Dan Froomkin emphasizes the point that despite Bush administration claims to contrary, no terrorist plots were foiled by torturing anyone.
Abu Zubaida was the alpha and omega of the Bush administration’s argument for torture.
That’s why Sunday’s front-page Washington Post story by Peter Finn and Joby Warrick is such a blow to the last remaining torture apologists.
Finn and Warrick reported that “not a single significant plot was foiled” as a result of Zubaida’s brutal treatment — and that, quite to the contrary, his false confessions “triggered a series of alerts and sent hundreds of CIA and FBI investigators scurrying in pursuit of phantoms.”
Zubaida was the first detainee to be tortured at the direct instruction of the White House. Then he was President George W. Bush’s Exhibit A in defense of the “enhanced interrogation” procedures that constituted torture. And he continues to be held up as a justification for torture by its most ardent defenders.
But as author Ron Suskind reported almost three years ago — and as The Post now confirms — almost all the key assertions the Bush administration made about Zubaida were wrong.
Zubaida wasn’t a major al Qaeda figure. He wasn’t holding back critical information. His torture didn’t produce valuable intelligence — and it certainly didn’t save lives.
[Click to continue reading White House Watch – Bush’s Torture Rationale Debunked ]
In a just world, thugs like John Yoo, Albert Gonzales, Douglas J. Feith and Dick Cheney would do hard time in a federal prison. Instead, Rethuglicans are chuckling to themselves at their golf junkets.
and you gotta love this assertion:
While the officials named in the complaint have not addressed these specific accusations, Mr. Yoo defended his work in an opinion column in The Wall Street Journal on March 7, warning that the Obama administration risked harming national security if it punished lawyers like himself.
“If the administration chooses to seriously pursue those officials who were charged with preparing for the unthinkable, today’s intelligence and military officials will no doubt hesitate to fully prepare for those contingencies in the future,” Mr. Yoo wrote.
[click to continue reading Spanish Court Weighs Inquiry on Torture for 6 Bush-Era Officials – NYTimes.com]
In other words, “you sure have a nice democracy here, would hate to see anything happen to it, kid.” / faux mafia voice.