Yet another reason why torture is bad for national security. Or, the segment in which I agree again with Andrew Sullivan and find myself wondering if either of us has a goatee ...

"Al Qaeda continues to have a deep interest in acquiring weapons of mass destruction... I can trace the story of a sernior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these weapons to al Qaeda. Fortunately, this operative is now detained and he has told his story."

The man who spoke those words was Colin Powell at the UN. The "operative", we now know, was Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libbi. He was waterboarded and given Bush-approved hypothermia treatment, i.e. frozen till he could take it no longer. It was only then that he told of al Qaeda's links with Saddam's WMDs... the CIA subsequently found al-Libbi "had no knowledge of such training or weapons and fabricated the statements because he was terrified of further harsh treatment." So I now realize that part of the reason I believed the WMD case for war against Saddam was because the Bush administration had been secretly torturing suspects and got false confessions. The biggest intelligence failure in recent US history - the WMD case in Iraq - was partly created by the torture policy. [Link]

The same story is true of another tortured prisoner, Abu Zubaydah... [who]

was waterboarded, beaten, threatened, subjected to mock executions, and bombarded with continuous deafening noise and harsh lighting.

Zubayhdah gave the FBI dozens of warnings of looming attacks across the US: plots to bomb shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, water systems. Many of the terror alerts issued by the Bush administration were based on Zubaydah's tortured false confessions. See the picture? It's a closed circle. Cheney and Bush have sealed off the government from even cursory Congressional oversight; they have instituted torture as a primary means for intelligence gathering; and used that intelligence to justify war and more torture. Once you enter this vortex of torture and untruth, there is no escaping it. This is where we now find ourselves. There is no doubt in my mind, in other words, that not only is torture evil, it is terribly dangerous for our national security. We have expended enormous resources in fighting threats that are not there, while failing to expend the necessary resorces and time to figure out accurately what exact threats we do face. When you hear of the intelligence extracted by torture, remember that it was the intelligence that "proved" that Saddam and WMDs and links to al Qaeda. Tyrants get the tortured to say what they want them to say. The point of torture is always and everywhere torture. [Link]

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