The Scum Also Rises...When will it stop?
In March of 2003, the Bush administration thought it had a gold-mine of information on Al Qaeda with the capture of Khalid Sheik Mohammed. FBI interrogators extracted a wealth of information from him before the CIA took over and began using "enhanced interrogation techniques". Hereafter EIT will be called by its correct name...torture.
March 2003, the same month Bush invaded Iraq. The same month Khalid Sheik Mohanmmed was water-boarded 183 times. Under this duress, he admitted to everything from the kidnapping of Charles Lindgergh's baby to being the second gunman on the grassy knoll in Dallas. What he did not confess to, however, and what the Bush administration was seeking, was an operational link between Al Qaeda and Iraq.
In April 2003, former UN weapons inspector. Charles Duelfer, received a request to engage in a more aggressive manner, as in water-boarding, with an Iraqi intelligence officer, Muhammed Khudayr, former head of M-14...a branch of Saddam's Mukhabarat...whom he was helping to debrief on Saddam's WMD's. You know the ones that were never there in the first place. According to Mr. Duelfer, this request originated in Washington. This request was problematic in two aspects. First would have been the violation of the Geneva Conventions, as this Iraqi was a lawful combatant. Secondly, this Iraqi intelligence officer was freely co-operating with his interrogators. Saddam was gone and he saw US forces as allies in rebuilding Iraq. Mr. Duelfer put it thus:
“Some in Washington at very senior levels, not in the CIA, were concerned that the debriefing was too gentle. They asked if enhanced measures, such as waterboarding should be used.”
Duelfer found the request "reprehensible" and he and his fellow interrogators refused to comply with this request to commit a war crime. Never mind that the motive behind the request wasn't to acquire intelligence which could be used to stop a further attack on America. It was to obtain information on an operational link between Al Qaeda and Iraq. Never mind that as a uniformed member of Iraqi security services Khudayr WAS subject to ALL provisions of the Geneva Conventions.
According to a report by Robert Windrem, this request for the use of water-boarding Khudayr originated in then Vice-President Dick Cheney's office.
But why this focus on links between Al Qaeda and Iraq? Perhaps the Bush administration, realizing it's WMD rational for the invasion of Iraq was tenuous, at best, they were seeking to back-fill their justification for what was, essentially, an illegal, ill-conceived war of choice against an enemy which was no threat to anyone beyond its borders.
The point to all of this is that the Bush administration's use of water-boarding, and other forms of torture, went beyond even the flimsy legal justifications offered up by the Yoo and Bybee memos. As we see in this memo from John Bybee
Our advice is based upon the following facts, which you have provided to us. We also understand that you do not have any facts in your possession contrary to the facts outlined here, and this opinion is limited to these facts. If these facts were to change, this advice would not necessarily apply...Specifically, he(Abu Zubaydha) is withholding information regarding terrorist networks in the United States or in Saudi Arabia and information regarding plans to conduct attacks within the United States or against our interests overseas...In 1ight of the information you believe Zubaydah has and the high level of threat you believe now exists, your wish to move the interrogations in to what you have described. as an "increased pressure phase."
The upshot is that the Bush administration exceeded even its own tenuous limits on the use of torture. As indicated above, torture was to be used only in the event of a "ticking time-bomb" scenario. The approval of the torture program by the DOJ was dependent upon the need to stop new attacks on the US and its interests. Securing evidence of an operational link between Al Qaeda and Iraq in order to justify the invasion of Iraq did not fall under even that flimsy rationale. The Bush administration tortured detainees, not to obtain intelligence aimed at preventing further attacks on the US, but to back-fill an illegal war of aggression based on a non-existent operational link between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
And there you have it. The torture of detainees, not to prevent further attacks on the US...Even though not even that is justification for torture. Detainees were tortured to cover the political asses of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and the rest of the architects of the invasion and botched occupation of Iraq.
Taken as a whole, the continued reluctance of President Obama and Attorney General Holder to pursue the investigation and prosecution of war crimes against the members of the Bush administration who authorized, and those who carried out, torture continues to boggle the mind. Given the evidence that exists, it is clear that an investigation must be undertaken, and the evidence followed wherever...and to whonever...it may lead. US treaty obligations under the UN Conventions Against Torture and the Geneva Convention requires this. Failure to do so is nothing less than complicity in these crimes.
