Cheney's Evidence Prove He's Wrong About Torture Effectiveness

Original Link: http://wizbangblue.com/2009/05/18/cheneys-evidence-prove-hes-wrong-about-torture-effectiveness.php

By Lee Ward

Torture does not produce good information. That's been proven over and over -- but those who approved the use of torture are still telling lies, claiming that torture produced reliable information.

And as he continues his laughable attempts to keep his torture-approving ass out of jail, there is no question that former V.P Cheney would like to selectively choose the memos and 'evidence' he presents to support his torture-loving ways.

Here's one bit of evidence he's sure to not cite -- and it was 'proof' that he himself presented to the nation back in 2004 -- asserting that Gitmo interrogation tactics had produced evidence of an al-qaeda/Iraq link.

It didn't:

Then-Vice President Dick Cheney , defending the invasion of Iraq , asserted in 2004 that detainees interrogated at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp had revealed that Iraq had trained al Qaida operatives in chemical and biological warfare, an assertion that wasn't true.
Cheney cited the information obtained through torture as evidence of an al-Qaeda/Iraq link, but further investigation over the course of the next few years failed to produce any real evidence to corroborate the bad information obtained through torture.

Just as the experts have been telling us -- torture doesn't work.

But at the time, Cheney was desperate to justify the invasion of Iraq - so Guantanamo interrogators were told to get the information Cheney wanted to hear - by any means possible.

Cheney's 2004 comments to the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News were largely overlooked at the time. However, they appear to substantiate recent reports that interrogators at Guantanamo and other prison camps were ordered to find evidence of alleged cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein -- despite CIA reports that there were only sporadic, insignificant contacts between the militant Islamic group and the secular Iraqi dictatorship.
The head of the Criminal Investigation Task Force at Guantanamo from 2002-2005 confirmed to McClatchy that in late 2002 and early 2003, intelligence officials were tasked to find, among other things, Iraq -al Qaida ties, which were a central pillar of the Bush administration's case for its March 2003 invasion of Iraq .

Cheney ordered up the information he wanted to hear, and had the interrogators use torture until they got it.

"I'm aware of the fact that in late 2002, early 2003, that (the alleged al Qaida-Iraq link) was an interest on the intelligence side," said retired Army Lt. Col. Brittain Mallow , a former military criminal investigator. "That was something they were tasked to look at."
He said he was unaware of the origins of the directive, but a former senior U.S. intelligence official has told McClatchy that Cheney's and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's offices were demanding that information in 2002 and 2003. The official, who wasn't authorized to speak publicly on the matter, requested anonymity.

During the same period, two alleged senior al Qaida operatives in CIA custody were waterboarded repeatedly -- Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times and Khalid Sheik Mohammed at least 183 times.

When the evidence Cheney and Rumsfeld wanted couldn't be produced - because it wasn't true -- Cheney and Rumsfeld encouraged the use of torture to get the words they wanted to hear -- never mind if it wasn't true.

A 2004 Senate Intelligence Committee report said that the two were questioned about the relationship between al Qaida and Iraq , and that both denied knowing of one.
A U.S. Army psychiatrist, Maj. Paul Burney , told the Army Inspector General's office in 2006 that during the same period, interrogators at Guantanamo were under pressure to produce evidence of al Qaida-Iraq ties, but were unable to do so.

"The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . . . there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results," Burney said, according excerpts of an interview published in a declassified Senate Armed Services Committee report released on April 22.

And despite the fact that there was no evidence to support his contentions that there was a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq, Dick Cheney continued to lie and say there was.

A key proponent of the Iraq invasion and of harsh interrogation methods, Cheney has become the leading defender of such measures, which included forced nudity, prolonged sleep deprivation, stress positions and waterboarding, which simulates drowning.
The Rocky Mountain News asked Cheney in a Jan. 9, 2004 , interview if he stood by his claims that Saddam's regime had maintained a "relationship" with al Qaida , raising the danger that Iraq might give the group chemical, biological or nuclear weapons to attack the U.S.

"Absolutely. Absolutely," Cheney replied.

It was a lie, and Dick Cheney ordered torture to be used in an attempt to fabricate the evidence that was lacking.