Consortium News: Bush Boasted about Tortured Captive

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Bush Boasted about Tortured Captive

By Jason Leopold
March 8, 2009


About the time President George W. Bush was boasting of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri’s capture in late 2002, the alleged mastermind of the USS Cole bombing was undergoing waterboarding, according to top-secret documents released in a New York federal court case.

One heavily censored page of what appears to be a CIA internal report about the torture of “war on terror” detainees reads: “Interrogators administered (redacted) waterboard to Al-Nashiri.”

The same page indicates that a dozen of 92 destroyed videotapes of the CIA’s interrogations were of detainees undergoing brutal treatment. “There are 92 videotapes, 12 of which include EIT (enhanced interrogation techniques) applications,” the page says.

Though U.S. officials confirmed more than a year ago that al-Nashiri and two other detainees were subjected to the drowning sensation of waterboarding, the page, which was released on Friday, represents rare documented evidence that the technique, regarded as torture at least since the Inquisition, was used against prisoners in American custody.

On Dec. 3, 2002, President Bush cited the capture of al-Nashiri as an important victory in the “war on terror.” In a speech to an excited crowd at the fairgrounds in Shreveport, Louisiana, Bush declared:

“The other day we hauled a guy in named al-Nashiri. It's not a household name here in America. I can understand why some go blank when they hear his name. But he was the al-Qaeda commander in the Gulf States. ........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/030709c.html