- Jan 12, 2005
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For those who still insist that torturing captives is justified because - essentially - it is a lesser evil than the evil it prevents, you might want to read this new Wash Post story.
Wash Post
An excerpt:
That gets to one of the core issues of torture: even if torture is deemed acceptable only for extraordinary prisoners, and can be performed only at the direction of the President - how do you KNOW that the individual you're about to torture really knows anything or is the person you think he is? The Zubaida case clearly shows that you CANNOT know.
And the story also demonstrates that even when you've got the right buy, torture may be unnecessary. In Zubaida's case, according to the story, most of the useful info obtained from him was obtained BEFORE they tortured him.
Edit: Oops. And, of course, this story also demonstrates that what a individual says while tortured is often BS.
So, what do the torture-apologists have to say now?
Wash Post
An excerpt:
When CIA officials subjected their first high-value captive, Abu Zubaida, to waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods, they were convinced that they had in their custody an al-Qaeda leader who knew details of operations yet to be unleashed, and they were facing increasing pressure from the White House to get those secrets out of him.
The methods succeeded in breaking him, and the stories he told of al-Qaeda terrorism plots sent CIA officers around the globe chasing leads.
In the end, though, not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida's tortured confessions, according to former senior government officials who closely followed the interrogations. Nearly all of the leads attained through the harsh measures quickly evaporated, while most of the useful information from Abu Zubaida -- chiefly names of al-Qaeda members and associates -- was obtained before waterboarding was introduced, they said.
Moreover, within weeks of his capture, U.S. officials had gained evidence that made clear they had misjudged Abu Zubaida. President George W. Bush had publicly described him as "al-Qaeda's chief of operations," and other top officials called him a "trusted associate" of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and a major figure in the planning of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. None of that was accurate, the new evidence showed.
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Abu Zubaida was not even an official member of al-Qaeda, according to a portrait of the man that emerges from court documents and interviews with current and former intelligence, law enforcement and military sources. Rather, he was a "fixer" for radical Muslim ideologues, and he ended up working directly with al-Qaeda only after Sept. 11 -- and that was because the United States stood ready to invade Afghanistan.
That gets to one of the core issues of torture: even if torture is deemed acceptable only for extraordinary prisoners, and can be performed only at the direction of the President - how do you KNOW that the individual you're about to torture really knows anything or is the person you think he is? The Zubaida case clearly shows that you CANNOT know.
And the story also demonstrates that even when you've got the right buy, torture may be unnecessary. In Zubaida's case, according to the story, most of the useful info obtained from him was obtained BEFORE they tortured him.
Edit: Oops. And, of course, this story also demonstrates that what a individual says while tortured is often BS.
So, what do the torture-apologists have to say now?