Criminal Mastermind Or Mentally Unstable? To The Bushies, Does It Matter?

Last week this John Kiriakou guy came out from the CIA and said that yes, we did torture Abu Zubaydah, but we got some really good information out of that, information which thwarted dozens of terrorist attacks. He didn't remember WHICH attacks it prevented, or what the information was, but we should trust him that torture works. Today, an FBI agent says not so fast:

While CIA officials have described him as an important insider whose disclosures under intense pressure saved lives, some FBI agents and analysts say he is largely a loudmouthed and mentally troubled hotelier whose credibility dropped as the CIA subjected him to a simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding and to other "enhanced interrogation" measures [...]

There is little dispute, according to officials from both agencies, that Abu Zubaida provided some valuable intelligence before CIA interrogators began to rough him up, including information that helped identify Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, and al-Qaeda operative Jose Padilla. Footnotes in the 9/11 Commission report attribute information about a variety of al-Qaeda personnel and activities to interrogations of Abu Zubaida beginning in April 2002 and lasting through February 2004 [...]

Retired FBI agent Daniel Coleman, who led an examination of documents after Abu Zubaida's capture in early 2002 and worked on the case, said the CIA's harsh tactics cast doubt on the credibility of Abu Zubaida's information.

"I don't have confidence in anything he says, because once you go down that road, everything you say is tainted," Coleman said, referring to the harsh measures. "He was talking before they did that to him, but they didn't believe him. The problem is they didn't realize he didn't know all that much."

What's interesting here is that the torture is seen as not just yielding untrustworthy information, but as one of the main reasons to call into question Zubaydah's confessions. The truth is that the CIA needed something to give to their superiors to prove they were doing the job, and needed to get it by any means. Zubaydah's importance in the chain of command is not definite, and his revelations not obviously helpful in preventing attacks. It's a mystery, forever tainted by how the evidence was collected.

And there are other detainees, like Majid Khan, who has asked a federal court to disclose that he was tortured for three years, and this former detainee who's back in England, who claims there are CIA photos which would reveal his torture. This is a guy who has been released by the United States.

This policy doesn't even seem to be reserved for high-value targets. It was the standard policy to betray our ideals and torture whoever we found, just to get as much information out of them to justify the war on terror, the truth be damned. The next several years, after this Administration is out of office, will bring some tough choices for our government. I believe we must convene a truth and reconciliation commission to get to the root of what our country has done. Only then could we restore any moral authority in the world, only then can we ensure that this never happens as long as we all live. And the evidence should be followed wherever it leads, no matter who it implicates. It's the only way to remove the rot that has set in to our government.