Catch 22

I have been thinking quite a bit since I posted the other night about Richard Clarke's op ed. Its funny how you may have missed an angle on a story and then all of a sudden it comes into focus. That's how I feel about the moment when I read Clarke's column and he pointed out that the Bush Adminstration never tried to find out what the most effective form of interrogation was before ordering EITs. As I noted when I blogged on it, the remarkable thing is that nobody has brought up that fact in the recent months that torture has been discussed extensively. Almost all of the conversation has been about their legality or lack thereof or whether or not they worked. Nobody thought to ask why the Bush Administration thought it would work in the first place.

Now following up on that lets not forget that we know from the OLC memos that these interrogation techniques were basically new and untested in terms of interrogation methods. Two men reverse engineered the torture techniques by using SERE school guidelines. Why that is important is it means that there was no record going in on how effective these methods would be. The point of SERE school was and is to prepare our soldiers who are going into theaters of war for what might happen if they are captured. They were being prepared not to resist giving up vital information, but to resist giving false confessions which could be used as propanda for our enemies.

Based on the fact that so much effort was put into trying to find a way to term these torture techniques as being legal under the Bush Administration would lead me and most reasonable people to similarly believe that such tactics had never before been authorized. If they had then there would have already had been legal precedent for what the CIA was about to do.

Of course that doesn't necessarily mean that the techniques had never been employed but if it had been done in the past that would mean that it had been done without legal cover.

But back to the issue at hand. What is apparent now after having thought it over is that Bush et al put the safety of our country at the peril of interrogation techniques that had no previous track record to go by. Other than the fact that it would come across "looking tough" there was no real reason to believe that EITs or torture or whatever you choose to call it, would work any better than traditional interrogation techniques. And that goes hand in hand with Ali Soufan's account that these torture techniques did more harm than good when it came to the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah.

And yet no one in the media has brought this point up.

And when you think about it, the only way the Bush Administration could claim to know the techniques worked before using them would be if they admitted that the techniques had been employed before they were deemed legal. Or worse they would have to say that the SERE school was really a way for our military to use men and women headed to war as guinea pigs. Because if neither one of those are true, and I personally don't think they are, then its apparent that the Bush Administration ordered these kinds of interrogations just because they "believed" that might is always right. That pain will always yield the best results. That force was the answer to any problem.

And really, based on everything else we saw from the Bushies, doesn't that just make perfect sense?

When oh when will our mainstream media try to get to the bottom of this?

Gen Petraeus: "We Ought To Live Our Values"

Still waiting for someone in the MSM to ask Liz or Dick Cheney if they are calling General David Petraeus a liar.






I won't hold my breath.

I Guess "The Use Of Sugar Free Cookies Saved Lives" Just Didn't Sound Tough Enough

Crossposted at Attackerman

I think one of the problems with the torture debate that people normally don't correct is that the premise that torture works better or quicker than traditional interrogation techniques is a lie. Proponents of torture, or their useful euphemism EITs, frequently invoke the ticking time bomb scenario as a situation when we should be allowed to do "whatever it takes" to get the information from terrorists in our custody to avert a disaster. And usually, unfortunately, people don't push back on that notion other than maybe to point out that "ticking time bombs" rarely if ever exists. But the point should be made that if anything what you really want SHOULD there be a ticking time bomb scenario is a process that yields accurate information quickly from detainees and that process is the traditional method of interrogation.

I really think people who are pushing for accountability for our government ordering torture, should get intimately aquainted with former FBI interrogator Ali Soufan's testimony before the Senate a couple of weeks ago.

At that time he said:

In addition the harsh techniques only serves to reinforce what the detainee has been prepared to expect if captured. This gives him a greater sense of control and predictability about his experience, and strengthens his will to resist.

A second major problem with this technique is that evidence gained from it is unreliable. There is no way to know whether the detainee is being truthful, or just speaking to either mitigate his discomfort or to deliberately provide false information. As the interrogator isn't an expert on the detainee or the subject matter, nor has he spent time going over the details of the case, the interrogator cannot easily know if the detainee is telling the truth. This unfortunately has happened and we have had problems ranging from agents chasing false leads to the disastrous case of Ibn Sheikh al-Libby who gave false information on Iraq, al Qaeda, and WMD.

A third major problem with this technique is that it is slow. It takes place over a long period of time, for example preventing the detainee from sleeping for 180 hours as the memos detail, or waterboarding 183 times in the case of KSM. When we have an alleged "ticking timebomb" scenario and need to get information quickly, we can't afford to wait that long.

So in a ticking time bomb scenario what you really is the antithesis of EITs/torture unless you want to wait several days with something like sleep deprivation, or risk getting bad information from stuff like waterboarding. But very often we just either cede the argument to the "tough guys" instead of pressing the case that even IF we were facing a time sensitive threat, torture would be the wrong move.

Now Ali Soufan has added even more ammunition for the people, like myself, who believe in the rule of law and also believe that we can't justify torture. In an interview with Time magazine he reveals how he was able to obtain information from the detainee who was closest to Osama bin Ladin.

Was it walling?

Nope.

A couple face slaps?

Nah.

Waterboarding?

Hell no.

So how did he pull vital information from Abu Jandal?

Some muthafuckin sugar free cookies, thats how.

The most successful interrogation of an Al-Qaeda operative by U.S. officials required no sleep deprivation, no slapping or "walling" and no waterboarding. All it took to soften up Abu Jandal, who had been closer to Osama bin Laden than any other terrorist ever captured, was a handful of sugar-free cookies.

Abu Jandal had been in a Yemeni prison for nearly a year when Ali Soufan of the FBI and Robert McFadden of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service arrived to interrogate him in the week after 9/11. Although there was already evidence that al-Qaeda was behind the attacks, American authorities needed conclusive proof, not least to satisfy skeptics like Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, whose support was essential for any action against the terrorist organization. U.S. intelligence agencies also needed a better understanding of al-Qaeda's structure and leadership. Abu Jandal was the perfect source: the Yemeni who grew up in Saudi Arabia had been bin Laden's chief bodyguard, trusted not only to protect him but also to put a bullet in his head rather than let him be captured.

Abu Jandal's guards were so intimidated by him, they wore masks to hide their identities and begged visitors not to refer to them by name in his presence. He had no intention of cooperating with the Americans; at their first meetings, he refused even to look at them and ranted about the evils of the West. Far from confirming al-Qaeda's involvement in 9/11, he insisted the attacks had been orchestrated by Israel's Mossad. While Abu Jandal was venting his spleen, Soufan noticed that he didn't touch any of the cookies that had been served with tea: "He was a diabetic and couldn't eat anything with sugar in it." At their next meeting, the Americans brought him some sugar-free cookies, a gesture that took the edge off Abu Jandal's angry demeanor. "We had showed him respect, and we had done this nice thing for him," Soufan recalls. "So he started talking to us instead of giving us lectures."

It took more questioning, and some interrogators' sleight of hand, before the Yemeni gave up a wealth of information about al-Qaeda — including the identities of seven of the 9/11 bombers — but the cookies were the turning point. "After that, he could no longer think of us as evil Americans," Soufan says. "Now he was thinking of us as human beings."

snip

To get Abu Jandal's cooperation, Soufan and McFadden laid a trap. After palliating his rage with the sugar-free cookies, they got him to identify a number of al-Qaeda members from an album of photographs, including Mohamed Atta and six other 9/11 hijackers. Next they showed him a local newspaper headline that claimed (erroneously) that more than 200 Yemenis had been killed in the World Trade Center. Abu Jandal agreed that this was a terrible crime and said no Muslim could be behind the attacks. Then Soufan dropped the bombshell: some of the men Abu Jandal had identified in the album had been among the hijackers. Without realizing it, the Yemeni prisoner had admitted that al-Qaeda had been responsible for 9/11: For all his resistance, he had given the Americans what they wanted. "He was broken, completely shattered," Soufan says. From that moment on, Abu Jandal was completely cooperative, giving Soufan and McFadden reams of information — names and descriptions of scores of al-Qaeda operatives, details of training and tactics.

Now I realize that breaking a detainee with sugar free cookies doesn't lend itself to great sound bites or political ads. But evidently it works well with helping keep our country safe and bringing terrorists to justice.

Better yet it contrasts with torture in such a way to make the claims of people like Dick Cheney absolutely laughable.

So can our mainstream media folks please drop the pretense that the pro torture crowd has a leg to stand on? This debate has been over for a very long time we are just waiting for the YOU to catch up.

And hopefully, at some point, our Justice Department will follow suit.

When Will Someone At MSNBC Push Back On Liz Cheney?

Crossposted at Attackerman

Yesterday MSNBC gave Liz Cheney a platform to deceive yet again.



Now interestingly enough Carlos Watson asked for questions to ask Liz Cheney before she came on for the interview. I myself submitted probably 10 good questions to ask her. Nothing over the top, just straight forward questions that she probably would have a hard time answering and which would expose her as being there purely for propaganda purposes. Several other people endorsed many of the questions. Sadly maybe at the most one of my questions were used. Not only that he allowed Liz Cheney to make up shit out of whole cloth. Like for instance when she said that Bush saying torture saved lives meant thats exactly what happened. Or when she claimed DNI Dennis Blair said that torture saved lives which he didn't.

Maybe the most frustrating thing was that Carlos Watson used the "some people say" device when interviewing her instead of being specific. The President of the United States says she is wrong. The Director of the FBI says she is wrong. The FBI interrogator who extracted the most useful information from Abu Zubaydah says she is wrong. But Watson seemed content with generalities allowing her to frame it as if just partisan politicos were the ones who were saying she was wrong.

Watson also refused to say that waterboarding is "illegal" using that word, or that the CIA may have "broken the law", instead using the weaksauce euphemism "crossed the line". What the hell does "crossed the line" mean? And what in the hell is so hard about being honest about what is at stake here?

Well now Greg Sargent is reporting that the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Carl Levin, has now come out and said that Liz Cheney and her daddy Dick are both full of shit.

Levin’s comments are highly newsworthy because they give us the most detailed picture yet of what’s in the documents Cheney wants. You can watch Levin’s speech right here at TPM. This is what Levin said about the documents:

Mr. Cheney has also claimed that the release of classified documents would prove his view that the techniques worked. But those classified documents say nothing about numbers of lives saved, nor do the documents connect acquisition of valuable intelligence to the use of the abusive techniques. I hope that the documents are declassified so that people can judge for themselves what is fact and what is fiction.

If this is true, it’s big. A Senator who has seen the documents Cheney claims will prove that torture saved lives says that those docs contain absolutely nothing about whether the torture techniques were actually responsible for yielding any valuable intelligence.

Networks such as MSNBC have given literally hours of airtime to Cheney and his daughter Liz to claim endlessly that these docs will prove Cheney’s torture assertions. These claims have gone almost entirely unchallenged, due to the classified nature of the documents. You’d think that a contrary claim from a well-respected Senator who has also seen the docs would merit a few passing mentions, too.

Yeah you would think that but for some reason I doubt it will happen. For whatever reason MSNBC has decided to allow Liz Cheney to come on their show and have free reign. I don't know if the edict has been handed down from on high, but its pretty evident that either no anchor has been allowed to really press her on specifics or every anchor who has interviewed her is woefully inept. I happen to have a pretty high opinion of Carlos Watson so I am going to go with the former. But the question is when will people start holding MSNBC accountable for absolutely failing their audience by giving these softball interviews? I can't think of one credible reason for them continuing to have a blatant propagandist come on their network and spew misinformation. Can you?

Like it or not Liz Cheney can move public opinion on this issue. That means that every time she is allowed on MSNBC they are basically helping to push against accountability for torture. That is not only morally wrong but also irresponsible. We should demand better.