HBox
06-20-2006, 10:53 AM
<p><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/19/AR2006061901211_pf.html" target="_self">I don't know what to say after reading this.</a></p><p>One example out of many comes in Ron Suskind's gripping narrative of
what the White House has celebrated as one of the war's major
victories: the capture of Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan in March 2002.
Described as al-Qaeda's chief of operations even after U.S. and
Pakistani forces kicked down his door in Faisalabad, the Saudi-born
jihadist was the first al-Qaeda detainee to be shipped to a secret
prison abroad. Suskind shatters the official story line here.</p><p>Abu
Zubaydah, his captors discovered, turned out to be mentally ill and
nothing like the pivotal figure they supposed him to be. CIA and FBI
analysts, poring over a diary he kept for more than a decade, found
entries "in the voice of three people: Hani 1, Hani 2, and Hani 3" -- a
boy, a young man and a middle-aged alter ego. All three recorded in
numbing detail "what people ate, or wore, or trifling things they
said." Dan Coleman, then the FBI's top al-Qaeda analyst, told a senior
bureau official, "This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality."</p><p>Abu
Zubaydah also appeared to know nothing about terrorist operations;
rather, he was al-Qaeda's go-to guy for minor logistics -- travel for
wives and children and the like. That judgment was "echoed at the top
of CIA and was, of course, briefed to the President and Vice
President," Suskind writes. And yet somehow, in a speech delivered two
weeks later, President Bush portrayed Abu Zubaydah as "one of the top
operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United
States." And over the months to come, under White House and Justice
Department direction, the CIA would make him its first test subject for
harsh interrogation techniques.</p><p>...</p><p>Which brings us back to the unbalanced Abu Zubaydah. "I said he was
important," Bush reportedly told Tenet at one of their daily meetings.
"You're not going to let me lose face on this, are you?" "No sir, Mr.
President," Tenet replied. Bush "was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to
tell us the truth," Suskind writes, and he asked one briefer, "Do some
of these harsh methods really work?" Interrogators did their best to
find out, Suskind reports. They strapped Abu Zubaydah to a water-board,
which reproduces the agony of drowning. They threatened him with
certain death. They withheld medication. They bombarded him with
deafening noise and harsh lights, depriving him of sleep. Under that
duress, he began to speak of plots of every variety -- against shopping
malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment
buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty. With each new
tale, "thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each .
. . target." And so, Suskind writes, "the United States would torture a
mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he
uttered." <br /></p>
what the White House has celebrated as one of the war's major
victories: the capture of Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan in March 2002.
Described as al-Qaeda's chief of operations even after U.S. and
Pakistani forces kicked down his door in Faisalabad, the Saudi-born
jihadist was the first al-Qaeda detainee to be shipped to a secret
prison abroad. Suskind shatters the official story line here.</p><p>Abu
Zubaydah, his captors discovered, turned out to be mentally ill and
nothing like the pivotal figure they supposed him to be. CIA and FBI
analysts, poring over a diary he kept for more than a decade, found
entries "in the voice of three people: Hani 1, Hani 2, and Hani 3" -- a
boy, a young man and a middle-aged alter ego. All three recorded in
numbing detail "what people ate, or wore, or trifling things they
said." Dan Coleman, then the FBI's top al-Qaeda analyst, told a senior
bureau official, "This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality."</p><p>Abu
Zubaydah also appeared to know nothing about terrorist operations;
rather, he was al-Qaeda's go-to guy for minor logistics -- travel for
wives and children and the like. That judgment was "echoed at the top
of CIA and was, of course, briefed to the President and Vice
President," Suskind writes. And yet somehow, in a speech delivered two
weeks later, President Bush portrayed Abu Zubaydah as "one of the top
operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United
States." And over the months to come, under White House and Justice
Department direction, the CIA would make him its first test subject for
harsh interrogation techniques.</p><p>...</p><p>Which brings us back to the unbalanced Abu Zubaydah. "I said he was
important," Bush reportedly told Tenet at one of their daily meetings.
"You're not going to let me lose face on this, are you?" "No sir, Mr.
President," Tenet replied. Bush "was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to
tell us the truth," Suskind writes, and he asked one briefer, "Do some
of these harsh methods really work?" Interrogators did their best to
find out, Suskind reports. They strapped Abu Zubaydah to a water-board,
which reproduces the agony of drowning. They threatened him with
certain death. They withheld medication. They bombarded him with
deafening noise and harsh lights, depriving him of sleep. Under that
duress, he began to speak of plots of every variety -- against shopping
malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment
buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty. With each new
tale, "thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each .
. . target." And so, Suskind writes, "the United States would torture a
mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he
uttered." <br /></p>