More on Torture, Justice, and the American Way

When last we spoke, I asked why the Bush administration had turned to a torture program reverse-engineered from the U.S. military’s SERE program to train soldiers, sailors, and Marines to resist torture designed to elicit false confessions for propaganda purposes. Apparently the Republicans have conveniently glossed over this troubling detail, because they continue to stay on the “Dick Cheney kept us safe” bandwagon. Oh well. Things are getting a little hotter for the Republicans, though, since hearings have started on Capitol Hill regarding who knew what and when, who authorized what and when, and who dissented and when and why.

When it comes to damning testimony, I don’t know that anyone has any more damning information to share than Ali Soufan. Soufan is a Lebanese-American who joined the FBI as an interrogator in the late ‘90s. He is notable in this story because he was the guy who interrogated Abu Zubaydah before the waterboarding and got Zubaydah to give up Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the mastermind behind 9-11 and the identity of Jose Padilla, the supposed “dirty bomber.” Again, this information was given to Soufan during a standard interrogation with NO TORTURE needed. In his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts this week, Soufan recounted the events that led him to walk away from the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah. He and his partner, using traditional interrogation tactics, were getting lots of actionable intelligence information from Zubaydah.

Then the CIA showed up with orders from on high to use “harsh interrogation tactics.” This is, by the way, the only time I will use this despicable euphemism. They were told to torture, and no game of semantics can hide or obscure that fact. According to Soufan, as soon as the waterboard was introduced to Zubaydah, he became defensive and uncooperative. Eventually, Soufan and his partner were asked to come back and continue their interrogation. This back and forth between Soufan and the CIA continued until Zubaydah was so traumatized by the waterboarding that he shut down completely and Soufan could not get any more information from him. It was at that point that Ali Soufan, one of this country’s greatest weapons in the fight against terror, walked away from the interrogation. His disenfranchisement with what he saw going on around him eventually led him to leave the FBI altogether.

In his testimony this week, Mr. Soufan offered several refutations to the Bush administration’s “ticking time bomb” nonsense—you know, that scenario where an attack is imminent so you’ll resort to ANYTHING to get information to stop it, never mind the fact that torture doesn’t lead to actionable intelligence. In fact, that was Soufan’s first point. Torture is ineffective. According to Mr. Soufan, “Al Qaeda terrorists are trained to resist torture. As shocking as these techniques are to us, the al Qaeda training prepares them for much worse – the torture they would expect to receive if caught by dictatorships for example.” Hey, guess what, these guys have their very own SERE school! Just in case they get captured and tortured to elicit false confessions for propaganda purposes. Mr. Soufan also said that torture at the hands of Americans only reinforces a detainees impression of America as amoral and Godless and thus strengthens his will to resist.

Following closely from this is Mr. Soufan’s second point: The information gained during torture is not, despite the constant ramblings of former Vice President Cheney, reliable. In fact, the FBI and CIA spent entirely too much time chasing down false information which had been tortured right out of detainees. Again, see my previous point in the preceding post—I would probably admit to having Osama bin Laden’s love child if waterboarded just to make it stop. Too bad it would have been not just a lie, but a real whopper of a lie.

Finally, Mr. Soufan addressed the “ticking time bomb” scenario directly. The CIA had, in its arsenal of torture tactics, authorization to use sleep deprivation for up to 180 hours. That is seven and a half days, at the end of which, I don’t know many people who would be coherent enough to even remember their own name, let alone anything that might even resemble actionable intelligence. When questioned by Senator Lindsey Graham (we’ll get back to Mr. Graham in a moment) about the allegations of former CIA officer John Kiriakou that Abu Zubaydah (the very one that Mr. Soufan so excellently interrogated) broke within seconds of being waterboarded, Mr. Soufan first reminded the senator that Mr. Kiriakou had recanted that statement, saying he had not been present during the waterboarding of Zubaydah and thus could not speak to the veracity of that claim. Then he made the excellent point that if waterboarding was so successful, why was it used 83 times against Abu Zubaydah and 183 times against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed…IN ONE MONTH!! What kind of “timely” information can be coerced from a guy who has to be waterboarded 6 times a day for a month?

But here’s the really bad news, just as I feared in my last post about this topic: this wasn’t really about “actionable intelligence” at all. It was about propaganda, gotten by any means, at any cost. The administration always held up the “ticking time bomb” scenario as the only acceptable reason for getting a little rough with detainees, be they in Guantanamo, Afghanistan, Iraq, or any number of black-ops sites around the world. Yet, the evidence points to something much more insidious. In a 2004 report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence regarding the use of intelligence in the lead-up to the Iraq War, buried near the back, on page 353, is the following statement: “CTC [Counter Terrorist Center] noted that the questions regarding al-Qaida's ties to the Iraqi regime were among the first presented to senior al-Qaida operational planner Khalid Shaikh Muhammad following his capture.”

Just so we all know the timeline here, KSM was captured on March 1, 2003. During March 2003, he was famously waterboarded 183 times. The Iraq War started March 20, 2003. So apparently the only attack that was imminent here was the American attack on Iraq. Furthermore, this was not, I repeat WAS NOT, a ticking time bomb scenario. This was a directive from somewhere in the Bush administration to get information linking al-Qaeda and Iraq, a link that virtually everyone (except Dick Cheney) now believes to be non-existent, to justify the war. If that’s not a propaganda purpose, then I don’t know what is.

Everyone, and I do mean everyone, is completely missing the point here. This isn’t about finger pointing or hating Bush or demonizing our armed forces or intelligence services. This is about what America stands for. This is about keeping America safe. This is about actually preventing the next attack, not merely paying lip service to that auspicious goal. Sunshine really is the best disinfectant here. The only way this country can avoid making the same horrible, illegal, injurious mistakes again is to know exactly what those mistakes where. How were these things allowed to happen? Who was responsible for allowing it? Who stood back and did nothing while it happened? I’m sure I will come back to this issue many times before all is said and done because it infuriates me. It infuriates me because it was harmful to national security. It infuriates me because it put our men and women in uniform in greater danger in Iraq and Afghanistan. It infuriates me because it has galvanized Muslim opinion in favor of al Qaeda and its objectives. And personally, it infuriates me because the Bush administration and its Republican allies in Congress at the time demonized those who disagreed with them.

Dissenters were subtly, and not-so-subtly, called traitors and turncoats. Their patriotism was questioned. They were mocked and ridiculed by people who claimed to be looking out for this country. As it turns out, the true patriots here were the dissenters, not the idiots in charge. And to think that their integrity was being impugned by the likes of Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld who were looking out for something, though I haven’t quite figured it out yet. One thing is certain, they were not looking out for the best interests of the country. If they had been, they would have left the interrogating to the professionals, refrained from meddling in the affairs of the intelligence community, and listened when Judge Advocates from all four branches of the military raised objections to the torture methods being authorized from on high.

And now the Republicans, who are supposedly all about duty, honor, and country, who have tried to win every election since 9-11 by portraying the Democrats as sissies and not at all concerned about national security, are stonewalling every attempt to get to the truth in this, the most important of matters with relation to national security. And that brings me back to our friend, Senator Graham. It was obvious from some of his questions for Mr. Soufan in the Judiciary Committee hearing this week that Mr. Graham has been drinking the Republican Kool-Aid. It is also becoming readily apparent to me that this is all being done not because of some deeply held conviction that these tactics were necessary but because the Republicans want to do whatever they can wherever they can to get in President Obama’s way. Want to know my proof? The words of no less than Senator Lindsey Graham.

In February 2006, when hearings were convening to investigate the allegations of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, Senator Graham disagreed with his Republican colleague, Jim Inhofe, who I try regularly to forget that my fellow Oklahomans have the bad sense to keep sending to Washington, about whether outrage over the events at Abu Ghraib was warranted or not. Inhofe, of course, thought that the outrage itself was outrageous because he just knew that all of the detainees being abused were murderers and terrorists. Senator Graham rebutted this assertion saying, “When you are the good guys, you’ve got to act like the good guys.” Indeed, Senator Graham. So in 2006, you thought the good guys ought to act that way, and now you think the good guys should just…what, exactly? Avoid looking too close at what was going on? You, John McCain, and others who have in the past vocally opposed torture now think we should just sweep it under the rug? How is that helpful? What good does that accomplish? Don’t the good guys generally stand for truth, justice, and the American way? How can we possibly do that if we ignore the truth and don’t vigorously pursue justice?

Prove to me, Republicans, prove to me that you are interested in government accountability all the time and not just when it’s the other guys in power. Prove to me that your belief in the goodness of our country isn’t just lip service to win elections. Cooperate with the Democrats. Call for a special prosecutor. Demand an independent investigation. Rigorously pursue justice for those who were tortured, no matter their degree of guilt or innocence. Demand of yourselves, of the Democrats, of all of us, that none of us be considered above the law—even, if necessary, a former president, vice-president, cabinet secretary, or legal counsel turned federal judge. Loving this country doesn’t mean turning a blind eye to its faults or its wrongdoings. Patriotism is not blind allegiance. So prove it, Republicans. Let’s see if your patriotism can hold up when the going gets tough, because this isn’t going away. You can stay on the wrong side of this issue, or you can come toward the light. If you’re at all concerned about the survival of the GOP or its continued relevance on the national stage, I strongly recommend you chose the latter of those two options.

Here is the link to all of the testimony from the hearing in front of the Judiciary’s subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts, as well as a link to the written testimony of former Air Force interrogator Matthew Alexander. I would also like to thank Mr. Soufan and Mr. Alexander for their exemplary service to this country. These men are true patriots and deserve nothing but our utmost respect.
Testimony from Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts
Matthew Alexander's Written Testimony to the Subcommittee