New documents indicate that under Alberto Gonzales, new harsh interrogation techniques were secretly authorized, such as detainees being placed naked in freezing conditions, stress positions, water-boarding, starvation and beaten in simultaneous combination. The documents also indicate that this was done simultaneous to the effort in Congress passing new restriction on these very same techinques.
During the report they speak with one British citizen who had been held in Gitmo and eventually released who says that he was willing to "say anything to stop the torture." He claims that he was "beaten, shackeled, stripped naked and hog-tied", was never associated with al Qeada and only said so to end the torture.
Wolf Blitzer then talks to WH Homeland Security Advisor Fran Townsend who trots out each and every wingnut talking point on this issue. I swear, this woman is like Baghdad Bob with an 80's flip and pink pants suit.
First there's the obvious old saw...
These programs stop attacks.
This she says while also claiming.
The United States does not torture.
Oh really, then just what are people doing in these programs?
I can't discuss specific techniques
No kidding. And then she naturally goes on to justify the torture that we don't do.
The program is very limited. The interrogators are highly trained. We start with the least harsh measures first, it stops when the subject becomes cooperatives. This program was used on Abu Zubaydah and resulted in actionable intelligence that led to the capture of abu Ben-Alzied.
Frankly Wolf, if Americans are killed because we failed to the hard things, Americans have a right to ask us why?
Abu Zubahdah? That would be the Ghost Detainee who was found to be mentally ill?
One example out of many comes in Ron Suskind's gripping narrative of what the White House has celebrated as one of the war's major victories: the capture of Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan in March 2002. Described as al-Qaeda's chief of operations even after U.S. and Pakistani forces kicked down his door in Faisalabad, the Saudi-born jihadist was the first al-Qaeda detainee to be shipped to a secret prison abroad. Suskind shatters the official story line here.
Abu Zubaydah, his captors discovered, turned out to be mentally ill and nothing like the pivotal figure they supposed him to be. CIA and FBI analysts, poring over a diary he kept for more than a decade, found entries "in the voice of three people: Hani 1, Hani 2, and Hani 3" -- a boy, a young man and a middle-aged alter ego. All three recorded in numbing detail "what people ate, or wore, or trifling things they said." Dan Coleman, then the FBI's top al-Qaeda analyst, told a senior bureau official, "This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality."
This is where we got "actionable intelligence"?
And the "Why" part isn't so hard - it's because it's against the law.
Townsend literally scoffs at the idea that our usage of these techniques might make Americans less safe (never mind what Colin Powell says, it's not like he knows anything about the soldiers after being Chairman of the Joint Chiefs) claiming that "these people don't wear uniforms, they're going to treat our soldiers the same way no matter what we do."
Or don't do, or do and claim we don't do, or something...
She naturally ignores that it doesn't just put American troops at risk, when America is an international leader begins trying to find wiggle room in the Geneva conventions and our own War Crimes Laws it's like a virus that starts to spread to all sorts of other nations like say - Myanmar.
What Ms. Townsend also ably dodges is the fact that these techniques were expressly prohibited under U.S. Law and the Uniform Military Code of Justice during the entire period of their use until the passage of the Military Commissions Act in 2006, which implemented the Bybee Standard. (Torture isn't Torture unless some is about to die or lose a vital organ)
It was only last month that it was revealed that CIA Director Michael Hayden officially removed Water-Boarding from the approved list of "alternative" interrogation techniques which were approved by the President in 2002 - long before passage of the MCA or the McCain Detainee Treatment Act.
It is beyond question that these techniques have often been ineffective and have produce inaccurate information (such as the claims from "Curveball" an Ibn Sheik al-Libi that there were WMD's IN IRAQ!), that they are illegal and immoral.
It's not about whether we do the "hard thing" to protect Americans, it's whether we do the right thing because so far nearly 4,000 Americans have already died in the Iraq War in part, because we used torture - because we did the wrong thing.
This is a question of both character and morality. The question isn't whether America is willing to do the "hard thing", it's whether we're willing and able to do the right thing even when it does risk American lives to do so. Townsend's version of the question speaks to our cowardice, when we should be speaking to our courage.
And in this area it's long past time we we showed some courage and started doing the right thing.
Vyan
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