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Levin's Torture Report: A Round-Up
Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) has picked up where he left off almost a year ago last night by unveiling an unclassified report (PDF) detailing the origins of U.S. torture policies and the route those policies took through the government and into the darkened rooms where military interrogators put them into practice.
The release of this report is coincidental to last week's release, by the Obama Justice Department, of a series of Bush-era memos written to justify a number of torturous CIA interrogation techniques.
Levin got this process rolling in June of last year, releasing a shorter report and a series of Pentagon memos--the fruits of a two year investigation--which painted a more skeletal picture than last night's report does.
For instance, we've known since last year that, in July, 2002, senior Pentagon officials compiled information on Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape (SERE) techniques. (The military operates a number of SERE schools, where soldiers are trained to withstand the horrors that might be inflicted upon them if captured by regimes that don't adhere to the Geneva Conventions). We've known many of those officials' names for some time. And we've known how the techniques they authorized moved from the realm of theory into practice, first in Guantanamo and then in Iraq.
Today, we learn much more. For instance, we learn that, "[i]ntelligence and military officials under the Bush administration began preparing to conduct harsh interrogations long before they were granted legal approval to use such methods -- and weeks before the CIA captured its first high-ranking terrorism suspect, Senate investigators have concluded."
The New Yorker's Jane Mayer writes that, "[t]he Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel authorized harrowing tactics for interrogating [Al Qaeda suspect Abu] Zubaydah in the infamous "Bybee Torture Memo" of August 1, 2002, which Obama released publicly last week. So, presumably, whatever happened to Zubaydah after August is indemnified by the Obama invisibility cloak. But what about what happened to Zubaydah in the four months before?"
Mayer continues, "On April 16, 2002--a couple weeks after Zubaydah's capture, and three and a half months before the Bybee memo--a military psychologist named Dr. Bruce Jessen was already circulating a blueprint for cruelly coercive interrogations based on torture methods used by Chinese Communist forces during the Korean War."
Just two months later, but still a couple months before Bybee released his now infamous memo, an FBI special agent walked away from a Zubaydah interrogation session because he thought the techniques being used against him might have risen (or sunk?) to the level of torture.
The Post reports that, "[n]o substantive plots were disrupted as a result of information provided during Abu Zubaida's interrogation, according to current and former counterterrorism officials."
That didn't give the Bush administration much pause. If anything, it made senior officials all the more eager to use the techniques to learn what they wanted to learn. McClatchy reports that, "for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were...demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq...(former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi" and these techniques were seen as the quickest way to make the connection.
We'll scour the report all day for more revelations.
Josh
Zachary
The public, and apparently most members of Congress, has to be informed by counter-intelligence agents whose job it is to get information from captives the hows and whys viable information is gotten including the negative results when torture is used.
That said, does the US now advocate and support a government policy that is nothing short of using whatever means possible to achieve an end? Well, that's right in line with the likes of Hitler, Stalin, Pinochet...so it can't be all bad.
April 22, 2009 11:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
So instead of torturing prisoners to "keep America safe" they were doing it to uncover phantom connections between AQ and Saddam Hussein to justify their planned invasion of Iraq.
Boy, am I surprised.
April 22, 2009 11:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm sure with enough torture, they got some really good imaginary connections too.
April 22, 2009 12:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Damn right, good enough to sacrifice thousands of lives for.
April 22, 2009 9:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
From the McClatchy Report:
Here's the thing: according to professional crime and intelligence investigators the practical reason not to use torture is that the person being tortured will tell you what he thinks you want to hear, rather than the truth.
Or to put it another way: if you're Dick Cheney the reason to use torture is that the person being tortured will tell you what he thinks you want to hear, rather than the truth.
April 22, 2009 12:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
The real torture will be reading Cheney's book when it comes out next year with all his lies and justifications.
April 22, 2009 12:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
No, the real torture will be the book-on-tape, read by the Dark Lord (or is that Dick Lord?) himself.
April 22, 2009 4:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
The people who claim its "not torture" need to be subjected to it a few times.
Otherwise they are hypocrites.
Let's challenge the assholes to a few dunks!
But Cheney is a gift: His approval rating is about 15%, and he's technically not even human at this point (mostly replaced biomechanical parts making up this "Cheney" figure), so the more he becomes the "face" of the GOP, the better.
April 22, 2009 1:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
If's not clear yet, here's an abridged version:
1) Nefarious foreign governments implemented torture techniques to make prisoners more docile and to coerce false confessions. Psychologists, military and otherwise confirmed the effectiveness of torture to gain these results.
2) U.S. military implements program (SERE) to expose personnel at greater risk of capture to these techniques to help harden them against becoming compliant and giving false testimony.'
3) Bush administration ignores, disregards and discredits specific intelligence indicating Bin Laden planning attack on U.S. involving airplanes.
4) 9/11
5) Bushies and neo-cons, without military or interrogation experience, and without knowledge or history of torture, its uses and results, think it would be a nifty idea to start torturing prisoners.
6) The same Bushies and neo-cons invade Iraq and continue to waste resources and millions chasing down false leads coerced through torture, rather than focusing on known information, such as Bin Laden trapped in Tora Bora.
7) Al Qaeda expands its size, range and exposure, using the invasion of Iraq and evidence of U.S. torture to recruit.
This is what happens when you deny reality in favor of making your own, and let chickenhawks, Haliburton and neo-con porn such as 24 shape your foreign policy.
April 22, 2009 1:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Brilliant Mr. E! If I had your persuasive gifts and knowledge of this issue I wouldn't have to be so flip and humorous. Well done.
April 22, 2009 2:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Waterboarding has quite a history, a US history, that is--used against Filipinos by US troops during Spanish-American war and also used against the Vietnamese by US troops-- these "tidbits" are usually not mentioned in the history of US waterboarding.
April 22, 2009 1:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Seriously, someone should investigate 911.
April 22, 2009 1:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
This puts the lie to their purported rationale for torturing, doesn't it? They used it in their attempt to justify the unjustifiable invasion of Iraq and their decision go down that dark road had nothing to do with preventing another attack.
April 22, 2009 1:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
It probably excited Cheney to hear about the torture, much like it excited Ted Bundy to kill. What a sick pervert.
April 22, 2009 2:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm glad that this story is out, because it gives us an opportunity to show-up what has seemed to me to be the key strength in the Bush Administration's arguments for torture. So far, the Bush Administration has been able to say things like "well, these were dangerous terrorists and there was no other way..." blah, blah, blah, and "we had to torture them to keep America safe."
But arguments like that equivocate. The truth is, and now we can finally discuss it, is that there are at least 3 different torture “scenarios,” and only now (with this story) are we seeing that the Bush Administration used torture in all three “scenarios” rather than just in scenario 1 or 1 & 2.
The “scenarios” I'm talking about are like this:
1) The classic "24" scenario. You have a known terrorist in custody, and you know that this terrorist knows the details of specific attack that is about to go down. He won’t tell you where the attack is going to go down or give other details that would allow the Administration to thwart the attack, so he’s tortured. This is the scenario where the Bush Administration’s pro-torture argument is rhetorically strongest, and so its not surprising that all along they have characterized their use of waterboarding as occurring in this type of scenario.
2) The “investigative torture” scenario. In this scenario, you have a known terrorist in custody, but no information about a specific threat from that terrorist’s group. So, in order to find out if that terrorist group is planning an attack, you torture him. The Bush Administration’s argument for torture is less rhetorically pleasing in this scenario, but still strong. Given the time that some of these terrorists were in custody, its probably safe to say that most of the torture was of this variety.
3) The “recreational torture” scenario. This is the scenario that today’s revelations most closely mirror. You have a known terrorist in custody, you torture him “investigatively” as in scenario 2, but then you go a step further. You just start using torture to find out whether you know what you don’t know. North Korea is a threat to the U.S., so did this terrorist group ever talk to a North Korean? Hmmm, interesting question, let’s find out by torturing him. Any ties to Iraq? Dunno! So let’s torture him, maybe something will drop… And so on and so forth.
I think its time to start really asking how much of the Bush Adminsitration’s torturing was of the “recreational” variety. In particular, I have always wondered about all of those people picked up in Afghanistan during the anti-Taliban operations. Northern Alliance forces were constantly bringing in people and saying “he’s a terrorist” or “he’s a Taliban” in order to collect cash rewards from the CIA operatives there. So, the question is, with no better information than that (for a large cash reward the Northern Alliance gave us this guy and say he’s a terrorist) how do you know if this guy is a terrorist or not?
What I want to know is, did the Bush Administration answer this question by torturing these guys, not because they were al qaida, but to find out IF they were al qaida?
I think that armed with such information, support for the Bush Administration’s torture policy would become less virulent. Its one thing to know that the terrorist knows something that you need to know and to torture him for it, and quite another to torture someone to find out what you don’t know.
April 22, 2009 3:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
What is it that Hobbes said....something to the extent that when one tortures one always hears what one wants but not necessarily the truth....but then again thumb-screws are so much fun.
April 22, 2009 5:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
"WASHINGTON, Dec. 8 - The Bush administration based a crucial prewar assertion about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda on detailed statements made by a prisoner while in Egyptian custody who later said he had fabricated them to escape harsh treatment, according to current and former government officials.
The officials said the captive, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, provided his most specific and elaborate accounts about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda only after he was secretly handed over to Egypt by the United States in January 2002, in a process known as rendition."
From this 2005 NYT article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/09/politics/09intel.html?_r=1&hp&ex=1134190800&en=7e35bbb61b8d1d0c&ei=5094
You can create any scenario you want, let your victim know what you want to hear and then torture them until they say it. It's the Cheney way to push a neo-con foreign policy objective, in this case a war with Iraq.
April 22, 2009 9:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
one question - if torture can result in a false confession of what you want to hear, why didn't they get it? why didn't the administration release some recording of a Bin Laden lieutenant describing secret meetings with Iraqi officials?
i think this was torture, and we should marshal the full force of the law to investigate and prosecute these activities, but I find it strange that despite all the waterboarding and sleep-deprivation and insect-boxing and walling, none of these people actually gave them what they wanted - the evidence supporting the original justification for the Iraq war.
April 23, 2009 10:57 AM | Reply | Permalink