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Sadly though, virtually all of the public discussion on torture focuses on its possible efficacy, even though all but the most sadistic of people have long recognized that torture would be wrong even if it "works" -- and it often doesn't "work" because it induces those being tortured to fabricate answers that they think the torturers want to hear.
The Senate report is simply the latest study showing torture does not produce reliable information. It is, after all, common sense. One need only be aware that almost anyone will say anything -- true or false -- to stop being tortured.
It would, I think, be difficult to come up with anyone more authoritative on this issue than Gen. John Kimmons, the head of Army intelligence in 2006, whose long career dealt largely with interrogation. After the cat was out of the bag on CIA torture -- and the Bush administration's wordsmiths were working on innocent-sounding euphemisms such as an "alternative set of procedures" or "enhanced interrogation techniques" -- Kimmons seized the "bull" by the horns by arranging his own press conference.
Sounding the death knell for utilitarian arguments, Kimmons warned: "No good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices. I think history tells us that. I think the empirical evidence of the last five years, hard years, tells us that."
Then Why Torture?
Kimmons stated definitively that abusive techniques do not yield "good intelligence." But if it's bad intelligence you're after, torture works like a charm. If, for example, you wish to "prove," post 9/11, that "evil dictator" Saddam Hussein was in league with al-Qaeda and might arm the terrorists with WMD, bring on the torturers.
It is a highly cynical and extremely sad story, but many Bush administration policymakers wanted to invade Iraq before 9/11 and thus were determined to connect Saddam Hussein to those attacks. The PR push began in September 2002 -- or as Bush's chief of staff Andrew Card put it, "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August."
By March 2003 -- after months of relentless "marketing" -- almost 70 percent of Americans had been persuaded that Saddam Hussein was involved in some way with the attacks of 9/11.
The case of Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, a low-level al-Qaeda operative, is illustrative of how this process worked. Born in Libya in 1963, al-Libi ran an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan from 1995 to 2000. He was detained in Pakistan on Nov. 11, 2001, and then sent to a U.S. detention facility in Kandahar, Afghanistan. He was deemed a prize catch, since it was thought he would know of any Iraqi training of al-Qaeda.
The CIA successfully fought off the FBI for first rights to interrogate al-Libi. FBI's Dan Coleman, who "lost" al-Libi to the CIA (at whose orders, I wonder?), said, "Administration officials were always pushing us to come up with links" between Iraq and al-Qaeda.
CIA interrogators elicited some "cooperation" from al-Libi through a combination of rough treatment and threats that he would be turned over to Egyptian intelligence with even greater experience in the torture business.
By June 2002, al-Libi had told the CIA that Iraq had "provided" unspecified chemical and biological weapons training for two al-Qaeda operatives, an allegation that soon found its way into other U.S. intelligence reports. Al-Libi's treatment improved as he expanded on his tales about collaboration between al-Qaeda and Iraq, adding that three al-Qaeda operatives had gone to Iraq "to learn about nuclear weapons."
Al-Libi's claim was well received at the White House even though the Defense Intelligence Agency was suspicious.
"He lacks specific details" about the supposed training, the DIA observed. "It is possible he does not know any further details; it is more likely this individual is intentionally misleading the debriefers. Ibn al-Shaykh has been undergoing debriefs for several weeks and may be describing scenarios to the debriefers that he knows will retain their interest."
Meanwhile, at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, Maj. Paul Burney, a psychiatrist sent there in summer 2002, told the Senate, "A large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq and we were not successful. 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."
Just What the Doctor Ordered
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