Torturing The Al Qaeda-Iraq Connection
Torturing The Al Qaeda-Iraq Connection
Shedding some well-needed light on why it could have possibly been necessary to waterboard someone 183 times, McClatchy reports that according to “a former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue,” former Vice-President Cheney and Defense Secretary 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.” [...]
“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.
I suppose it’s fitting, if disturbingly ironic, that techniques adopted wholesale from methods intended to extract false confessions were used in an attempt to generate evidence of a non-existent Al Qaeda-Saddam operational relationship.
In addition to the basic issue of illegal torture, however, we have the issue of mis-allocation of resources. The time spent and assets used in attempting to torture out a justification for what we now know was a predetermined Iraq invasion could have been better spent actually protecting America. In other words, the Iraq war was damaging U.S. national security even before it began.
Al-Libi's testimony was used by the Bush administration to substantiate its allegations that Iraq was prepared to provide al-Qaeda with weapons of mass destruction, [but] in January 2004, al-Libi recanted his confession. He said that he had invented the information because he was afraid of being further abused by his interrogators.[...]
The administration's best case for the value of enhanced interrogation techniques, then, turned out to have been fundamentally flawed. If the consequences of torture are as catastrophic as embarking upon the Iraq War on the basis of fabricated information, it emasculates the claims by torture's defenders that the practice saves lives.
Beers has been nominated as Under-Secretary for National Protection and Programs Directorate at the Department of Homeland Security.
6 Responses to “Torturing The Al Qaeda-Iraq Connection”
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I have been suggesting for some time that these techniques were obviously used not in spite of their propensity to produce false confessions, but BECAUSE they produce false confessions. I am glad to see some other people finally ready to openly face this fact (at least you and Atrios this morning.)
Recognition of this fact should be the final blow to the justifications of torture offered by the Bush administration. It is time to get on with our duty to see that these barbarous acts, carried out in all of our names, have consequences.
April 22nd, 2009 at 12:21 pmFrankly, while it is certainly disturbing, there’s nothing “ironic” about it. The administration needed false confessions, so they turned to procedures designed to produce exactly that. It’s only “ironic” if you attribute good-faith motives to those who ordered the torture. I think the evidence against that position is now overwhelming.
April 22nd, 2009 at 1:37 pmYeah well, what we have here are crimes against humanity. Not just the torture, but the illegal war of aggression it was used to try to justify.
But you know, we’re looking forward, not back. Should have done the same thing at Nuremberg, it would have been more progressive, you know? All that prosecution of Nazis — so vindictive. Sure, the Nazis made policy decisions that are regrettable, but thanks to the retribution that was taken against them, future psychopathic dictators won’t feel they can make decisions without the prospect that they might be second guessed and get into trouble for it.
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:35 pmThe Iraqi oilfield maps were open on the White House desk in February, 2001. Entering office, the Bush foreign policy, such as it was, had Iraq at the top of the list. These guys were going to do Iraq, hell or high water.
But to try to extract phony intel through torture just to beat out a few figleaves of ass covering justification, even if phony, is really quite breathtaking in it’s conspiratorial lawlessness. I mean, don’t you think?
April 22nd, 2009 at 3:01 pmFalse confessions to a false war?
It’s a “Slam (them into a wall, and) Dunk (their heads by waterboarding them)!
April 22nd, 2009 at 8:41 pmDick Cheney is running off at the mouth because he’s running scared. And with good reason. The Orwellian double-speak that obfuscated the authoritarian torture state created by the Bush-Cheney administration in the aftermath of 9/11 is collapsing. Dick Cheney is facing serious jail time. He’s especially facing serious jail time if the allegation, bouncing around the Internet now, that “Global War on Terrorism” suspects were tortured with the sole and specific intent of supporting the thesis of a link between Sadaam Hussein and Al Qaeda in the run-up to the Iraq War, proves true.
Torture is torture. Even John Boehner, that font of ignorance and obstructionism, frontman for the reactionary movement that now calls itself the Republican Party, called it so in a recent unguarded moment. Torture apologists like Boehner are arguing that instead of prosecution, we should have a political debate, that this all boils down to a political disagreement. But civilized societies don’t debate the merits of torture any more than they debate the merits of genocide. There simply is no legitimate debate to be had on this issue. It is moot.
April 24th, 2009 at 12:39 pm