Abu Zubaydah was off on a years-long torture tour of the globe. Thus began the familiar story of the FBI's Ali Soufan eliciting information through humane questioning, the CIA learning nothing through its brutality, and the CIA lying about those facts. The torture, always illegal, began before President George W. Bush "authorized" it. Zubaydah was treated to the full menu of "approved" (and some unapproved) torture techniques: stripped naked, shackled, hooded, slammed against concrete, confined in a small box, threatened with death, waterboarded, deprived of sleep, etc.
Only on September 6, 2006, did Abu Zubaydah arrive at Guantanamo, where the CIA torture and human experimentation continued with the use of mefloquine, extended solitary confinement, and other brutality.
Did anyone on this little planet of ours know that the Central "Intelligence" Agency had kidnapped the wrong victim? It seems likely. It also seems that such knowledge became a fatal condition. Mahmoud was reportedly killed by a drone. The man whom Abu Zubaydah called his best friend in his diary, Ibn al-Shaykh Al Libi was tortured into false statements used by President Bush Junior to justify attacking Iraq. Al Libi died in a Libyan prison cell. A few weeks later, a man kidnapped along with Abu Zubaydah, a man named Ali Abdullah Ahmed, died in a Guantanamo cell. Fifteen other men were "captured" at the same time. All are dead. Khalil Al-Deek, an associate of Abu Zubaydah, was killed -- we know not how -- in April 2005.
Two corpses in the pile surrounding the story of Abu Zubaydah of the Unlucky Name were Saudi princes, and one was a Pakistani air marshal. One of the CIA's brilliant strategies for "interrogating" Abu Zubaydah was to dress up as and pretend to be Saudis. Instead of getting scared by this ploy, Abu Zubaydah appeared greatly relieved. He told the phony Saudis to call three Saudi officials. He provided their phone numbers. One of the three was Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz, a nephew of the Saudi king who spent most of his time in the United States and owned the 2002 Kentucky Derby winner. A second was Chief Prince Turki Al-Faisal Bin Abdul Aziz who had in 1991 arranged for Al Qaeda training to take place in Sayyaf's camps. The third was the Pakistani air marshal Mushaf Ali Mir. All three shortly died ("heart attack" at 43, car crash, and clear weather airplane crash).
What can we learn from all of this? Probably not the new liberal conceit that anything the CIA tells us about Russia is the gospel truth derived from super serious professionalism and about which requesting evidence constitutes a treasonous act.
Now for a few quibbles with this book. The authors claim that the confessions of U.S. troops to crimes in the war on North Korea were all or mostly false confessions. They should read research on that war that parallels their fine work on more recent ones. They claim the jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan was the best example of a defensive jihad that there is, despite and without mentioning Brzezinski's confession that the U.S. initiated the war. They claim that Saudi Arabia feared an Iraqi invasion in 1990, prompting the U.S. to "offer" to send in troops. This misleadingly omits the fact that the U.S. generated that fear through the aggressive use of false satellite images falsely suggesting an Iraqi troop presence that did not exist. The authors also state that the 9/11 attacks were a protest of U.S. support for Israel. They provide no source for that statement, but if we are to believe reported statements by bin Laden the motivation included that along with numerous other U.S. actions harmful to Muslim populations including the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia so generously provided in 1991.
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