What a surprise – the declassified document that Cheney says proves the effectiveness of the “enhanced interrogation techniques” (and the rest of the world calls torture) doesn’t prove Cheney’s point at all. Spencer Ackerman gives some examples:
Those documents were obtained today by The Washington Independent and are available here. Strikingly, they provide little evidence for Cheney’s claims that the “enhanced interrogation” program run by the CIA provided valuable information. In fact, throughout both documents, many passages — though several are incomplete and circumstantial, actually suggest the opposite of Cheney’s contention: that non-abusive techniques actually helped elicit some of the most important information the documents cite in defending the value of the CIA’s interrogations.
The first document, issued by the CIA in July 2004 is about the interrogation of 9/11 architect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times in March 2003 and whom, the newly released CIA Inspector General report on torture details, had his children’s lives threatened by an interrogator. None of that abuse is referred to in the publicly released version of the July 2004 document. Instead, we learn from the July 2004 document that not only did the man known as “KSM” largely provide intelligence about “historical plots” pulled off from al-Qaeda, a fair amount of the knowledge he imparted to his interrogators came from his “rolodex” — that is, what intelligence experts call “pocket litter,” or the telling documentation found on someone’s person when captured. As well, traditional intelligence work appears to have done wonders — including a fair amount of blundering on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s part:
In response to questions about [al-Qaeda’s] efforts to acquire [weapons of mass destruction], [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] revealed that he had met three individuals involved in [al-Qaeda’s] program to produce anthrax. He appears to have calculated, incorrectly, that we had this information already, given that one of the three — Yazid Sufaat — had been in foreign custody for several months.
You can read the documents yourself, here. I’m not really sure how we got to this place – arguing whether torture was o.k. if it works, but here we are. I personally think whether torture “works” or not is irrelevant. We’re supposed to be a nation of laws and a model for other nations to follow. However, these documents show that torture doesn’t even work so why are we bothering? As people that are experts in the field have been telling us – torture gives you a lot of false information. The real information only comes from building a relationship with the person who has the information. I’m sorry to tell you that the ticking time bomb scenario isn’t real. If you have to waterboard someone 183 times in a month – that ticking time bomb has already gone off.