Cheney on the 16th of September 2001
"We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will. We've got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies, if we're going to be successful. That's the world these folks operate in, and so it's going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective."
From 2002
US Government / Central Intelligence Agency. Requested a plane to transfer prisoners from a secret site in Thailand to a secret site on a military base near Stare Kiejkuty, northern Poland. Documents filed in legal cases in Poland place both Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri on this flight.
The plane set off from Dulles Airport, Washington DC, passing through Anchorage, Alaska and Osaka, Japan on the way to Bangkok. The prisoners were then transported from Bangkok to Szymany airbase in northern Poland, via a stopover in Dubai. After dropping the prisoners off, the plane flew on to London Luton, where the crew rested overnight before returning to Dulles.
The abuses inflicted on Abu Zubaydah and al-Nashiri in Thailand and Poland have been copiously documented, not least in the CIA’s own internal “Special Review of Counterterrorism Detention and Interrogation Activities" (September 2001 - October 2003) by the Office of the Inspector General.
Link to the CIA report
No this is not from yesterday's report this is from 2002
Inmates at Bagram are kept in painful positions for hours, hooded or made to wear opaque goggles, or bombarded with light, the report says. However, other detainees have faced far worse for not cooperating, being "rendered" to a foreign intelligence service which has no compunction about torture.
From the
Washington Post article quoted in 2002
While the U.S. government publicly denounces the use of torture, each of the current national security officials interviewed for this article defended the use of violence against captives as just and necessary. They expressed confidence that the American public would back their view. The CIA, which has primary responsibility for interrogations, declined to comment.
From 2003
During his State of the Union address, President Bush spoke about the horrifying torture techniques Saddam Hussein has inflicted on prisoners in Iraq. He described the use of electric shock, burning with hot irons, acid, and rape. He said that the Iraqi government tortured children to get their parents to confess to crimes. President Bush concluded: "If this isn't evil, then evil has no meaning."
There is now strong evidence that the United States itself has engaged in torture and condoned its use by others as part of its war against terrorism. Photographs of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, hooded, naked, attached to wires, attacked by dogs, forced to simulate sex acts and assume humiliating and painful postitions, and presided over by smiling U.S. military personnel have shocked the world. Other incidents of abuse and even murder have come to light and received new attention.
The Telegraph has a good time line up
April - July, 2002: Reports emerge of detainees being held in isolation, forced into painful positions, and subjected to sleep deprivation. A US official states that these are part of “getting a detainee ready” for interrogation.
June, 2004: The Bush administration confirms it authorised sleep and food deprivation, as well as the use of hooding, on detainees
Another time line
January 20, 2002: Bybee to Abu Gonzales memo specifying that common article 3 of the Geneva Convention does not apply to “an armed conflict between a nation-state and a transnational terrorist organization.”
April 2002: CIA OGC lawyers begin conversations with John Bellinger and John Yoo/Jay Bybee on proposed interrogation plan for Abu Zubaydah. Bellinger briefed Condi, Hadley, and Gonzales, as well as Ashcroft and Chertoff.
Mid-May 2002: CIA OGC lawyers meet with Ashcroft, Condi, Hadley, Bellinger, and Gonzales to discuss alternative interrogation methods, including waterboarding.
Anyone even half following this after the 11th of September of 2001 would not have been surprised by the contents of yesterday's report.
As to who knew and who did not, excuse me whilst I laugh out loud.
Ridiculous.
As for G W Bush someone must have read a newspaper to him at some point.