
The Al-Qaeda Leader Who Wasn’t: The Shameful Ordeal of Abu Zubaydah - brhsiao
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176132/tomgram%3A_rebecca_gordon%2C_exhibit_one_in_any_future_american_war_crimes_trial/
======
patrickg_zill
Before, we were told how tough it was on a person to be waterboarded.

That it was so debilitating that it was only used in extreme cases.

Now this guy is waterboarded 3 times a day for a month, basically at every
meal (if you want to think about it in terms of frequency).

It seems clear that it is not rare; and that it doesn't really deliver
results.

Again and again, we have been lied to about waterboarding, how often it is
done, what level of use we get out of it, etc.

And, this is just 1 example - there could well be other methods of torture and
many other cases of incompetence... makes you want to say "you know what?
Let's just scrap the whole thing..."

If waterboarding was a piece of software it would be considered too crashy and
unreliable and a replacement that worked better would be sought immediately.

~~~
overcast
Well it didn't deliver results, because none of it was true. So how could the
guy give up any information that didn't exist?

~~~
iandanforth
Imagine you had a scale, onto which you put a weight labeled "100kg". You know
it weights 100kg because it says so right there. The scale however, only
registers 85kg. You take it off, you put it back on, the scale always says the
same thing. You try different scales, they say 85kg, but you _keep going_
because it's 100kg and you're going to find a scale that's accurate!
Eventually you find a scale that says what you want.

This straw man illustrates that at some point, it isn't the tool, but the
process that's flawed. Even if your tool is accurate, if you don't believe it,
you can't get at the truth, and if you work hard enough you can find a broken
tool to tell you what you want.

So perhaps there is some truth to the idea that torture can extract true
information from people, but if the whole process operates like the above
straw man, it totally invalidates the use of the tool.

~~~
Aelinsaar
It's more like, you will extract information, but only in hindsight can you
ever know if it was worthwhile, accurate, a trap, etc. You will also kill some
people, some people won't break easily, and some will babble anything and
everything. You won't know which is which in the moment, and usually you're
torturing for time-sensitive information.

What you get is what happened during WWII, when the resistances knew they just
had to withstand torture for 24 hours, 48 at most. It's amazing what motivated
people can do when they have a goal, and that goes for the tortured as well as
the torturers.

------
jmnicolas
This article will not change anything. By the time our day end we will have
been bombarded by so much other information that it will just be one more
forgotten thing.

And there's so much things that are revolting that our brains are just
shutting down as a self defense mechanism.

Sociopaths in power don't even need to hide anymore, they know they are hidden
in the noise.

I mean look at Turkey : they help ISIS, they shoot Syrian refugees crossing
the border, they kill their own Kurdish population and they denies a genocide
... barely a blip in the news.

~~~
rhino369
One reason this won't cause a blip in the news is because it's really
sensationalist and biased.

The article implies that the government was totally wrong about Abu Zubaydah
and, therefore, he was totally innocent But to prove that the article cites to
the court memo that says the US government doesn't alleged Zubaydah was a
member of al Qaeda.

But the government still alleged he ran an independent terrorist training camp
that was affiliated with al Qaeda. The gov't just didn't "contend that
Petitioner was a 'member' of al-Qaida in the sense of having sworn bayat
(allegiance) or having otherwise satisfied any formal criteria that either
Petitioner or al-Qaida may have considered necessary for inclusion in
al~Qaida. Nor is the Government detaining Petitioner based on any allegation
that Petitioner views himself as part of al-Qaida as a matter of subjective
personal conscience, ideology, or worldview. Rather, Respondent's detention of
Petitioner is based on conduct and actions that establish Petitioner was 'part
of' hostile forces and 'substantially supported' those forces."

~~~
totall
If he wasn't innocent, he would be judged by an independent court, and be
given the chance of challenging the evidence against him. The US is a
democracy.

------
npx
I think it's time to confront the reality that we have a serious asshole
epidemic in America. It has gone unchecked for a few centuries and it has
reached a fever pitch of state sanctioned torture and Donald Trump supporters.

Much like idiots, assholes cannot possibly realize that they are being
assholes. It's one of the symptoms. They're actually completely confident that
what they're doing makes total sense. It's a touch-and-go sorta thing; how do
you openly confront assholery without becoming a huge asshole? I call this the
Snowden dilemma. It's a real problem.

We are well past the point of occasionally waking up to find feces on the
kitchen table. The majority of this country is subsisting entirely on a diet
of pure shit. I don't want to seem elitist - I regard myself as a world class
dummy - but I do know what shit tastes like and I understand that eating it is
bad for you. I don't have any answers but I think we're in a lot of trouble
here.

"Democracy always seems bent upon killing the thing it theoretically loves.
[...] It not only wars upon the thing itself; it even wars upon mere academic
advocacy of it. I offer the spectacle of Americans jailed for reading the Bill
of Rights as perhaps the most gaudily humorous ever witnessed in the modern
world." \--H.L. Mencken

~~~
titzer
I don' think there's a magic bullet to asshattery. There has to be a cultural
shift away from asshattery as acceptable behavior. The same way there has been
a cultural shift away from domestic abuse and racism being acceptable (though
they both have their stragglers).

The problem is that the diet of pure shit serves a purpose. It keeps people
both agitated and docile at the same time. The kind of agitated and docile you
would recognize in a cranky 80 yr man who shouts at clouds. Angry and
uncomfortable, but ultimately harmless; miles away from taking an AK-47 and
marching on Washington, and ultimately willing to pull the lever for the blue
or red party, or best, not vote at all.

------
1024core
The sad part is: despite reading this article and fully agreeing with it,
conservatives in this country will just shrug and say: mistakes happen, let's
not dwell on it. And they feel justified in taking this view because they know
deep down that it would never happen to a white person in today's US. Case in
point: John Walker Lindh -vs- Jose Padilla. JWL (a white guy) was actually
fighting against the Americans; was taken prisoner, treated well, immediately
put on trial and sentenced to 20 years (he'll be out in 7). Jose Padilla (a
Hispanic male) was tortured for years in a Naval brig, without charges.

~~~
CWuestefeld
_conservatives in this country will just shrug and say: mistakes happen, let
's not dwell on it._

Apparently so will our Liberal president:

 _I hope that today’s report can help us leave these [torture] techniques
where they belong—in the past._ [https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-
office/2014/12/09/state...](https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-
office/2014/12/09/statement-president-report-senate-select-committee-
intelligence)

------
dandare
If they can do this to him they can do it to anyone. The saddest thing is the
example the "free world" is giving to all totalitarian torturers.

------
astazangasta
Sometimes I question whether there is the possibility of change, here. The CIA
has started openly torturing people - they have no doubt been covertly
torturing people for years; we've been showing this in our fiction for
decades, and this is probably largely the public's view of how the CIA is -
unsavory characters who do the "dirty work" that needs to get done to keep us
safe.

Why do we accept this notion of torture as a heroic virtue, when it's
obviously not? I think we're unable to assimilate the alternative - that our
national myths are all false, that we are subject to an evil torture state,
that our security apparatus is beyond democratic control or the rule of law.
All of these are horrific, monstrous possibilities that we can't confront, so
it's much easier for us to rationalize them away by suggesting that the CIA's
actions are not, actually, evil.

Determining otherwise requires an act of national catharsis, a revolution in
our understanding of ourselves as a political entity. We are not safe, good,
democratic. We are venal, aggressive, evil. Making this confrontation will
take more than just a factual understanding.

------
fiatmoney
You would expect this to happen. Things like the Geneva Conventions are
artifacts of roughly symmetric wars, where one could reasonably expect
treatment & retaliation to be reciprocal. This explains things like
restrictions on, eg, hollow point bullets - it's easy enough for everyone to
use them, and it only serves to increase the severity of the conflict with no
change in relative outcomes.

Now that the US doesn't actually fear having large numbers of troops captured,
and even if they did their opponents have no desire to reciprocate treatment,
they're "free" to engage in whatever horrific behavior they would like, and
vise versa.

Lind is good on this: [http://www.amazon.com/Generation-Warfare-Handbook-
William-Li...](http://www.amazon.com/Generation-Warfare-Handbook-William-Lind-
ebook/dp/B017IP1JM2)

------
hoodoof
Well if he didn't hate the CIA before then he probably does now.

~~~
DoofusOfDeath
Good point. The argument could be made that the CIA agents involved have
provided material support for terrorism.

~~~
cmdrfred
[http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx_GOM4Jcjo](http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx_GOM4Jcjo)

Reminds me of this.

------
Esau
Speaking as someone who served in the U.S. military - this is not how a
prisoner should be treated.

~~~
Cthulhu_
Well no shit; there's the Geneva convention and shit that makes practices like
torture and such illegal. The US can waltz right over that though, because
what is anyone going to do?

~~~
Esau
I understand that some people argue that the Geneva Convention doesn't apply
to members of terrorist organizations; that it only applies to members of a
sovereign country's military. Regardless, it reflects badly on us.

Torture is wrong; no matter who is doing it or who it is being done to.

------
okreallywtf
I think their discussion of "learned helplessness" is interesting in this
context. I think it also applies to most Americans in the feeling that this
will occur in our name, without our consent or approval, regardless of what we
do. I don't think this is truly the case but it is hard to shake the feeling
that it is and be as outraged by this as we absolutely should be.

------
pdonis
I notice that the article places all the blame on the Bush administration--yet
it says the Obama administration quietly dropped the charges but did not
release Zubaydah.

~~~
IkmoIkmo
Charges is not the right word, he has to this day not been charged with
anything whatsoever. He's held based on suspicion, allegations, stuff like
that. Essentially awaiting a fair trial for over a decade, while being
tortured in the process. It's quite insane.

~~~
pdonis
_> Charges is not the right word_

Yes, good point, I should have said "dropped the claims being made" or
something like that.

------
rjett
As a free member of the western world, happily able to pursue "the dream," and
unexposed to the direct effects of war and humanitarian crimes, what am I to
do? If you think about it, the domestic conditions in the US, relative to many
of the places in the non-western world, are such that we have no incentive to
ACTUALLY do anything to change things for the better. Sure, we get upset about
reading articles like this. But is getting upset for 5 minutes, writing an
article, making a movie, or even settling into the mindset of being jaded and
skeptical about our own country's leadership really the toolset we are left
with at the end of the day to cause change? Is there revolution in the modern
west? Or are we neutered by the relatively great living conditions we take for
granted?

~~~
woodman
So here is a false choice, but consider which one would have a greater and
longer lasting impact:

A) You dash to the rolltop and feverishly write letters to every politician
you can think of. You then get on a bus with a bunch of other upset people, go
to DC and wave signs with clever catch phrases. You then live in a tent on
public space for several weeks.

B) You consider this information, your feelings, and your prior model of the
way the world worked. Methodically you reexamine long unchallenged precepts
related to morality, the role of the state, and the logical consistency of the
entire endeavor. After a while you find that things make a lot more sense, you
are no longer experience the effects of cognitive dissonance when new
information hits your brain. You share this new understanding, through example
(maybe by pestering strangers online, either or).

Clearly I favor option B, but one could easily deride it as slacktivism -
though the self reflection is not something you often see in #Kony2012. Every
example of positive change that I can think, involved marching and rhyming
slogans, would not have been possible without a great deal of uncomfortable
self examination.

------
Lagged2Death
The historical purpose and utility of torture is to produce made-up
confessions and bullshit "intelligence" to lend some veneer of necessity to
whatever course of action the high and mighty have already committed to.

Just about anybody with a Middle-Eastern-sounding name and the slightest
plausible connection to or proximity with "﻿Al Qaeda" (conveniently defined
and delimited by the torturers themselves) would have been equally useful for
this purpose. _There is no "right" man, no "wrong" man._ That's torture. It's
a show, a blood pageant. It's reading the Tarot or goat entrails.

That's the system, the procedure you defend when you apologize for torture.

------
confluence
The CIA is not known for its intelligence.

~~~
GordonS
Agreed, they've come to be known for lack of oversight, being involved in
corruption, being involved in drug production and trafficking, overthrowing
democraically elected governments, installing despots, grabbing people from
their home countries and torturing them in absolutely vile ways, and more.

The 3 letters 'CIA' now strike fear into the hearts of innocent people across
the globe.

~~~
saiya-jin
I would say disgust rather than fear, just another entitled bunch of a __holes
who think they can do whatever they want all around the globe and they
actually have means to do so.

but then comes fleeting moment of satisfaction when some of them are shot,
kidnapped etc... yeah, that's how despised they are

~~~
GordonS
> just another entitled bunch of aholes who think they can do whatever they
> want all around the globe and they actually have means to do so

I think that understates things a bit - I'm not aware of any other group in
history that has freely wrought global havoc for so long, torturing, killing,
trafficking in drugs, destroying lives, destroying whole _nations_...

Honestly, they are _terrifying_.

~~~
cryoshon
Yeah. I wonder if there's a way to tally up their death toll... it's possible
it'd be in the millions.

------
eric_h
Same article on a website that is not _awful_

[http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176132/tomgram%3A_rebecca_go...](http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176132/tomgram%3A_rebecca_gordon%2C_exhibit_one_in_any_future_american_war_crimes_trial/)

~~~
Strom
Good thing I clicked on it before it was changed. I have the complete opposite
reaction. The Nation's page has a nice picture to set the theme and uses a
wider space with a bigger font, while the TomDispatch page looks like
something from 1999.

~~~
eric_h
I agree that the _design_ of the nation's site is better/more modern. However,
when I landed on the site, I was able to read the first sentence before a
modal subscription form popped up. I clicked the little x button in the top
right of that modal, and it did a full page load redirecting me to an article
about hillary clinton, and then popped the subscription modal again.

I clicked the x button again and it did the same fucking thing, so I gave them
the email address go.fuck.yourself@gmail.com, found the article I was trying
to read and noticed that it was sourced from the link I dropped above. That
page loaded quickly and showed me what I wanted to see, the content.

/rant

~~~
Strom
That does sound like a bad experience indeed. I didn't get that myself, and
can't seem to replicate it now in incognito either. Perhaps geo-targeting?

Pop-ups suck, and I wish my browser's pop-up blocker would also block these
inline e-mail asking dialogs in every site.

~~~
eric_h
I've been meaning to whip up a browser extension that streamlines the Open web
inspector - find offending node on page - delete div element work flow.

There are some out there that sort of do what I want, but I really just want
to right click on the annoying popup/ad/whatever and select delete from the
contextual menu, or something like that.

------
overlordalex
The website comes up with a pop-up when I try read the article, but when I hit
the 'x' to close it I get dumped at the homepage.

Here's the Google cache version:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Itp90I0...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Itp90I0NOLMJ:www.thenation.com/article/the-
cia-waterboarded-the-wrong-man-83-times-in-1-month/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

~~~
puddintane
On my phone it is a scrolling advertisement. To get past it don't click on it
just scroll using the page around the ad and once you get past it you can
scroll again! Desktop I'm not sure about however

------
consto
Bush is a war criminal

------
visarga
Well, that should teach these non-terrorists not to be easily mistaken for
terrorists any more.

------
matthewhuff89
Trevor would be so into this story

~~~
Luc
Imagine the patches with cool Latin slogans!

------
spangry
Interesting implication from the title of the article: that it would be
'right' to waterboard some other men. Who are they, and what justifies their
torture? And before someone says it, I don't think "gathering intelligence" is
a sufficiently moral or practical justification. People being tortured don't
tell you valuable information; they tell you whatever they think will make the
torture stop.

The CIA is a sickening and surprisingly amateurish organisation. Their actions
over the past decades have ruined the United States' international moral
authority. It's laughable whenever some US politician goes on TV and proclaims
that America is some magical paragon of liberal democratic virtue. It's a sick
joke.

~~~
ikeboy
>Who are they, and what justifies their torture?

>People being tortured don't tell you valuable information; they tell you
whatever they think will make the torture stop.

You're already asserting your position, and disguising it as a question.
Virtually everyone seriously condoning torture believe it is effective. If
they were to believe it wasn't effective, they wouldn't order it to be done.

You may think it's not effective, but that should be argued on its own merit.
You're assuming the conclusion, then pretending that everyone else does and
are therefore unjustified.

~~~
evan_
> Virtually everyone seriously condoning torture believe it is effective.

I think a very high number of "torture proponents" are simply in favor of
hurting the "bad guys" and don't even care that there might be information to
be had.

Donald Trump said it best, to an arena full of cheering supporters:

"If it doesn’t work, they deserve it anyway, for what they’re doing"

In his mind, and the minds of his constituents, the "information gathering"
aspect is a sly wink at the other sadists in the room.

~~~
kobayashi
Donald Trump and his supporters are not the individuals who ordered the
torture/enhanced interrogation (T/EI). If one watches/reads General Hayden's
comments on the topic, he's disgusted by any call for punitive T/EI. He begins
talking about this at about 34:50. [https://youtu.be/GBx-
ECt6vUo?t=34m50s](https://youtu.be/GBx-ECt6vUo?t=34m50s)

The discussion on the US' RDI program begins at about 30:25.

~~~
cowardlydragon
T/EI ?

What a cute military acronym.

~~~
kobayashi
I just made it up.

------
elcapitan
While "waterboarding the right man 83 times in 1 month" would of course be a
very honorable occupation.

~~~
brillenfux
"Justified" is the word you're looking for.

We want it to be justified, not honorable. Nobody gives two shits about honor
as soon as it is about "them" (whoever fits that definition currently).

~~~
GordonS
I'm not sure this kind of disgusting behaviour can ever be justified.

~~~
Maxious
"Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe torture can be justified to extract
information from suspected terrorists, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll ...
Only 15 percent said torture should never be used ... The Reuters/Ipsos poll
included 1,976 people. It has a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy,
of 2.5 percentage points for the entire group"
[http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-torture-
exclu...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-torture-exclusive-
idUSKCN0WW0Y3)

~~~
reacweb
We can see physical or psychological torture used effectively in many TV
series. I have read that in real life, torture was very ineffective to make
people tell something they want to hide. Generally people die without speaking
or do not know any valuable secret.

Remember at school. When one child get punished, all the other childs of the
class become quiet. The main desired effect of torture is manipulation of
population. They do not care if the tortured guy speaks or dies, they want to
inspire fear.

I think it is the only way to understand how something so barbare and so
ineffective (in its direct purpose) is still used. TV series should stop
disinformation (pretending torture works and presenting torture as
acceptable).

Torture is unacceptable.

~~~
pessimizer
> We can see physical or psychological torture used effectively in many TV
> series.

Almost exclusively by the heroes, and it always works almost instantly. It
says something about the people writing them.

I can't wait for the episode of Daredevil where he spends a month and a half
torturing someone for information.

Remember all of those scenes in movies from the 70s and earlier when halfway
through the rape, the woman starts to get into it, and when we cut to the
morning after she's like "never leave me," and now the viewer is expected to
sympathise with the rapist and his victim against the world?

It's a snapshot of the mindset of elites.

> Remember at school. When one child get punished, all the other childs of the
> class become quiet. The main desired effect of torture is manipulation of
> population. They do not care if the tortured guy speaks or dies, they want
> to inspire fear.

This is only way torture is effective. Except, in this context, the more
accurate term for it is terrorism.

~~~
krapp
>Remember all of those scenes in movies from the 70s and earlier when halfway
through the rape, the woman starts to get into it, and when we cut to the
morning after and she's like "never leave me," and now the viewer is expected
to sympathise with the rapist and his victim against the world?

Actually, no. I've seen plenty of old movies, but I don't recall many rape
scenes, much less such rape scenes where the rapist is meant to be sympathized
with, or where the rape victim takes pleasure in it.

~~~
anarazel
Old James Bond movies at the very least come close to that. I was rather
shocked watching over on a plane recently.

~~~
pessimizer
James Bond and Pussy Galore - is this rape?

[http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/1570613-...](http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/1570613-James-
Bond-and-Pussy-Galore-is-this-rape)

