"certifiable, insane" Zubaydah, Bush and the Bureaucracy of Torture

[autorank]

(Even I'm shocked at the cabinet torture choreographers. What a mess. MC)


Full Article: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0804/S00239.htm

"insane, certifiable"

"The United States does not torture."
Pres. Bush, Sept. 6, 2006

Zubaydah, Bush and the Bureaucracy of Torture

Michael Collins
"Scoop" Independent News
Washington, D.C.

The devastating attack of 9/11 conferred unprecedented popularity on the Bush administration. This was more a reflection of the strong desire for national unity in the wake of a tragedy than an endorsement of Bush policies.

After the attack, there was a frantic effort inside the administration to show a major success in their newly proclaimed war on terror. The administration knew what the public didn't: Far from being surprised by airplanes used as weapons, they'd had a series of warnings from intelligence sources that commercial airplanes were indeed the next weapon of choice by terrorists. Once that information became public, the Bush administration would need something more to boost its image.

In addition to warnings on the use of airplanes, the administration received at least 28 advanced intelligence warnings prior to 9/11. Was there more damaging information and analysis in the files of the agencies and individuals involved?

The "Mailman" Delivers

When Abu Zubaydah was captured in April 2002, he presented the first opportunity to show that the administration was actually doing something to protect the nation and rectify the losses of September 11, 2001.

There was just one seemingly insurmountable problem: Zubaydah was not the "mastermind" that the White House needed so desperately. After several weeks of nonviolent interrogation, the initial interrogators said he'd given up what he had. Zubaydah was a good find but not top tier al Qaeda material -- more like a "mailman," as noted by the FBI's Dan Coleman, a highly regarded agent. Also, according to Coleman, "Zubaydah was "certifiable, insane, a split personality," hardly a credible source of information. (Ron Suskind, The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of its Enemies Since 9/11.)

None of that mattered.

Abu Zubaydah had to become what the administration needed him to be: an al Qaeda mastermind imprisoned just months after 9/11 and a font of invaluable information vital to national security. His birth reflected an act of political desperation. The administration had nothing up to that point.

SNIP

Abu Zubaydah's metamorphosis in myth from mailman to mastermind was complete. Once he was labeled a mastermind, his questioners had to use "enhanced interrogation" techniques to save lives. The ends justified the means. Judging their own work, the authors determined that their project was a success. Other prisoners of equal or greater importance were lined up for torture. The evidence was there from the test case, Abu Zubaydah. Torture worked.

SNIP

A Bureaucracy Mired in the Details of Torture

We found out last week that the vice president and senior Bush appointees "discussed and approved" the highly abusive interrogation techniques applied to U.S. detainees, according to reports by ABC News and the Associated Press. Those techniques include waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and physical assault.

In dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House, the most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, sources tell ABC News. ABC News, Apr. 10, 2008

The list of officials includes Vice President Cheney, along with Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, and John Ashcroft -- who were cabinet members at the time -- and Condoleezza Rice." They "discussed and approved" torture scripts that were followed to the letter:

The high-level discussions about these "enhanced interrogation techniques" were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed -- down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic. ABC News, Apr. 10, 2008

The choreography of torture was revealed by the Boston Globe (Apr. 15, 2006). The story exposed Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld's personal involvement in monitoring the interrogation and torture of a Guantanamo Bay prisoner. The Globe may have uncovered the tip of comprehensive story offered by ABC.

Over a six-week period, according to subsequent investigations, the detainee was subjected to sleep deprivation, stripped naked, forced to wear women's underwear on his head, denied bathroom access until he urinated on himself, threatened with snarling dogs, and forced to perform tricks on a dog leash, among other things. http://tinyurl.com/gn4d4">Boston Globe, Apr. 15, 2006 (describing activities "monitored" weekly by Donald Rumsfeld)

Obedience to Authority

What was behind the willingness of this top ranking group to participate in torture? What went on in their minds as they did so? One can only imagine.

Cheney and the other participants are political survivors, if nothing else. How did they reconcile the notion of survival with their actions? Did they think that this would be a secret in perpetuity? Did they delude themselves that the Iraq war would end with such success that no one would care?



Former CIA Director and Medal of Freedom recipient George Tenet (Image - receiving the medal)) provides an important clue. In response to top agent Coleman's charge that Abu Zubaydah was "insane, certified, a split personality," Tenet called the agent and others who agreed "junior Freudians" who didn't know what they were talking about.

But Ron Suskind got a different version of Tenet's thoughts on the "first al Qaeda prisoner captured after 9/11."

… one day, when CIA Director George Tenet reminds Bush that Zubaida was not such a top leader after all, Bush reportedly says to him, "I said he was important. You're not going to let me lose face on this, are you?" Tenet replies, "No sir, Mr. President. Suskind, 2006 see also Cooperative History Research Commons

Did Tenet and the rest of them do what they did in the service of a man who demanded their loyalty to preserve his war, his reputation, and his sense of control?

It all started with a prisoner who was mentally ill, by a very reliable account, and then it expanded into a collaborative effort involving Cheney and the most senior Bush appointees in the intimate details of torture.

It didn't matter to the senior officials if the detainee was mentally ill and a spent vessel in terms of new information. His capacity to deliver information in a reliable fashion was not an issue. They needed a "mastermind." It didn't matter that the officials were involved in morally repellant and illegal acts of torture. All that mattered was the opinion of President George W. Bush "I said he was important."

That's all it took.

END

N.B. Abu Zubaydah is a major source of information in the http://tinyurl.com/4qv6m7">911 Commission Report.

Resources: http://tinyurl.com/5avc6x">Ron Suskind, The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of its Enemies Since 9/11 and http://tinyurl.com/6kaarn">"April 9, 2002 and After: Bush Administration Exaggerates the Value of Al-Qaeda Prisoner Zubaida for Political Gain," Cooperative History Research Commons

Special thanks to Jill Hayroot and Susannah Pitt for their contributions.

This article may be reproduced in part or in whole with attribution of authorship and a link to the article.

Full Article: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0804/S00239.htm

[lonestarnot]

1. This I have never understood either.

"The devastating attack of 9/11 conferred unprecedented popularity on the Bush administration." I felt we were doubly doomed due to the freaks at the helm. I have never come out of the 9/11 depression, and I don't think I ever will.

[autorank]

2. I'm with you

"freaks at the helm" - yep.

And now they're truly freaky with this torture scripting

- Powell, Cheney, Rice, Ashcroft, Tenet, Rumsfeld -

What's missing when people at this position can become the 'overlords' on how torture is conducted.
First, it's wrong and doesn't work according to our top people, pre Bush. Second, even if it did,
why put cabinet members in charge of "discussing and approving" (i.e., writing) the final version
of beat downs?

I'm hard to shock but I was indeed by this.

:hi:

[lonestarnot]

3. The fear factor, soley the fear factor.

:hi: And how about that publicity by the MSM on the same topic. eye yeye yeye.

[gratuitous]

4. This is how it goes. Inevitably. Every time.

As soon as you open the door to torture of any kind, every suspect is made to fit the template. Zubaydeh gave up some information, but not as much information as the interrogators or their superiors thought he should be giving up? Maybe he's some kind of super-terrorist, trained to withstand our toughest interrogations. Can we afford to take the chance that he might be some super-terrorist? Could we live with ourselves if we didn't use every means at our disposal and something bad happened?

So, Zubaydeh (or anyone else luckless enough to fall into our clutches) must be tortured. It's not an option, because they might, just might have crucial information. And could the administration face the American people if an attack happened and if they had only tortured a prisoner to find out what he knew, or what they thought he might know, it could have been avoided? Torture isn't an option, it's a necessity.

The same idiot logic prevailed during the 1950s, when the absence of any evidence that someone was a communist was additional proof that they were a communist.

[autorank]

5. This is the key point that they use.

"the absence of any evidence that someone was a communist was additional proof that they were a
communist." Excellent!

How far ahead we would be if the people at the top had just said, "You know Joe McCarthy and Richard
Nixon and the illiterate yahoos who ape them are dumb as rocks." Eisenhower sad by and did nothing,
others who could speak up did nothing. It took Murrow and Attorney Welch to bring that maddness to
an end. Who do we have now? Apparently nobody.

And today, who sat there and had this material presented to them in a top secret briefing,
and did nothing?

All those who "know" participate and are subject to the embarrassment and castigation
of the perpetrators because the "knew" and did nothing.

It's the "what if?" that gets you. After I finished this story, I rented "Goya's Ghosts." Great film
about the Spanish Inquisition. Suspects were "Put to the word" - if you were Satanic, you would
confess. If not, then God would take care of things and never let you speak a lie.

I think that this crew has been running from 911 forever, afraid that we'd find out how badly they
failed everyone; afraid what would happen to them if we found out.

So they drown their paranoia in the strange discourse about who gets slapped when and where, for how
long, etc.

[tblue37]

11. The logical problem in such situations is that you can't prove a negative.

In other words, innocence is not provable, so the innocent prisoner ends up being tortured mercilessly, because he has no information to give up, but his failure to give up information even under torture is interpreted not as absence of information but as insufficency of toruture.

[truedelphi]

20. You just cogently explained the back cloud of "weird" that descends upon my grey matter

Whenever I think abt torture.

And on the Mike Malloy show, back in fall of 2003? 2004? he asked the audience to define/describe what it takes to put a holocuast in motion. After listening patiently to his callers for some three hours, he came up with the notion that a holocaust is put in motion whenever a people justify torturing even one single individual - because after that it is just a matter of degrees.

[stellanoir]

6. These sickwads have seemingly presumed impunity for legalizing utter sadism.

They won't get away with it.

I swear.

Have a nice evening pal.

[madokie]

10. I am solidly in the camp with you that they will pay for this

to think otherwise is to give up on the American Dream, thats not gonna be happening with me ever.

[autorank]

19. Bingo ... vicarious sadism because they're not present...

... but wait, maybe they were.

[Me.]

7. 'We All Knew' Didn't We? We Just Didn't Have The Details

At least subconsciously in the case of the public at large. The German thing, not knowing what was going on right before their faces. Can the people of this country seriously expect the world to believe they didn't have a clue?

So what's it called exactly? Fear induced blindness? Nativism taken to the ultra extremes?

I'm waiting for the day, and I believe the world is too, for the end of this admin, for I truly believe if any of the 7 major miscreants step one foot outside this country that rendition flights will begin.

[autorank]

14. I didn't suspect this level of vileness

But they surprised me! I think it's "fear induced blandness" - they have so little to do, they end up doing this.

[Kurovski]

8. K&R.

:kick:

[mod mom]

9. I hope REAL JUSTICE is served to these thugs. Thanks, auto!

[kpete]

12. thanks

for writing this.

Such an IMPORTANT topic, not pretty, not pleasant, but it stabs at the heart of all those whose souls KNOW and RECOGNIZE the insanity.

kp

[autorank]

15. welcome

We're all going to know soon. This one has legs.

:hi:

[msedano]

13. You know what's hard to believe in this story?

None of it.

What is missing is lack of details on the briefings. I'm wondering if the co-conspirators had a few hands-on practice sessions in the Oval Orifice to judge for themselves the likely effectiveness of waterboarding and other "enhanced" methods. I'm reminded of scenes in gangster movies. After the captive has been slapped around a while, the henchasshole turns to the Boss and advises, "if he knew anything he'd have told us by now" and the Boss says, "take him out to the farm and sic the dogs on him. That way we'll know for sure."

recommended.

[autorank]

18. Right ! Here's what they were considering

Or like the inquisition, the less they talk the more you just know they're holding back.

Apparently there are "thousands" of tapes of these interrogations, which I find an apt
comparison to these teen muggers (like those girls in Texas) who beat people up and video
tape it.

Maybe we'll find out that they ware special uniforms when they go in "the room" - I've always
found Jersey State Trooper uniforms intimidating. When some guy steps out of the cruiser with
knee high black boots and that strange "Blackhawks" (from the old comic series)had, etc. Surely
they had a tee shirt to memorialize their participation: "I survived and executive beat down and
lived to tell about it."

Here's what they were working with;

Technique details under the Bush administration
Wikipedia: http://tinyurl.com/6jopmw

According to ABC News<47>, former and current CIA officials have come forward to reveal details of interrogation techniques authorized in the CIA. These include:

1. The Attention Grab: The interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt front of the prisoner and shakes him.
2. Attention Slap: An open-handed slap aimed at causing pain and triggering fear.
3. The Belly Slap: A hard open-handed slap to the abdomen. The aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury. Doctors consulted advised against using a punch, which could cause lasting internal damage.
4. Long Time Standing: This technique is described as among the most effective. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor, for more than 40 hours.
5. The Cold Cell: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius).
6. Waterboarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Material is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.

[Joe Chi Minh]

16. All in accordance with their established m.o., eh, Mike? Where and how will it end?

If WWII is a guide, the unconscionably brutal will never again last long enough to build the empire/reich they covet. How barbaric or bloodless will the end be?

[autorank]

17. I think it's over and they just don't know it.

What a lofty question, I'm honored.

When they actually take time to do 'hands on 'supervision and collaboration in what they call
interrogation and what people who speak and read the English language call torture, then they are in
big trouble. There simply are no words or phrases I've seen to begin to explain the pathos of
these activities and their exposure. What will they say to their spouses, friends, future contacts to
explain inflicting this type of personal violence and to do so in such detail? And if they were
running a real emerging empire, how could the justify being preoccupied with these details.

As Andrew Sullivan said, there are many in the Bush administration who will not ever travel
abroad due to charges that will be filed the minute this administration ends.

But for them, there's always "the ranch" that their leader bought about a year or two before the
2000 elections. They'll like that.

Ahoy!

[truedelphi]

21. K & R'ed. No topic. n/t