This revelation doesn't surprise me, but it horrifies me all over again.
The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist.
As we all know, there were no links between bin Laden's outfit and Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Bush and Cheney wouldn't (couldn't?) believe that, and their insistence that there were links provided the impetus to waterboard KSM and Zubaydah and to apply all the other techniques outlined in the torture memos (slapping, sleep deprivation, etc.) in order to get that non-existent evidence.
We went to war on false pretenses; that's pretty well accepted. But to torture people in order to try to fabricate evidence which would justify those pretenses? That's a war crime.
Posted by Linkmeister at April 22, 2009 10:24 AM | TrackBack