Bragging About Torture

Petey in comments below notes a rather shocking portion of today's Bush speech where he's bragging about his administration's authorization of torture:

Within months of September the 11th, 2001, we captured a man known as Abu Zubaydah. We believe that Zubaydah was a senior terrorist leader and a trusted associate of Osama bin Laden. Our intelligence community believes he had run a terrorist camp in Afghanistan where some of the 9/11 hijackers trained, and that he helped smuggle al Qaeda leaders out of Afghanistan after coalition forces arrived to liberate that country. Zubaydah was severely wounded during the firefight that brought him into custody -- and he survived only because of the medical care arranged by the CIA.

After he recovered, Zubaydah was defiant and evasive. ... We knew that Zubaydah had more information that could save innocent lives, but he stopped talking. As his questioning proceeded, it became clear that he had received training on how to resist interrogation. And so the CIA used an alternative set of procedures.

These procedures were designed to be safe, to comply with our laws, our Constitution, and our treaty obligations. The Department of Justice reviewed the authorized methods extensively and determined them to be lawful. I cannot describe the specific methods used -- I think you understand why -- if I did, it would help the terrorists learn how to resist questioning, and to keep information from us that we need to prevent new attacks on our country. But I can say the procedures were tough, and they were safe, and lawful, and necessary.

Zubaydah was questioned using these procedures, and soon he began to provide information on key al Qaeda operatives, including information that helped us find and capture more of those responsible for the attacks on September the 11th. For example, Zubaydah identified one of KSM's accomplices in the 9/11 attacks -- a terrorist named Ramzi bin al Shibh. The information Zubaydah provided helped lead to the capture of bin al Shibh.

Of course, the real reason Bush can't describe the procedures to us is that they're not lawful at all. Compare this to Barton Gellman's review of The One Percent Doctrine:

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."

Abu Zubaydah also appeared to know nothing about terrorist operations; rather, he was al-Qaeda's go-to guy for minor logistics -- travel for wives and children and the like. That judgment was "echoed at the top of CIA and was, of course, briefed to the President and Vice President," Suskind writes. And yet somehow, in a speech delivered two weeks later, President Bush portrayed Abu Zubaydah as "one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States." And over the months to come, under White House and Justice Department direction, the CIA would make him its first test subject for harsh interrogation techniques.

[...]

Which brings us back to the unbalanced Abu Zubaydah. "I said he was important," Bush reportedly told Tenet at one of their daily meetings. "You're not going to let me lose face on this, are you?" "No sir, Mr. President," Tenet replied. Bush "was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth," Suskind writes, and he asked one briefer, "Do some of these harsh methods really work?" Interrogators did their best to find out, Suskind reports. They strapped Abu Zubaydah to a water-board, which reproduces the agony of drowning. They threatened him with certain death. They withheld medication. They bombarded him with deafening noise and harsh lights, depriving him of sleep. Under that duress, he began to speak of plots of every variety -- against shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty. With each new tale, "thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each . . . target." And so, Suskind writes, "the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered."

The business about Ramzi bin al-Shibh is -- shockingly -- incorrect and seriously dishonest, but more on that later.

9/6/06 6:20PM del.icio.us this incoming links

Comments

Again, take your policy cap off.

Put on your political football helmet. This is going to be complete smashmouth politics devoid of even trying to get any legislation passed. It's just about trying to knock all of the teeth out of your enemy before they do so to you.

The fall campaign began today.

And the WH has a three act KSM play they're going to be unfolding according with their own script and their own pace.

They'll sink lower than you can possibly imagine. Remember Max Cleland in '02? Remember the SBVT in '04? We're going to get something even sleazier shot at us in '06 around KSM.

Posted by: Petey on September 6, 2006 06:49 PM

KSM was illegally kidnapped and detained, and tortured.

KSM walks. Anything less is a betrayal of the world, the relevant Conventions, the very concept of liberal internationalism.

If the Geneva, Hague, and Torture Conventions are toilet paper, what you got Matthew?

KSM walks.

Posted by: bob mcmanus on September 6, 2006 07:27 PM

KSM is not a Prisoner of War, he was grabbed on the streets of Karachi, IIRC.

KSM is almost precisely equivalent to Adolf Eichmann, and a very smart lady wrote a very challenging book about that...problem...and I think decided, on balance, that Israel did wrong.

Posted by: bob mcmanus on September 6, 2006 07:32 PM

KSM is such a Bush-nickname... ("Mispronounce his name once... shame on me... mispronounce... can't mispronounce his name again!") Can we just call him Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? Anyway. So Bob, you think this dude is worth losing the midterms over? Can't the Dems just go along for two months and do an about-face after the elections?

Posted by: max on September 6, 2006 08:16 PM

Is there a way to note in the RSS feed that there is an extended entry? The "Read More" isn't coming through.

Posted by: Becks on September 6, 2006 08:32 PM

"So Bob, you think this dude is worth losing the midterms over?"

I am angry enough to wish to prevent the midterms from happening.

Posted by: bob mcmanus on September 6, 2006 08:54 PM

War and War Crimes were Kaiser Wilhelm's election strategy and they seem to be Bush's. It may even work for the Republicans in November - war-mongering rarely loses elections, but at the same time it is often the sign of a regime near collapse.

Posted by: otto on September 6, 2006 09:03 PM

KSM was illegally kidnapped and detained, and tortured.

KSM walks. Anything less is a betrayal of the world, the relevant Conventions, the very concept of liberal internationalism.

Being tortured in custody may go to the admissibility of evidence, but it doesn't make you not guilty. You can't use as your defense at trial the fact that the jailers beat you up.

Similarly, the allegation that KSM was illegally kidnapped just makes no difference as a legal matter. "Illegal arrest or detention does not void a subsequent conviction." Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S. 103 (1975). Again, it doesn't make him innocent.

Now, it's certainly the case that we may have violated a treaty or somesuch, and that's a serious matter that has to be dealt with; but in any event, the remedy for breach of a treaty is not that the defendant gets off scot-free. Once a defendant is within your jurisdiction - even if you got him there illegally - you may have to pay a price for the illegal detention, but you still get to put him on trial.

I'm opposed to torture (although the abduction of someone who masterminded 9/11, not so much), but I simply disagree with the legal conclusion that these circumstances make a difference as to the outcome of the trial.

Posted by: Steve on September 6, 2006 10:06 PM

Bob --

You say you want a revolution
...
Well, you know
We'd all love to see the plan.

Posted by: Christopher M on September 6, 2006 10:56 PM

You can't use as your defense at trial the fact that the jailers beat you up.

But you can argue, with some degree of plausibility, that your confession was false, and was given only to stop the beatings, waterboardings, what have you.

That does speak to the issue of guilt or innocence quite directly.

Posted by: dj moonbat on September 6, 2006 11:01 PM

So like, what would a Federal Judge in say Denver do, if a prisoner was continuously beaten and tortured before trial, which trial was indefinitely postponed, and police refused to arrest torturers and prosecutors refused to prosecute. Habeas Corpus is no longer available, unless Hamdan directly affected Graham, which I think it intentionally did not. Aww, whatever.

Toilet paper. I don't know MY what is going to write his book about, any international agreements Democrats might enter into are totally provisional, liable to be revoked and disregarded by the next Republican administration. This is now a fact that should inform all IR theory.

Posted by: bob mcmanus on September 6, 2006 11:26 PM

Why is this such a bad thing. Let's go Democrats, take this head on. Yes, the American justice system should try this guy and it will do a good job. Justice will be served.

Heck, if we can't trust the justice system to work with a terrorist, how can we trust it to protect us from anyone?

Posted by: dave on September 6, 2006 11:34 PM

Bush is double-daring the Democrats to stand up to him on this.

They should take the dare. In the strongest terms possible. In defence of the American criminal justice system, which they should praise as being robust enough to deal, untampered, with everything from suspected jaywalkers to suspected terrorists.

I only wish Jon Stewart weren't on vacation this week: his Bush 'heh-heh-heh' belongs as commentary to that sick bit of grandstanding from a man who defended the bars of Alabama from the Vietcong. He's a coward and a bully and a shit, who deserves to be placed in a situation where he'd piss his pants in fear. Such as the dock.

Posted by: ahem on September 7, 2006 12:16 AM

But you can argue, with some degree of plausibility, that your confession was false, and was given only to stop the beatings, waterboardings, what have you.

That's why I said, pretty clearly I thought, that torture would go to the admissibility of evidence.

If you're tortured, of course they can't and shouldn't be able to use your confession against you. But if they can prove your guilt through other evidence - your fingerprints on the bloody knife, etc., that evidence doesn't magically vanish because you raise the torture issue.

Posted by: Steve on September 7, 2006 03:13 AM

"Playing politics with the security of this nation" and "Contemptible unseriousness in the face of danger" seem like decent maneuvers for the Dems, although hopefully someone here will explain why I'm wrong :).

Posted by: Dan on September 7, 2006 03:19 AM

What ever happened to the "name, rank, and serial number" standard? In a guerilla war "Abu Ali from Pakistan, bomb maker," or its equivalent, should be the end of all questioning.

Anything looser than that legitimises the beheadings and torture by the other side.

Posted by: David Lloyd-Jones on September 7, 2006 02:37 PM

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