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Al Qaeda leader Khalid Sheik Mohammed
Defenders of the practice say the waterboarding of Al Qaeda leader Khalid Sheik Mohammed produced information that allowed the U.S government to thwart a planned attack on Los Angeles in 2002.According to a previously classified May 30, 2005, Justice Department memo that the Obama administration released last week, before he was waterboarded, when KSM was asked about planned attacks on the United States, he ominously told his CIA interrogators, “Soon, you will know.”
After the "enhanced techniques," which the agency used on him 183 times, KSM -- the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks -- told investigators about a "second wave" of terrorists from East Asia who planned to crash a hijacked airliner into a building in Los Angeles.
Could they still have gotten the information out of Mohammed via acceptable techniques?
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Color me skeptical.
If there is one person for whom the waterboarding techniques were fully 100% justified, it is, Khalid Sheik Mohammed.
'The mastermind of the 9/11 attacks'? LOL They don't even know who to blame anymore for the obvious inside job..... and come on! Who wouldn't confess to anything after being subjected to such horrid torture?
The CIA is behind Al Qaeda...this is nothing more than theatre for the sheeple! And boy do they eat it up!
One slight problem with this story:
The waterboarding of Khalid Sheik Mohammed could not have "produced information that allowed the U.S government to thwart a planned attack on Los Angeles in 2002" because he was not captured until 2003.
(channeling rightwingoverse thought patterns)
Yea but, he would have if he could have so that justifies torturing the shit out of him to get him to admit that he had every intention of carrying out an attack.
My own opinion is that an individual who is tortured would probably confess to nailing up Jesus just to get the torture to stop. So you have to actually believe anything he said while he was being tortured to believe torturing him produced any useful information or actually prevented him from doing anything.
He was, after all, already locked up and it's kind of hard to carry out terrorist attacks while you're locked up on an island in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico.
My own opinion is that an individual who is tortured would probably confess to nailing up Jesus just to get the torture to stop.
It's pretty well documented that information given out under torture is unreliable. This is why we started training our own troops to withstand "harsh conditions." During and after the Korean War, film was released showing soldiers who succumbed to torture admit that the United States invaded Korea for all the wrong reasons, had imperialist aims, and was misguided in their use of capitalism. Communist is the way to be! (Disregarding the validity, or not, of their statements, it was all rather embarrassing during the Cold War.)
(channeling Bush)
Why how can you say that? It's no worse than a frat club initiation.
This story has already been debunked, and is being trotted out by the torture justifiers in the hopes that people won't notice.
I'm quoting Keith Olbermann here because it was the quickest summary to find, but any cursory check will find that this story was bogus when it was first mentioned as a justification for torture, and it still is:
I am indebted to David Swanson, press secretary for Dennis Kucinich's 2004 Presidential campaign, who has blogged about the dubious 96 words in Mr. Bush's address this year and who has concluded that of the four counter-terror claims the President made, he went 0 for 4.
"We cannot know the full extent of the attacks that we and our allies have prevented," Mr. Bush noted, "but here is some of what we do know: we stopped an Al-Qaeda plot to fly a hijacked airplane into the tallest building on the West Coast."
This would, of course, sir, be the purported plot to knock down the 73-story building in Los Angeles, the one once known as the Library Tower -- the one you personally revealed so breathlessly, a year ago next month.
It was embarrassing enough that you mistakenly referred to the structure as the Liberty Tower. But within hours, it was also revealed, that authorities in Los Angeles had had no idea you were going to make any of the details -- whether serious or fanciful -- public.
Who terrorized Southern California that day, Mr. Bush?
A year ago next month, the Los Angeles Times quoted a source -- identified only by the labyrinthine description "a U-S official familiar with the operational aspects of the war on terrorism" -- who insisted that the purported "Library Tower plot" was one of many Al-Qaeda operations that had not gotten very far past the conceptual stage.
The former staff director of counter-terrorism for the National Security Council -- now NBC and MSNBC News Analyst Roger Cressey -- puts it a little more bluntly.
In our conversation, he classified the "Library Tower story" into a category he called the "What-Ifs" -- as in the old Saturday Night Live sketches that tested the range of comic absurdity:
-- What If... Superman Had Worked For The Nazis?
-- What if... Spartacus Had A Piper Cub, during the battle against the Romans in 70 B-C?
More ominously, the L.A. Times source who debunked the Library Tower story said that those who could correctly measure the flimsiness of the scheme, quote, "feared political retaliation for providing a different characterization of the plan than that of the President."
Come on Zach, you just linked to a post by the never-reliable Andrew Malcolm who linked to a story by the "Conservative News Service" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybercast_News_Service), who's story got the whole timeline of events wrong.
KSM was not captured until March 2003, so it's not possible that this plot was foiled due to waterboarding KSM, he hadn't been captured yet.
Also:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/us/politics/22blair.html
Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the intelligence director, wrote in a memo to his staff last Thursday:
"The information gained from these techniques was valuable in some instances, but there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means," Admiral Blair said in a written statement issued last night. "The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security."
Actually, it was written by Johanna Neuman.
whoops, my bad, but that doesn't change the fact that LA Times cited a completely factually incorrect story from a right-wing site.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybercast_News_Service
Isn't there a scientist out there who can invent a harmless truth serum . . . you know, the kind that you see being administered in cartoons and sci-fi movies? I think a hit of ecstasy could do wonders for interrogation too . . . who doesn't want to spill the beans (albeit in a loving kind of way) after a hit?
samarkand is right. KSM did indeed give up the info relating to the Library Tower plot, but the Bush administration had already claimed credit for breaking it up by the time they tortured the guy.
Could they still have gotten the information out of Mohammed via acceptable techniques?
By "Mohammed" to you mean "The White House" and by "acceptable techniques," do you mean "reading?"
We Also Broke Up Other Post-9/11 Aviation Plots.
* In 2002, we broke up a plot by KSM to hijack an airplane and fly it into the tallest building on the West Coast. During a hearing at Guantanamo Bay two months ago, KSM stated that the intended target was the Library Tower in Los Angeles.
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20070523.html
Why is the headline and lede phrased as though this were a fact?
I have no doubt terrorists did, and probably still do, want to crash planes into Los Angeles. They probably constantly make plans to do so. And they likely proceed with more plans that they end up abandoning, or are thwarted by regular means.
I'm not going to take my word for it that torture stopped a terror attack unless the goverment explains a bit more about what info they received, how they thwarted an attack, and at what stage the planning was.
Man, if terrorists were like half of my LA friends, they'd bail on their plans at the last minute anyways. Is torture really the answer, when 'open bar' is always such a guarantee to bring people out of the woodwork?
Good of you to change the headline, Zach.
Thanks, Ben, I was pretty horrified to see an hour later my draft headline :( I didn't mean to publish it that way
Thanks for not posting my comment! :oP I guess when one talks about truths and questions certain events one gets ignored... sheesh!
Sorry man, it just got caught in an auto-filter. fixed now, your original comment is up there. thanks for bringing it to our intention. we never block a comment unless something needs to be redacted (like if you gave away the personal address of someone).
this just further confirms that the LA Times is no longer anything other than a Right Wing Tabloid.
I've often wondered if Zell is trying to be the next Rupert Murdoch.
I think he's trying to ruin the paper. I really do. The decisions he's made make no sense form a business perspective but make total sense from a movement conservative pov.
Really Zach? 183 times waterboarded= valuable info? You think he might've coughed up the intel after the first 90 times. I think I would've laughed through the last 93 had it been me.
I don't think you're putting forth a lot of logical effort here, other than disgorging someone else's work. Torture is torture and the intel is always shaky. Is it worth sacrificing our moral compass on the slim possibility we might get some tidbit of info that may/may not be valuable? I'm pretty sure the "Liberty" Tower was nothing more than half-baked plans and chatter anyhow, there was no apparent operational plan.
I could talk about blowing lots of things up and in the end it's still talk and torture won't change that.
My apologies Zach, didn't realize you were the news aggregator. Seemed like you were coming from a point of view.
LMFAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yeah and Rachel Maddow is a fascist.
"right wing tabloid"....LOL....
Children! The "cell leader" of the Los Angeles, Asian based "Second Wave" was captured in 2002. Subsequently, the cell disbanded. KSM was reported widely to have been captured in March of 2003. His rather stupid statement of, "Soon, you will know.." was the driving force behind the almost constant waterboarding he received. He simply reiterated the information of the second attack, and the probable target in Los Angeles. His information was after the fact, but revealed in detail by him. When picking up "chatter", for example, on subjects that don't translate well into Arabic without naming outright, like the "Brooklyn Bridge," it's obvious what terrorists are talking about. I think these 'evil' CIA workers know a little bit more about this process than the appeasing, weakling teenyboppers on this site. Worry about your guy, Obama, instead. He releases top secret information that has our allies questioning whether they can ever work with us again and at the same time punishes our own people for keeping the country safe. He, is more like an enemy of the state! When we start getting hit left and right again Obama, who blows with the wind, will change his tune real quick on these "enhanced' techniques! Babies like you will too. MoveOn, children. Move on..