Saturday, April 18, 2009

The Problem With Torture Part XXXIV

From Digby at Hullabaloo here. (Updated on Sunday, below.)

Blowback:

Abu Zubaydah had provided much valuable information under less severe treatment, and the harsher handling produced no breakthroughs, according to one former intelligence official with direct knowledge of the case. Instead, watching his torment caused great distress to his captors, the official said.

Even for those who believed that brutal treatment could produce results, the official said, “seeing these depths of human misery and degradation has a traumatic effect.”

Imagine what these depths of human misery and degradation did to the prisoner? Of course, legal wing nut hacks like David Rifkin are out there saying those memos show awesome legal reasoning and prove that these actions were not torture. So perhaps it was actually much harder on the torturers because they erroneously thought it was torture, in which case it actually was torture -- for them.

Apparently, this all came about because there were those in the field who felt they had extracted all useful information but were pressured by Washington to step it up.

And why was that do you suppose? . . .

[Sunday update] But watch this:

No comments: