Ali Soufan, the former FBI interrogator who wrote a riveting op-ed against the use of torture -- and he should know, since he was interrogating Abu Zubaydah himself -- testified under oath today that he got information out of Zubaydah quickly using basic FBI methods; and that information was then used successfully to capture "the bad guys." Then, when the CIA forced torture on Zubaydah, they got nothing.
It knocks down Liz and Dick Cheney's talking points all to hell. They have been saying that waterboarding uncovered crucial information, but Soufan refutes that as well.
David Shuster goes over his testimony and it's incredible. Soufan also got more information by using his own techniques later on and was thrown off the interrogation detail for his success. The high wizards of BushCo. wanted to torture these people, and we know why: See "Abusive tactics used to seek Iraq-al Qaida link" for more.
Soufan said torture is too slow and unreliable, as evidenced by the 83 times Zubaydah was waterboarded.
Soufan: It's merely an exercise in trying to force compliance rather than elicit cooperation. A major problem is that it is ineffective. Waterboarding itself had to be used 83 times, an indication that Abu-Zubayda had already called his interrogators' bluff.
The Atlantic made my job a little easier:
The Senate Judiciary Committee hears testimony from former lead FBI counterterrorism agent Ali Soufan. Soufan calls "enhanced interrogation techniques" "ineffective, slow, unreliable" and therefore harmful, "aside from the important considerations that they are un-American and harmful to our case and reputation." Soufan describes the successful non-coercive interrogation of Al Qaeda terrorist Abu Jandal, who "identified many terrorists who we later successfully apprehended." Soufan describes an interrogation method he calls the "Informed Interrogation Approach," which seeks to capitalize on the natural fear that a detainee feels as a result of his custody by adopting a posture of openness and respect.
Soufan presents an interesting challenge to the Ticking Time Bomb Scenario. Noting that it took 83 waterboardings to force Khalid Shake Mohammed to cough up information, he describes that technique as "slow" and therefore unreliable when information needs to be obtained quickly. Soufan also provides an unclassified chronology of the joint FBI-CIA efforts to question Abu Zubaydah. He says that his early efforts to coax information out of the Al Qaeda operate were successful, and CIA director George Tenet prepared a congratulatory telegram. As soon as Tenet learned that FBI agents -- not his CIA team -- had taken the lead role in the interrogation, he withdrew the congratulations and sent a team from the CIA's counterterrorism center to the interrogation site. That team was assisted by a contractor who "instructed" the new CIA operatives in tougher interrogation techniques. According to Soufan, the new team began to use the EITs. Zubaydah stopped cooperating. Soon, the FBI was brought back in. Zubaydah opened up like a book.
The attacks will start to flow in against Soufan, as you'll see in the above video. Joe Watkins says that while he had success, he's also a "disgruntled employee."
Shuster:...flatly contradicts the allegations that many conservatives and Vice President Cheney have made, that waterboarding produced significant information. Your reaction?
Watkins: Ali Soufan is certainly somebody who had experience and had some success with using his own interrogation methods, but you have to realize that he's a disgruntled former employee of the FBI. He did not agree with waterboarding and other means of...
Shuster: But that does not change the accuracy of his statements. He's testifying under oath that the information that we got from Abu-Zubayda came from him and not from waterboarding. Isn't that significant?
Watkins: It's significant for him...
Our pal James Boyce comes on and refutes Watkins' hollow rationalizations.
And even if it did work what would it matter and to what end?
It is a war crime.
It should be repeated over and over that it was used by Bush as a Hitlerian means to justify his war of aggression in Iraq.
That is a crime against peace, the first crime of the crimes listed in the Nuremberg Tribunal Charter, here.
The crime from which all the others flow.
statusquObama, change you can only pretend in
but we had to inflict revenge and punishment anyway on the prisoners for 911 is this the logic?
There is no logic. There are only the neocons and their enemies - if you're not with 'em, you're against 'em!
those ideological shape-shifters and creatures of legend, the neocons. What would earth be like without them and their "enemies" all over the place.
I'm thinkin.
Yeah, since with neoconservatives it comes to "with or against" them, I'm gonna have to pick "against" and side with everyone else.
Sorry, neoconservatives, but go fuck yourselves.
at 3:23 the repub says "shut up"!
Tony Poe, legendary CIA paramilitary officer Special Activities Division who mailed a bag of ears to the US embassy in Vientiane to prove his body counts. And dropped severed heads onto enemy locations twice as a form of psy-ops?
yet at the crucial moment of Soufan's testimony, only Whitehouse and Graham were present.
"I mean Romney is the most conservative on illegal immigration and I don't think Ronald Reagan could get elected in California today."
Ann "Clipped" Coulter
The Reslugs habitually plug their ignorant ears and sing Liar, Liar pants on fire. They are killing themselves.
Where were the Democrats?
"I mean Romney is the most conservative on illegal immigration and I don't think Ronald Reagan could get elected in California today."
Ann "Clipped" Coulter
...Shocking. I wonder if this we quell Cheney's little media tour. I doubt it. I think being in that undisclosed location all those years has made him need to be seen and heard. Please go back Dick, please go back.
Obama's blocking of the prisoner abuse photos has got my dander up. Check out my thoughts on the subject:
http://yellingatthemoon.com/2009/05/13/obamab...
trying to save his ass has made him need to be seen and heard.
...if they had all the information they still attacked Iraq? Didn't Bush say that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11?
"A black belt is not what you were, it is what you become"
...an art form out of mentioning 9/11 and Iraq in the same sentences time and time again without saying Iraq was involved. The main reason for the torture was to provide that missing link. They never got it, because it never existed.
I thought it was Rudy!
No Shit! That was proved many years ago. It's just the lying Reslugs that love and believe in torture. Still waiting for Hannity to be waterboarded, but we all know the bedwetter doesn't have a hair on his Lard-Ass.
on this committee no conflict of interests there being she's nose deep into the MIC by marriage.
Now the Neo-Cons will have to fine a poster child to testify under oath that waterboarding does in fact produce results. Good luck with that suckers.
Limbaugh will spew frogs from his ass and scream "Liberal bias, liberal bias, liberal bias!!"....the media will swoon, the ditto heads will fondle themselves feverishly and all this talk of torture not working will be forgotten.
"Anyone that makes less than $150K in this country, has no business voting Republican."
They are above the law.
Move on.
...admit it, you're right. The two tiered justice system is designed to allow the most powerful to get away with their crimes. This will be no different.
Dick-Head Cheney's real problem is that Americans dislike proven habitual liars like him and that's why he refuses to go under oath.
hopefully he will soon be under dirt.
"Anyone that makes less than $150K in this country, has no business voting Republican."
Right now he's just lower than dirt.
I'll take the word of someone who was there and a witness over the word of a man who spent eight years in an undisclosed location.
I haven't heard anyone else other than pundits and water carriers say that torture has worked and if they do, they are admitting that we torture detainees. Torture is against the law no matter what name you give it.
Say what you mean. Mean what you say. But don't say it mean.
"I haven't heard anyone else other than pundits and water carriers say that torture has worked"
Waterboarders have been saying it too, as far back as when the Church used it on recalcitrant Jews and Muslims.
"I mean Romney is the most conservative on illegal immigration and I don't think Ronald Reagan could get elected in California today."
Ann "Clipped" Coulter
Torture and acts of torture were not outlawed because they did or didn't work. We agreed with nearly 200 other CIVILIZED countries that it was INHUMANE! If you argue for torture you are neither civilized nor human, err humane.
My computer security system ran into something on that video that it didn't like. Probably just a fluke or something.
Say what you mean. Mean what you say. But don't say it mean.
Don't they ever get embarrased telling all these lies?
This black man, you would think he would be embarrased?
When will we just turn the liars off?
We need to prosecute all the people involved in this torture!
The legitimate FBI interrogator and the democrats who stand behind the rule of law or the whole rightwing neocon fascist cabal who tortured to obtain false confessions and information? I think we know the answer.
I'd like to meet them!
it's no wonder laws had to be passed to
protect govt whistle-blowers......every
single time the govt agency has called
them...DISGRUNTLED FORMER EMPLOYEES
that lame excuse is so old, it's embarrassing
that it is used. there's too much corruption
in govt. and the good old boys protection
system has to fucking go !!!!!
What this guy said is part of a recurring theme in which actual interrogators say torture doesn't work while right-wing talking heads and "experts" (i.e. ppl who have never interrogated someone) say it does work.
The whole torture 'house of cards' is crumbling.
I cannot figure out what Cheney is up to in demanding that memos be released because every time something does come out, the news is not good for Dick. His stance makes no sense. Invading Iraq was a cluster**** from the get-go.
Al Qaeda figure who provided link to Iraq reportedly dead in Libya
"Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi's allegation that Iraqi agents trained al Qaeda operatives in the use of chemical and biological weapons was "pivotal" to the Bush administration's case for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, said Stacy Sullivan, a counterterrorism adviser for the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch."
suicide or suicided?
I pledge allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America, and to the republic which it established, one nation from many peoples, promising liberty and justice for all
Maybe there are no memos that say that torture worked. Maybe cheney is only saying that to put up a false front and to make it look like President Obama is hiding something. Don't forget cheney also said some years back that Saddam had WMD and when Saddam couldn't prove he didn't have any, cheney told us he was hiding something.
Say what you mean. Mean what you say. But don't say it mean.
More likely Cheney had memos created as a measure to cover his sorry ass, just like the phony legal opinions by White House lawyers.
New meme coming:
"Well, certainly Ali Soufan was successful in his normal interrogation techniques after our EITs: It softened him up, put the fear of death into him. Bad cop/good cop...Cagney & Lacey, people. Starsky & Hutch! And if Abu Zubaydah was 'calling our bluff', all that means is that the interrogations were *too soft* and they need to be 'enhanced' even more..."
10...9...8...7...6...
Dr. Grumpus
if I watched methodology that worked successfully get thown to the side for something I deemed as torture. Furthermore (if I was Soufon), I'd be even more disgruntled to see how the country I worked hard to defend as an FBI agent be misrepresented by overzealous contractor's and CIA agents. Finally, I'd be even more disgruntled as it was all covered up, and the leaders I wanted to follow lied to the country I defend about how valuable information was actually attained.
Love when the Reslugs have egg on their face and then proceed to do the predictable thing like fuckin lie their asses off.
Remember, only liberals and Democrats are "disgruntled", "obsessed", "have an axe to grind", "are only in it for the [grant] money" or are suffering from "Derangement Syndrome".
It's part and parcel with how all right-wing authoritarians argue: if you are against me, then you must be crazy, stupid, ignorant, corrupt or weak.
When you accuse right-wingers of being "bitter", they take it as a terrible outrageous insult. Then, with the next breath, they dismiss all critics as compromised traitors.
It would merely be disgusting if our worthless media didn't let them get away with it all the time.
They refer to the AMERICAN TRAITOR cheney, the worst VP in American history, a DRAFT BDODGER 5 Deferments and these clowns claim this piece of human fecal matter kept us safe. DUH! 9/11 was 9 months into this TRAITORS term they have not kept us safe in fact I would bet they would engineer yet another attack just to prove themselves right. Remember this is a TRAITOR you are talking about this is a man who was working with the TALKING MONKEY bush who IGNORED the Intel Reports. The only thing I know is this TRAITOR cheney sold us OUT twice, he has NOTHING to say except yes I am a TRAITOR.
Keeping his train of thought couldn't have been easy, with Watkins constantly interrupting and talking over him.
I'm always glad to have another vociferous lefty on the news, but Shuster is not easy to watch. He has no lips, he's prone to excessive reactions, He talks strangely.
Whether torture works or not is not and should not be the question. If Bush/Cheney had such strong feelings about its effectiveness, then why did not try to change the law with a Republican controlled Congress? Why did they ignore other intelligence such as Obama determined to strike in US?
hmm…
statusquObama, change you can only pretend in
• On August 6, 2001 Pres. Bush received a classified briefing, the President's Daily Brief. On that day, the headline blared: "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." According to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind, Bush told the briefer, "All right. You've covered your ass, now." Dick Cheney, who has called the President's Daily Brief "the family jewels," presumably received the same briefing. Neither Bush nor Cheney acted on it. The "family jewels" were pearls before swine.
tortured logic...
So let's review the basic GOP position. Torture (sorry "enhanced interrogation") is good and saves lives. It does not incite or radicalize the Muslim world or help al Qaeda recruit. Releasing pictures of it, however, does do all of these things. Also, if we stop torturing people, this leads to a al Qaeda recruiting bonanza
http://www.anonymousliberal.com/2009/05/terro...
We could certainly slow the aging process down if it had to work its way through Congress.
- Will Rogers
A little quiz. Who said this???
1. "The United States is a country that takes human rights seriously. We do not torture. It’s against our laws and against our values. And we expect all those who serve America to conduct themselves accordingly, and we enforce those rules...America is a fair and a decent country. President Bush has made it clear, both publicly and privately, that our duty to uphold the laws and standards of this nation make no exceptions for wartime. As he put it, we are in a fight for our principles and our first responsibility is to live by them. The war on terror, after all, is more than a contest of arms and more than a test of will. It’s also a war of ideas."
More here... http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings...
We could certainly slow the aging process down if it had to work its way through Congress.
- Will Rogers
It doesn't matter!!!! It IS illegal to order or commit TORTURE whether it works or not! It is ILLEGAL period!! But don't worry Dick Cheneys cousin Barack Obama is doing all he can to insure no one is ever held accountable for these crimes that are some of the worst crimes ever committed by America.
That lying clown suggested that the FBI agent is lying because the FBI is jealous of the CIA. What a buffoon.
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