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May 23, 2013
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 British Deny Bush’s Claim That Torture Paid OffPosted on Nov 9, 2010
In his new memoir, George W. Bush claims that information obtained by waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammad 183 times helped foil plots to attack targets in the United Kingdom. British intelligence and Cabinet officials—Labor and Conservative alike—beg to differ. Oh, to live in a country where the use of torture is condemned without controversy. —PZS
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By David Owsley, July 12, 2011 at 6:50 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Personally that’s just ridiculous claims. I’m sure he is not the only president who has approved torture to get information.
I don’t approve of any torture methods, but if were going to prosecute bush, will we be prosecuting past presidents?
Report thisBy fearnotruth, November 12, 2010 at 12:43 am Link to this comment
RE: a high value individual
again, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad is dead
read all about it
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/DJ30Df01.html
South Asia - Oct 30, 2002
A chilling inheritance of terror
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
...an Arab woman and a child were taken to an ISI safe house, where they
identified the Shaikh Mohammed’s body as their husband and father. The body
was kept in a private NGO mortuary for 20 days before being buried, under the
surveillance of the FBI, in a graveyard in the central district of Karachi.
the man in custody who says anything he’s made to say is a half-wit, patsy perp - most likely this man:
Ahmed Abdul Qadus (centre) is brought to an anti-terrorist court in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, on Saturday. Qadus, an activist of the Jamat-e-Islami, was arrested earlier this month with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, suspected mastermind of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks in the USA. — AP/PTI
Report thiscaption is from photo here: http://www.tribuneindia.com/2003/20030309/world.htm
By Marshall, November 11, 2010 at 9:28 pm Link to this comment
By gerard, November 11 at 3:36 am Link to this comment
Gerard - to your points:
1. extraordinary rendition is another topic. You mean “enemy combatant”
which is a class under Geneva convention but which Bush clarified in light of
9/11. Enemy (or unlawful) combatants do not get POW geneva protection.
2. Water Boarding is used routinely in training our special forces recruits. It
does not cause physical or mental damage. Numerous politicians and
journalists have also done it as demonstrations of its effectiveness.
3. I don’t believe Water Boarding creates a culture of torture any more than
other techniques we use. Fact is that if there’s a high value individual with
crucial information, then we need to have good ways of getting at it that are
more successful than shining a desk lamp into their face and asking them in a
firm voice. This is a safe procedure. And there’s no evidence it opens the door
for other countries to do the same.
4. I don’t consider water boarding to be torture according to your description.
Report thisTorture causes lasting physical or mental damage. War itself is FAR more
intense than water boarding and always has been. People die.
By William W. Wexler, November 11, 2010 at 12:42 am Link to this comment
OK, we get it, Bush and Cheney are scum and they lied us into war and then proceeded to torture.
So who’s going to hold them accountable? The Mormon kid?
I don’t think so.
Report thisBy gerard, November 10, 2010 at 10:36 pm Link to this comment
Marshall: “,,, an interrogation technique that causes no lasting physical or mental damage and can save the lives of innocents from senseless terrorist
acts? We’re not talking about criminals here, we’re talking about terrorists that don’t fall under Geneva Convention POW protection.
1. Am I wrong? The “extraordinary rendition” : category was made up out of thin air in order to create a class of prisoners who would not be protected under the Geneva Conventions—a sheer case of evasioin of legal restrictions.
Report this2. Does “no lasting physical or mental damage?” You have a reliable source for that information? Where?
3. “Can save lives of innocents?” But ... creates a culture of torture that opens the doors for everyone to do likewise. Is there any hard evidence that torture “saves lives” of innocent people”
4. Torture not only damages prisoners; it damages the people who torture prisoners. Torture is inhumane and the extremely cruel state of mind that permits it destroys the moral fabric of everyone involved, directly and indirectly. The same can be said of war (an extremely popular form of torture) and that’s why so many soldiers are coing out of Iraq and Afghanistan (as with every other war) with PTSD, which is an incurable psychological disease
—a kind of insanity, either temporary or often permanent.
By fearnotruth, November 10, 2010 at 7:26 pm Link to this comment
RE: ...Do you seriously compare live
decapitation with an interrogation technique that causes no lasting physical or
mental damage and can save the lives of innocents from senseless terrorist
acts? We’re not talking about criminals here, we’re talking about terrorists that
don’t fall under Geneva Convention POW protection.
Yes, that’s what the entire MSM is ‘talking about’ - this is more likely what’s
really happening:
March 24-May 11, 2004: Al-Zarqawi Blamed for Beheading of US Citizen, but Video Raises Many Questions
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a080704hoaxvideo
A video of US citizen Nick Berg being beheaded in Iraq is made public and causes widespread horror and outrage around the world.
The video shows five masked men taunting and then beheading Berg, and one of them claims to be Islamist militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Two days later, a CIA official says, “After the intelligence community conducted a technical analysis of the… video, the CIA assesses with high probability that the speaker on the tape is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and that person is shown decapitating American citizen Nicholas Berg.” [BBC, 5/13/2004] However, many doubts about the video and the identity of al-Zarqawi surface:
Berg is seen wearing an orange jumpsuit typically worn by detainees in US custody. At the start of the video, he speaks directly to the camera in a relaxed way. The Sydney Morning Herald will later comment, “It is highly likely that this segment is edited from the interrogation of Berg during his 13 days of custody.”
Then the video cuts to scenes including the five masked men. But their Arabic is heavily accented in Russian, Jordanian, and Egyptian. One says “do it quickly” in Russian. A voice also seems to ask in English, “How will it be done?” Glimpses of their skin look white. [SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, 5/29/2004]
The masked man identified as al-Zarqawi does not speak with a Jordanian accent even though al-Zarqawi is Jordanian. CNN staff familiar with al-Zarqawi’s voice claim the voice does not sound like his. [CNN, 5/12/2004; SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, 5/29/2004]
Berg is then decapitated, but there is very little blood. Dr John Simpson, executive director for surgical affairs at the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, says, “I would have thought that all the people in the vicinity would have been covered in blood, in a matter of seconds… if it [the video] was genuine.” Forensic death expert Jon Nordby of the American Board of Medicolegal Death Investigators suggests that the beheading was staged and Berg was already dead. He also suggests that Berg appears to be heavily drugged in earlier parts of the video. [ASIA TIMES, 5/22/2004] The Herald comments, “The scream is wildly out of sync, sounds female, and is obviously dubbed.” [SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, 5/29/2004]
Al-Zarqawi is the one shown cutting Berg’s throat with a knife, and uses his right hand to do so. But people who spent time in prison with al-Zarqawi and knew him well claim that he was left handed. [NEW YORK TIMES, 7/13/2004]
The timing of the video also raises suspicions, as it is broadcast just two weeks after the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal is exposed, and the shock of the beheadings cause some to claim a moral relativism to justify the US military’s abusive behavior towards detainees. [SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, 5/29/2004]
examination of all details reveals a tragic incident, curiouser and curiouser
Report thisBy tp, November 10, 2010 at 7:24 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Hahahahahahahahaha
Report thishahahahahahahahaha
Bushahahahahahahah
hahahahahahahahaha
Bushit wrote a book!
Hahahahahahahahahah
hehehe!
tp hehe :\ reeeeally”:?)
By Marshall, November 10, 2010 at 7:00 pm Link to this comment
By knute, November 10 at 7:36 pm Link to this comment
Knute - there is no barn door. People like AQ have been doing far worse than
torturing americans for quite some time. Do you seriously compare live
decapitation with an interrogation technique that causes no lasting physical or
mental damage and can save the lives of innocents from senseless terrorist
acts? We’re not talking about criminals here, we’re talking about terrorists that
don’t fall under Geneva Convention POW protection.
There is certainly debate about the effectiveness of torture - just as there is
about virtually all topics, even when there’s consensus. There’s clear consensus
that water-boarding is an effective interrogation technique and this article does
absolutely nothing to contradict that. If you want to call it torture, then so be
it. Is sleep deprivation torture as well? How about yelling in someone’s face?
All are techniques with a long history of effectiveness.
It’s not that difficult to assess the effectiveness of something like water-
Report thisboarding because traditional interrogation techniques are usually tried first and
the information obtained can be compared to that received from water-
boarding. In the case of this article, valuable information was received along
with BS as you point out. But you’ll notice that the CIA interrogators realized it
was BS - it was Bush who apparently chose to believe it. The failure was in
policy, not process. No “wasted resources” here unless you think he shouldn’t
have been interrogated at all.
By Sol, November 10, 2010 at 3:45 pm Link to this comment
It will go with me to my grave that this complete idiot was president of the United States for 8 years. I just wished he was waterboarded 183 times as well. It probably would make him saner. According to him it was not torture anyway so why not. This man is an affront to human decency and inteligence.
Report thisBy gerard, November 10, 2010 at 2:42 pm Link to this comment
Apologies for my previous partially incoherent post.Something got dropped from the first sentence by accident somewhere.
There is much authentic evidence that torture is not only evil but counterproductive. Most people know this. Continued toleration of torture by the U.S.is continuing to undermine what little moral stature our country maintains. It must be discontinued.
Period.
It would also be a good idea while we are on the subject to consider broadening the definition of torture to include the fact that we (the richest country in the world, give or take a few trillion here and there) tacitly permit by doing nothing the starvation of millions of helpless women and children, also here and there.
Happy Thanksgiving, if you have the stomach for it.
Report thisBy knute, November 10, 2010 at 2:36 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
So Marshall is an advocate of torture it looks like. I guess the barn door is thrown open for any who capture an american then right? To torture without recrimination as well I guess. He states that its ridiculous to say that torture dosen’t work, despite so many who know better in and outside the military. This is the kind of unamerican rationality that our president and VP used to toss out the Geneva convention, that made sure the classification for war criminals was first watered down internationally for americans before we invaded Iraq. You can always get a lawyer to do your dirty work, but that dosen’t excuse the wrong by hiding behind them. The vast majority of the supposed info obtained thru waterboarding Sheik mohammed ( sp?) turned out to be complete bullshit. It wasted resources checking them out ofcourse. In one of John McCain’s brief lucid moments a few years ago he stated that torture says more about us then them.
Report thisBy felicity, November 10, 2010 at 1:30 pm Link to this comment
Since, at least according to Mr. Bush, God ordained,
even made possible the appointment of Mr. Bush to the
presidency, can we assume that God also approves of
torture? Or can we assume that Mr. Bush thought he’d
channeled God but, in fact, it was the other guy.
Who are we to believe. Counter-intelligence agents,
people whose job it is to get information out of
captives and have repeatedly informed us that torture
does not produce viable information, or George Bush
who has a history of engaging in sadistic acts.
(And, for God’s sake don’t buy his book.)
Report thisBy Knute, November 10, 2010 at 12:12 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
When a spoiled brat is constantly never held to account for his actions you get someone too full of themselves to even pretend to care what anyone else thinks, or anyone else’s perception of reality for that matter. When that individual was raised in an enviroment that had nothing but contempt for the working class then you get a Bush. When you have a new administration that refuses to hold Bush and Cheney and the rest to account for their disdain for our democracy and what America once stood for from 2000 - 2008 you get to see the credibility of a nation evaporate in front of the world. History will show the last administration in a glaring light, but that does little to help us out now, and this current administration that appears too gutless to do what is right in regards to them will shoulder a large measure of the blame. We have Bush and Cheney proudly telling all that they pushed for torture, we have countless others from Generals on down, stating that not only did it not produce actionable intelligence, but more basically that it was torture, and that our treatment of “detainees” at Guantanimo, in Iraq, in countless “black site” all over the world is the over-riding recruiter that brought so many volunteers to help kill our soldiers in the first place. Yet on they go, happily interviewd by Lauer, or Oprah, all struggling to help them find excuses for their criminal behavior. This same corporate media that cheerleaded so many of the decisions made rather then question them.
Report thisBy Jim Yell, November 10, 2010 at 11:12 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
The thing most destructive about this pretense that torture is not torture, is how hollow it makes our continued proclaimations about the torture, brutality and lack of democracy and human rights in other countries.
We had 8 years of flagrant disregard of correct behavior and human rights. We had 100s of people held even though they had not been judged to be guilty, we had 10s of thousands of helpless people murdered by “accident” in a military response that was largely a lie. And, yet it continues under the current administration.
It has and is costing us billions, and bringing us nothing but the destruction of our country. And, now like a zombie army the right wing has started a return. This will not stop until those guilty are in prison. It should start with Bush and Cheney being less than honored guests of the nation.
Report thisBy Marshall, November 10, 2010 at 10:37 am Link to this comment
By Kanamachi, November 10 at 8:33 am Link to this comment
You say the verdict is in that torture is useless, yet the point of this article is that
Report thisthe Brits agree that water-boarding (which I assume you call torture) did in fact
provide “extremely valuable” intelligence. How exactly is that useless?
By MArtin, November 10, 2010 at 9:34 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Marshal,
Report thiswhenever I hear or read ‘There’s no question ...’ I feel like choking and shaking the utterer of such nonsense. Of course there is a question. This whole article is written because there are questions to the efficacy and ethics of torture. Now you come and boldly state as your first words ‘There is no question…’ What? You are now the authority who decides if there are questions? Or are you employing a really nasty and bullying type of rhetoric by putting all those who do have questions outside of what you consider legitimate or outside of your limited horizon.
Bohner and McCullum and Cantor are the worst abusers of this ruse. Pumping up their chests and pompously stating their positions while abrogating any other opinion.
Marshal, you only speak for yourself. Consider that the next time when you try to make point.
And it is time to indict GWB. But the Obambi administrations does not have balls.
By bogi666, November 10, 2010 at 8:01 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Bush’s memoirs are his “Mein Kampf”, my story in German and it has a certain familiarity to it, “Mein Kampf”, where have I heard those world before and to who they are attributed. The difference between Bush’s Mein Kampf and Hitler’s is that Hitler was more honest than Bush, which is in keeping with Bush’s behavior. After all Sadaam told the truth about WMD’ in Iraq and it was Bush who was lying to the world but really to instill fear using mindlessness, the inability to discern thoughts from truth and or facts, which Americans are susceptible to because mindlessness is institutionalized, therefore giving it legitimacy, by the government, businesses, pretend christians{biblical harlots]using the MSM to instill mindlessness in the American public whom are gullible, ignorant, intellectually lazy narcissistic, consumerist gluttons. This book is Bush’s Mein Kampf and 30% will unquestioningly believe it which is significant because Hitler and the NAZI’S gained power with 33% of the vote with a somewhat similar coup d’etat to the Military/SCOTUS Judicial coup that selected Bush as President in 2000.
Report thisBy fearnotruth, November 10, 2010 at 5:57 am Link to this comment
Khalid Sheikh Mohammad is dead
The patsy perp, water-boarded 183 times, is the central prop in the dog-and-pony show trial to further fuel the phony Global War of Terror - not that there ain’t enough terror to go around, it just ain’t what we’re being made to think it is.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/DJ30Df01.html
South Asia - Oct 30, 2002
A chilling inheritance of terror
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - (excerpts)
Ever since the frenzied shootout last month on September 11 in Karachi there have been doubts over whether Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed head of al-Qaeda’s military committee, died in the police raid on his apartment.
Certainly, another senior al-Qaeda figure, Ramzi Binalshibh, widely attributed as being the coordinator of the September 11 attacks on the United States a year earlier, was taken alive and handed over to the US. The latest information is that he is on a US warship somewhere in the Gulf.
Now it has emerged that Kuwaiti national Khalid Shaikh Mohammed did indeed perish in the raid, but his wife and child were taken from the apartment and handed over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), in whose hands they remain.
Initially, the joint ISI-FBI plan was to take Shaikh Mohammed alive so that he could be grilled, especially as he was believed to have knowledge of other al- Qaeda cells in Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and elsewhere. However, as a plainclothed officer climbed the stairs toward the third-floor apartment, a hand grenade was thrown, and he retreated. Reinforcements then arrived, and for the next few hours a fierce gun battle blazed.
The FBI, still keen to take Shaikh Mohammed alive, teargassed the area, and a number of people were captured. However, despite instructions to the contrary, a few Pakistan Rangers entered the flat, where they found Shaikh Mohammed and another man, allegedly with their hands up. The Rangers nevertheless opened fire on the pair.
Later, the Pakistani press carried pictures of a message scrawled in blood on the wall of the flat, proclaiming the Muslim refrain of Kalma, in Arabic: “There is no God except Allah, Mohammed is his messenger”). An official who was present in the flat at the time of the shooting has told Asia Times Online that the message was written by Shaikh Mohammed with his own blood as his life drained from him.
Subsequently, to their surprise, the raiders learned that Ramzi Binalshibh had been netted in the swoop. And nothing further was said of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.
But now it emerges that an Arab woman and a child were taken to an ISI safe house, where they identified the Shaikh Mohammed’s body as their husband and father. The body was kept in a private NGO mortuary for 20 days before being buried, under the surveillance of the FBI, in a graveyard in the central district of Karachi.
The widow subsequently underwent exhaustive interrogation in the custody of FBI officials, during which she revealed details of people who visited her husband, and of his other contacts and plans. News of the death of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was intentionally suppressed so that officials could play on the power of his name to follow up leads and contacts.
(© 2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
Report thisBy Kanamachi, November 10, 2010 at 3:33 am Link to this comment
It does no good to try and correct what those like Bush and his ilk are telling
the American public regarding torture and the illegal war in Iraq. Far too many
are happy to take what they
say without investigating if it is true or not.
These people are lazy and not interested in the facts regarding torture that
have been repeated over and over again . . . torture has not and does not work.
It is mostly useless. Bush is lying through his teeth in this useless book when he says differently and
people who take him at his word are fools, plain and simple.
I am glad that my uncle, who died on the beaches of France defending the
right of these people to lie, is not around to see what he laid down his life for.
Bush should be ashamed of himself but he doesn’t even have the sense to know
Report thiswhat a fool he is.
By Marshall, November 10, 2010 at 2:58 am Link to this comment
There’s no question that using more extreme techniques like water boarding
will extract more and better information than milder techniques; to think
otherwise may appeal to one’s sense of what “ought” to be, but it doesn’t
correspond to reality.
One oft-repeated justification for opposing water boarding is that people will
tell lies just to stop the pain. This is nonsense since the interrogator would use
control questions (querying information we already know) to detect falsehoods
and would notify the subject that we know he’s lying. Obviously, people will
tell the truth to make the process stop, not lies. You’d do it. I’d do it. That’s
how humans work.
Apparently this article doesn’t rate “extremely valuable intelligence” as
Report thisimportant enough to justify water boarding. Perhaps “crucial” intelligence
would do? How about “life saving” intelligence? Because for all the moralizing
that’s used to rule out the use of something like water boarding, whether you
call it torture or not, the fact is that the “ticking time bomb” case can and does
happen. If the lives of innocents can be saved by the use of a technique which
causes no lasting physical or mental damage (nor does it arguably meet the
geneva definition of torture) versus simply playing good-cop bad-cop and
hoping for the best, I know which one I’d choose.
By gerard, November 10, 2010 at 12:19 am Link to this comment
Punishing even accused and tried in a legal court is even worse. America will never be able to “live down” such atrocities—not to mmention the millions of poverty-stricken women and children in Third World Countries we allow to die when we could feed, clothe and shelter them with the money we spend on wars—that is even worse.
Report thisThink of our great possibilities, offered anew every day, and let’s get to it with open hearts and a free will and transform our country within the coming decade. Unity and cooperation, plus a spirit of joy we haven’t experienced in decades.
Can’t you see the light on the horizon?
By SteveL, November 9, 2010 at 11:57 pm Link to this comment
When will people learn? Bush and company only need the 20% to 30% of the populace that will believe any thing he says. That is who he wrote the book for. Liars lie all the time and I am not going to waist any effort trying to figure out his garbage.
Report thisBy Psychobabbler, November 9, 2010 at 11:49 pm Link to this comment
“We know from Iraq that whenever brains rather than brutality was involved, you get better results.”
That is what conservatives say in ENGLAND.
It will be mince pies and tea for supper for me tonight!
The BBC deserves a lot of credit as a news organization. They really show what is happening (minus propaganda) more or less.
Report thisBy FRTothus, November 9, 2010 at 10:41 pm Link to this comment
The entire Bush ‘administration’ echelon should be
Report thisbrought up on war crimes charges ranging from war
crimes to abrogating their duty to defend the US
Constitution and see that the laws are faithfully
executed. The current ‘administration’ must be
called to account for abetting and expanding these
same crimes and usurpations. Yet, even were we able
to root them out, as justice and honor demands a
great people, it will still take years to rid us of
the stench, the stain perhaps never. The Republic
has been undone, and our hands are black with blood
and oil for allowing it to become so. A disgraceful,
dishonorable lot.
By Jimnp72, November 9, 2010 at 8:35 pm Link to this comment
hey it paid off for dubya as he gets to write a book about his exploits and make
more big bucks that he doesnt need.
It is sickening that this criminal slacker is making more money now and boasting
about his criminality to boot.
Obama is a wuss for not advocating for his full prosecution, as are the dems.
Report this