Why Torture Failed

Think Progress has put together a great report about our use of torture and why it failed. If you anticipate debating someone on the merits of whether we should torture to "keep America safe" I highly recommend you take a look at it or even print it out and keep it with you. When the facts are on your side its hard to lose this debate.

Frank Rich Exposes The TRUE Ticking Time Bomb

Frank Rich almost by himself justifies the continued existence of the New York Times. Today he focuses on the OLC memos along with the Senate Armed Services Committee Report on torture. He especially on the new revelations contained in both. The last couple off days I have heard from different corners including on some center left blogs that nothing in these reports and memos were new. Well that's simply untrue. In point of fact, as Rich points out, the very genesis of the torture program was exposed for all to see in the SASC report. It turns out that there was in fact a ticking time bomb scenario for the Bush Administration, but it didn't mean what you think it means...

In other words, the ticking time bomb was not another potential Qaeda attack on America but the Bush administration’s ticking timetable for selling a war in Iraq; it wanted to pressure Congress to pass a war resolution before the 2002 midterm elections. Bybee’s memo was written the week after the then-secret (and subsequently leaked) “Downing Street memo,” in which the head of British intelligence informed Tony Blair that the Bush White House was so determined to go to war in Iraq that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.” A month after Bybee’s memo, on Sept. 8, 2002, Cheney would make his infamous appearance on “Meet the Press,” hyping both Saddam’s W.M.D.s and the “number of contacts over the years” between Al Qaeda and Iraq. If only 9/11 could somehow be pinned on Iraq, the case for war would be a slamdunk.

But there were no links between 9/11 and Iraq, and the White House knew it. Torture may have been the last hope for coercing such bogus “intelligence” from detainees who would be tempted to say anything to stop the waterboarding.

Last week Bush-Cheney defenders, true to form, dismissed the Senate Armed Services Committee report as “partisan.” But as the committee chairman, Carl Levin, told me, the report received unanimous support from its members — John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman included.

Levin also emphasized the report’s accounts of military lawyers who dissented from White House doctrine — only to be disregarded. The Bush administration was “driven,” Levin said. By what? “They’d say it was to get more information. But they were desperate to find a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq.”

Five years after the Abu Ghraib revelations, we must acknowledge that our government methodically authorized torture and lied about it. But we also must contemplate the possibility that it did so not just out of a sincere, if criminally misguided, desire to “protect” us but also to promote an unnecessary and catastrophic war. Instead of saving us from “another 9/11,” torture was a tool in the campaign to falsify and exploit 9/11 so that fearful Americans would be bamboozled into a mission that had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. The lying about Iraq remains the original sin from which flows much of the Bush White House’s illegality.

Levin suggests — and I agree — that as additional fact-finding plays out, it’s time for the Justice Department to enlist a panel of two or three apolitical outsiders, perhaps retired federal judges, “to review the mass of material” we already have. The fundamental truth is there, as it long has been. The panel can recommend a legal path that will insure accountability for this wholesale betrayal of American values.

President Obama can talk all he wants about not looking back, but this grotesque past is bigger than even he is. It won’t vanish into a memory hole any more than Andersonville, World War II internment camps or My Lai. The White House, Congress and politicians of both parties should get out of the way. We don’t need another commission. We don’t need any Capitol Hill witch hunts. What we must have are fair trials that at long last uphold and reclaim our nation’s commitment to the rule of law.

Telling

I just want to highlight one paragraph from today's Washington Post article entitled "In Obama's Inner Circle, Debate Over Memos' Release Was Intense"

One of those present said that when asked, the CIA officers acknowledged that some foreign intelligence agencies had refused, for example, to share information about the location of terrorism suspects for fear of becoming implicated in any eventual torture of those suspects. Sources said that Jones shared these concerns and that, as a former military officer, he worried that any use of harsh interrogations by the United States could make it more likely that American soldiers in captivity would be subjected to similar tactics.

I don't know how much more evidence we need to realize this was in fact torture. When other governments decline to help us because they don't want to be associated with torture, what else is there to say?

The Truth On Torture

Former FBI supervisory special agent Ali Soufan decided to come out and debunk a lot of the conjecture flying around from the pro torture crowd in an op-ed today. I know there will be a lot of howling today from this article but its going to be hard to get around the uncomfortable truths in the op-ed.

One of the most striking parts of the memos is the false premises on which they are based. The first, dated August 2002, grants authorization to use harsh interrogation techniques on a high-ranking terrorist, Abu Zubaydah, on the grounds that previous methods hadn’t been working. The next three memos cite the successes of those methods as a justification for their continued use.

It is inaccurate, however, to say that Abu Zubaydah had been uncooperative. Along with another F.B.I. agent, and with several C.I.A. officers present, I questioned him from March to June 2002, before the harsh techniques were introduced later in August. Under traditional interrogation methods, he provided us with important actionable intelligence.

We discovered, for example, that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Abu Zubaydah also told us about Jose Padilla, the so-called dirty bomber. This experience fit what I had found throughout my counterterrorism career: traditional interrogation techniques are successful in identifying operatives, uncovering plots and saving lives.

There was no actionable intelligence gained from using enhanced interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah that wasn’t, or couldn’t have been, gained from regular tactics. In addition, I saw that using these alternative methods on other terrorists backfired on more than a few occasions — all of which are still classified. The short sightedness behind the use of these techniques ignored the unreliability of the methods, the nature of the threat, the mentality and modus operandi of the terrorists, and due process.

Defenders of these techniques have claimed that they got Abu Zubaydah to give up information leading to the capture of Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a top aide to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and Mr. Padilla. This is false. The information that led to Mr. Shibh’s capture came primarily from a different terrorist operative who was interviewed using traditional methods. As for Mr. Padilla, the dates just don’t add up: the harsh techniques were approved in the memo of August 2002, Mr. Padilla had been arrested that May.

One of the worst consequences of the use of these harsh techniques was that it reintroduced the so-called Chinese wall between the C.I.A. and F.B.I., similar to the communications obstacles that prevented us from working together to stop the 9/11 attacks. Because the bureau would not employ these problematic techniques, our agents who knew the most about the terrorists could have no part in the investigation. An F.B.I. colleague of mine who knew more about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed than anyone in the government was not allowed to speak to him.

Don't miss what he is saying here. Not only did torture not work, it also created the same kind of wall between the FBI and the CIA that hurt our intelligence agencies before 9-11. So not only did it hurt our reputation around the world, it in point of fact made us less safe by interfering with the communications between intelligence agencies.

The debate after the release of these memos has centered on whether C.I.A. officials should be prosecuted for their role in harsh interrogation techniques. That would be a mistake. Almost all the agency officials I worked with on these issues were good people who felt as I did about the use of enhanced techniques: it is un-American, ineffective and harmful to our national security.

Fortunately for me, after I objected to the enhanced techniques, the message came through from Pat D’Amuro, an F.B.I. assistant director, that “we don’t do that,” and I was pulled out of the interrogations by the F.B.I. director, Robert Mueller (this was documented in the report released last year by the Justice Department’s inspector general).

My C.I.A. colleagues who balked at the techniques, on the other hand, were instructed to continue. (It’s worth noting that when reading between the lines of the newly released memos, it seems clear that it was contractors, not C.I.A. officers, who requested the use of these techniques.)

So contrary to the musings of Joe Klein and David Ignatius the CIA themselves didn't want to have to torture these people. Its about time for all of this to come to light. If we are a nation of laws, we have to start acting like it.

Torture Is Not Just A CIA Issue

It would behoove all of us to remember, as the SASC report shows, that torturing detainees didn't originate with the CIA at GITMO. It actually started with the military in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Soon afterward, the first alarms began to sound. Jerald Ogrisseg, an Air Force SERE psychologist, warned JPRA chief of staff Daniel Baumgartner that waterboarding detainees was illegal. In Oct 2002, Lieut. Colonel Morgan Banks, an Army SERE psychologist, warned officials at Gitmo of the risks of using SERE techniques for interrogation, pointing out that even with the Army's careful monitoring, injuries and accidents did happen. "The risk with real detainees is increased exponentially," he wrote.

But by then, the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) had already issued two legal opinions, signed by Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, declaring that the techniques did not amount to torture. JPRA training for Gitmo interrogators was stepped up. In December 2002, with Rumsfeld's authorization, officials of the Joint Task Force at Gitmo devised a standard operating procedure for the use of many SERE techniques to interrogate detainees.

Rumsfeld would rescind his authorization in a manner of weeks, after the Navy General Counsel, Alberto Mora, raised concerns about many techniques, arguing that they violated U.S. and international laws and constituted, at worst, torture. Mora met Haynes and warned him that the "interrogation policies could threaten [Rumsfeld's] tenure and could even damage the presidency."

But even after Rumsfeld in January 2003 rescinded the authority for the use of SERE techniques at Gitmo, they remained in use in Afghanistan, and later in Iraq. Since Rumsfeld never declared these techniques illegal, military lawyers down the line were able to cite his original authorization as Pentagon policy. JPRA instructors would eventually travel to Iraq to train military interrogators there.

In the summer of 2004, the JPRA was even considering sending trainers to Afghanistan, prompting another SERE psychologist, Colonel Kenneth Rollins, to warn his colleagues by e-mail: "[W]e need to really stress the difference between what instructors do at SERE school (done to INCREASE RESISTANCE capability in students) versus what is taught at interrogator school (done to gather information). What is done by SERE instructors is by definition ineffective interrogator conduct. Simply stated, SERE school does not train you on how to interrogate, and things you 'learn' there by osmosis about interrogation are probably wrong if copied by interrogators."

Deep Thought/"Pro Torture"

If the Democrats are smart they will start labeling the torture apologists in the Republican Party as being "Pro Torture". This will help them frame the debate and it will also stick the Republican Party with a label that will turn most voters off. Much in the same way the religous right has labeled Democrats for years as being pro abortion, using the term pro torture towards Republicans will force them to explain why they are so committed to using torture in principle. I will put them on the defensive for once and it will change the conversation from whether torture works or not (which it has been shown not to) to a debate over the morality of torturing another human being under any circumstances. I fully endorse this concept and hope it catches on.

The "Ticking Time Bomb" Was Iraq?

McClatchy has an article based on the newly released Senate Armed Services report on torture in GITMO, Afghanistan and Iraq that probably explains why KSM and Zubaydah were waterboarded so many times. It turns out that at least part of the reason Dick Cheney and Dick Rumsfeld pushed for torture was an attmept to get detainees to verify a link between Iraq and al Qaida that never existed.

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration put relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist.

Such information would've provided a foundation for one of former President George W. Bush's main arguments for invading Iraq in 2003. No evidence has ever been found of operational ties between Osama bin Laden's terrorist network and Saddam's regime.

The use of abusive interrogation — widely considered torture — as part of Bush's quest for a rationale to invade Iraq came to light as the Senate issued a major report tracing the origin of the abuses and President Barack Obama opened the door to prosecuting former U.S. officials for approving them.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney and others who advocated the use of sleep deprivation, isolation and stress positions and waterboarding, which simulates drowning, insist that they were legal.

A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue said that Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld demanded that intelligence agencies and interrogators find evidence of al Qaida-Iraq collaboration.

"There were two reasons why these interrogations were so persistent, and why extreme methods were used," the former senior intelligence official said on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity.

"The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there."

It was during this period that CIA interrogators waterboarded two alleged top al Qaida detainees repeatedly — Abu Zubeida at least 83 times in August 2002 and Khalid Sheik Mohammed 183 times in March 2003 — according to a newly released Justice Department document.

"There was constant pressure on the intelligence agencies and the interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the detainees, especially the few high-value ones we had, and when people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people to push harder," he continued.

"Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people were told repeatedly, by CIA . . . and by others, that there wasn't any reliable intelligence that pointed to operational ties between bin Laden and Saddam, and that no such ties were likely because the two were fundamentally enemies, not allies."

Senior administration officials, however, "blew that off and kept insisting that we'd overlooked something, that the interrogators weren't pushing hard enough, that there had to be something more we could do to get that information," he said.

A Nation Of Laws

Over at Politico they have a debate going centered around this question, "Should the DOJ consider prosecuting Bush administration officials for detainee abuse as the NYT and others have urged?" My question is, "How could they not"? Republican operatives love to tell us that America is a nation of laws. It is what elevates us above every other country of the face of the earth. Is anyone asking if federal officials should consider prosecuting Casey Anthony in the death of her daughter Caylee? Is anyone asking whether officials in New York should consider prosecuting Bernie Madoff for ripping off all of his investors? Of course not. That is not to say that either one of those people are guilty of their crimes, I don't know and neither do you. But if they investigate and find pretty strong evidence that says they are guilty there is no way that anyone would say that they shouldn't be prosecuted for their crimes, so what makes our President any different? What does it say about America when we hold the lowest of our citizens to a higher standard than we do the highest? What does it say about our country when we even entertain the thought of NOT prosecuting our President if there is strong evidence that he committed a crime? And how do we regain our moral standing in the world when we push for prosecutions of war crimes every where in the world except in our own backyard?

I was intrigued to see what the response would be from some of the people on the right to that question. I was amused but not surprised to see several responses like this one:

Such prosecutions, warranted or not (and on balance, I don't believe they are), would distract and diminish the new Administration in a manner similar to what would have occurred had the same Bushhaters been successful in getting the Democratic Congress to begin impeachment proceedings. Congressional Republicans learned that lesson the hard way in the 1998 elections after they tried to turn Clinton's lying ("perjury lite") and cheating (on the future Secretary of State) into vengeance. If I were the RNC I might be saying, "go ahead, make my day." Dirty Harry is the only vigilante who ever kept his badge.

And besides, Eric Holder is demonstrably better at handling pardons than prosecutions.

I just have a hard time taking this argument seriously. How exactly would President Elect Barack Obama be diminished by the Bush administration being held accountable for the actions? Its almost presumed as fact that they would be found guilty and that shines a light on this kind of thinking. You rarely people even try to argue the point that the Bush administration did not commit prosecutable offenses. So where does this thinking come from about prosecutions diminishing the next administration? Obviously it didn't do anything to hurt George W. Bush because even after he stole the election in 2000 he still was about to push through his agenda and do pretty much whatever in the hell he wanted to. And where was this reluctance to prosecute crimes when Ken Starr was on his witchunt of Bill Clinton? Am I supposed to believe that its right to prosecute a man for getting some head, but wrong to prosecute a man for crimes against the constitution and international treaties? Please, give me a break. What ever happened to "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time""? And what does this tell you about a Republican party that tries to own the mantle of being tough on crime?

Recently on MSNBC's "Hardball", Chris Matthews had Christopher Hitchens and Mike Smerconish on to talk about the Senate Armed Services Committee report on detainee abuse which pointed the finger at the Bush administration and Don Rumsfeld as being the party's responsible for authorizing the abuses. It was a lively discussion where Hitchens made the case against torturing detainees for information and Smerconish made the case for doing so. It seemed to me that Smerconish's whole rationale was that the end will always justify the means. Then last night, again Tweety had two guests on to talk about the report. This time it was Congressman Jim Moran and Congressman Duncan Hunter making the case for and against torture and for and against prosecution of the administration for detainee abuses. But the meme in support of torture remained the same. Congressman Hunter focused on some unsupported story about information supposedly obtained from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed that helped stop some unknown terrorist attack. Another thing that both Smerconish and Congressman Hunter did was ask Tweety and the other guests if they would torture someone if an attack on America was imminent and the detainee had information about it. On both nights both Matthews and the anti torture guests had no comeback to that question. Well I for one do. I just might torture someone to stop an attack on America but I would also then after resign and expect to be brought up on war crimes. You see it is a terrible strawman question because the truth is there is no way of knowing if someone actually has information that you can use until AFTER they give it to you....or don't. But it really doesn't matter because the premise of the question is would you be willing to torture in any circumstance. Well torture is a war crime period point blank. There is no ambiguity in that fact. So if the new GOP talking point is "we did it but it was necessary" I say fine, let them say that. But what they are also saying that they committed a war crime and they should be prosecuted for it.

Actions should have consequences. If someone threatens my family with bodily harm its highly likely I will beat their ass. But when I am done I shouldn't be surprised when I get hauled off to jail. Yes I was defending my family from a potential threat, but I was also breaking the law by assaulting that other person. Whether the ends justify the means has no bearing on whether something is illegal or not. If torture is a war crime and it is, then torturing no matter what the situation is breaking the law. Just the other day Vice President Dick Cheney admitted in a televised interview that he helped to formulate and authorize torture. Hell I welcome their admissions now and their attempts to justify them, because at the end of the day they are still admitting to war crimes.

If I admit that I killed a man because he threatened to kill me, I be get prosecuted.

If I admit that I tortured a man because he had information I needed, I will be prosecuted.

If I admit that I kidnapped a man for what ever reason, I will be prosecuted.

So tell me why George Bush or Dick Cheney or Don Rumsfeld should get any better treatment than me.