Grand unified scandal – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com.
Krugman ties the torture program to a desperate search for a way to link 9/11 to Iraq.
The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist.
Such information would’ve provided a foundation for one of former President George W. Bush’s main arguments for invading Iraq in 2003. In fact, no evidence has ever been found of operational ties between Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network and Saddam’s regime.
From: Report: Abusive tactics used to seek Iraq-al Qaida link – McClatchyDC.com
It has been stated by many before me, torture is unreliable as a source of information. The SERE techniques our “enhanced interrogation” program was based on were developed to help US pilots resist techniques used against them during the Korean War to force false confessions.
Perhaps this was the real point: They didn’t want to extract intelligence information. The pressed interrogators to get rough so they could get a “confession” to “prove” a link to Saddam and improve the case to invade Iraq. Perhaps this is why Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in one month. Either they wanted to force him to say that Saddam was involved or it was simply torture for torture’s sake. Either it says nothing good about America.
