The New York Times is becoming some sort of 5th column for terrorists. Today, they examine the interrogations given to Al Qaeda detainees. It's one thing to criticize members of the military that degrade low-level Iraqi prisoners, but this article explains and criticizes the techniques the CIA and strategies against the real bad guys.
The Central Intelligence Agency has used coercive interrogation methods against a select group of high-level leaders and operatives of Al Qaeda that have produced growing concerns inside the agency about abuses, according to current and former counterterrorism officials.
In the case of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a high-level detainee who is believed to have helped plan the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, C.I.A. interrogators used graduated levels of force, including a technique known as "water boarding," in which a prisoner is strapped down, forcibly pushed under water and made to believe he might drown.
So far, the agency has refused to grant any independent observer or human rights group access to the high-level detainees, who have been held in strict secrecy. Their whereabouts are such closely guarded secrets that one official said he had been told that Mr. Bush had informed the C.I.A. that he did not want to know where they were.
Notice the aside that Bush has set-up deniability.
Counterrorism officials say detainees have also been sent to third countries, where they are convinced that they might be executed, or tricked into believing they were being sent to such places. Some have been hooded, roughed up, soaked with water and deprived of food, light and medications.
Many authorities contend that torture and coercive treatment is as likely to provide information that is unreliable as information that is helpful.
What authorities think the tactics won't work? If the information is incorrect, won't the prisoners face harsher tactics?
Concerns are mounting among C.I.A. officers about the potential consequences of their actions. "Some people involved in this have been concerned for quite a while that eventually there would be a new president, or the mood in the country would change, and they would be held accountable," one intelligence source said. "Now that's happening faster than anybody expected."
The Times is warning the CIA that John Kerry is ready to gut their effectiveness again and for good reason.
Way down here near the end of the article after the criticism we get the information about how these tactics have been successful.
The C.I.A. high-level interrogation program seemed to show early results with the capture of Abu Zubaida in April 2002. Mr. Zubaida was a close associate of Mr. bin Laden's and had run Al Qaeda's recruiting, in which young men were brought from other countries to training camps in Afghanistan.
Under such intensive questioning, Mr. Zubaida provided useful information identifying Jose Padilla, a low-level Qaeda convert who was arrested in May 2002 in connection with an effort to build a dirty bomb. Mr. Zubaida also helped identify Mr. Mohammed as a crucial figure in the 9/11 plot, counterterrorism officials said.
A few other detainees have been identified by the Bush administration, like Ramzi bin al-Shibh, another 9/11 plotter and Walid Ba'Attash, who helped plan the East Africa embassy bombings in 1998 and the attack on the Navy destroyer Cole in October 2000.
Now back to the criticism.
Some officials have suggested that some of the high-level detainees may be tried in military tribunals or officially turned over to other countries, but counterterrorism officials have complained about the Bush administration's failure to have an "endgame" for these detainees. One official said they could also be imprisoned indefinitely at a new long-term prison being built at Guantánamo.
What's funny is that any time the government doesn't share their plan with the media it gets written as no plan at all. When the administration shares the plan, the media gets "authorities" to describe how it won't work.
I don't know what this article accomplished other than alerting future detainees to our tactics and scaring CIA operatives into being nice to bad guys for fear of their jobs. Do writers at the New York Times think this was a service to the American people?
No comments:
Post a Comment