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."
"I think it's obvious that the administration was scrambling then to try to find a connection, a link (between al Qaida and Iraq)," [Senator] Levin said in a conference call with reporters. "They made out links where they didn't exist."
Levin recalled Cheney's assertions that a senior Iraqi intelligence officer had met Mohammad Atta, the leader of the 9/11 hijackers, in the Czech Republic capital of Prague just months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The FBI and CIA found that no such meeting occurred.
In other words, top Bush administration officials not only knowingly lied about a non-existent connection between Al Qaida and Iraq, but they pushed and insisted that interrogators use special torture methods aimed at extracting false confessions to attempt to create such a false linkage. See also this and this.
Paul Krugman summarized eloquently summarized the truth about the type of torture used:
Let's say this slowly: the Bush administration wanted to use 9/11 as a pretext to invade Iraq, even though Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. So it tortured people to make them confess to the nonexistent link.
There's a word for this: it's evil.
Torture Is Antithetical to American Ideals
All torture is unjustifiable, as it produces no good intelligence and weakens national security. I think that - as Congress recognized in passing the War Crimes Act of 1996 - all torture is antithetical to American ideals.
The surge in Afghanistan is not necessary. For
example, the U.S. admits there are only a small handful of Al Qaeda in
Afghanistan. As ABC notes:
U.S. intelligence officials have concluded there are only about 100 al Qaeda fighters in the entire country.And a leading advisor to the U.S. military - the very hawkish Rand Corporation - released a study in 2008 called "How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al Qa'ida". As a press release about the study states:
With 100,000 troops in Afghanistan at an estimated yearly cost of $30 billion, it means that for every one al Qaeda fighter, the U.S. will commit 1,000 troops and $300 million a year.
Terrorists should be perceived and described as criminals, not holy warriors, and our analysis suggests that there is no battlefield solution to terrorism.There are additional reasons why prolonging the Afghan war may reduce our national security, such as arguably weakening our economy.
Many experts also say that a surge in Afghanistan will actually weaken our national security by pushing the few remaining Al Qaeda into Pakistan - a county with nuclear weapons. See this and this.
If Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama is going to escalate the war in Afghanistan anyway, the least he should do is stop all torture.
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