crimes."
As does Colonel Wilkerson, the former number two man at the State Department:
Indeed, as Dan Froomkin notes in a little-noticed essay, torture actually delayed by years more effective intelligence-gathering methods which would have resulted in finding Bin Laden:
Defenders
of the Bush administration’s interrogation policies have claimed
vindication from reports that bin Laden was tracked down in small part
due to information received from brutalized detainees some six to
eight years ago.
But that sequence of events -- even if true --
doesn’t demonstrate the effectiveness of torture, these experts say.
Rather, it indicates bin Laden could have been caught much earlier had those detainees been interrogated properly.
"I think that without a doubt, torture and enhanced interrogation techniques slowed down the hunt for bin Laden,"
said an Air Force interrogator who goes by the pseudonym Matthew
Alexander and located Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al Qaeda in
Iraq, in 2006.
It now appears likely that several detainees had
information about a key al Qaeda courier -- information that might have
led authorities directly to bin Laden years ago. But subjected
to physical and psychological brutality, "they gave us the bare
minimum amount of information they could get away with to get the pain
to stop, or to mislead us," Alexander told The Huffington Post.
"We
know that they didn’t give us everything, because they didn’t provide
the real name, or the location, or somebody else who would know that
information," he said.
In a 2006 study by the National Defense Intelligence College,
trained interrogators found that traditional, rapport-based
interviewing approaches are extremely effective with even the most
hardened detainees, whereas coercion consistently builds resistance and
resentment.
"Had we handled some of these sources from the
beginning, I would like to think that there’s a good chance that we
would have gotten this information or other information," said Steven
Kleinman, a longtime military intelligence officer who has extensively
researched, practiced and taught interrogation techniques.
"By
making a detainee less likely to provide information, and making the
information he does provide harder to evaluate, they hindered what we
needed to accomplish," said Glenn L. Carle, a retired CIA officer who oversaw the interrogation of a high-level detainee in 2002.
***
For Alexander, Kleinman and others, the key takeaway is not just that the torture didn't work, but that it was actually counterproductive.
"The
question is: What else did KSM have?" Alexander asked. And he’s
pretty sure he knows the answer: KSM knew the courier’s real name, "or
he knew who else knew his real name, or he knew how to find him -- and
he didn’t give any of that information," Alexander said.
Alexander’s
book, "Kill or Capture," chronicles how the non-coercive interrogation
of a dedicated al Qaeda member led to Zarqawi’s capture.
"I’m 100 percent confident that a good interrogator would have gotten additional leads" from KSM, Alexander said.
***
This
new scenario hardly supports a defense of torture on the grounds that
it’s appropriate in "ticking time bomb" scenarios, Alexander said. "Show me an interrogator who says that eight years is a good result."
Indeed, Froomkin points out that the type of torture used is a special type focused on obtaining false confessions:
Experts agree that torture is particularly good at one thing: eliciting false confessions.
Bush-era
interrogation techniques, were modeled after methods used by Chinese
Communists to extract confessions from captured U.S. servicemen that
they could then use for propaganda during the Korean War.
And Froomkin notes that torture hurts national security:
"They
don’t want to talk about the long term consequences that cost the
lives of Americans," Alexander added. The way the U.S. treated its
prisoners "was al-Qaeda’s number-one recruiting tool and brought in
thousands of foreign fighters who killed American soldiers," Alexander
said. "And who want to live with that on their conscience?"
For background, see this.
Note: Cheney and Rumsfeld were never very interested in capturing Bin Laden. Their focus was elsewhere. So
their revisionist statements about the usefulness of torture for
intelligence purposes must be taken with a grain of salt. In reality,
their torture program was crafted to justify the Iraq war, not to catch Bin Laden (and see this.)
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http://www.vosizneias.com/83269/2011/05/08/cape-canaveral-fl-video-catche
One more thing, GW: why is it OK for Pres. Obama to be aiming Predator missiles at an American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, in Yemen? Where's the legal justification for that? Is your notion of "torture" worse than a President ordering the killing a citizen from afar, entirely without Due Process and without even an attempt to capture him?
Are you willing to be consistent and call Obama a war criminal as well?
"Are you willing to be consistent and call Obama a war criminal as well?"
Of course ...For some reason many people can think only in terms of "democrat vs. republican" and are unable to see that they are both sides of one coin. The fact that Bush/Cheney are war criminals does not exclude the same for Obama/Biden - the only difference is that O/B are hypocrites on top of that for opposing Bush policies and then following them.
Anyway, thanks for interesting viewpoints GW and even though I do not always agree with you I always read what you wrote with interest.
So what we really have here are anti-war leftists, who for some reason believe the US should supinely surrender to those who have made war on us.
Thus Bush/Cheney are war criminals, and so is Barack Obama.
Sorry, folks: you are not serious people. If just once you would offer your proposed solutions to Islamist terrorism... just once.
there are plenty of "rightists" who have learned to distrust most things our government is doing and saying and have also learned the "war on terror" is being used to destroy our constitution. It's more a factor of intelligence than political philosophy.
I have never in my life voted for a "left" person. I have never voted for a Democrat in my life. I have given election money to some Republicans and never to a Democrat. In fact, I am pretty far right with respect to almost everything. However, in my book torture is not a left-right concept; it is a concept of "are we better than mullahs". Judging from you, our country has become like the Islamic nutjob countries with many people thinking that stoning, or waterboarding, or whatever other crap that fits agenda of the government is just fine.
Name-calling that you are engaging in is STUPID. And you asked above for examples of people dying from torture in US custody. i gave you a link and instead of name-calling it would be nice to try to disprove that link with facts.
Islamic terrorism as we know it is made by USA ...in Saudi...in Pak...so first learn history...then talk.
Sorry, skippy, but I've spent time in both countries. You are simply full of it.
There is no statute of limitations on murder, and war crimes.
torture is just a way of our government saying we are no better or smarter than the bad guys, the bad guys can say monkey see monkey do and torture our military, civilians, etc. just a bad idea all around and TPTB are too stupid to realize it. using torture and it still took 10 years, that doesn't sound like much actionable intelligence to me.
You don't sound like a man, more like a milk-whiskered youth. You imply an equivalence that doesn't exist. You further imply that our enemies are pure, and it's only our behavior that corrupts them. That is simply foolish. As for how much time it took to land OBL: so what? it took the Israelis 20 years to find Adolph Eichmann. The point is, they found him.
there are no enemies per se...we are our worst enemy..so don't use the enemy logic, it doesn't fly....Never degrade yourself by being as degradable as others who've gone that way..It has nothing to do with them but with ourselves...And in the long run it ALWAYS pays...as what destroys civilization is the rot within...not the threat without...its always entropy that kills an ecosystem...you are such a worm from Galapagos who is happy to stay a worm.
Time for you to step away from the Happy Hour bar.
If you managing anyone's money, God help them.
Waterboaring is torture, eh? Then why do American aviators, as well as SEALS, Special Forces and the like all undergo it as part of their training? Do we routinely torture our own soldiers, sailors and airmen?
And why did Leon Panetta say forthrightly that waterboarding resulted in information very useful in tracking down OBL's couriers? We keep being told that torture doesn't work!
This "torture doesn't work" thing: it flies in the face of all of human experience. Does anyone remember Col. Buckley, our CIA station chief in Lebanon, captured by Hezbolla and given over to the Iranians, who tortured the crap out of him until he gave info about our operations in South Lebanon? Hezbollah used that info to wipe out our assets there.
That was torture, and it worked. Oh and btw: Buckley died while being tortured. KSM is alive and well.
Poor logic. Just because we try to train our military to resist torturous interrogation techniques doesn't mean it's not torture.
The "poor logic" is yours: by law our military and CIA are not allowed to engage in torture. The point of John Yoo's memos to GWB was that waterboarding was NOT torture.
and John Yoo is your legal authority? His "memos" are held to be amazingly creative, unconsitutional and "tortured" legal logic. He also supported broad violations of the fourth amendment
http://www.justice.gov/opa/documents/memomilitaryforcecombatus10232001.pdf
and the Unitary Executive Theory
try again
There is no difference between them (Iran) and us now and consequently US can not take moral high ground any more. Also, would be nice for you to grow some rudimentary brains and tell people here why if Japanese waterboard US servicemen it is torture but if US waterboards captives it is not torture? Also, after torture in US custody many people have died. See http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/06/30/accountability for a few examples.
When the Japanese water-tortured (not waterboarded) captives they did not take pains to ensure that the prisoner did not die. When we did it, for example, we simulated drowning but did not actually force water into the lungs. In fact, we put plastic wrap over the boardee's mouth and nose to prevent water from being ingested or inhaled. The Japanese often intentionally drowned the captives or stomped on their water-engorged stomachs to rupture them and cause the captives to die a horrible death.
And, no, no Japanese officer (of seven convicted of war crimes) was ever executed "for waterboarding" or "water-torture". Such folks were executed for committing a variety of heinous war crimes on a large scale.
Finally, if you have evidence for the claim that "many people" have died after torture "in US custody", please produce it.
Read through Greenvalds' article and disprove the deaths.
See also http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/01/national/main3441363.shtml
Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, considers waterboarding a form of torture. McCain has been quoted as saying that waterboarding is "no different than holding a pistol to his head and firing a blank."
In 1968, a U.S. soldier was court-martialed for water boarding a Vietnamese prisoner.
read also through this which is a released US government document:
http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/Footnote2.png
It says that waterboarding for training which you alluded to before was done differently from waterboarding meant to torture detainees.
SERE was bastardized and changed in order to illicit false confessions. For example:
So we have the two main Air Force insiders concerning the genesis of the torture program confirming - with original notes - that the whole purpose of the torture program was to extract false confessions.
It ain't about getting "confessions" false or otherwise. It's about getting actionable intelligence.
You've used the word "confession" multiple times in situations in which it does not apply.
Hmmm. I wonder why that is. It's like you know you're wrong but want to spread BS and confusion.\
Bernank? Is that you?
Hilarious!! You are saying that KSM took the SERE course, and thus was trained to give us false intelligence!!
Except Leon Panetta says the intelligence they got was useful in finding the couriers.
Heh.
If the paranoid bullbleep you're serving up here reflects the logic and sophistication on the financial/market side of Zero Hedge, we are all well and truly boned.
Hey GW...just read the chronicles of the Inquisition...its all there, when a power group wants to win at whatever cost even to betray...and misuse, their so called "god of universal love". The papal church showed the way in western civilisation like none other. The list is too long of their crimes...Now GWB...the Patriot act...all these false flags... is sad repeat performance...Like LBJ/Nixon during Vietnam...the dogs of war have destroyed the mind set of US politics.
two wrongs don't make a right. You sold your soul to the devil. Doesn't mean you deserve to be group banged senseless. You own words are your worst indictment.
Is it still torture when there is no permanent physical damage? Getting your ass kicked or simulating drowning really only leaves you with a fear of getting hit or going under water. Whereas getting your eye plucked out or branding someone is whole other ball game. I also doubt we beheaded anyone in any of these prisons with rusty dull blades....I'm just saying.
Well:
Indeed, all of those who said it's not torture - including radio personality Mancow (and see this) and writer Christopher Hitchens - have changed their tune as soon as they got waterboarded themselves for even a few seconds.
Pretend tough guy Sean Hannity said years ago that he would get waterboarded for charity. But for years on end, he has chickened out.
The 1984 United Nations Convention Against Torture (Article 1) provides a definition of torture that is considered customary.
International humanitarian law (IHL) differs somewhat from this definition in not requiring the involvement of a person acting in an official capacity as a condition for an act intended to inflict severe pain or suffering to be defined as torture.
The ICRC uses the broad term " ill-treatment " to cover both torture and other methods of abuse prohibited by international law, including inhuman, cruel, humiliating, and degrading treatment, outrages upon personal dignity and physical or moral coercion.
The legal difference between torture and other forms of ill treatment lies in the level of severity of pain or suffering imposed. In addition, torture requires the existence of a specific purpose behind the act – to obtain information, for example.
The various terms used to refer to different forms of ill treatment or infliction of pain can be explained as follows:
Torture: existence of a specific purpose plus intentional infliction of severe suffering or pain;
Cruel or inhuman treatment: no specific purpose, significant level of suffering or pain inflicted;
Outrages upon personal dignity: no specific purpose, significant level of humiliation or degradation.
Methods of ill treatment may be both physical and/or psychological in nature and both methods may have physical and psychological effects.
GW said: “In reality, their torture program was crafted to justify the Iraq war, not to catch Bin Laden”.
Yes, the truth can be told in one sentence without volumes of illumination. Although GW’s opinion is well documented, the truth is simple; it is lies that are complicated and deliberately confusing.
Our American Democracy and the Rule of Law has been overthrown by the Fascist Oligarchy. Like the banksters, even admitted American War Criminals go unpunished.
With the Fascist in control of our government, American civil liberties have been suspended indefinitely by Homeland Security; American citizens who resist or speak out against unwarranted search and seizure by the goons have become the enemy. They will be arrested on the spot. Are you afraid of the TSA goons? You should be, they are no different then the Nazi SS.
“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power”. -- Benito Mussolini
Here here, hoist the Jolly Roger mate.
"torture and enhanced interrogation techniques slowed down the hunt for bin Laden"
Could it also be that enhanced TSA rapedowns slow down the hunt for terrorists?
Cheney was a key instigator of an executive branch that operated on its own set of laws.
This is what happens when you lose control of your representative government.
We wouldn’t have had wars without congressional approval.
We wouldn’t have had evidence presented without being challenged.
We wouldn’t have had an executive so strong that laws could be made through executive order because a Congress responsible to the people would have nullified them.
In short, we wouldn’t have been in Iraq or had torture prisons if we had had representative government. With a Congress responsible to the people, Clinton’s impeachment would have resulted in his removal from office, instead of in a bombing campaign in Bosnia to divert attention.
The key to America’s problems lies in the Congress.
Your stuff is getting very tiresome ( see this, this, this and this. and while you at it, take a look at that. )
he justifies his viewpoint while neocon trolls here can just spout slogans
ooh ha ha
Neo cons are dupes, trolls, and punks, but now Democrats are joining in on the parade that looks more like a dance of death than a way to promote the American Dream. The American Dream appears to have taken its final turn, and now has descended into the depths of hell, celebrated by the people in passive terms; watching TV and staying mum is the masochistic way of understanding we are all only scull and bones for eternity.
Torture in the Bush/Obama Doctrine sense is not only never justified, it does not even work. Ask the Mossad how they interrogate.
'Pack of cigarettes?'
People who advocate waterboarding and other forms of torture might talk tough. But as former Navy Judge Advocate General Admiral John Hutson said:
Writes Robert Katz: When details of Abu Ghraib became public...Joe Sobran quipped, “There goes all the good will we built up through years of bombing Arab cities and starving Arab children.”
Thanks, George, for your work on this.
George,
China routinely tortures it's own citizens and brutalizes the Tibetan people. How about putting the spot light on those abuses to put the U.S. actions in context. When in context the U.S. pales in comparison to torturous regimes around the world. In fact GW, try going to China and posting some anti- Chinese gov't comments and see what happens to you.
Did you read this:
?
Yes, China is a brutal tyranny, but the U.S. has sunk to its depths.
Way to go, communist torture implementers!
From day one, the very goal, just like the North Korean and Chinese, was to produce false information and propoganda. It seems utterly clear given that the wealth of experts know this indeed is all it produces. But that's not the only hard evidence. As you point out, the program itself was reverse engineered:
According to a 2009 Senate Armed Services Committee report (see April 21, 2009), the Pentagon begins asking the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA) for assistance in developing a set of procedures for “harsh interrogations”—torture—to be used against suspected terrorists captured by US soldiers and intelligence operatives. JPRA has “reverse-engineered” a training program, Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE), which trains US soldiers to resist torture techniques if captured by an enemy, to produce harsh techniques to be used in interrogating suspected terrorists. [Washington Post, 4/22/2009]
Methods Already in Use - Military interrogators have already begun using the methods inflicted on them during SERE training on their prisoners, and SERE instructors—often having no training in interrogation procedures and no experience with other cultures—have been reassigned as interrogators. [Savage, 2007, pp. 216] The JPRA program will result in the personal approval of 15 “harsh” techniques by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The policies will be adopted by US interrogators in Afghanistan, at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, and at Guantanamo. [New York Times, 4/21/2009] In a June 2004 press conference, General James T. Hill, the commander of the US Southern Command (SOCOM), which oversees the Guantanamo detention facility, will say that US officials tapped the “SERE School and developed a list of techniques.” Hill will say that he was reassured by Pentagon officials that the techniques were “legally consistent with our laws.”
Methods Devised to Produce Propaganda, Not Reliable Information - Trained interrogators are, in the words of reporter Charlie Savage, “aghast at this policy.” Savage will write that unlike many Pentagon officials, Special Forces troops, and even SERE instructors, they know full well where SERE techniques originated: from the techniques used by Chinese and North Korean interrogators to torture and brutalize US soldiers during the Korean War. The Koreans and Chinese were experts at coercing American captives to “confess” to “war crimes” and other offenses; those confessions were used for propaganda purposes. “After the war,” Savage will write, the captured soldiers “all told the same story: Chinese interrogators, working with the North Koreans, had put them through a series of sustained torments” identical to those used in SERE training “until their minds had bent and they had made the false confessions.” The stories led to the concept of Chinese “brainwashing” techniques made famous by such books and films as The Manchurian Candidate. In 1963, the CIA concluded that the techniques were virtually useless at producing reliable intelligence, but worked very well in coercing victims to say whatever interrogators wanted them to say. “[U]nder sufficient pressure subjects usually yield but their ability to recall and communicate information accurately is as impaired as the will to resist.” Savage will write, “Neither SERE trainers, who run scenarios by following the instructions in basic military manuals, nor their Special Forces trainees understood that the coercive techniques used in the program were designed to make prisoners lose touch with reality so that they will falsely confess to what their captors want to hear, not for extracting accurate and reliable information.” Colonel Steve Kleinman, the former head of the Air Force’s strategic interrogation program, will later comment: “People who defend this say ‘we can make them talk.’ Yes, but what are they saying? The key is that most of the training is to try to resist the attempts to make you comply and do things such as create propaganda, to make these statements in either written or videotaped form. But to get people to comply, to do what you want them to do, even though it’s not the truth—that is a whole different dynamic than getting people to produce accurate, useful intelligence.”
http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=joint_personnel_recovery_agency_1
Torture is a crime against humanity.
It puts those who carry it out on the same stage with people like the SS, Stalin's killer commandos, Pol Pot, Gaddhafi, Saddam and any other dictator.
It is also very ineffective as a method of interrogation, because the tortured person will say anything and everything, including lies, just to avoid the pain.
Every study on that topic, and there are numerous out there, proves this well known fact.
So the torturer will always hear what he wants to hear from the tortured, even if it's not true.
The only reason why torture is performed on a person then must be sadism, the delight at watching others' agony and misery.
Which says a lot about those who support torture.
true but the very intent of torture is to fabricate information
Donald Rumsfeld. That guy couldn't even answer what kind of kool aid he liked without getting defensive and adversarial.
Geo Wash will not be happy until the terrorists send him on a trip to try to find his own 72 virgins. Remember, there is no guarantee that the promised virgins will be female.
Anyone who trusts their government is a fool
Psywar - The real battlefield is your mind (1/8)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7A2hVDdB10
Human Resourceshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9R85eo2rA70
What do you say to the hypothetical situtation where a terrorist has a nuke planned to go off.
Geo Wash says to share your last cookies with the person who planted the bomb. Maybe they will like you better just before the bomb go BOOOM.
According to the experts - torture is unnecessary even to prevent "ticking time bombs" from exploding (see this, this and this). Indeed, a top expert says that torture would fail in a real 'ticking time-bomb' situation