Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-confessed mastermind of 9/11, was waterboarded 183 times in one month, and “confessed” to murdering the journalist Daniel Pearl, which he did not. There could hardly be more compelling evidence that such techniques are neither swift, nor efficient, nor reliable
Showing posts with label waterboarding. Show all posts
Showing posts with label waterboarding. Show all posts
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Waking up to torture truths
The Bush administration claimed that the waterboarding of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed helped foil a planned 2002 attack on Los Angeles -- forgetting that he wasn't captured until 2003.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Was Waterboarded 183 Times in One Month
The IG Report noted that in some cases the waterboard was used with far greater frequency than initially indicated, see IG Report at 5, 44, 46, 103-04, and also that it was used in a different manner. See id. at 37 ("[T]he waterboard technique ... was different from the technique described in the DoJ opinion and used in the SERE training. The difference was the manner in which the detainee's breathing was obstructed. At the SERE school and in the DoJ opinion, the subject's airflow is disrupted by the firm application of a damp cloth over the air passages; the interrogator applies a small amount of water to the cloth in a controlled manner. By contrast, the Agency Interrogator ... applied large volumes of water to a cloth that covered the detainee's mouth and nose. One of the psychologists/interrogators acknowledged that the Agency's use of the technique is different from that used in SERE training because it is "for real--and is more poignant and convincing.")
So: two two-hour sessions a day, with six applications of the waterboard each = 12 applications in a day. Though to get up to the permitted 12 minutes of waterboarding in a day (with each use of the waterboard limited to 40 seconds), you'd need 18 applications in a day. Assuming you use the larger 18 applications in one 24-hour period, and do 18 applications on five days within a month, you've waterboarded 90 times--still just half of what they did to KSM.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
'We Carried Out Torture Because White House Ordered Us To'
(Full Article)
In an interview last night with ABC News, John Kiriakou — the CIA official who headed the team that interrogated al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah — said that Zubaydah was waterboarded, but defended those actions as having prevented “maybe dozens” of planned attacks and “probably saved lives.”
“Was the White House involved in that decision?” Lauer asked. “Absolutely,” Kiriakou said, adding:
This isn’t something done willy nilly. It’s not something that an agency officer just wakes up in the morning and decides he’s going to carry out an enhanced technique on a prisoner. This was a policy made at the White House, with concurrence from the National Security Council and Justice Department.
In an interview last night with ABC News, John Kiriakou — the CIA official who headed the team that interrogated al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah — said that Zubaydah was waterboarded, but defended those actions as having prevented “maybe dozens” of planned attacks and “probably saved lives.”
“Was the White House involved in that decision?” Lauer asked. “Absolutely,” Kiriakou said, adding:
This isn’t something done willy nilly. It’s not something that an agency officer just wakes up in the morning and decides he’s going to carry out an enhanced technique on a prisoner. This was a policy made at the White House, with concurrence from the National Security Council and Justice Department.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Retired FBI agent: Waterboarding produced 'crap' information from detainee
(Full Story)
Contradicting the assertions of President Bush and waterboarding advocates at the CIA, federal investigators say a suspected al Qaeda operative who was subjected to the simulated drowning technique produced increasingly unreliable information after his interrogators began treating him harshly.
Abu Zubaida was captured in 2002 and moved through the CIA's secret prison system for much of that year. Although the FBI says Zubaida was a fairly low-level associate of some al Qaeda players, the CIA was convinced that he actually was a high-level terrorist who simply was holding out on them.
"I don't have confidence in anything he says, because once you go down that road, everything you say is tainted," retired FBI agent Daniel Coleman told the Washington Post, referring to the harsh measures. "He was talking before they did that to him, but they didn't believe him. The problem is they didn't realize he didn't know all that much."
Contradicting the assertions of President Bush and waterboarding advocates at the CIA, federal investigators say a suspected al Qaeda operative who was subjected to the simulated drowning technique produced increasingly unreliable information after his interrogators began treating him harshly.
Abu Zubaida was captured in 2002 and moved through the CIA's secret prison system for much of that year. Although the FBI says Zubaida was a fairly low-level associate of some al Qaeda players, the CIA was convinced that he actually was a high-level terrorist who simply was holding out on them.
"I don't have confidence in anything he says, because once you go down that road, everything you say is tainted," retired FBI agent Daniel Coleman told the Washington Post, referring to the harsh measures. "He was talking before they did that to him, but they didn't believe him. The problem is they didn't realize he didn't know all that much."
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