This blunt headline at Politico won't come as news to most people here on this site but it will to many across the country.
Dick Cheney Was Lying About Torture
By Mark Fallon
It’s official: torture doesn’t work. Waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, did not in fact “produce the intelligence that allowed us to get Osama bin Laden," as former Vice President Dick Cheney asserted in 2011. Those are among the central findings of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA interrogation and detention after 9/11
The report’s executive summary is expected to be released Tuesday. After reviewing thousands of the CIA’s own documents, the committee has concluded that torture was ineffective as an intelligence-gathering technique. Torture produced little information of value, and what little it did produce could’ve been gained through humane, legal methods that uphold American ideals.
I was aware of no valuable information that came from waterboarding. And the Senate Intelligence Committee—which had access to all CIA documents related to the “enhanced interrogation” program—has concluded that abusive techniques didn’t help the hunt for Bin Laden. Cheney’s claim that the frequent waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed “produced phenomenal results for us" is simply false.
The results were so phenomenal that Bin Laden actively helped Bush's reelection campaign in 2004 by making and releasing a
threatening video just four days before the US election. That's how well al Qaeda liked the Bush/Cheney all out War on Terrorism that included torture.
al Qaeda wanted four more years of it!
Charles Krauthammer is wringing his hands and making dark predictions of "danger" from knowing exactly what this country did in our name.
“What exactly is to gain here? Do we not know about this already? Does it have to be done in detail and released now?” Krauthammer, a syndicated columnist and Fox News contributor, questioned.
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Politico's Mark Fallon crushes Krauthammer's fallacious arguments.
The self-defeating stupidity of torture might come as news to Americans who’ve heard again and again from Cheney and other political leaders that torture “worked.” Professional interrogators, however, couldn’t be less surprised. We know that legal, rapport-building interrogation techniques are the best way to obtain intelligence, and that torture tends to solicit unreliable information that sets back investigations.
And dark it was. Terms like “waterboarding” and “enhanced interrogation” obscure the brutal, sometimes bloody, reality. It was about the delivery of pain. The U.S. government authorized previously taboo techniques, which—along with a take-the-gloves-off message coming from the top—led to even greater horrors. You can draw a line from the “enhanced interrogation” to the barbarism of Abu Ghraib.
The ostensible purpose of torture was to save lives, but it has had the exact opposite effect. Torture was a PR bonanza for enemies of the United States. It enabled—and, in fact, is still enabling—al Qaeda and its allies to attract more fighters, more sympathizers, and more money.
We can expect Dick Cheney to go right on lying about torture's utility.
We can expect Charles Krauthammer and his ilk to go on wringing their hands about imaginary dire consequences while being featured prominently on Fox News.
So what will change? Will Congress create stronger prohibitions against torture?