McClatchy Papers: Bush Pushed Torture to Find Iraq-Al Qaida Link
A link which, of course, never existed.
In other words, Bush/Cheney et al were so intent on getting evidence to justify their misbegotten war in Iraq that they approved torture in order to find it:
WASHINGTON — 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.
Such information would’ve provided a foundation for one of former President George W. Bush’s main arguments for invading Iraq in 2003. In fact, no evidence has ever been found of operational ties between Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network and Saddam’s regime.
“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.”
Senior administration officials, however, “blew that off and kept insisting that we’d overlooked something, that the interrogators weren’t pushing hard enough, that there had to be something more we could do to get that information,” he said.
McClatchy Newspapers, which includes the former Knight-Ridder chain, continues to do some of the best investigative reporting in the country. Read the whole damn article, and come back here to vent.
no way man. I read that Saddam was allowing al-qaeda. He met with them! in fact, he knew about 9/11!
They tortured and kept torturing until the got the answers they wanted.
To me, this is just more evidence that the Bush administration was determined to go into Iraq from the very beginning of his presidency.
To me this is just like the Gay Thought of the Day post, in that I’ve always thought this was true.
You liberals who refuse to pretend that torture saved the country want a US city to be incinerated.
That is the only conclusion that one can draw from this.
Exactly Jason330!
The neocons saw a political opportunity post 9/11, and went for it big time in March 2003. Now we know for sure that torture was one of the tactics attempted, the other was huge lies.
The neocons thought that they could take control of oil.
The neocons thought that they could establish a permanent military base in Baghdad.
The neocons thought that they could make the GOP into a permanent political powerhouse.
In spite of all their setbacks, and the damage done to this nation, they are at it again.
Observe Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Frank Gaffney and the like, and the right wing radio freaks, and Fox News. What is their strategy?
Someone please correct me if I am wrong.
Their strategy, in my view, is to sabotage Obama and the Dems into failure, so they can begin their climb back in 2010.
You liberals who refuse to pretend that torture saved the country want a US city to be incinerated.
That was taken pretty much verbatim from the ironically named blog: Common Sense Political Thought
The best thing to do is have a complete opening of all the information, all of it. You will see why you may disagree with the policy there was not law broken and the non combatants rate any constitutional protections or Geneva Convention protections.
For those who want to bash Bush stand by for nothing happening to him at all. Obama, however will have to expplain if things were so bad why he did not support prosecution from the start and also why he still allows rendition?
Can’t wait.
Mike Protack
I have no idea what you just said.
Neither does he, frankly.
I don’t speak wingnut.
My wingnutese translator X35-D returned this…
Oh… so he’s saying what he always says. I should have known. Thanks, Jason.