1, 1429 A.H.
MONDAY AUGUST 4 2008
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Justifying torture: Two big lies (II)
By Coleen Rowley and Ray McGovern
(Remember, too, that in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush allowed prominent Saudis, including members of Osama bin Laden’s family, to be whisked out of the United States aboard private jets after only cursory interviews with the FBI.) The Real Reasons Behind Torture?
What, then, accounts for the descent into Inquisition practices of waterboarding and other torture techniques? What accounts for the bizarre decision to round up a whole bunch of people with no provable attachment to terrorism, designate them terrorist suspects, herd them into prisons in New York, New Jersey, Afghanistan, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and God knows where else, where they could be — and were — abused?
What accounts for the blithe departure from international and national law — not to mention time-honored civilized procedures for dealing with prisoners and detainees?
What accounts for the marginalization of those military, FBI and other professionals who warned that torture is not only a war crime but also that it doesn’t yield reliable information — that, rather, it is the very best recruiting tool for terrorists?
We suggest four reasons why I-don’t-care- what-the-international-lawyers-say George Bush and dark-side Dick Cheney opted for torture:
1 -- Deceit: Granted, torture does not yield truthful information. It can, though, be an excellent way to obtain the untruthful information you may wish to acquire. All you really need to know is what you want the victims to “confess” to and torture them, or render them abroad to “friendly” intelligence services toward the same end.
One case that speaks volumes is that of Ibn al -Shaykh al-Libi, who was captured and rendered to Egypt, where, under torture, he told his interrogators precisely what they wanted to hear.
According to the Defense Intelligence Agency, al-Libi had been identified as a likely fabricator months before the Bush
administration began to use his statements to prove that Iraq trained al-Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons.
Without mentioning al-Libi by name,
President Bush, Vice President Cheney, then- Secretary of State Colin Powell and other administration officials repeatedly cited information from his interrogation as credible evidence that Iraq was training al-Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons.
So torture can indeed provide the information you may want to have to grease the skids for war. Al-Libi was practically the poster boy for the Cheney/Bush torture regime; that is, until he publicly recanted and explained that he only told his interrogators what he thought would stop the torture.
2 -- Sadism: Cheney’s open advocacy of waterboarding speaks volumes, but what about the President? Sad to say, as psychiatrist Justin Frank, author of Bush on the Couch, has noted:
“Bush’s certitude that he is right gives him carte blanche for destructive behavior. He has always had a sadistic streak: from blowing up frogs, to shooting his siblings with a BB gun, to branding fraternity pledges with white-hot coat hangers (explaining that the resulting wound was ‘only a cigarette burn’)… ”His comfort with cruelty is one reason he can be so jocular…Instead of seeing a President in anguish, we watch him publicly joking about the absence of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ in Iraq, in the vain search for which so many young Americans died.”
3 -- Intimidation: Are you perhaps in some “shock and awe” at the prospect of the President designating you an “enemy combatant” and sending you off to the Navy brig in South Carolina for an indefinite stay?
He now has court approval to do precisely that, and we are proceeding on faith that this joint article will not bring us “enhanced interrogation techniques.”
Indefinite imprisonment is bad enough, but with the fringe benefit of the kind of torture suffered by Jose Padilla? Well, let us just say that the open advocacy of waterboarding and other “harsh” methods may, just may, be aimed at throwing the fear of Cheney into us, as a way of dissuading those of us who still believe in the Constitution from attempting to hold accountable those who break the law.
4 -- Because We Can: Lord Acton was, of course, right. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
And closeness to it does the same.
Guided by the principle of an unaccountable unitary executive – not to mention the writings of torture apologist Alan Dershowitz, the acting performances of the torture evangelists on Scalia’s TV favorite, Fox’s “24,” and using the fear factor to a fare-thee- well – torture has become the bellwether of exclusive dominant power.
The very transparency of the excuses for torture serves to demonstrate that this kind of power is in place, and is not to be questioned.
Lie Number 2: Torture Saves Lives
It was hard to know whether to laugh or to cry.
John Ashcroft insisting that according to “the reports I have heard, and I have no reason to disbelieve them, these techniques are very valuable.”
Ashcroft’s source? He indicated that it is none other than former CIA Director George Tenet, who wrecked the CIA by creating a Gestapo in the operations directorate and cultivating fawning boot-lickers among managers of analysis.
To say Tenet’s reputation for truthfulness leaves much to be desired would be the kind of self-evident revelation that CIA analysts were accustomed to assigning to their tongue- in-cheek “Great Moments in Intelligence” file.
It is, nonetheless, the White House line.
Not only Ashcroft and Hayden, but also David Addington and John Yoo rang changes on the theme in their recent testimony before the aging Conyers.
Both Addington and Yoo argued that harsh interrogation methods had been crucial in preventing another terrorist attack on the U.S. after 9/11.
On Thursday, Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee picked up the theme, arguing that waterboarding and other harsh tactics yielded information that saved lives.
Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-California: “Had we not used those, would the probability of another attack not only be a probability but a certainty?”
Ashcroft: “It could well have been.”
Have you, finally, no shame, Mr. Ashcroft? There is not a scintilla of evidence to support that claim. And, again, we are far past the point where the President and his torture apprentices merit “the benefit of genuine doubt.” Not the way they continue to play fast and loose with the truth.
Quod Est Veritas?
Here it is the President himself, with his remarkable contempt for truth, who sets the tone.
Dr. Frank points out that contempt itself is a defense, a form of self-protection of Bush’s belief system, in which he clings to his beliefs as if they were well researched facts: “Bush’s pathology is a patchwork of false beliefs and incomplete information woven into what he asserts is the whole truth.”
And Cheney, Fox News, and the rest of the fawning corporate media (FCM) follow suit.
What is truth? Go ask Pontius Bush.
Trouble is, the truth usually gets out, and the President is beginning to squirm.
One highly disturbing fact, from the President’s point of view, emerged Thursday in the questioning of Ashcroft by Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-New York.
Nadler noted that “high-value” detainee Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded after his arrest in March 2002, and Nadler asked Ashcroft whether that happened before the memos from John Yoo justifying such activity were drafted. Ashcroft said he didn’t know.
Nadler, at least, had done some homework.
The videotapes of Zubaydah’s interrogation were among those destroyed by the CIA, for obvious reasons. Nadler is really asking on whose authority Zubaydah was waterboarded, since Addington and Yoo had not yet completed their ex-post-facto legal acrobatics.
