The NBC News analysis shows that more than one quarter of all footnotes in the 9/11 Report refer to CIA interrogations of al-Qaida operatives who were subjected to the now-controversial interrogation techniques. In fact, information derived from the interrogations is central to the Report’s most critical chapters, those on the planning and execution of the attacks. The analysis also shows – and agency and commission staffers concur – there was a separate, second round of interrogations in early 2004, done specifically to answer new questions from the Commission.
9/11 Commission staffers say they “guessed” but did not know for certain that harsh techniques had been used, and they were concerned that the techniques had affected the operatives’ credibility. At least four of the operatives whose interrogation figured in the 9/11 Commission Report have claimed that they told interrogators critical information as a way to stop being “tortured.” The claims came during their hearings last spring at the U.S. military facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba…
Fourteen of the highest-value detainees had their initial hearings this spring before the Pentagon’s Combatant Status Review Tribunal. The tribunal acts as sort of a grand jury, charged with determining if a detainee should be held over for trial.
Four of them said they gave information only to stop the torture. Although details were redacted in all the detainees’ testimony, the tribunal permitted the inclusion of a letter from a detainee’s father in one case, citing what he claimed was American torture of his son.
This torture only stopped when Majid agreed to sign a statement that he wasn’t even allowed to read.
bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful
=== News Update ===
We (US) Tortured To Justify War
Dick Cheney keeps saying “enhanced interrogation” was used to stop imminent attacks, but evidence is mounting that the real reason was to invent evidence linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaida.
By Joe Conason
May 15, 2009 “Salon.com” — The single most pertinent question that Dick Cheney is never asked — at least not by the admiring interviewers he has encountered so far — is whether he, Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush used torture to justify the illegal invasion of Iraq. As he tours television studios, radio stations and conservative think tanks, the former vice-president hopes to persuade America that only waterboarding kept us safe for seven years.
Yet evidence is mounting that under Cheney’s direction, “enhanced interrogation” was not used exclusively to prevent imminent acts of terror or collect actionable intelligence — the aims that he constantly emphasizes — but to invent evidence that would link al-Qaida with Saddam Hussein and connect the late Iraqi dictator to the 9/11 attacks.In one report after another, from journalists, former administration officials and Senate investigators, the same theme continues to emerge: Whenever a prisoner believed to possess any knowledge of al-Qaida’s operations or Iraqi intelligence came into American custody, CIA interrogators felt intense pressure from the Bush White House to produce evidence of an Iraq-Qaida relationship (which contradicted everything that U.S. intelligence and other experts knew about the enmity between Saddam’s Baath Party and Osama bin Laden’s jihadists). Indeed, the futile quest for proof of that connection is the common thread running through the gruesome stories of torture from the Guantánamo detainee camp to Egyptian prisons to the CIA’s black sites in Thailand and elsewhere.
bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful
=== News Update ===
The US government has videotapes of boys being sodomized at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Wednesday, July 14, 2004
“The worst is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking,” the reporter told an ACLU convention last week. Hersh says there was “a massive amount of criminal wrongdoing that was covered up at the highest command out there, and higher.”
(I transcribed some of his speechfrom this streaming site. Hersh starts at about 1:07:50.)
He called the prison scene ”a series of massive crimes, criminal activity by the president and the vice president, by this administration anyway�war crimes.”
The outrages have cost us the support of moderate Arabs, says Hersh. “They see us as a sexually perverse society.”
bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful
=== News Update ===
Abu Ghraib – The Sequel
This is a must watch video
With the response to those Danish cartoons and the British Army beatings in Iraq, still running red-hot in the Islamic world, tonight, even uglier images from Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison.
Back in 2004 when the first shocking pictures were originally leaked, the world recoiled in horror, but since then the Bush Administration has fought tooth and nail to prevent the American public from seeing any new images of the treatment of Iraqi detainees, but tonight Dateline reporter Olivia Rousset reveals new photos and videos. Despite the currently overheated international climate, we are showing them because they show the extent of the horror that occurred at Abu Ghraib. A serious warning though – some of the images you’re about to see are pretty confronting and may offend some of you.
Broadcast By SBS – Australia - Dateline – 02/15/06
bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful
=== News Update ===
New ‘Prisoner Abuse’ Photographs Emerge Despite US Bid to Block Publication
Graphic photographs of alleged prisoner abuse, thought to be among up to 2,000 images Barack Obama is trying to prevent from being released, emerged yesterday.
By Alex Spillius in Washington
May 15, 2009 “The Telegraph” — The shocking imagesof inmates in Iraq and Afghanistan were published just a day after the US president announced plans for a legal battle stop them ever being seen.
They risked provoking renewed hostility in the Middle East as Mr Obama attempts to build bridges with the Islamic world.
He is scheduled to make a major speech in Cairo on June 4 when he will launch his version of a plan to bring peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
One picture showed a prisoner hung up upside down while another showed a naked man smeared in excrement standing in a corridor with a guard standing menacingly in front of him. Another prisoner is handcuffed to the window frame of his cell with underpants pulled over his head.
Others yet to be released reportedly show military guards threatening to sexually assault a detainee with a broomstick and hooded prisoners on transport planes with Playboy magazines opened to pictures of nude women on their laps.
The images emerged from Australia yesterday where they were originally obtained by the channel SBS in 2006 in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal. They were not distributed around the world at the time but are now believed to be among those the president is trying to block.
Mr Obama previously committed to allowing thousands of images to be published but changed his mind after senior generals warned that their publication could place US troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan in greater danger.
The president’s change of heart brought bitter criticism from the left wingers and the American Civil Liberties Union, which had brought a freedom of information case against the US government applying to see the pictures.
bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful
=== News Update ===
What is Acknowledged and What Remains Unknown Sexual Torture
DAVID ROSEN
Sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners by United States military.
May 15, 2009
“Removal of clothing was authorized by the Secretary of Defense [Rumsfeld] for use at GTMO [Guantánamo] on December 2, 2002,” acknowledges the recently released U.S. Senate Armed Service Committee report on the use of harsh interrogation techniques. It also reports that the use of prolonged nudity proved so effective that, in January 2003, it was approved for use in Afghanistan and, in the fall of 2003, was adopted for use in Iraq.
The pictures below should only be viewed by a mature AUDIENCE
See Also
The photos America doesn’t want seen: : MORE photographs have been leaked of Iraqi citizens tortured by US soldiers at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad.
bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful
=== News Update ===
Dick Cheney ’suggested waterboarding’ Iraqi prisoner
Dick Cheney, the former US vice-president, suggested waterboarding an Iraqi prisoner whom White House officials suspected might possess knowledge of a potential connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, it has emerged.
By Alex Spillius in Washington
Last Updated: 8:46PM BST 14 May 2009
Dick Cheney said that the previous administration’s anti-terror apparatus had prevented another incident on a par with the September 11, 2001, attacksPhoto: AP
Two senior intelligence officials said that the April 2003 request was made regarding Muhammed Khudayr al-Dulaymi, head of the M-14 section of the Mukhabarat secret police, whose responsibilities included chemical weapons and contacts with terrorist groups.
They told the Daily Beast website that the request came from Mr Cheney’s office but did not reveal who specifically had made it. At the time the Bush administration was anxious to support its principal case for the war, that the late Iraqi dictator was aiding plots against the US.
Charles Duelfer, who was leading the hunt for weapons of mass destruction at the time and was also in charge of interrogations, said that he found the suggestion “reprehensible”.
