The Workday Liberal

Here is a story from ABC regarding the "enhanced techniques" (read Orwellian for torture) used to break detainees, and a partial history of how these techniques have been employed. Now if you read this blog on a fairly regular basis, you know I've called this administration stupid, ignorant, liars, buffoons etc... but this will be a first for me. I think this article actually proves that in it's conduct regarding the treatment of detainees, that this administration is ... evil. I mean actually malignant, insidious, cancerous and just plain on the wrong side of good and evil.

You may say... "gee Mr. Frik, coming a bit unhinged are we?" Well look at the following passage and let us consider the implications.

According to CIA sources, Ibn al Shaykh al Libbi, after two weeks of enhanced interrogation, made statements that were designed to tell the interrogators what they wanted to hear. Sources say Al Libbi had been subjected to each of the progressively harsher techniques in turn and finally broke after being water boarded and then left to stand naked in his cold cell overnight where he was doused with cold water at regular intervals.

His statements became part of the basis for the Bush administration claims that Iraq trained al Qaeda members to use biochemical weapons. Sources tell ABC that it was later established that al Libbi had no knowledge of such training or weapons and fabricated the statements because he was terrified of further harsh treatment.

"This is the problem with using the waterboard. They get so desperate that they begin telling you what they think you want to hear," one source said.

This means the administration is a party to the torturing of a prisoner to get false information, that they then used to mislead the country into a needless war. To be fair the paragraph following the above quote reads:

However, sources said, al Libbi does not appear to have sought to intentionally misinform investigators, as at least one account has stated. The distinction in this murky world is nonetheless an important one. Al Libbi sought to please his investigators, not lead them down a false path, two sources with firsthand knowledge of the statements said.

Yet these sources are evidently unaware that the CIA knew as early as February 2002 that Al Libbi's claim was not reliable. In January of 2004,while not being tortured Al Libbi recanted the testimony he gave while being tortured. And the weasle words of the source quoted in the disclaimer are simply hard to give credence to. Al Libi did not intentionally mislead his interrogators, he was simply trying "to please" them? He wasn't offering them sexual favors or trying to do their laundry... HE WAS TRYING TO END THE TORTURE! He HAD to mislead the interrogators to please them. As quoted in the CIA warning, Al Libbi simply was not in a position to know about contacts with Iraq, and the CIA knew this.

What was the interrogation method used on Al Libbi you may ask? There were two techniques used to break him, and these are described by the ABC article as:

Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.

The Cold Cell: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water.

According to the sources, CIA officers who subjected themselves to the water boarding technique lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in. They said al Qaeda's toughest prisoner, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, won the admiration of interrogators when he was able to last between two and two-and-a-half minutes before begging to confess.

I truly believe that the final word confess in the above block quote should be in quotation marks.

As if this weren't already bad enough, consider this. These techniques were imported from the infamous prison camps, of North Vietnam and Korea. These are techniques used against our own POW's, not in an effort to gain actual intelligence from them, but to break them and to gain false confessions.

The Pentagon effectively signed off on a strategy that mimics Red Army methods. But those tactics were not only inhumane, they were ineffective. For Communist interrogators, truth was beside the point: their aim was to force compliance to the point of false confession.

Thus it is that the weasles can claim Al Libbi didn't intend to lie... he just wanted to please his captors. He wanted to give them what they wanted to hear... a false confession.

How this nation, who for so long claimed the moral high ground in respect to human rights has been brought to this pass by this administration is a sad and disgusting tale. But I calls 'em like I sees 'em... and to me this stain on our national honor, which is now shown to have actually assisted this administration in a misguided march to needless war in Iraq, has given up any claim we as a nation once held in this regard. And the acts being committed in our name, being evil when committed by our enemies against POW's, are evil today as well. We as good citizens of our democracy must NOT close our eyes to this. Or history will consider our generation in a very shameful light.

Now I'm not calling for violent revolution or rioting in the streets mind you. But I believe with a growing fervor that those responsible for this stain on our nation must be brought to account, and legally punished for this. When those responsible are thrown into jail, where they will be treated much more humanely than they allow those inmates under their control to be handled, then America can approach the world stage, having in some manner punished the wrong doers, and begin to retake the standing we once had on the issue of human rights and decency. Let us not be the generation that allowed our nation to become the enemy.