Liars

[sleigh]

Former CIA operative John Kiriakou claimed back in 2007 that suspected Al Queda prisoner Abu Zubaydah endured only 35 seconds of waterboarding before he broke and spilled everything. This testimony was used to highlight the effectiveness of the technique, as well as to demonstrate how it was still 'humane' due to the briefness of the experience.

Well, it seems that was just another big lie. According to a NY Time article today, just-released CIA memos from 2005 relate that waterboarding at least 83 times in August 2002 on Abu Zubaydah, and 183 times in March 2003 against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

If you've used waterboarding 266 times in two months against two subjects, you are torturing them, in pretty much anyone's definition of the term. If you use waterboarding 266 times in two months against two subjects, waterboarding is also evidently not working.

I wonder what Dick Cheney, who seems to think that waterboarding is such a wonderfully effective technique, might confess to if he were waterboarded 183 times in a single month. He might even come to consider it barbaric torture.

Comments

[ontology101.livejournal.com]

I don't even understand the efficacy argument. So torture works. That doesn't justify torture. We don't torture our enemies. It is inhumane. Even if it works. Could the concept be any simpler?

Anne