BUSHCO Waterboarded A Brain-Damaged + Low Level Operative 83 Times & Got - NOTHING

[kpete]

Wednesday, April 22, 2009
How the Bush administration waterboarded a low-level operative,
who was brain-damaged, 83 times

He was low-level and brain-damaged. The CIA knew that and waterboarded him 83 times anyway -- because Bush wanted answers.

by Joe Sudbay (DC) on 4/22/2009 04:00:00 PM

In the end, though, not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida's tortured confessions, according to former senior government officials who closely followed the interrogations. Nearly all of the leads attained through the harsh measures quickly evaporated, while most of the useful information from Abu Zubaida -- chiefly names of al-Qaeda members and associates -- was obtained before waterboarding was introduced, they said.

........................

Abu Zubaida was not even an official member of al-Qaeda, according to a portrait of the man that emerges from court documents and interviews with current and former intelligence, law enforcement and military sources. Rather, he was a "fixer" for radical Muslim ideologues, and he ended up working directly with al-Qaeda only after Sept. 11 -- and that was because the United States stood ready to invade Afghanistan.

And, that article included this tidbit:

***He was seriously wounded by shrapnel from a mortar blast in 1992, sustaining head injuries that left him with severe memory problems, which still linger.

***Yes, he was low-level and brain-damaged. The CIA knew that and waterboarded him 83 times anyway -- because Bush wanted answers.

..........................

Author Ron Suskind in his book, The One Percent Solution, gave the background on Zubaydah. I read that book and found the info. on Zubaydah, who Bush often invoked, just jaw-dropping. Here's a synopsis:

Abu Zubaydah, his captors discovered, turned out to be mentally ill and nothing like the pivotal figure they supposed him to be. CIA and FBI analysts, poring over a diary he kept for more than a decade, found entries "in the voice of three people: Hani 1, Hani 2, and Hani 3" -- a boy, a young man and a middle-aged alter ego. All three recorded in numbing detail "what people ate, or wore, or trifling things they said." Dan Coleman, then the FBI's top al-Qaeda analyst, told a senior bureau official, "This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality."

Abu Zubaydah also appeared to know nothing about terrorist operations; rather, he was al-Qaeda's go-to guy for minor logistics -- travel for wives and children and the like. That judgment was "echoed at the top of CIA and was, of course, briefed to the President and Vice President," Suskind writes. And yet somehow, in a speech delivered two weeks later, President Bush portrayed Abu Zubaydah as "one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States." And over the months to come, under White House and Justice Department direction, the CIA would make him its first test subject for harsh interrogation techniques.

Bush, with an assist from Alberto Gonzales, allowed the execution of a "mentally retarded" man. It's wasn't a big leap to torturing a brain-injured suspect. They should be really proud of this one.

more at:
http://www.americablog.com/2009/04/how-bush-administration-waterboarded.html

[southpaw]

1. than

[MannyGoldstein]

2. It Gets More Awful By The Minute

We need to get to the bottom of this and serve judgment and punishment on war criminals. It blows my mind that a "Democratic" president is unsure of whether this is a crime or not.

Utterly fucked.

[gratuitous]

3. And his captors saw with their own eyes this guy didn't have all his marbles

And yet they continued the torture. I have to say I'm disinclined to let the torturers off the hook for any reason. If you'll strap a mentally disturbed man down, you'll strap your own mother down. And such a person has no place in human society.

[spanone]

4. the rot is deep

[TNOE]

5. Bush the Executioner

Had no problem in executing people while Governor of Texas either.

Thank God he was a "christian" and God put him in the White House.

[Occam Bandage]

6. Traumatic brain injury isn't mental retardation.

Not a huge problem, but they're different issues, and for accuracy it should be corrected to "brain damaged."

[Arctic Dave]

8. One in the same if you look in the thesaurus.

Just sayin'.

[Occam Bandage]

9. First, you mean "one and the same," and secondly, thesauruses are terrible.

They are terrible because they encourage people to use words without understanding what those words mean; there are very few words in English that are pure and precise synonyms (even words like royal, regal, and kingly are all different in connotation despite having the same definition). Mental retardation is diminished mental capacity as result of innate developmental problems originating in childhood. Brain injury is a change in brain function, sometimes with diminished mental capacity, as result of external physical trauma. They are only the same thing in that diminished mental capacity is involved.

By comparison, a German is a European as a result of their citizenship in Germany, and a Briton is a European as a result of their citizenship in Great Britain. Yet claiming that means that Winston Churchill was a German is just strange.

[Arctic Dave]

11. Thank you for the correction.

But it is the same, it is usually how society uses the language that changes. Language is never in a point of stasis. This why the thesaurus is useful, it allows us the bridge the language gap of time and or region to come to a conclusion.

[Uncle Joe]

7. But, but, but, Peggy Noonan said "some things in life need to be mysterious."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5504785

Thanks for the thread, kpete.

[formercia]

10. To Junior, it was just another fraternity hazing.

Junior had personally been torturing pledges long before he became usurper in chief.