To Those Who Defend The Torturers

A quote posted without further comment:

Every apology for torture is a denial of the separation between us and them, and between the modern and ancient West. Every attempt to re-define what constitutes torture is an attempt to re-define what makes us American. Every denial of wrong-doing is an admission that the very forces we seek to defeat have in fact sullied with fear our higher ideals, have achieved a terrible victory at a terrible cost.

That’s the point of terror, after all — not to merely kill, but to transform the world through fear.

Beyond that, it seems very foolish — very short-sighted — for torture apologists to continue this charade. It may seem necessary now, to many of them, to rewrite history or clean the slate or whatever — but in the end can this really be anything more than political suicide? Maybe for the architects — the Cheney’s and the Yoo’s — it makes sense. They face a real (if unlikely) chance at prosecution. When the media finally starts using the word "torture" instead of "harsh interrogation tactics" and all of this comes spilling out — the pictures, the video recordings, etc. — is this the side you want to be on? Standing over there in the spotlight with Cheney and Bush and Bybee and Yoo?

History is merciless.

And this from Newsweek:

But Soufan had poured through the bureau's intelligence files and stunned Abu Zubaydah when he called him "Hani" — the nickname that his mother used for him. Soufan also showed him photos of a number of terror suspects who were high on the bureau's priority list. Abu Zubaydah looked at one of them and said, "That's Mukhtar."

Now it was Soufan who was stunned. The FBI had been trying to determine the identity of a mysterious "Mukhtar," whom bin Laden kept referring to on a tape he made after 9/11. Now Soufan knew: Mukhtar was the man in the photo, terror fugitive Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and, as Abu Zubaydah blurted out, "the one behind 9/11."

As the sessions continued, Soufan engaged Abu Zubaydah in long discussions about his world view, which included a tinge of socialism. After Abu Zubaydah railed one day about the influence of American imperialist corporations, he asked Soufan to get him a Coca-Cola — a request that prompted the two of them to laugh. Soon enough, Abu Zubaydah offered up more information — about the bizarre plans of a jihadist from Puerto Rico to set off a "dirty bomb" inside the country. This information led to Padilla's arrest in Chicago by the FBI in early May.

But the tenor of the Abu Zubaydah interrogations changed a few days later, when a CIA contractor showed up. Although Soufan declined to identify the contractor by name, other sources (and media accounts) identify him as James Mitchell, a former Air Force psychologist who had worked on the U.S. military's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape training — a program to teach officers how to resist the abusive interrogation methods used by Chinese communists during the Korean War. Within days of his arrival, Mitchell — an architect of the CIA interrogation program — took charge of the questioning of Abu Zubaydah. He directed that Abu Zubaydah be ordered to answer questions or face a gradual increase in aggressive techniques. One day Soufan entered Abu Zubadyah's room and saw that he had been stripped naked; he covered him with a towel.

The confrontations began. "I asked [the contractor] if he'd ever interrogated anyone, and he said no," Soufan says. But that didn't matter, the contractor shot back: "Science is science. This is a behavioral issue." The contractor suggested Soufan was the inexperienced one. "He told me he's a psychologist and he knows how the human mind works." Mitchell told NEWSWEEK, "I would love to tell my story." But then he added, "I have signed a nondisclosure agreement that will not even allow me to correct false allegations."