Torture, Lies, and Videotape

What did those videotapes the CIA illegally destroyed show? It seems that some, at least, showed the torture of Abu Zubaydah. Zubaydah was a low ranking Al Quaeda gofer who turned out to be crazy and not know anything, but Bush was convinced he was important, so he wanted him tortured. Kevin Drum (via a complicated path that you will need to visit his site to unravel) has some details. Under torture, Zubaydah:

. . . began to speak of plots of every variety — against shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty. With each new tale, "thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each...target." And so, Suskind writes, "the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered."

Drum summarizes:

So here's what the tapes would have shown: not just that we had brutally tortured an al-Qaeda operative, but that we had brutally tortured an al-Qaeda operative who was (a) unimportant and low-ranking, (b) mentally unstable, (c) had no useful information, and (d) eventually spewed out an endless series of worthless, fantastical "confessions" under duress. This was all prompted by the president of the United States, implemented by the director of the CIA, and the end result was thousands of wasted man hours by intelligence and and law enforcement personnel.

Nice trifecta there. And just think: there's an entire political party in this country that still thinks this is OK.

Drum also has a nice picture of Bush pinning the Medal of Freedom on Tenet. Too bad that irony is utterly wasted on those who need it.

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