One thing that Joan McCarter picked up on that I hadn’t really thought about is that the Bush administration and the Intelligence Community did pick up some pieces of high value information through their torture. McClatchey reports on it today:
…for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there.”
…
“There was constant pressure on the intelligence agencies and the interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the detainees, especially the few high-value ones we had, and when people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s people to push harder,” he continued.
“Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s people were told repeatedly, by CIA . . . and by others, that there wasn’t any reliable intelligence that pointed to operational ties between bin Laden and Saddam, and that no such ties were likely because the two were fundamentally enemies, not allies.”
It’s a matter of public record that the decision to invade Iraq was made and conveyed to British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the Republican caucus in the spring of 2002, before the waterboarding of anyone had begun. In fact, President Bush was not making a consistent effort to hide his decision, as this April 5, 2002 interview with Britain’s ITV Television makes clear:
Q: I take your point about no immediate plans, but in a sense, have you made up your mind that Iraq must be attacked?
THE PRESIDENT: I made up my mind that Saddam needs to go. That’s about all I’m willing to share with you.
Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld were desperately trying to get intelligence that would connect Iraq to the 9/11 attacks, and they communicated that desire quite clearly to the people who went on to do the waterboarding on Abu Zubaydah in August 2002 (remember Andy Card’s remark that you don’t roll out a new product in August?) and on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in March 2003 (the month we invaded Iraq).
On page 37 of the OLC memo, in a passage discussing the differences between SERE techniques and the torture used with detainees, the memo explains:
“The CIA used the waterboard “at least 83 times during August 2002 in the interrogation of Zubaydah. IG Report at 90, and 183 times during March 2003 in the interrogation of KSM, see id. at 91.”
The timing of these waterboardings goes beyond the coincidental. But the important thing is that the torture revealed that there was no connection between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. Maybe Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld knew that waterboarding could produce false confessions and that is precisely what they were hoping for. But, if they were looking for the truth, they got some measure of it. Even under sustained and relentless torture, they did not get useful information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda or the 9/11 attacks. And, if they really thought that such a connection existed and would justify invading Iraq, they should have been disabused on that score.
Unfortunately, they only wanted intelligence that would advance their deadly agenda. Intelligence that undermined their agenda was met with calls for more torture and then, finally, it was ignored.
