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The Al-Qaeda Leader Who Wasn’t: The Shameful Ordeal of Abu Zubaydah
- confluence 10y agoThe CIA is not known for its intelligence.
- GordonS 10y agoAgreed, they've come to be known for lack of oversight, being involved in corruption, being involved in drug production and trafficking, overthrowing democraically elected governments, installing despots, grabbing people from their home countries and torturing them in absolutely vile ways, and more. The 3 letters 'CIA' now strike fear into the hearts of innocent people across the globe.
- saiya-jin 10y agoI would say disgust rather than fear, just another entitled bunch of aholes who think they can do whatever they want all around the globe and they actually have means to do so. but then comes fleeting moment of satisfaction when some of them are shot, kidnapped etc... yeah, that's how despised they are
- GordonS 10y ago> just another entitled bunch of aholes who think they can do whatever they want all around the globe and they actually have means to do so I think that understates things a bit - I'm not aware of any other group in history that has freely wrought global havoc for so long, torturing, killing, trafficking in drugs, destroying lives, destroying whole nations... Honestly, they are terrifying.
- cryoshon 10y agoYeah. I wonder if there's a way to tally up their death toll... it's possible it'd be in the millions.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- tobltobs 10y agoI don't think disgust is the right word what you will feel if they put your name on some kill list.
- overlordalex 10y agoThe website comes up with a pop-up when I try read the article, but when I hit the 'x' to close it I get dumped at the homepage. Here's the Google cache version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Itp90I0NOLMJ:www.thenation.com/article/the-cia-waterboarded-the-wrong-man-83-times-in-1-month/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Itp90I0...
- puddintane 10y agoOn my phone it is a scrolling advertisement. To get past it don't click on it just scroll using the page around the ad and once you get past it you can scroll again! Desktop I'm not sure about however
- elcapitan 10y agoWhile "waterboarding the right man 83 times in 1 month" would of course be a very honorable occupation.
- brillenfux 10y ago"Justified" is the word you're looking for. We want it to be justified, not honorable. Nobody gives two shits about honor as soon as it is about "them" (whoever fits that definition currently).
- GordonS 10y agoI'm not sure this kind of disgusting behaviour can ever be justified.
- 7952 10y agoIt is coneviable that circumstances could exist where the use of torture would prevent some greater evil. But the only proper place to make such an argument is in court as a defense against prosecution. The act would still be illegal and should still be illegal. The disgusting thing is trying to pre-approve illegal acts ahead of time and using that as a defence.
- Natanael_L 10y agoProblem is that it doesn't even give all that much actionable information in the first place.
- ramblerman 10y agoYes and no. In the case of somebody who has information waterboarding is generally an 'efficient' strategy. i.e. you have the guy you know hid the bomb somewhere in manhattan. It's just very hard to tell when somebody doesn't know anything. And they will start making up information to make it stop. i.e. 10 guys and you have reason to believe one of them may have hidden a bomb somewhere.
- dandare 10y agoIf they can do this to him they can do it to anyone. The saddest thing is the example the "free world" is giving to all totalitarian torturers.
- hoodoof 10y agoWell if he didn't hate the CIA before then he probably does now.
- DoofusOfDeath 10y agoGood point. The argument could be made that the CIA agents involved have provided material support for terrorism.
- cmdrfred 10y agohttp://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx_GOM4Jcjo http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx_GOM4Jcjo Reminds me of this.
- jmnicolas 10y agoThis article will not change anything. By the time our day end we will have been bombarded by so much other information that it will just be one more forgotten thing. And there's so much things that are revolting that our brains are just shutting down as a self defense mechanism. Sociopaths in power don't even need to hide anymore, they know they are hidden in the noise. I mean look at Turkey : they help ISIS, they shoot Syrian refugees crossing the border, they kill their own Kurdish population and they denies a genocide ... barely a blip in the news.
- harryf 10y ago20 years ago it wouldn't have been news at all. Now it's hard to make things completely vanish. Its just the balance between scandals and outrage has shifted; far more scandals are floating to the surface in the Information Age and outrage has yet to catch up. But it will
- pessimizer 10y ago20 years ago, it would have been far bigger news. There's been a gradual slide in the conditions in Turkey that make what's happening there now not very surprising.
- harryf 10y agoDisagree. 20 years ago no one would have heard of this. And 20 Turkey was a far worse place than it is today, just about to have a military coup https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Turkish_military_memorandum https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Turkish_military_memora...
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- user_0001 10y agoyes, but we need Turkey. They are in Nato, they are on "our" side - thus we do not criticise (and if we do - very meekly). The same as when they are "our" dictators, or "theirs". Whether the government is murdering "communists in their 10s / 100s of thousands or whether the government is trying to improve the lot of the country's people via social programs at the experience of foreign (our) international businesses.
- toomanythings2 10y agoThat's nothing. His buddies beheaded hundreds and exploded bombs in marketplaces in the same amount of time!
- Amir6 10y agoDo you even understand the meaning of word "wrong"? And since when are we punishing people for things their buddies did? I'm sure your buddies are all saint.
- lallysingh 10y agoHe did have brown skin. They all know each other, amiright?
- patrickg_zill 10y agoBefore, we were told how tough it was on a person to be waterboarded. That it was so debilitating that it was only used in extreme cases. Now this guy is waterboarded 3 times a day for a month, basically at every meal (if you want to think about it in terms of frequency). It seems clear that it is not rare; and that it doesn't really deliver results. Again and again, we have been lied to about waterboarding, how often it is done, what level of use we get out of it, etc. And, this is just 1 example - there could well be other methods of torture and many other cases of incompetence... makes you want to say "you know what? Let's just scrap the whole thing..." If waterboarding was a piece of software it would be considered too crashy and unreliable and a replacement that worked better would be sought immediately.
- overcast 10y agoWell it didn't deliver results, because none of it was true. So how could the guy give up any information that didn't exist?
- wodenokoto 10y agoPart of the result of any interrogation is to figure out if the subject has the information you want. So it didn't deliver at all.
- overcast 10y agoRight, but the point of the article is that they were doing it to the wrong person. That doesn't mean it does not work. Causation does not imply correlation.
- CocaKoala 10y agoIf it takes you more than 83 separate instances of waterboarding somebody to decide that they don't have useful information to share with you, then waterboarding is not an efficient way to get reliable information. If waterboarding is not an efficient way to get reliable information, then I'd be very curious to hear about what definition of "work" you're using where waterboarding might satisfy, but fail in this particular instance.
- spangry 10y agoInteresting implication from the title of the article: that it would be 'right' to waterboard some other men. Who are they, and what justifies their torture? And before someone says it, I don't think "gathering intelligence" is a sufficiently moral or practical justification. People being tortured don't tell you valuable information; they tell you whatever they think will make the torture stop. The CIA is a sickening and surprisingly amateurish organisation. Their actions over the past decades have ruined the United States' international moral authority. It's laughable whenever some US politician goes on TV and proclaims that America is some magical paragon of liberal democratic virtue. It's a sick joke.
- an_ko 10y agoI think the word “wrong” in the title was meant to be understood in the sense of “pressed the wrong button”—undelining technical rather than moral incompetence from the CIA. Torturing someone already strongly implies the latter.
- jccc 10y agoTo be fair: "And even if it had been true, what the CIA did to Abu Zubaydah—with the knowledge and approval of the highest government officials—is a prime example of the kind of still-unpunished crimes that officials like Dick Cheney, George Bush, and Donald Rumsfeld committed in the so-called Global War on Terror." ... from very near the beginning of the article.
- gshulegaard 10y agoAlthough, to be fair I can't read the article because of its abhorrent pop up...which redirects me when I try to close it.
- ikeboy 10y ago>Who are they, and what justifies their torture? >People being tortured don't tell you valuable information; they tell you whatever they think will make the torture stop. You're already asserting your position, and disguising it as a question. Virtually everyone seriously condoning torture believe it is effective. If they were to believe it wasn't effective, they wouldn't order it to be done. You may think it's not effective, but that should be argued on its own merit. You're assuming the conclusion, then pretending that everyone else does and are therefore unjustified.
- matthewhuff89 10y agoTrevor would be so into this story
- Luc 10y agoImagine the patches with cool Latin slogans!
- Esau 10y agoSpeaking as someone who served in the U.S. military - this is not how a prisoner should be treated.
- Cthulhu_ 10y agoWell no shit; there's the Geneva convention and shit that makes practices like torture and such illegal. The US can waltz right over that though, because what is anyone going to do?
- Esau 10y agoI understand that some people argue that the Geneva Convention doesn't apply to members of terrorist organizations; that it only applies to members of a sovereign country's military. Regardless, it reflects badly on us. Torture is wrong; no matter who is doing it or who it is being done to.
- 1024core 10y agoThe sad part is: despite reading this article and fully agreeing with it, conservatives in this country will just shrug and say: mistakes happen, let's not dwell on it. And they feel justified in taking this view because they know deep down that it would never happen to a white person in today's US. Case in point: John Walker Lindh -vs- Jose Padilla. JWL (a white guy) was actually fighting against the Americans; was taken prisoner, treated well, immediately put on trial and sentenced to 20 years (he'll be out in 7). Jose Padilla (a Hispanic male) was tortured for years in a Naval brig, without charges.
- CWuestefeld 10y agoconservatives in this country will just shrug and say: mistakes happen, let's not dwell on it. Apparently so will our Liberal president: I hope that today’s report can help us leave these [torture] techniques where they belong—in the past. https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/12/09/statement-president-report-senate-select-committee-intelligence https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/12/09/state...
- woodman 10y agoBoth liberals and conservatives will eagerly switch off their brains when their pet interest is threatened. For conservatives it is their brand of culture, for liberals it is their brand of state. The puppet show is getting boring. As far as the identity politics, I can't think of a group more paranoid about government abuse in the US than white male birch society types.
- lvs 10y agoObama, for his part, also committed not to pursue any prosecutions for the misdeeds of his predecessor's administration.
- Lagged2Death 10y agoThe historical purpose and utility of torture is to produce made-up confessions and bullshit "intelligence" to lend some veneer of necessity to whatever course of action the high and mighty have already committed to. Just about anybody with a Middle-Eastern-sounding name and the slightest plausible connection to or proximity with "Al Qaeda" (conveniently defined and delimited by the torturers themselves) would have been equally useful for this purpose. There is no "right" man, no "wrong" man. That's torture. It's a show, a blood pageant. It's reading the Tarot or goat entrails. That's the system, the procedure you defend when you apologize for torture.
- eric_h 10y agoSame article on a website that is not awful http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176132/tomgram%3A_rebecca_gordon%2C_exhibit_one_in_any_future_american_war_crimes_trial/ http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176132/tomgram%3A_rebecca_go...
- dang 10y agoOK, we changed to that from http://www.thenation.com/article/the-cia-waterboarded-the-wrong-man-83-times-in-1-month/ http://www.thenation.com/article/the-cia-waterboarded-the-wr.... We'll also use the article's title (which you have to scroll down to see), which doesn't suffer from the problem users have pointed out with the Nation's title.
- Strom 10y agoGood thing I clicked on it before it was changed. I have the complete opposite reaction. The Nation's page has a nice picture to set the theme and uses a wider space with a bigger font, while the TomDispatch page looks like something from 1999.
- eric_h 10y agoI agree that the design of the nation's site is better/more modern. However, when I landed on the site, I was able to read the first sentence before a modal subscription form popped up. I clicked the little x button in the top right of that modal, and it did a full page load redirecting me to an article about hillary clinton, and then popped the subscription modal again. I clicked the x button again and it did the same fucking thing, so I gave them the email address go.fuck.yourself@gmail.com, found the article I was trying to read and noticed that it was sourced from the link I dropped above. That page loaded quickly and showed me what I wanted to see, the content. /rant
- Strom 10y agoThat does sound like a bad experience indeed. I didn't get that myself, and can't seem to replicate it now in incognito either. Perhaps geo-targeting? Pop-ups suck, and I wish my browser's pop-up blocker would also block these inline e-mail asking dialogs in every site.
- astazangasta 10y agoSometimes I question whether there is the possibility of change, here. The CIA has started openly torturing people - they have no doubt been covertly torturing people for years; we've been showing this in our fiction for decades, and this is probably largely the public's view of how the CIA is - unsavory characters who do the "dirty work" that needs to get done to keep us safe. Why do we accept this notion of torture as a heroic virtue, when it's obviously not? I think we're unable to assimilate the alternative - that our national myths are all false, that we are subject to an evil torture state, that our security apparatus is beyond democratic control or the rule of law. All of these are horrific, monstrous possibilities that we can't confront, so it's much easier for us to rationalize them away by suggesting that the CIA's actions are not, actually, evil. Determining otherwise requires an act of national catharsis, a revolution in our understanding of ourselves as a political entity. We are not safe, good, democratic. We are venal, aggressive, evil. Making this confrontation will take more than just a factual understanding.
- okreallywtf 10y agoI think their discussion of "learned helplessness" is interesting in this context. I think it also applies to most Americans in the feeling that this will occur in our name, without our consent or approval, regardless of what we do. I don't think this is truly the case but it is hard to shake the feeling that it is and be as outraged by this as we absolutely should be.
- consto 10y agoBush is a war criminal
- pdonis 10y agoI notice that the article places all the blame on the Bush administration--yet it says the Obama administration quietly dropped the charges but did not release Zubaydah.
- IkmoIkmo 10y agoCharges is not the right word, he has to this day not been charged with anything whatsoever. He's held based on suspicion, allegations, stuff like that. Essentially awaiting a fair trial for over a decade, while being tortured in the process. It's quite insane.
- pdonis 10y ago> Charges is not the right word Yes, good point, I should have said "dropped the claims being made" or something like that.
- visarga 10y agoWell, that should teach these non-terrorists not to be easily mistaken for terrorists any more.
- rjett 10y agoAs a free member of the western world, happily able to pursue "the dream," and unexposed to the direct effects of war and humanitarian crimes, what am I to do? If you think about it, the domestic conditions in the US, relative to many of the places in the non-western world, are such that we have no incentive to ACTUALLY do anything to change things for the better. Sure, we get upset about reading articles like this. But is getting upset for 5 minutes, writing an article, making a movie, or even settling into the mindset of being jaded and skeptical about our own country's leadership really the toolset we are left with at the end of the day to cause change? Is there revolution in the modern west? Or are we neutered by the relatively great living conditions we take for granted?
- woodman 10y agoSo here is a false choice, but consider which one would have a greater and longer lasting impact: A) You dash to the rolltop and feverishly write letters to every politician you can think of. You then get on a bus with a bunch of other upset people, go to DC and wave signs with clever catch phrases. You then live in a tent on public space for several weeks. B) You consider this information, your feelings, and your prior model of the way the world worked. Methodically you reexamine long unchallenged precepts related to morality, the role of the state, and the logical consistency of the entire endeavor. After a while you find that things make a lot more sense, you are no longer experience the effects of cognitive dissonance when new information hits your brain. You share this new understanding, through example (maybe by pestering strangers online, either or). Clearly I favor option B, but one could easily deride it as slacktivism - though the self reflection is not something you often see in #Kony2012. Every example of positive change that I can think, involved marching and rhyming slogans, would not have been possible without a great deal of uncomfortable self examination.
- fiatmoney 10y agoYou would expect this to happen. Things like the Geneva Conventions are artifacts of roughly symmetric wars, where one could reasonably expect treatment & retaliation to be reciprocal. This explains things like restrictions on, eg, hollow point bullets - it's easy enough for everyone to use them, and it only serves to increase the severity of the conflict with no change in relative outcomes. Now that the US doesn't actually fear having large numbers of troops captured, and even if they did their opponents have no desire to reciprocate treatment, they're "free" to engage in whatever horrific behavior they would like, and vise versa. Lind is good on this: http://www.amazon.com/Generation-Warfare-Handbook-William-Lind-ebook/dp/B017IP1JM2 http://www.amazon.com/Generation-Warfare-Handbook-William-Li...
- npx 10y agoI think it's time to confront the reality that we have a serious asshole epidemic in America. It has gone unchecked for a few centuries and it has reached a fever pitch of state sanctioned torture and Donald Trump supporters. Much like idiots, assholes cannot possibly realize that they are being assholes. It's one of the symptoms. They're actually completely confident that what they're doing makes total sense. It's a touch-and-go sorta thing; how do you openly confront assholery without becoming a huge asshole? I call this the Snowden dilemma. It's a real problem. We are well past the point of occasionally waking up to find feces on the kitchen table. The majority of this country is subsisting entirely on a diet of pure shit. I don't want to seem elitist - I regard myself as a world class dummy - but I do know what shit tastes like and I understand that eating it is bad for you. I don't have any answers but I think we're in a lot of trouble here. "Democracy always seems bent upon killing the thing it theoretically loves. [...] It not only wars upon the thing itself; it even wars upon mere academic advocacy of it. I offer the spectacle of Americans jailed for reading the Bill of Rights as perhaps the most gaudily humorous ever witnessed in the modern world." --H.L. Mencken
- titzer 10y agoI don' think there's a magic bullet to asshattery. There has to be a cultural shift away from asshattery as acceptable behavior. The same way there has been a cultural shift away from domestic abuse and racism being acceptable (though they both have their stragglers). The problem is that the diet of pure shit serves a purpose. It keeps people both agitated and docile at the same time. The kind of agitated and docile you would recognize in a cranky 80 yr man who shouts at clouds. Angry and uncomfortable, but ultimately harmless; miles away from taking an AK-47 and marching on Washington, and ultimately willing to pull the lever for the blue or red party, or best, not vote at all.
- mineshaftgap 10y ago>The same way there has been a cultural shift away from domestic abuse and racism being acceptable (though they both have their stragglers). Are you claiming that racism isn't the biggest reason blacks are struggling?