K
Kickin' Ass and Takin' Names
Guest
John Kiriakou has completed his Gee It's Sad That We Have To Torture
People Tour, and the media has nodded sagely over his every word.
While a few media stories headlined Kiriakou's regret over using
torture, his real message went out loud and clear to the right wing
nutosphere.
Like that old Gary Larson cartoon, in which a dog picks only its name
out of a string of words, pro-torture Republicans discarded every
other part of the conversation and seized on the real message.
Torture Works Great! as presented here by talk radio suppuration,
Mark Davis.
The debate is over torture. Mr. Kiriakou is a retired CIA agent who
has seen a detainee waterboarded.
And it worked. He was part of the undercover team in Faisalabad,
Pakistan, that interrogated Abu Zubaydah, the first major al-Qaeda
figure captured in the months following 9/11.
Mr. Zubaydah helped plan those attacks, and the CIA had high
confidence that he knew of other murderous plans. Early questioning
was fruitless. "We knew he was the biggest fish we had caught, we knew
he was full of information, and we wanted to get it," Mr. Kiriakou
told ABC's Brian Ross.
....
About 35 seconds later, Mr. Zubaydah was ready to talk. "From that day
on, he answered every question," Mr. Kiriakou recalls, and they were
not the useless, desperate replies that waterboarding opponents insist
are the procedure's only result. "The threat information he provided
prevented a number of attacks."
In a sensible era, that's it. Case closed. But these days are not so
simple. Our war effort is hampered by the finger wagging and hand
wringing of people who cannot tolerate winning on those terms.
That's the view fostered on the right by Kiriakou's media blitz.
Torture good, concern over the morality of torture treasonous. The
story as laid out by Kiriakou was like a 220v cable wired straight
into the Republican pleasure center. We caught a major al-Qaeda
baddie, a tough old hombre, who wouldn't tell us a thing until we
tortured him. Then he folded like a baby and couldn't stop blabbing.
Best of all, that data was pure gold, directly stopping "dozens" of
operations and saving red-blooded American lives.
We have heard much from the portion of America that grows queasy at
the thought of tough treatment for al-Qaeda detainees. But I'll share
what makes me queasy: my countrymen in tattered clothes perched at
windows a thousand feet high against the Manhattan skyline, their
lungs burning with jet fuel, making the decision to jump to their
deaths because it was a better fate than what awaited them if they did
not.
Against the backdrop of that memory, anyone worked up about the
occasional, carefully targeted waterboarding is simply not serious
about protecting our nation.
Got it? Waterboard, or die.
Now that the Torture Works meme has been reinforced to the
satisfaction of every right wing blog and Republicans everywhere have
had the chance to brag about how they braved harsher treatment in
Intro to Swimming, the media has allowed Kiriakou to go count the
contracts rolling into his private sercurity firm. However, the
Washington Post has turned up a few questions about his story.
Was Abu Zubaydah a major al-Qaeda operative, vital to the planning of
9/11?
.... some FBI agents and analysts say he is largely a loudmouthed and
mentally troubled hotelier whose credibility dropped as the CIA
subjected him to a simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding
and to other "enhanced interrogation" measures.
But surely this was a man who we just had to freeze, beat, threaten,
deprive of sleep, and finally waterboard. It saved lives, damn it!
Bush has sided publicly with the CIA's version of events. "We knew
that Zubaida had more information that could save innocent lives, but
he stopped talking," Bush said in September 2006. "And so the CIA used
an alternative set of procedures," which the president said prompted
Abu Zubaida to disclose information leading to the capture of Sept.
11, 2001, plotter Ramzi Binalshibh.
But former FBI officials privy to details of the case continue to
dispute the CIA's account of the effectiveness of the harsh measures,
making the record of Abu Zubaydah's interrogation hard for outsiders
to assess.
I suppose it's easy to see where there could be conflict. On the one
hand, both Bush and the CIA need to demonstrate that this information
was vital in order to justify violating dozens of treaties and
judicial rulings. The FBI's view is distorted by their selfish desire
to tell the truth and uphold the law.
As it turns out, both the CIA and the FBI agree that Abu Zubaydah
provided some important information. Want to guess when?
There is little dispute, according to officials from both agencies,
that Abu Zubaydah 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.
Far from supporting Kiriakou's pitiful story, the evidence shows that
everything we got worth knowing from Abu Zubaydah came before he was
tortured. Afterwards.
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 other words, the results of torture were exactly the sort of
"useless, desperate replies that waterboarding opponents insist are
the procedure's only result." I'm guessing that the wingnuts won't be
issuing a retraction.
People Tour, and the media has nodded sagely over his every word.
While a few media stories headlined Kiriakou's regret over using
torture, his real message went out loud and clear to the right wing
nutosphere.
Like that old Gary Larson cartoon, in which a dog picks only its name
out of a string of words, pro-torture Republicans discarded every
other part of the conversation and seized on the real message.
Torture Works Great! as presented here by talk radio suppuration,
Mark Davis.
The debate is over torture. Mr. Kiriakou is a retired CIA agent who
has seen a detainee waterboarded.
And it worked. He was part of the undercover team in Faisalabad,
Pakistan, that interrogated Abu Zubaydah, the first major al-Qaeda
figure captured in the months following 9/11.
Mr. Zubaydah helped plan those attacks, and the CIA had high
confidence that he knew of other murderous plans. Early questioning
was fruitless. "We knew he was the biggest fish we had caught, we knew
he was full of information, and we wanted to get it," Mr. Kiriakou
told ABC's Brian Ross.
....
About 35 seconds later, Mr. Zubaydah was ready to talk. "From that day
on, he answered every question," Mr. Kiriakou recalls, and they were
not the useless, desperate replies that waterboarding opponents insist
are the procedure's only result. "The threat information he provided
prevented a number of attacks."
In a sensible era, that's it. Case closed. But these days are not so
simple. Our war effort is hampered by the finger wagging and hand
wringing of people who cannot tolerate winning on those terms.
That's the view fostered on the right by Kiriakou's media blitz.
Torture good, concern over the morality of torture treasonous. The
story as laid out by Kiriakou was like a 220v cable wired straight
into the Republican pleasure center. We caught a major al-Qaeda
baddie, a tough old hombre, who wouldn't tell us a thing until we
tortured him. Then he folded like a baby and couldn't stop blabbing.
Best of all, that data was pure gold, directly stopping "dozens" of
operations and saving red-blooded American lives.
We have heard much from the portion of America that grows queasy at
the thought of tough treatment for al-Qaeda detainees. But I'll share
what makes me queasy: my countrymen in tattered clothes perched at
windows a thousand feet high against the Manhattan skyline, their
lungs burning with jet fuel, making the decision to jump to their
deaths because it was a better fate than what awaited them if they did
not.
Against the backdrop of that memory, anyone worked up about the
occasional, carefully targeted waterboarding is simply not serious
about protecting our nation.
Got it? Waterboard, or die.
Now that the Torture Works meme has been reinforced to the
satisfaction of every right wing blog and Republicans everywhere have
had the chance to brag about how they braved harsher treatment in
Intro to Swimming, the media has allowed Kiriakou to go count the
contracts rolling into his private sercurity firm. However, the
Washington Post has turned up a few questions about his story.
Was Abu Zubaydah a major al-Qaeda operative, vital to the planning of
9/11?
.... some FBI agents and analysts say he is largely a loudmouthed and
mentally troubled hotelier whose credibility dropped as the CIA
subjected him to a simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding
and to other "enhanced interrogation" measures.
But surely this was a man who we just had to freeze, beat, threaten,
deprive of sleep, and finally waterboard. It saved lives, damn it!
Bush has sided publicly with the CIA's version of events. "We knew
that Zubaida had more information that could save innocent lives, but
he stopped talking," Bush said in September 2006. "And so the CIA used
an alternative set of procedures," which the president said prompted
Abu Zubaida to disclose information leading to the capture of Sept.
11, 2001, plotter Ramzi Binalshibh.
But former FBI officials privy to details of the case continue to
dispute the CIA's account of the effectiveness of the harsh measures,
making the record of Abu Zubaydah's interrogation hard for outsiders
to assess.
I suppose it's easy to see where there could be conflict. On the one
hand, both Bush and the CIA need to demonstrate that this information
was vital in order to justify violating dozens of treaties and
judicial rulings. The FBI's view is distorted by their selfish desire
to tell the truth and uphold the law.
As it turns out, both the CIA and the FBI agree that Abu Zubaydah
provided some important information. Want to guess when?
There is little dispute, according to officials from both agencies,
that Abu Zubaydah 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.
Far from supporting Kiriakou's pitiful story, the evidence shows that
everything we got worth knowing from Abu Zubaydah came before he was
tortured. Afterwards.
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 other words, the results of torture were exactly the sort of
"useless, desperate replies that waterboarding opponents insist are
the procedure's only result." I'm guessing that the wingnuts won't be
issuing a retraction.
