Why did Al-Libi, the fabricator whose discredited claims about Saddam training al-Qaeda were amply cited by the Bush administration in its case for war, tell the Bush administration what it wanted to hear? Because he was tortured. From Newsweek:....Al-Libi's capture, some sources say, was an early turning point in the government's internal debates over interrogation methods. FBI officials brought their plea to retain control over al-Libi's interrogation up to FBI Director Robert Mueller. The CIA station chief in Afghanistan, meanwhile, appealed to the agency's hawkish counterterrorism chief, Cofer Black. He in turn called CIA Director George Tenet, who went to the White House. Al-Libi was handed over to the CIA. "They duct-taped his mouth, cinched him up and sent him to Cairo" for more-fearsome Egyptian interrogations, says the ex-FBI official. "At the airport the CIA case officer goes up to him and says, 'You're going to Cairo, you know. Before you get there I'm going to find your mother and I'm going to f--- her.' So we lost that fight." (A CIA official said he had no comment.)...
Torture produced bad information that was used by the administration to make the case for war. The lawyers pushing the torture have been promoted to the very top positions of the US government (David Addington), or given cushey offices at the American Enterprise Institute (John Yoo). The Congressional oversight committees have been way too compliant, with the chairman of the Senate Intel committe voting to support Cheney's demands that the torture continue.
I don't know why, but this seems like a good time to mention that two recent polls have shown that if Bush lied in making his case for war a majority of Americans want his faux-macho, all hat and no cattle, worse of a wimp than his father ever was, incompetence-rewarding, sluglike ass impeached!
No comments:
Post a Comment