CIA Inspector General Confirms FBI: Torture FAILS!

In a report from McClatchy, the CIA Inspector General's Report from 2004 confirms the recent statement in Vanity Fair by FBI Director Mueller, which found that "No Plots were Thwarted" by harsh interrogation measures.

The CIA inspector general in 2004 found that there was no conclusive proof that waterboarding or other harsh interrogation techniques helped the Bush administration thwart any "specific imminent attacks," according to recently declassified Justice Department memos.

This is actually something I noted just the other day while debunking Liz Cheney's Lies, but it bears repeating what was actually in the IG report.

"It is difficult to quantify with confidence and precision the effectiveness of the program," Steven G. Bradbury, then the Justice Department's principal deputy assistant attorney general, wrote in a May 30, 2005, memo to CIA General Counsel John Rizzo, one of four released last week by the Obama administration.

"As the IG Report notes, it is difficult to determine conclusively whether interrogations provided information critical to interdicting specific imminent attacks. And because the CIA has used enhanced techniques sparingly, 'there is limited data on which to assess their individual effectiveness'," Bradbury wrote, quoting the IG report.

As has been noted most of the worthwhile information we received from Abu Zubaydah came from Before he was tortured, and what we received afterward was mostly garbage.

There is little dispute, according to officials from both agencies, that Abu Zubaida provided some valuable intelligence before CIA interrogators began to rough him up, including information that helped identify Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, and al-Qaeda operative Jose Padilla.

But FBI officials, including agents who questioned him after his capture or reviewed documents seized from his home, have concluded that even though he knew some al-Qaeda players, he provided interrogators with increasingly dubious information as the CIA's harsh treatment intensified in late 2002.

In legal papers prepared for a military hearing, Abu Zubaida himself has asserted that he told his interrogators whatever they wanted to hear to make the treatment stop.

Yet again the desperate canard that "These Harsh Tactics are Worth It Because they Save Lives dies with narry a wimper.

Vyan