By GottaLaff
Jason Leopold is a good friend who works his tush off when he sniffs out a good story. He's thorough and does his homework. For that reason, it's necessary to read his entire post, not just the excerpts I provide here.
There is a lot to this story, and it's an important one. Jason has graciously given his permission to cross-post his work:
The Justice Department has quietly recanted nearly every major claim the Bush administration had made about "high-value" detainee Abu Zubaydah, a Guantanamo prisoner who at one time was said to have planned the 9/11 attacks and was the No. 2 and 3 person in al-Qaeda.
Additionally, Justice has backed away from some of the claims intelligence officials working in the Clinton administration had also leveled against Zubaydah, specifically, that he was directly involved in the planning of the 1998 embassy bombings in East Africa. [...]
His torture was videotaped and the tapes later destroyed. [...]
In recent months, former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen has been on a public relations campaign promoting his book, "Courting Disaster," in which he defended the torture of Zubaydah, claiming that he reviewed classified intelligence that revealed Zubaydah's torture produced actionable intelligence that thwarted imminent plots against the United States.
But court documents unclassified last week debunk Thiessen's assertions. Moreover, the government acknowledges in its partially redacted filing that it does not rely on anything Zubaydah told his torturers after his March 2002 capture in Pakistan in arguing that he should continue to be detained.
The document also refutes every statement George W. Bush made publicly about Zubaydah, who the former president claimed was one of al-Qaeda's "top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States."
For the first time, the government now officially admits that Zubaydah did not have "any direct role in or advance knowledge of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001," and was neither a "member" of al-Qaeda nor "formally" identified with the terrorist organization.
Please go read the whole thing here while I find a wall to bang my head on... repeatedly.
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All my previous posts on this subject matter can be found here; That link includes one specific to only Fayiz al-Kandari's story here. Here are audio and video interviews with Lt. Col. Wingard, one by David Shuster, one by Ana Marie Cox, and more. My guest commentary at BuzzFlash is here.
Lt. Col. Barry Wingard is a military attorney who represents Fayiz Al-Kandari in the Military Commission process and in no way represents the opinions of his home state. When not on active duty, Colonel Wingard is a public defender in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
If you are inclined to help rectify these injustices: Twitterers, use the hashtag #FreeFayiz. We have organized a team to get these stories out. If you are interested in helping Fayiz out, e-mail me at The Political Carnival, address in sidebar to the right; or tweet me at @GottaLaff.
If you'd like to see other ways you can take action, go here and scroll down to the end of the article.
Then read Jane Mayer's book The Dark Side. You'll have a much greater understanding of why I post endlessly about this, and why I'm all over the CIA deception issues, too.
More of Fayiz's story here, at Answers.com.
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