There has been a flurry of posts and news stories about the legal advice proffered by the Bush administration concerning “enhanced interrogation techniques” (a.k.a., torture) over the last several days.
Round One included information that illuminated what was going on and the legal cover provided.
Round Two was the counter-punch that avoided the morality of the techniques, but insisted that the techniques worked. This was a claim made by ex-CIA Director, General Michael Hayden on Fox News Sunday this past weekend, and a claim made by ex-Veep Dick Cheney as well (amongst others).
Now, comes what may be Round Three: that even if some of the information was correct (a position I am not yet convinced of, btw), other information was false and yet was acted on: via McClatchy: Report: Abusive tactics used to seek Iraq-al Qaida link.
Not only is it possible that “information” gathered via this method may have led to a war, but this story underscores exactly the worst outcome of the utilization of these techniques, the fact that government officials may want certain information and demand that interrogators find it (whether it is there or not):
A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue said that Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld demanded that the interrogators find evidence of al Qaida-Iraq collaboration.“There were two reasons why these interrogations were so persistent, and why extreme methods were used,” the former senior intelligence official said on condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity.
“The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there.”
It was during this period that CIA interrogators waterboarded two alleged top al Qaida detainees repeatedly — Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times in August 2002 and Khalid Sheik Muhammed 183 times in March 2003 — according to a newly released Justice Department document.
One suspects that the individuals in question provided all manner of information after all of that.
And it is not just unnamed sources who are saying such things:
A former U.S. Army psychiatrist, Maj. Charles Burney, told Army investigators in 2006 that interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility were under “pressure” to produce evidence of ties between al Qaida and Iraq.“While we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida and Iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al Qaida and Iraq,” Burney told staff of the Army Inspector General. “The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . . . there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results.”
Andrew Sullivan writes:
The first reason to use torture is to prevent a ticking time bomb that could kill millions; the second reason is as a routine part of intelligence gathering; the third is to produce false confessions to justify a war already planned. Torture is a powerful weapon, isn’t it?
Indeed.
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April 22nd, 2009 at 5:29 pm
The framing here still gives the Bush government far too much credit. For instance,
Not only is it possible that “information” gathered via this method may have led to a war [...]
The implication I take from that statement, in context, is that had the inner core of the Bush government–what we might call the War and Security Cabinet– not obtained this (potentially false) information, they would not have decided upon war.
I am reasonably confident that is the wrong framing. After all, one is not inclined to let objective information get in the way when one has set out to “remake the map of the Middle East.”
The “information” was going to be found one way or another.
April 22nd, 2009 at 6:24 pm
This has eerie similarities to the gun control debate. Is torture the gun?
April 22nd, 2009 at 6:51 pm
the third is to produce false confessions to justify a war already planned
I’m down with this theory, except for one nagging question. Why bother with the torture? Why not just make it all up?
April 22nd, 2009 at 8:29 pm
This has eerie similarities to the gun control debate. Is torture the gun?
I fear I don’t follow your point.
Andy and MSS;
You both make a point–but I think that they (the Bush admin) thought the info was there and that they were actually extracting the truth from the bad guys.
April 23rd, 2009 at 9:13 am
Yes, but…man, this is difficult to grok because it’s all so circular…if they believed beyond all doubt the info was there (and amazingly, still do) and were going to war regardless, why even bother extracting the “truth?”
The evidence only matters in this instance insofar as it is useful, as Sullivan says, as justification to others in going to war. Why go through the motions?
April 23rd, 2009 at 9:31 am
According to the cited piece, which tracks with the behavior of the admin at the time, they thought they had reliable info (via Chalabi) that there was a connection. So, it is not at all beyond reason that they wanted both confirmation and more information. This doesn’t strike me as an unlikely scenario.
April 23rd, 2009 at 6:41 pm
What is driving me crazy is that the following point in not being emphasized enough in the press:
We know that Al-Libi issued a false confession linking Iraq to Al Qaeda while being “debriefed” in Egypt after CIA took custody of him from the FBI and that this confession (dubious from the start) became one of the major justifications for invading Iraq.
What isn’t being brought up (that I know of) is what Jane Mayer reported in The Dark Side. Namely, that Al-Libi had told his FBI interrogators that there WAS NO LINK that he knew of between Al Qaeda and Iraq.
Yet you can turn on the tv at any given moment, currently, to be greeted by some torture apologist telling us how safe we as a result of torture. All those who have died in Iraq certainly not made safer.
April 23rd, 2009 at 6:48 pm
Also:
To anyone trying to figure out how the Bush administration was able to convince itself of so many things that are not true, I recommend The Price of Loyalty by Ron Suskind.
April 24th, 2009 at 12:39 am
It’s hilarious that the media/Democrats continue to lie about this. They continue to conflate no operational links (meaning Saddam’s agents weren’t physically involved with actual attacks) with no links whatsoever. It’s embarassing.
April 24th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
I can’t speak for others, but I never considered the “Iraq/Al Quaeda links” argument a central argument for invading Iraq. Instead, I understood the (original) Bush Doctrine of “we’re going to stamp out terrorism and state sponsors of terrorism” -> Iraq was a state sponsor of Palestinian terrorism -> Iraq had a long history of trying to develop biological and chemical weapons (there was a threat of biological scuds launched at Israel during the first Gulf War, and Clinton spent much of his Presidency trying to prevent further development) as the main driver.
In fact, I remember the biological and chemical weapon part of that argument only gained steam after Powell suggested trying to round up a few allies for the invasion.
April 24th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
“We’ve learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and gases.” - George W. Bush, Oct. 2002
He “learned” that by having Al-Libi “debriefed” in an Egyptian prison after the CIA seemingly kidnapped him from FBI custody, where he had been telling them (truthfully) that he knew of no link. His FBI interrogators also believed they were getting invaluable intelligence from him, including, reportedly, intelligence that led to the prevention of an attack on the US embassy in Yemen.
Apparently, however, the manufacture of an al Qaeda/Iraq link was more important.