One reason the Bush got Bin Laden meme is in with a chance is the growing chorus claiming that “enhanced interrogation” was the key to cracking the case. (Warning: wingnuttia at that link)
This is nonsense, of course, on at least two levels. One, well documented by lots of folks, including, repeatedly, commenters here, is that the mind-crumbling treatment of detainees being touted as the key to the case is both unnecessary for properly trained interrogators and counterproductive as well. Oh and people, like Khalid Sheik Muhammed, the man that Cheney’s acolytes allege gave up the nickname of the courier who led US intelligence to Bin Laden’s compound, have already admitted lying to end the pain (hoocoodanode?)
The other reason this claim is nonsense is that the accumulating record of this case demonstrates that a lot of old fashioned intelligence work — and some basic policing, in fact — and not torture produced the leads that ultimately brought a Seal team to Abbottabad. The New York Times has published a mostly impressive account of the case that reads in part like a procedural thriller. In it, the reporters describe how the courier was first tagged:
Prisoners in American custody told stories of a trusted courier. When the Americans ran the man’s pseudonym past two top-level detainees — the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed; and Al Qaeda’s operational chief, Abu Faraj al-Libi — the men claimed never to have heard his name. That raised suspicions among interrogators that the two detainees were lying and that the courier probably was an important figure.
So KSM did not reveal the secret under torture. Rather, he held his tongue…and this is how US intelligence closed the gap:
By 2005, many inside the C.I.A. had reached the conclusion that the Bin Laden hunt had grown cold, and the agency’s top clandestine officer ordered an overhaul of the agency’s counterterrorism operations. The result was Operation Cannonball, a bureaucratic reshuffling that placed more C.I.A. case officers on the ground in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
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With more agents in the field, the C.I.A. finally got the courier’s family name. With that, they turned to one of their greatest investigative tools — the National Security Agency began intercepting telephone calls and e-mail messages between the man’s family and anyone inside Pakistan. From there they got his full name.
Boots on the ground, intercepts, the slow, boring sifting through data. Cop work. Spy work — the real kind, not the deluded fantasies of those who think Jack Bauer actually works for the US government.
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All good so far: the usual suspects of or enamored with the Bush-Cheney crime family are wrong, lying and gaining at least a bit of traction, but mainstream media accounts are out there that give them the lie.
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So what’s my beef?
This, from the same article:
As the hunt for Bin Laden continued, the spy agency was being buffeted on other fronts: the botched intelligence assessments about weapons of mass destruction leading up to the Iraq War, and the intense criticism for using waterboarding and other extreme interrogation methods that critics said amounted to torture. [Italics added]
No.
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It’s not that “critics say” waterboarding is torture.
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As everybody likely to read this already knows, many times over, waterboarding is torture, as defined by international law and has repeatedly been recognized as such by the U.S. in the prosecution of other nations’ war criminals. It is also recognized as such by everyone who has experienced it. See, e.g. Christopher Hitchens.
This has gone on too long. I’m sick of it. Killing Bin Laden is a significant milestone in the pursuit of the criminals who murdered US citizens in 2001 (and many others before and after, of course). We know now that the success of that mission turned on classic approaches to investigation and the pursuit of fugitives. That the US government tortured people for years produced one of the key victories won by Osama Bin Laden, as discussed in John’s thread earlier today.
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The inability of the newspaper of record to simply state that torture is torture helps preserve that victory. They should know better. Hell, they do know better. But in that one weasely little “critics said,” the New York Times gives aid and comfort to the worst — and least competent — among us.
Image: José Ribera, Ixion, 1632.
Joe Beese
Hardly makes a difference now.
If Obama had gone on TV and said, “We found bin Laden by crushing KSM’s nuts in a vice”, do you think there would have been one fewer chant of “U-S-A!” outside the White House. There would probably have been more.
The ugly truth is that, on the whole, American citizens are indifferent about torture. At least when inflicted on people with Arab names.
dp
Bush should be given the credit he is due: Without him ignoring intelligence warnings, most people would never have heard of Osama bin Laden, and killing him would not have been nearly as big a deal.
Trentrunner
Too late. It’s already out there. And it will never stop echoing through the RWMN chambers.
Torture was U. S. policy, and it was effective.
USA!!!!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Amen, that’s all I have to say
Villago Delenda Est
El Cid
No one could have noticed a gigantic compound with 18 foot walls and an unnamed occupant being built in 2005 outside a suburb filled with retired Pakistani military officers not far away from the premiere Pakistani military training academy without waterboarding some dude at a secret site. Reportedly the enhanced interrogation informed the US of the presence of Google Earth.
Bob Loblaw
Can’t stop the madness, Tom. Never yet have fake partisan stories not sprung up after major events. The allure of being able to write history’s reaction is too strong.
Bush “stopped looking for bin Laden?” Well, no. He closed the dedicated CIA hunter team in 2006 in favor of a broader, regional (read Pakistani) focus with more emphasis on the entire al Qaeda network as a system.
Osama was killed as a result of intelligence gained from torture? Um, no. Hell no. The arrested terrorists’ information was no doubt useful in building a broader case, but only when they were being interrogated properly and humanely.
So it goes.
Villago Delenda Est
BTW, I might point out that we put Germans and Japanese to death for those actions, and “enhanced interrogation techniques” as a euphemism was invented by the Gestapo.
Of course, it sounded cooler in the original German.
Tom Levenson
@Villago Delenda Est: Not to snark my own post, but you know what else sounded cooler in the (not) original German? This.
Brachiator
Yep. The two lies being told about this is that Obama was just doing what Bush started, and that torture “works.”
But I expect this now, the stubborn digging in and reiteration of lies, fantasies and wishful thinking on the part of the worst conservatives, along with the connivance of people who really should know better.
singfoom
Yeah, I’m with #3. Regardless that it’s been proven time and time again that torture gives you bad information and eventually the torturee will tell you anything to make it stop, the echo chamber will continue to pimp it’s effectiveness, because only PUSSIES don’t torture, and this is America.
I think it helps if you consider the typical American voter as the guy from Idiocracy who says, “Why do you keep trying to read that word? Are you some kind of fag?”
The bad info-meme is out there and even bleach and correct information won’t kill it now. Facts don’t change minds (see NPR Link)
So don’t be a pussy son, get out there and TORTURE FOR AMERICA!!!
singfoom
Boooo. Why haz I moderation?
WereBear
There was nothing we could do about it; as long as the MSM exists in its present form, they will spread lies.
PWL
I think the other thing is: do we REALLY want to keep going down that path? Do we REALLY want to descend to the levels of Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia?
We’ve abandoned the principles we said we believed in long enough. I’d like my (pre-9/11) country back now, please.
trollhattan
@dp:
Ouch, well played.
@Tom Levenson
Yes, spycraft, shoe leather and classic po-lice work are the boring necessary components that lead to spectacular results (some small percentage of the time). But, but, but, just look at what Jack Bauer can do in twenty-four frickin’ hours! If there’s any one thing that stands out for me about the Bush II legacy, it’s his love of the (supposed) Quick Fix. He was our MBA preznit, donchano?
El Cid
By the way, for the people I know who trot out this various bullshit, I have chosen to take the right wing method and ignore their arguments and repeat in the conservatives’ ox-like fashion of repeating the same thing over and over and refusing to admit any serious questioning.
“In 7 years Bush never got bin Laden, but Obama did in just over two.”
“Yeah, you can say whatever you want, but Obama got bin Laden and Bush never did. No matter what you say, everybody knows it and they’ll always know it.”
I’ve just decided to do it to piss them off and use their own fundamentalist faith-like tactics to come off as the same sort of robotic ass as they are to rub something about Obama in their faces.
[And damn if I’m not going to add to the “Bush had 7 years and didn’t get bin Laden and Obama did it in 2 years, and he did it in less than an hour.” Ha ha.]
Kane
One must recognize that some republicans have still never come to grips with accepting that 9/11 happened on their watch. From this, all spin unfolds.
trollhattan
@El Cid:
Say, “Forty minutes.” Specificity really pisses them off. :-)
Villago Delenda Est
“It sounded like firecrackers!”
The movies (and TV) have really futzed up the popular conception of how these things work. Americans can only take police procedurals in half hour to one hour doses, and furthermore, all sorts of Deus ex machina techniques are needed to fit in in to that short time period and result in a complete resolution of all the loose ends before the credits roll.
Too many Americans think that the demands of drama actually apply to real life. That’s the frustrating thing. They don’t.
Hence actual police work. You deal with terrorism like you deal with any other crime. You don’t send in the fucking cavalry to resolve it before the end of the final reel.
Chris
@Joe Beese:
In a lot of cases, “thrilled about it” would be more like it.
Blogger Rahul Mahajan pointed out in the aftermath of the Iraq war that all the arguments about bringing democracy, finding WMDs, and Saddam’s ties to al-Qaeda were meant for a pretty small audience. “For a lot of Americans, it’s a lot simpler: Arab scum attacked us on 9/11, and we have to get even.”
Torture’s the same thing. It’s not about getting information. It’s about giving that fucking hajji what’s coming to him, and exposing those who point out the constitutional ramifications of that for the lily-livered hand-wringing soft-soaping liberal egghead pinko communist Muslim sympathizers they are.
batgirl
@Brachiator:
While people claiming that “torture works” are wrong, at least they are using the word torture. The NYT still calls it “enhanced interrogation.”
I almost posted this article to Facebook. It is fascinating. But the bit that Levenson quotes really, really irked me. In fact, it disgusted me. I was waiting for someone to bring it up.
trollhattan
@Kane:
R.U. kidding? 9/11 was Clinton’s failure. Something to do with the missing “W” key caps.
Stillwater
@Tom Levenson: Not to snark my own post,
Tom, it’s OK. Really. You’re just using postmodern signifiers to frame premodern postglobalization. We all do that.
Chris
@Villago Delenda Est:
Although the same popular media’s futzed the image of what “police work” really means, thus giving backing for abuses in the police force as well (see Sherriff Joe Arpaio’s stunts in AZ).
piratedan
well it is one of those statements that sounds acceptable on the first pass yet…..
okay, say we did glean that info from torture then what?
If Bush knew there was a courier that could be used to link to OBL to a location, then why did Bush shut down the CIA unit responsible for tracking OBL…. why?
In fact, Shrub dropped the freaking ball (the very same crap that he accused Clinton of) and claimed it was not important since he couldn’t do it. This is the same crew that went to Iraq because it was flashy, we could fulfill Pop’s legacy and it was easier because he could send real Americans to go and do his bidding versus waiting for some dude named Abdul or such to stop being so sneaky and make a call that could be traced.
I really despise the fact that this complete fucktard of a former presidency is given such a free freaking pass by the media and our current President. Maybe that just makes Obama a better person than me, but I think all it does it reward the nitwits by not making them culpable for their own sins. I sure as hell wouldn’t expect the same from any R following Obama because its obvious that they care more about him being black than they do in solving any problems.
Bulworth
That critics said amounted to torture. Really, it was just critics (probably DFH) who said our torture really just “amounted to” torture. But you can never believe the DFH.
Villago Delenda Est
@Kane:
Not only did it happen on their watch, it happened due to their willful and deliberate negligence in ignoring existing intelligence that bin Laden was up to something, but we’re going to ignore that because a bunch of W removing Clintonites are telling us that it’s going to be our most important challenge. So there! Nyahhh!
Instead, let’s fuck around with stem cell research!
Paul in KY
@Villago Delenda Est: The Bush administration looked at Goebbel’s propaganda as a ‘how to’ manual.
I was sadly surprised at how well some of it worked.
Dennis SGMM
When John Kerry stated that deterring terrorists was largely a matter of good police work the Repuglicans turned that statement into a club and beat him half to death with it.
There are plenty of good cops in the world it’s just that giving them the additional training, resources and support wouldn’t result in any multi- hundred-billion dollar contracts for the MCI.
Villago Delenda Est
@Bulworth:
Like I said, we put Germans and Japanese to death after WWII for using techniques that “amounted to torture”.
Our bad, I guess.
Paul in KY
@singfoom: I think the p-word is a no-no.
Poopyman
Nice to meet you, preacher.
— The Choir.
Stefan
[The CIA faced] intense criticism for using waterboarding and other extreme interrogation methods that critics said amounted to torture.
“He faced intense criticism for using extreme intercourse methods that critics said amounted to rape.”
Oh, I see how this works….
PS
Er, Monty Python anyone?
I bet they never heard of me either. I’m important!
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
John Kerry was proved fucking right!
Shoemaker-Levy 9
There is something in this whole debate I just don’t understand at all.
Liberal blogs are falling all over themselves to create nuanced arguments for why torture didn’t nab bin Laden. My question is, why waste the time? It is so self-evidently the case that torture didn’t nab bin Laden that even the lowest grade knuckle-dragger ought to be able to comprehend it.
Torture was halted eight years ago (or so they say).
Bin Laden was just now caught.
After establishing these two premises do we really need to argue any further? Just because hysterical ideologues can’t follow trains of logic that middle schoolers find easy? The very best that can be said of torture is that maybe it yielded a nugget of information that could be used in conjunction with traditional intelligence. Maybe. And of course this is not even to mention the moral dimension.
Stefan
What enrages me is that often, in the very same edition as they used this weasely “extreme interrogation/what some critics say” dodge, the Times won’t hesitate to use the word torture when it’s practiced by other regimes. There’s nevery any “what some critics say is torture but the Libyan government insists is simply enhanced intelligence procedures” or “victims of harsh interrogation methods by Congolese militias.”
AAA Bonds
I was wondering. Fox ran this headline within HOURS of the announcement and their top source seemed to be Dick Cheney saying, “oh, yeah, all that torture shit helped.”
They actually ran this as two different pieces, one purporting to be a news story on the way the capture went down, one claiming to merely report Cheney’s view on the issue. Both seemed to have much the same content and both cited Cheney.
Bulworth
Well, some people say 9/11 happened on the Republican’s watch. Some people say it didn’t, that Bill Clinton was actually still president on 9/11. There are always two sides to an issue.
Paul in KY
@Villago Delenda Est: They came in with one overriding rule: ‘If Clinton did it, do the opposite’.
Crazy thing is that when you say the rule like this: ‘If GWB did it, do the opposite’ it makes for a much better rule.
Stefan
Hell, today the Times has a very long article about Iraqi torture survivors being treated by US-trained therapists in Jordan, and they use the word torture throughout. So why the extreme reluctance to use it when describing its use by the US government? Cowardice, plain and simple. Disgusting craven cowardice.
Kane
If Bush policies were as truly successful as some revisionists would like us to believe, Republican presidential candidates in 2008 wouldn’t have run away from those polices. And Jeb Bush would be running for president in 2012.
Poopyman
@PS: That’s not Monty Python, that’s Kafka.
(Yes, of course Kafka was one of MP’s muses, but still. Give the man his props.)
cleek
fuck the times
Bulworth
George Effin Will makes essentially this argument in a WashPost op-ed today. (Can’t find an on-line version).
Joe Beese
American Exceptionalism is a hell of a drug.
Villago Delenda Est
@Paul in KY:
Let’s see.
Clinton managed to balance the budget, and create surpluses used to pay down the national debt.
Bush managed to erase the surpluses and increase the national debt to depths not even seen under Ronald Reagan.
Yet the teatards, who are so concerned with budget deficits and the national debt, didn’t start screaming until 8PM 4 November 2008.
Go figure.
Bulworth
Oh, that. That was torture conducted by Iraqi’s. We don’t torture. But even if we did torture is was OK.
PS
@Poopyman: Mea maxima culpa
(But I am still Spartacus.)
Kane
The next time that you misplace your keys and your significant other finds them, you can take full credit because you looked for them first.
freelancer
@Villago Delenda Est:
I swear to Christ, Last night, Rumsfeld was interviewed on Greta Van Sustren (spell?) and he said the fact that Osama is dead vindicates the GWOT aka GSAVE overall forever war military strategy, as opposed to some wussy “law enforcement” strategy like “other” administrations used. When he was asked why it took so long, he said something to the effect of “You raise an army to fight other armies, they’re not the best tool to perform manhunts.”
Unbefuckinglievable.
Mike in NC
@Brachiator:
This is the football that every wingnut pundit in the country is now running with. The MSM couldn’t stop them even if they wanted to.
Stefan
Oh, that. That was torture conducted by Iraqi’s. We don’t torture. But even if we did torture is was OK.
Actually, at one point the article says “The torturers, clients say, have included the Iraqi Army, American forces, Saddam Hussein’s henchmen, Al Qaeda in Iraq, and the sectarian groups, gangs and militias that continue to terrorize parts of Iraq.” Guess some editor let that “American forces” slip in there, or figured that it was in the Science section so no one would ever see it….
Stefan
Sure, and Guantanamo and the military commissions and the Patriot Act and general approach of rejecting the law enforcement approach and treating terrorists like bank robbers or murderers and indicting them in absentia,
I’ve never understood this “we can’t treat terrorists like bank robbers or murderers” meme that’s sprung up, as if somehow we’re so nice to bank robbers and murderers and coddle them. “You can’t treat a terrorist the same way you’d treat a pedophile or rapist or serial killer! That’s a soft liberal thing to do!”
Corner Stone
Yes, two top level leaders of a multi-jurisdictional terrorist organization did both not know the name of a courier.
That, my friends, is damning stuff. Damning indeed.
Bulworth
Well, they did include the weasily “clients say”. Otherwise, yeah, major goof up at the Times. I’m sure someone will get called on the carpet for insinuating that Exceptional Americans torture. But even if we tortured it was OK.
Brachiator
@batgirl:
Unfortunately, so does NPR.
Yes, it really needed to be said, although cowards will continue to ignore the message.
@Dennis SGMM:
Kerry deserved much better, but both sides were being too glib here.
And some military work. All were involved in getting bin Laden. All have been used by every country that deals with terrorism.
And it’s not as though the US government, having done the investigative legwork, could have asked the Pakistani government to issue an arrest warrant and have a couple of detectives roll up and arrest bin Laden.
trollhattan
@Shoemaker-Levy 9:
You have to sow the seeds of torture, nurture the garden and in several years, harvest the delicious torture fruit(tm). It takes patience, Grasshopper.
/Chauncey Gardener Rumnseld-Cheney
Stefan
“The torturers, clients say, have included the Iraqi Army, American forces, Saddam Hussein’s henchmen, Al Qaeda in Iraq, and the sectarian groups, gangs and militias that continue to terrorize parts of Iraq.”
This is really proud company for American forces to be lumped in with. Well done, GWB. Well done indeed.
Warren Terra
This is quite a damning and a revealing passage, for two reasons.
First, along the lines of PS:
One reason to say they’ve never heard of him would be if they’d never heard of him. And, conversely, the opposite works, too. They’re not three years old, and they understand that a lie need not be the direct opposite of the truth. They could just as easily say they had heard of him, to make their interrogators think they in fact had not. The interpretation that their denial proves the name’s importance is juvenile and absurd.
But the other fact is the more important: the whole point of torture is that the victim wants the pain to stop. They will tell you what you want to hear. So, there’s one obvious rule: you do not tell the victim what it is you want to hear. If someone tortured me and told me the pain would stop when I admitted that Tunch was Al Qaeda’s new #3 top honcho, I’d reveal that dark secret tout suite. If they tortured me and asked a lot of connections about Tunch and about Al Qaeda, I’m smart enough to realize they want me to start connecting the two in the tale I tell. On the other hand, they could torture me all they wanted while asking about Al Qaeda, and it would probably never occur to me to mention Tunch. Asking their torture victims whether they ever heard of some dude, by name, is an excellent way to get false but confirmatory evidence.
But then, the Bushies are on the record as being quite comfortable with obtaining false but confirmatory evidence.
Villago Delenda Est
@Warren Terra:
That’s because they weren’t really interested in actual intelligence.
They were interested in propaganda talking points, though. Like “Saddam DOES have nukes! I swear on the grave of Mohammed!”
Paul in KY
@Villago Delenda Est: The Tea Party then obviously has no affiliation with or sympathy to the Republican Party.
They just like tea bagging.
Mike in NC
@freelancer:
Von Rumsfeld:
Guess he forgot there was this teeny, tiny outfit called the Defense Intelligence Agency sitting just across the river from the Pentagon. Hell, he could probably have seen it from his window.
Didn’t somebody also say that presidenting was hard work, too? Called for a lot of vacation time to clear brush and the like.
Dennis SGMM
@Warren Terra:
I always believed that those terrorist plots the Bushies claimed to have foiled were invented out of whole cloth:
TORTURER: You were going to blow up the Mall of America, weren’t you?
VICTIM: I am not a terrorist!
TORTURER: (Waterboards victim a few dozen times.)
VICTIM: I was going to blow up the, the… What was it?
TORTURER: You were going to blow up the Mall of America.
VICTIM: Yes, I was going to blow up the Mall of the Americans.
TORTURER: Another terrorist plot foiled! Notify the White House, stat!
catclub
@Villago Delenda Est: Like “Saddam DOES have nukes! I swear on the grave of Mohammed!”
Is this where our knowledge of Islamic tradition is tested?
I have some suspicion that Mohammed was received into heaven, (as in Elijah and the Virgin Mary) hence no grave.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@Dennis SGMM:
that would make sense, particularly in that case, because any self-respecting terrorist would know that blowing up mall of america would be doing us a favor, not punishing us.
Omnes Omnibus
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal: I was there once. It is horrible.
catclub
Slightly OT:
Who thinks that Bin Laden had strong encryption on his computers?
Who thinks he was vain enough to think he would never be caught and did not have stronge encryption?
I am voting for strong encryption.
PS
@Warren Terra: That Occam, he was pretty sharp.
Given that Obama just did exactly what he said he’d do, I’m not inclined to criticize him too hard for it, even though it was a part of his platform that horrified me during the campaign. But now would be an excellent moment to transition away from this more logical and effective application of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld thinking and toward something more constructive in the long term. For example, making the regional conflict less global and more regional. Supporting the rule of law would be nice, too. Hey, I can dream.
Calouste
@Corner Stone:
Not a courier. The courier. The guy you needed to be able to contact Bin Laden.
Villago Delenda Est
@catclub:
It’s like that great line from the Simpsons, where the gang down at Moe’s Bar is appalled that Bart would lie about the fire that ruined the family’s Christmas, and the entire town rallies to make things better, then the lie is discovered, and Barney remarks “On Christmas Day! Jesus is rolling over in his grave!”
Citizen_X
“NEVER match wits with a CIA agent, when Death is on the line! Aha ha ha, ha ha ha, ha ha ha ha” THUMP.
scav
What’s with this going on and on and on about the silliness of a denial of knowing a couriers name? Taken in the context of a lot of other evidence, it could very well be a valuable clue along the lines of the dog not barking in the middle of the night or how far the parsley sank into the butter on a hot day.
Villago Delenda Est
AFTER you’ve done all the cop work, then you call in the SWAT team.
von Rumsfailed’s approach is to send the SWAT team in first thing, to whatever address the stoolie said was the right one, and let the SWAT team just spray that fucking Kindergarten nest of five year olds with enough 5.56 rounds to flatten a hamlet somewhere in Quang Tri.
Villago Delenda Est
@scav:
These guys think that Jack Bauer is based on real life. Give them a break, will you?
Mnemosyne
@Warren Terra:
But the guy that they said they hadn’t heard of was the actual courier. He was the right guy. He was the one that the Obama administration has been tracking for the past couple of years.
Of course, by most of the accounts I’ve been seeing, KSM did not give that name under torture. It was months later when he was no longer being tortured that the interrogators talked to him about it, so it’s only in the most remote way that one can say that torture “worked.” You know, the same way one can say that tracking down bin Laden was Bush’s work, not Obama’s, since theoretically Bush started the hunt (before shutting it down in 2006).
Mnemosyne
Also, Steve Benen has a good roundup of the “torture rules!” meme the Republicans are trying to get started. It’s not going well for them.
Brachiator
@Warren Terra:
The other sad fact is that the torturer often wants to continue to inflict pain. Officials in charge of interrogations which regularly use torture will speak about the success of their methods even when the reality starkly contradicts them.
A brilliant analysis on the Salon website back in 2004, concerning the use of torture by the French during their attempts to retain their North African colonies reveals, a number of sobering examples about the stupidity of torture.
And there is this reminder about how torture seeps from a military venue into civilian life:
Those who want to insist on the effectiveness of torture have no idea about what evil they may later unleash because of their need to put fear and expediency ahead of justice.
Calouste
@catclub:
I don’t think he was vain enough not to have encryption, but his isolation might have prevented him from getting someone with the right expertise to set things up in the best way possible. Then again, once you have physical access to a system it is compromised. The only protection that encryption than offers is to make the cost of breaking the encryption higher than the value of the information, but in this case the value of the information will be estimated to be massive.
cyntax
@PS:
Well, here’s hoping that your name isn’t being brought up by multiple low level informants, giving credence to the idea that you’re actually in al Qaida. Then having the higher ups plead ignorance wouldn’t be suspicious.
Dr. Squid
Who cares about the spelling. The silly clam isn’t worth anyone’s time or effort to spell her name right.
Comrade Dread
All part of the act of re-embracing and redeeming George W. Bush.
Thus, the recession is no longer about greedy amoral Wall St. sociopaths acting against their own and their company’s long term interests for quick short term gain, it is about minorities conning honest bankers out of loan money for houses they couldn’t afford and government backed Fannie and Freddie causing the recession.
The Iraq War is downplayed and minimized, but whatever government we leave behind (assuming we ever leave) will be played up as worth it all.
OBL has to be caught because of Bush, because it redeems his policies of torture (not that we’ll ever call it that, too intemperate) AND it means he wasn’t just dicking around for seven years not giving a shit about OBL, it means he started it all and sowed the seeds of victory that Obama had the pleasure of reaping. See how selfless the man was?
You see, the problem conservatives had with George Bush wasn’t his deficit spending, his endless Middle Eastern wars, or his expansion of government and irresponsible blatant bribes to seniors in the form of Medicare D, or of generating the conditions that lead to the current recession, no, the problem conservative have with George Bush is that he was deeply unpopular with large swathes of the country that hated some of all of these things.
If they can just convince you that he was okay after all, he’ll take his place in the conservative pantheon next to Reagan and he’ll probably start getting airports named after him too.
Paul in KY
@catclub: I was surprised his hideout didn’t have more anti-personnel features. For an Islamic Lex Luthor, he skimped on the pits with crocodiles at bottom, hidden claymore mines, etc.
I think he might have been a little overconfident.
gene108
@Mike in NC:
They can stop giving them air time. That’d stop a large swath of them and / or force them to only appear on Fox News and right-wing rags and blogs.
Corner Stone
@Calouste:
Sounds like one of the names for a program running in The Matrix.
WereBear
@gene108: Sorry. This is the part of the movie where you realize they are all Faux News.
Dun dun DUN.
Xenocrates
And Orwell continues to spin in his grave…
Bloix
I’m very skeptical of the “we followed a guy on a motorbike around for five years” story.
I’m more willing to accept the “our supposed allies the Pakistanis put him where they could see him, but someone got the feeling that with all this turmoil in the Arab world he was too dangerous and decided to let us whack him for them” story.
PS
@cyntax: Help, I got lost in a tunnel of negatives. I may be Spartacus but I am also a citizen of the empire! Unless, that is, not. Life behind this looking glass is very strange.
The point I was originally making (as WT clearly understood) was that once you get into “enhanced interrogation” you cannot necessarily trust anything you hear, and you certainly cannot trust the absence of anything you don’t hear. In fact, you rapidly enter a strange sort of klein bottle where nothing makes sense. If in fact this courier was the unique conduit to Osama (which I don’t know) it’s still not certain that either of the people being tortured would necessarily have known his name, even if they knew how to get in touch with him. And on and on. And if they did know and didn’t cop to it, then the effectiveness of the torture comes into question again. And round we go.
I am not a number! I am a free man!
4jkb4ia
This needed to be linked to because it got buried in Science Times: Reporter visits the center for treatment of Iraqi torture victims in Amman, Jordan Reporter does not hesitate to say that there was a torture victim from American soldiers, and that everyone did it and that it was heartbreaking and life-destroying no matter who did it.
4jkb4ia
(And transitioning to the ridiculous, DK Elections had a really, really good first day.)