Dick Cheney’s Torture Delusion Destroyed by Timeline
By Larry Johnson on May 21, 2009 at 12:34 PM in Current Affairs
Dick Cheney continues to insist that “enhanced interrogation” kept Americans safe and, until now, has had some success pushing this nonsense. But if you examine the timeline for Abu Zubaydah from the time he was captured until he was subjected to American-style torture you will realize that Dick Cheney is completely, utterly full of shit.
Let’s start with the canard that the techniques employed are part of SERE training. SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape) is the acronym for a training program for military and intelligence officers designed to simulate what might happen if one is captured by tyrants who ignore the Geneva Conventions.
What is the number one thing you are taught in the SERE program if you are captured?
Delay for as long as possible in giving up information. Are you familiar with Bravo Two Zero? It is both a book and a movie recounting the events surrounding the capture and torture of a British Special Ops unit in Iraq during 1991. The author, Andy McNabb, recounts in detail the SERE strategy for giving out information in snippets and buying time. Why? Intelligence is perishable. Once a combatant/terrorist is captured any information they have starts to degrade with the passage of time. If the prisoner is no longer in touch with their chain of command they will not know about changes in plans in operations.
Those who endure SERE training go in with the expectation of trying to hold out for at least 48 hours in divulging any information. Got that? 48 HOURS!!!
So let’s look at the case of Abu Zubaydah. He was captured in March of 2002. He was interrogated starting in March of 2002 by the FBI (Ali Soufan). The FBI interrogation, which conformed to U.S. legal standards continued in April, May and June. Sometime in June the CIA intervened and tossed the FBI out. July? Nothing. August? The Department of Justice releases the infamous memo authorizing the so-called “enhanced” interrogation techniques. But these methods supposedly are not employed until September 2002.
That is more than SIX MONTHS since the capture of Abu Zubaydah. If we go stictly by SERE standards, Zubaydah no longer had relevant actionable intelligence justifying extreme interrogation techniques. His information at best was dated. It may have been useful in compiling a historical picture of Al Qaeda operations but it was not time-sensitive, ticking-timebomb kind of information.
Dick Cheney is lying when he insists that enhanced interrogation was critical in extracting essential information from Abu Zubaydah. His explanation would make sense if Zubaydah was subjected to these techniques in the first week of captivity. But that did not happen. The CIA reports that six months passed before Zubaydah was tortured. Perhaps the CIA is lying about the time. Maybe they started down this path in July. Even if that is true we are still talking about three months elapsing between the date of capture and the date of torture.
When you look at the timeline it becomes clear that Dick Cheney does not know what he is talking about and is indulging some kind of TV fantasy. Waterboarding someone six months after they were captured is an illegal and unnecessary descent into brutality. The fact that Cheney insists on embracing such techniques informs us of the kind of tyrant he is at heart. Good riddance Dick.
by Ronald Scott
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