Cheney Seeking Doc That Details What Khalid Shaykh Muhammad Revealed Under Torture?
So what’s in the CIA docs that Dick Cheney has asked for in order to prove torture has worked?
The blogger Marcy Wheeler, who’s been all over this story, thinks she’s figured it out: He’s trying to declassify and release more detail on what was revealed through the interrogation of top Al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Shaykh Muhammad.
Wheeler points out that one of the four torture memos released by Obama actually references a separate CIA document with the same date — July 13th, 2004 — as one of the docs Cheney requested.
In the torture memo, Bush lawyer Steven Bradbury described that 2004 document as a source for the claim that “prior to his capture,” the CIA considered Muhammad to be one of Al Qaeda’s “most important operational leaders.” He also cites it as the source for the claim that interrogation techniques have turned Muhammad and another top Al Qaeda leader into “pivotal sources” for the CIA for their “analysis and speculation about the capabilities, methodologies, and mindsets of terrorists.”
So, in short, there exists a document with the same date as the one Cheney wants that was compiled in order detail how torture made Muhammad a “pivotal source.” If this is the one Cheney is after, it presumably could reveal what info, if any, torture squeezed out of Muhammad.
If this is right, the question about the doc Cheney wants, as Spencer Ackerman puts it, is this: “One wonders when the CIA was asked to put that document together, and by whom.”
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This has been a GREAT collaborative effort. We now have the reasoninig behind why the reports were written in the first place and the impetus for Cheney asking for them last month. Now if only we could get that IG report.
“The question about the doc Cheney wants. . . is this: “One wonders when the CIA was asked to put that document together, and by whom.”
I thought the question was “what was revealed through the interrogation of Khalid Shaykh Muhammad?”
Proponents of enhanced interrogation will argue that such interrogation tactics provided valuable information “about the capabilities, methodologies, and mindsets of terrorists.”
Cheney is scamming. Even if the information in said document contains no unique information about Al Qaeda that was extracted from KSM, it will never be released unredacted (if at all).
Cheney will then cite this fact as “proof” that torturing KSM produced unique and invaluable information.
sbj
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Would you call it torture if North Korea waterboarded the two journalists they are now holding?
Looks like Dick is getting into selective mode. This looks like Scamming 101
Don’t they work for Al Gore? ehhh . . .
To be at all serious or fair I’d have to pull out the hobgoblin of consistency. That is, if WE do it then it might be torture, but we certainly shouldn’t voluntarily choose to prosecute ourselves for actions taken during war that seemed justified at the time.
If they do it and we catch the ******** then go ahead and prosecute.
Seems fair to me. If the terrorists capture Bush they will probably use enhanced interrogation on him and I’d be upset. [snark?] If we capture a terrorist leader and use enhanced interrogation on him then they’d probably be upset.
I can live with that, I think. War is hell.
I’m not convinced that if we ‘torture’ someone that gives the bad guys any more impetus to torture any of us they capture – I think they’ll pretty much do whatever they want without regard to our interrogation techniques.
I also have problems equating the two circumstances: the captured leader of a global terrorist organization versus reporters?
sbj
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Thats because you can only see it from your point of view. What if the North Koreans say those women are spies? Why wouldn’t THEY have a motivation to get all of the information from them that they could? Its a very slippery slope and once you start down it then you rarely are able to falling all the way off the cliff. Besides that its against our laws. Do you think Ronald Reagan was wrong for signing on to the Conventions Against Torture? Because they specifically outlaw any jutification for torture. Here is the relevant passage.
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http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/h_cat39.htm
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Not torturing detainees is what makes us better than them.
Two questions:
Was there not anytime during WWII or the Vietnam War that obtaining information from prisoners could have saved American lives? I don’t see why this situation is so different that it warrented torturing prisoners with the waterboard etc.
If torture works, why didn’t we find Osama bin Laden?
These are the questions that need to be answered by Cheney as he trys to control the debate about the U.S. using torture on prisoners.
Being Americans demands bravery. We presented ourselves as leaders of high ideas, it wasn’t forced on us. We get hit once and our so called high ideas go out the door as fear and cowardice takes over.
I enjoy the back and forth but I don’t think we are getting anywhere.
I reject the slippery slope argument. If what we started down was, indeed, a slippery slope, then we quite easily stopped the slide. Well before Obama took office even.
I believe that the devisers of the enhanced interrogation plan took pains to insure that it was not torture. I believe that they believed it was within the boundaries of the law.
I did not use being at war as a justification for torture. I said that it doesn’t make sense to prosecute ourselves for something we did during war that we felt, at that time, was not torture.
I certainly do agree that “I was only taking orders” is no defense and that is just one of the reasons I find the admin’s various conflicting statements on these issues to be so troubling. He does not appear to have thought this through very carefully.
I believe that there is plenty that makes us better than them. Not intentionally harming innocents is one of them.
Speaking of that, Olson makes the point that torture probes will never end:
“Why stop at the memos? “If it’s prosecutable because we waterboarded somebody or deprived him of sleep, what about sending a drone to blow him up without a trial or a hearing?” Olson asked. “What if the person we blew up was carrying a three-year old child? We know things like that have happened. We know innocent people have been killed. We know this administration has done it. Are they going to be prosecuted for that?”
I’ll remind you that drone attacks that have occurred under Obama’s watch have already resulted in the deaths of innocents. Would the next administration be justified in a probe such as that Olsen describes?
None of this information gleaned from torture ( “pivotal sources” for the CIA for their “analysis and speculation about the capabilities, methodologies, and mindsets of terrorists”) is remotely close to the ticking time bomb scenario used to justify torture. This kind of information, while very important, is the kind of information that has historically been obtained through traditional interrogation methods.
I am sure the torture defenders are working feverishly as we speak to redefine the meaning of “ticking time bomb.”
I’m glad we held that piece of **** KSM’s head under a stream of water. I hope we did it again and again and again. I’m sorry he’s not going to get drowned tomorrow too. Anyone remember Sep 11? The people that decided that jumping from the top of the WTC was better than staying inside? Do you remember the interview KSM gave in 2002 in Pakistan gloating about killing 3000 Americans? Bet he wasn’t smiling so big when the CIA was filling his nostrils with cold water.
I wish he’d been waterboarded with jet fuel going into his fat, hairy nose until he died. If that makes me a terrible person, so be it.
In 8 years of fighting the jihadist we poured water up the nose of three self admitted islamics. Big deal.
The memo was written in 2004. When was this guy interrogated? Seems to me that I recall it being a couple years previous, but I may have it confused with someone else. I need to see the actual results of the interrogation, not a CYA written several years later.
Another point that seems to be missed is why they were torturing someone who wasn’t even part of al Qaeda, merely an errand boy? The reason that they were torturing people in Guantanamo appears to be that Wolfowitz and Cheney were bound and determined to show that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11, not al Qaeda, because they needed justification to invade Iraq. If you use techniques from SERE that were designed by the Chinese and North Koreans to elicit false confessions, then it surprises no one that in fact what was elicited was false.
I want to see along with the presently classified memo an analysis of how much that was pulled out by torture actually had any foundation.
As for those who try to pretend that it wasn’t really torture, remember that at least 35 people in US custody have died with an autopsy report of homicide and dozens more have died of “natural causes”. Also, after WWII we executed some Japanese interrogators for waterboarding and sent others to jail for years. Why was waterboarding torture then and not now?