AI
Sunday, May 24, 2009 10:12:59 AM
We tortured to justify war
Photos: Reuters, Salon files
Dick Cheney keeps saying "enhanced interrogation" was used to stop imminent attacks, but evidence is mounting that the real reason was to invent evidence linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaida.
By Joe Conason
May 14, 2009 | The single most pertinent question that Dick Cheney is never asked -- at least not by the admiring interviewers he has encountered so far -- is whether he, Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush used torture to justify the illegal invasion of Iraq. As he tours television studios, radio stations and conservative think tanks, the former vice-president hopes to persuade America that only waterboarding kept us safe for seven years.
Yet evidence is mounting that under Cheney’s direction, "enhanced interrogation" was not used exclusively to prevent imminent acts of terror or collect actionable intelligence -- the aims that he constantly emphasizes -- but to invent evidence that would link al-Qaida with Saddam Hussein and connect the late Iraqi dictator to the 9/11 attacks.
In one report after another, from journalists, former administration officials and Senate investigators, the same theme continues to emerge: Whenever a prisoner believed to possess any knowledge of al-Qaida’s operations or Iraqi intelligence came into American custody, CIA interrogators felt intense pressure from the Bush White House to produce evidence of an Iraq-Qaida relationship (which contradicted everything that U.S. intelligence and other experts knew about the enmity between Saddam’s Baath Party and Osama bin Laden’s jihadists). Indeed, the futile quest for proof of that connection is the common thread running through the gruesome stories of torture from the Guantánamo detainee camp to Egyptian prisons to the CIA's black sites in Thailand and elsewhere.
Perhaps the sharpest rebuke to Cheney's assertions has come from Lawrence Wilkerson, the retired Army colonel and former senior State Department aide to Colin Powell, who says bluntly that when the administration first authorized "harsh interrogation" during the spring of 2002, "its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qaida."
In an essay that first appeared on the Washington Note blog [ http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/2009/05/the_truth_about/ (second item at http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=38091338 )], Wilkerson says that even when the interrogators of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the Libyan al-Qaida operative, reported that he had become “compliant” -- in other words, cooperative after sufficient abuse -- the vice-president’s office ordered further torture of the Libyan by his hosts at an Egyptian prison because he had not yet implicated Saddam with al-Qaida. So his interrogators put al-Libi into a tiny coffin until he said what Cheney wanted to hear. Nobody in the U.S. intelligence community actually believed this nonsense. But now, al-Libi has reportedly and very conveniently "committed suicide" in a prison cell in Libya, where he was dispatched to the tender mercies of the Bush administration's newfound friends in the Qaddafi regime several years ago. So the deceased man won't be able to discuss what actually happened to him and why.
Wilkerson's essay was followed swiftly by an investigative report in the Daily Beast [ http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-05-13/cheneys-role-deepens/ (the post to which this post is a reply)], authored by former NBC News producer Robert Windrem, who interviewed two former senior intelligence officers who told him a similar story about a different prisoner. In April 2003, U.S. forces captured an Iraqi official named Muhammed Khudayr al-Dulaymi, who had served in Saddam's secret police, the Mukhabarat. Those unnamed officials said that upon learning of Dulaymi's capture, the vice-president's office proposed that CIA agents in Baghdad commence waterboarding him, in order to elicit information about a link between al-Qaida and Saddam. Evidently that suggestion was not enforced by Charles Duelfer, the head of the Iraq Study Group who controlled Dulaymi's interrogation.
The same kind of demands were directed toward interrogators in Guantánamo, according to the testimony of former Army psychiatrist Charles Burney [ http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/66622.html (first item at http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=37891777 )], who testified that he and his colleagues interrogating prisoners at the detention camp felt "pressure" to produce proof of the mythical link.
"While we were there, a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida and Iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al Qaida and Iraq," he told the Army inspector general. "The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link ... there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results." In other words, they were instructed to use abusive techniques, as recounted in the investigation of torture by the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Looking back, we now know that coerced confessions -- and in particular the questionable assertions by al-Libi -- were highlighted by administration officials promoting the case for war with Iraq, in the landmark Cincinnati speech by President Bush in October 2002 and in Colin Powell’s crucial presentation to the U.N. Security Council in February 2003, the eve of the war.
Whether Bush, Cheney and their associates were seeking real or fabricated intelligence, they knowingly employed methods that were certain to produce the latter -- as American officials well knew because those same techniques, especially water torture, had been used to elicit false confessions from captured Americans as long ago as World War II and the Korean conflict.
Cheney now claims that he preserved the country from terrorism and saved thousands and perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives. We need a serious investigation, with witnesses including the former vice-president under oath, to determine what he and his associates actually did with the brutal powers they arrogated to themselves -- because instead their actions cost thousands upon thousands of American and Iraqi lives, all in the service of a political lie.
Joe Conason [ http://www.joeconason.com/feedback ] writes a weekly column for Salon and the New York Observer [ http://www.nyobserver.com/pages/conason.asp ]. His new [sic - latest] book [ http://www.amazon.com/Can-Happen-Here-Authoritarian-Peril/dp/0312356056/sr=1-1/qid=1168448608/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/105-3737146-3150828?ie=UTF8&s=books ] is "It Can Happen Here: Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush."
---
Related Stories
Cheney lives on
It's not just his crazy "Out of the Bunker!" tour. As long as Obama covers up and refuses to prosecute torture, the Dark Lord prevails.
By Joan Walsh
May 14, 2009
http://www.salon.com/opinion/walsh/politics/2009/05/14/cheney_lives/index.html
The hidden hand of Dick Cheney
Out of office, he continues to push his tortured version of reality -- and his vision of an imperial presidency -- and there are signs he is succeeding.
By Juan Cole
May 13, 2009
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/05/13/cheney/index.html
Cheney resurfaces, warns of new terrorist attacks
Former Vice President Dick Cheney comes out swinging, saying he believes President Obama's policies are putting Americans at risk.
By Alex Koppelman
Feb. 4, 2009
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2009/02/04/cheney/index.html
---
Copyright ©2009 Salon Media Group, Inc.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2009/05/14/cheney/index.html [comments at http://letters.salon.com/opinion/conason/2009/05/14/cheney/view/?show=all ]
==========
Focus Shifting To Evidence Bushies Ordered Torture To Boost Case For Iraq War
By Zachary Roth - May 14, 2009, 6:21PM
At last, the torture debate looks to be heading toward what's been the big question lurking in the background all along: was the Bush administration using torture in large part to make a political case for the invasion of Iraq?
Writing on The Daily Beast, former NBC producer Robert Windrem reports [ http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-05-13/cheneys-role-deepens/ (the post to which this post is a reply)] that in April 2003, Dick Cheney's office suggested that interrogators waterboard an Iraqi detainee who was suspected of having knowledge of a link between Saddam and al Qaeda.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse was questioned on the issue today [ http://tpmtv.talkingpointsmemo.com/?id=2524838 ] in two TV interviews. Speaking to CNN, Whitehouse allowed: "I have heard that to be true." To MSNBC, he noted that there was additional evidence of this in the Senate Armed Services committee report, and from Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell. "This thing is just getting deeper and deeper," said Whitehouse, noting that if it were true, it would significantly bolster the case for prosecutions.
And MSNBC's Chris Matthews also picked up on the issue this evening, as did Ed Schultz of the same network.
So let's look at the evidence that's emerged.
In a blog post [ http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/05/14/the_truth_about_richard_bruce_cheney/ (second item at http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=38091338 )] today [sic - yesterday], Wilkerson wrote:
What I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002 -- well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion -- its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa'ida.
We spoke to Wilkerson this afternoon to get a bit more context for that information. He told us that he was asked by Colin Powell in April 2004, when Powell ran the State Department, to conduct a wide-ranging investigation of the torture program. Powell, he said, had just learned that the Abu Ghraib photos were going to come out, and wanted a comprehensive view of what was going on.
Wilkerson's probe continued after he and Powell left office. In 2005 he formed an informal working group made up of retired military officers and human rights activists. He was motivated, he said, by a desire to keep the armed services -- an institution he had served in for much of his life and revered -- from getting embroiled in the torture controversy. He's also working on a forthcoming book -- though he said, half-jokingly, that he's considering delaying publication until after Powell has died, because in places he's critical of his former boss.
Wilkerson said that his information about torture being used to find a Saddam-Qaeda link came from people concerned to "defend the integrity" of the CIA. He said that according to these people, outside contractors, rather than CIA personnel, were used for these interrogations -- something that jibes with what we already know [ http://washingtonindependent.com/42903/former-fbi-agent-testifies-to-cia-contractor-push-for-harsh-interrogation (and see {items linked in} http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=37841806 ].
There's certainly no love lost between Wilkerson and Cheney. Explaining Cheney's recent outspokenness on the torture issue, Wilkerson told us: "Cheney is now on a personal ego-inspired trip. He cares not about his party. He cares not about his country. He cares only about being justified. And that is dangerous territory."
But the jist of Wilkerson's claims has already been formally reported [ http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/66622.html (first item at http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=37891777 )] last month, by McClatchy, based on the Senate Armed Services committee report, and its own interviews:
A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue said that Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld demanded that the interrogators find evidence of al Qaida-Iraq collaboration.
"There were two reasons why these interrogations were so persistent, and why extreme methods were used," the former senior intelligence official said on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity.
"The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there."
...
A former U.S. Army psychiatrist, Maj. Charles Burney, told Army investigators in 2006 that interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility were under "pressure" to produce evidence of ties between al Qaida and Iraq.
"While we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida and Iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al Qaida and Iraq," Burney told staff of the Army Inspector General. "The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . . . there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results."
In other words, Windrem's report today hardly comes out of the blue. In fact, the mounting evidence that the administration explicitly used torture to make a political case for the war in Iraq is only the latest reason why we need a full investigation of this whole dirty business.
Copyright 2009 TPM Media LLC (emphasis in original)
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/05/focus_shifting_to_evidence_bushies_ordered_torture.php [with comments]
Photos: Reuters, Salon files
Dick Cheney keeps saying "enhanced interrogation" was used to stop imminent attacks, but evidence is mounting that the real reason was to invent evidence linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaida.
By Joe Conason
May 14, 2009 | The single most pertinent question that Dick Cheney is never asked -- at least not by the admiring interviewers he has encountered so far -- is whether he, Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush used torture to justify the illegal invasion of Iraq. As he tours television studios, radio stations and conservative think tanks, the former vice-president hopes to persuade America that only waterboarding kept us safe for seven years.
Yet evidence is mounting that under Cheney’s direction, "enhanced interrogation" was not used exclusively to prevent imminent acts of terror or collect actionable intelligence -- the aims that he constantly emphasizes -- but to invent evidence that would link al-Qaida with Saddam Hussein and connect the late Iraqi dictator to the 9/11 attacks.
In one report after another, from journalists, former administration officials and Senate investigators, the same theme continues to emerge: Whenever a prisoner believed to possess any knowledge of al-Qaida’s operations or Iraqi intelligence came into American custody, CIA interrogators felt intense pressure from the Bush White House to produce evidence of an Iraq-Qaida relationship (which contradicted everything that U.S. intelligence and other experts knew about the enmity between Saddam’s Baath Party and Osama bin Laden’s jihadists). Indeed, the futile quest for proof of that connection is the common thread running through the gruesome stories of torture from the Guantánamo detainee camp to Egyptian prisons to the CIA's black sites in Thailand and elsewhere.
Perhaps the sharpest rebuke to Cheney's assertions has come from Lawrence Wilkerson, the retired Army colonel and former senior State Department aide to Colin Powell, who says bluntly that when the administration first authorized "harsh interrogation" during the spring of 2002, "its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qaida."
In an essay that first appeared on the Washington Note blog [ http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/2009/05/the_truth_about/ (second item at http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=38091338 )], Wilkerson says that even when the interrogators of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the Libyan al-Qaida operative, reported that he had become “compliant” -- in other words, cooperative after sufficient abuse -- the vice-president’s office ordered further torture of the Libyan by his hosts at an Egyptian prison because he had not yet implicated Saddam with al-Qaida. So his interrogators put al-Libi into a tiny coffin until he said what Cheney wanted to hear. Nobody in the U.S. intelligence community actually believed this nonsense. But now, al-Libi has reportedly and very conveniently "committed suicide" in a prison cell in Libya, where he was dispatched to the tender mercies of the Bush administration's newfound friends in the Qaddafi regime several years ago. So the deceased man won't be able to discuss what actually happened to him and why.
Wilkerson's essay was followed swiftly by an investigative report in the Daily Beast [ http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-05-13/cheneys-role-deepens/ (the post to which this post is a reply)], authored by former NBC News producer Robert Windrem, who interviewed two former senior intelligence officers who told him a similar story about a different prisoner. In April 2003, U.S. forces captured an Iraqi official named Muhammed Khudayr al-Dulaymi, who had served in Saddam's secret police, the Mukhabarat. Those unnamed officials said that upon learning of Dulaymi's capture, the vice-president's office proposed that CIA agents in Baghdad commence waterboarding him, in order to elicit information about a link between al-Qaida and Saddam. Evidently that suggestion was not enforced by Charles Duelfer, the head of the Iraq Study Group who controlled Dulaymi's interrogation.
The same kind of demands were directed toward interrogators in Guantánamo, according to the testimony of former Army psychiatrist Charles Burney [ http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/66622.html (first item at http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=37891777 )], who testified that he and his colleagues interrogating prisoners at the detention camp felt "pressure" to produce proof of the mythical link.
"While we were there, a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida and Iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al Qaida and Iraq," he told the Army inspector general. "The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link ... there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results." In other words, they were instructed to use abusive techniques, as recounted in the investigation of torture by the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Looking back, we now know that coerced confessions -- and in particular the questionable assertions by al-Libi -- were highlighted by administration officials promoting the case for war with Iraq, in the landmark Cincinnati speech by President Bush in October 2002 and in Colin Powell’s crucial presentation to the U.N. Security Council in February 2003, the eve of the war.
Whether Bush, Cheney and their associates were seeking real or fabricated intelligence, they knowingly employed methods that were certain to produce the latter -- as American officials well knew because those same techniques, especially water torture, had been used to elicit false confessions from captured Americans as long ago as World War II and the Korean conflict.
Cheney now claims that he preserved the country from terrorism and saved thousands and perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives. We need a serious investigation, with witnesses including the former vice-president under oath, to determine what he and his associates actually did with the brutal powers they arrogated to themselves -- because instead their actions cost thousands upon thousands of American and Iraqi lives, all in the service of a political lie.
Joe Conason [ http://www.joeconason.com/feedback ] writes a weekly column for Salon and the New York Observer [ http://www.nyobserver.com/pages/conason.asp ]. His new [sic - latest] book [ http://www.amazon.com/Can-Happen-Here-Authoritarian-Peril/dp/0312356056/sr=1-1/qid=1168448608/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/105-3737146-3150828?ie=UTF8&s=books ] is "It Can Happen Here: Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush."
---
Related Stories
Cheney lives on
It's not just his crazy "Out of the Bunker!" tour. As long as Obama covers up and refuses to prosecute torture, the Dark Lord prevails.
By Joan Walsh
May 14, 2009
http://www.salon.com/opinion/walsh/politics/2009/05/14/cheney_lives/index.html
The hidden hand of Dick Cheney
Out of office, he continues to push his tortured version of reality -- and his vision of an imperial presidency -- and there are signs he is succeeding.
By Juan Cole
May 13, 2009
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/05/13/cheney/index.html
Cheney resurfaces, warns of new terrorist attacks
Former Vice President Dick Cheney comes out swinging, saying he believes President Obama's policies are putting Americans at risk.
By Alex Koppelman
Feb. 4, 2009
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2009/02/04/cheney/index.html
---
Copyright ©2009 Salon Media Group, Inc.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2009/05/14/cheney/index.html [comments at http://letters.salon.com/opinion/conason/2009/05/14/cheney/view/?show=all ]
==========
Focus Shifting To Evidence Bushies Ordered Torture To Boost Case For Iraq War
By Zachary Roth - May 14, 2009, 6:21PM
At last, the torture debate looks to be heading toward what's been the big question lurking in the background all along: was the Bush administration using torture in large part to make a political case for the invasion of Iraq?
Writing on The Daily Beast, former NBC producer Robert Windrem reports [ http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-05-13/cheneys-role-deepens/ (the post to which this post is a reply)] that in April 2003, Dick Cheney's office suggested that interrogators waterboard an Iraqi detainee who was suspected of having knowledge of a link between Saddam and al Qaeda.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse was questioned on the issue today [ http://tpmtv.talkingpointsmemo.com/?id=2524838 ] in two TV interviews. Speaking to CNN, Whitehouse allowed: "I have heard that to be true." To MSNBC, he noted that there was additional evidence of this in the Senate Armed Services committee report, and from Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell. "This thing is just getting deeper and deeper," said Whitehouse, noting that if it were true, it would significantly bolster the case for prosecutions.
And MSNBC's Chris Matthews also picked up on the issue this evening, as did Ed Schultz of the same network.
So let's look at the evidence that's emerged.
In a blog post [ http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/05/14/the_truth_about_richard_bruce_cheney/ (second item at http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=38091338 )] today [sic - yesterday], Wilkerson wrote:
What I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002 -- well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion -- its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa'ida.
We spoke to Wilkerson this afternoon to get a bit more context for that information. He told us that he was asked by Colin Powell in April 2004, when Powell ran the State Department, to conduct a wide-ranging investigation of the torture program. Powell, he said, had just learned that the Abu Ghraib photos were going to come out, and wanted a comprehensive view of what was going on.
Wilkerson's probe continued after he and Powell left office. In 2005 he formed an informal working group made up of retired military officers and human rights activists. He was motivated, he said, by a desire to keep the armed services -- an institution he had served in for much of his life and revered -- from getting embroiled in the torture controversy. He's also working on a forthcoming book -- though he said, half-jokingly, that he's considering delaying publication until after Powell has died, because in places he's critical of his former boss.
Wilkerson said that his information about torture being used to find a Saddam-Qaeda link came from people concerned to "defend the integrity" of the CIA. He said that according to these people, outside contractors, rather than CIA personnel, were used for these interrogations -- something that jibes with what we already know [ http://washingtonindependent.com/42903/former-fbi-agent-testifies-to-cia-contractor-push-for-harsh-interrogation (and see {items linked in} http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=37841806 ].
There's certainly no love lost between Wilkerson and Cheney. Explaining Cheney's recent outspokenness on the torture issue, Wilkerson told us: "Cheney is now on a personal ego-inspired trip. He cares not about his party. He cares not about his country. He cares only about being justified. And that is dangerous territory."
But the jist of Wilkerson's claims has already been formally reported [ http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/66622.html (first item at http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=37891777 )] last month, by McClatchy, based on the Senate Armed Services committee report, and its own interviews:
A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue said that Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld demanded that the interrogators find evidence of al Qaida-Iraq collaboration.
"There were two reasons why these interrogations were so persistent, and why extreme methods were used," the former senior intelligence official said on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity.
"The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there."
...
A former U.S. Army psychiatrist, Maj. Charles Burney, told Army investigators in 2006 that interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility were under "pressure" to produce evidence of ties between al Qaida and Iraq.
"While we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida and Iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al Qaida and Iraq," Burney told staff of the Army Inspector General. "The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . . . there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results."
In other words, Windrem's report today hardly comes out of the blue. In fact, the mounting evidence that the administration explicitly used torture to make a political case for the war in Iraq is only the latest reason why we need a full investigation of this whole dirty business.
Copyright 2009 TPM Media LLC (emphasis in original)
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/05/focus_shifting_to_evidence_bushies_ordered_torture.php [with comments]
Greensburg, KS - 5/4/07
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790
F6
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