I found something out today that shocked me. Guess how many terrorists were waterboarded?
The CIA used a widely condemned interrogation technique known as waterboarding on three suspects captured after the Sept. 11 attacks, CIA Director Michael Hayden told Congress on Tuesday.
[...]
Those subjected to waterboarding were suspected Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and senior al Qaeda leaders Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, Hayden said at the Senate hearing on threats to the United States.
He said waterboarding has not been used in five years.
“The circumstances under which we are operating … are frankly, different than they were in late 2001 and early 2002,” Hayden said. “Very critical to those circumstances was the belief that additional catastrophic attacks against the homeland were imminent. In addition to that, my agency … had limited knowledge about al Qaeda and its workings. Those two realities have changed.”
Source – Reuters
Only three people, and we haven’t done it in five years! And to top it off, the three guys who got waterboarded were three of the biggest scums al Qaeda has produced. I don’t think the USA should authorize waterboarding, but I also don’t think we should be making as big of a deal out of this issue based on the context. It’s a distraction from the massive deficit.
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Word. It is a distraction. Still, I’m pretty sure Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded when he grudgingly admitted to have knowledge of a connection between al Qaeda and Iraq; a connection that to this day has yet to be demonstrated. But our intelligence used that information gathered from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as evidence in making a case for a war in Iraq in early 2003. I know this dude’s confession wasn’t the only misinformation contributing to the decision of whether or not to go to war with Iraq. Still, we’ll never know how big of an impact that confession had on starting a military operations that have cost the world over 1 million lives.
Furthermore, the fact that that guy or either of the other two detainees that were waterboarded are known to have been purposefully working to destroy the US doesn’t legitimize treating them in such a way that might cause them to misinform us. Couldn’t you just hook them up to a lie detector. They do that shit on T.V. all the time. I know that isn’t full-proof either but it’s a hole lot less messy than running a water park at Gitmo and would probably be just as reliable.
In a Feb. 08 article in the Washington Post, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said that the tactic was used because of the “belief that additional catastrophic attacks against the homeland were inevitable” after Sept. 11. It’s funny because, when all of the evidence and intelligence reports given in the weeks prior to September 11, the CIA seemed to BELIEVE that that attack was not inevitable (or the ignored the reports…but that’s pretty much the same thing). I find it very interesting that the CIA operated on the same premise as most of the world’s religions. Either way, it serves as a good example of how far “belief” will get you in comparison to factually accurate information.
I’d also like to note that the practice of waterboarding has been dismissed as merely “simulated drowning.” Well, last time I checked drowning kills people. Would the same euphemistic speech pass the smell test when it comes to other methods of killing or dying? Imagine these headlines:
Simulated strangulation: detainees fess up upon being intermittently suspended in mid-air by ropes tied around their necks
Simulated bullet wounds: Gitmo terrorists are shot in the torso with hail of rubber bullets when refusing to volunteer valuable information
Simulated electrocution: Gitmo inmate refuses to reveal terror plot, tazed 8 times in one day.
In conclusion I’d like to assert that at the very least waterboarding causes brain damage and psychological trauma. These two things (along with the possibility of death) are anathema to the American values evidenced by our overly paternalistic drug laws, which seek to impose these obligations on all Americans:
a) Stay alive and healthy for as long as possible (unless you want to smoke cigarettes, stuff your face with trans-fats or drink your liver into oblivion or can’t afford health care)
b) Remain fully functioning mentally
c) Stay psychologically stable…always.
Maybe if we demonstrated those same values in our treatment of the radical, hate-filled detainees in Gitmo, they in turn might come to understand that American values aren’t necessarily worthy of being targets of jihad. Of course maybe they wouldn’t. But until our government starts trying, the rest of the world will continue to point an accusing finger at us for employing unrefined torture and brutality in place ingenuity and humanity.
It’s about time someone came out and said it. My only question is why wasn’t this cleared up earlier, it would have only benefited the CIA and the entire government to move on from this earlier so as it was so eloquently put earlier, “our massive deficit”.
This is simply a case of the media using traditional spotlighting tactics to focus on negative workings of our world here within the US. It would behoove the media to try and focus less on this incident and more on how our bailout money will be spent or how or multi-trillion dollar deficit is going to be reconciled. This water boarding business is relatively minuscule compared to our other problems. That being said I do not necessarily agree with all of the inabilities our branches of government have in terms of transparency and I do not condone torture.
I wish Daniel Pearl would have been waterboarded. Then his brain damage and psychological terror would have been lessened.
^ What?! explain yourself.