FBI 'broke' Saddam without torture, documents reveal

By GottaLaff

Surprise, surprise. Saddam folded without being hung by his beard. Isn't this pretty much what all the fuss about the treatment of detainees has been about? You remember, the fuss about torture not being effective, etc. etc. blahblahblah... yeah, that fuss:

Documents published by The New York Daily News this week reveal that a complex game of "mental chess," and not torture or any such rough treatment, "broke" Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

The revelation stands in stark contrast to the Bush administration's repeated claim that its so-called "harsh interrogation techniques" were necessary for high value prisoners when lives were on the line.

Check out the Daily News report by James Meek.

And while you're at it, check out the reports filed by Saddam's interrogator, here, here and here (PDF links).

And if you haven't done so yet, please read my posts about a Gitmo detainee who has been sold into custody and held and abused for eight years on triple hearsay "evidence". He never broke either. And as opposed to Saddam, he's innocent.

Per intel, Cheney’s office: Waterboard Iraqi prisoner for Saddam/Al Qaeda connection

By GottaLaff

All roads lead straight to the Nation of Dick:

Robert Windrem, who covered terrorism for NBC, reports exclusively in The Daily Beast that:

*Two U.S. intelligence officers confirm that Vice President Cheney’s office suggested waterboarding an Iraqi prisoner, a former intelligence official for Saddam Hussein, who was suspected to have knowledge of a Saddam-al Qaeda connection.

*The former chief of the Iraq Survey Group, Charles Duelfer, in charge of interrogations, tells The Daily Beast that he considered the request reprehensible.

*Much of the information in the report of the 9/11 Commission was provided through more than 30 sessions of torture of detainees.

At the end of April 2003, not long after the fall of Baghdad, U.S. forces captured an Iraqi who Bush White House officials suspected might provide information of a relationship between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s regime. Muhammed Khudayr al-Dulaymi was the head of the M-14 section of Mukhabarat, one of Saddam’s secret police organizations. His responsibilities included chemical weapons and contacts with terrorist groups.

“To those who wanted or suspected a relationship, he would have been a guy who would know, so [White House officials] had particular interest,” Charles Duelfer, head of the Iraqi Survey Group and the man in charge of interrogations of Iraqi officials, told me. So much so that the officials, according to Duelfer, inquired how the interrogation was proceeding.

In his new book, Hide and Seek: The Search for Truth in Iraq, and in an interview with The Daily Beast, Duelfer says he heard from “some in Washington at very senior levels (not in the CIA),” who thought Khudayr’s interrogation had been “too gentle” and suggested another route, one that they believed has proven effective elsewhere. “They asked if enhanced measures, such as waterboarding, should be used,” Duelfer writes. “The executive authorities addressing those measures made clear that such techniques could legally be applied only to terrorism cases, and our debriefings were not as yet terrorism-related. The debriefings were just debriefings, even for this creature.”

Duelfer will not disclose who in Washington had proposed the use of waterboarding, saying only: “The language I can use is what has been cleared.” In fact, two senior U.S. intelligence officials at the time tell The Daily Beast that the suggestion to waterboard came from the Office of Vice President Cheney. [...]

“Everyone knew there would be more smiles in Washington if WMD stocks were found,” Duelfer said in the interview. “My only obligation was to find the truth. It would be interesting if there was WMD in May 2003, but what was more interesting to me was looking at the entire regime through the slice of WMD.”

But, Duelfer says, Khudayr in fact repeatedly denied knowing the location of WMD or links between Saddam’s regime and al Qaeda and was not subjected to any enhanced interrogation. Duelfer says the idea that he would have known of such links was “ludicrous".

This proposed use of enhanced interrogation techniques, or torture, in Iraq was not the only time these methods were actually used to derive information for a purpose other than the stated one—to derive intelligence about imminent threats to the United States following the 9/11 attacks.

An extensive analysis I conducted as a reporter for NBC News of the 9/11 Commission’s Final Report and its monograph on terrorist travel showed that much of what was reported about the planning and execution of the terror attacks on New York and Washington was based on the CIA's interrogations of high-ranking al Qaeda operatives who had been subjected to "enhanced interrogation techniques." [...]

In fact, information derived from the interrogations was central to the 9/11 Report’s most critical chapters, those on the planning and execution of the attacks.

The NBC analysis also showed—and agency and commission staffers concur—there was a separate, second round of interrogations in early 2004, specifically conducted to answer new questions from the 9/11 Commission after its lawyers had been left unsatisfied by the agency’s internal interrogation reports. [...]

A former senior U.S. intelligence official told me the Commission never expressed any concerns about techniques and even pushed for a second round of interrogations in early 2004, as the Commission was finishing up its work. The second round of interrogations sought by the Commission involved more than 30 separate interrogation sessions.

"Remember," the intelligence official said, "the Commission had access to the intelligence reports that came out of the interrogation. This didn't satisfy them. They demanded direct personal access to the detainees and the administration told them to go pound sand.” [...]

At least four operatives whose interrogation figured in the 9/11 Commission Report have claimed that they told interrogators critical information as a way to stop being "tortured." Those claims came during their hearings in the spring of 2007 at the U.S. military facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

For Duelfer, an experienced interrogator, the details now being laid out in CIA and White House memoranda and in congressional hearings cannot be justified.

Torture is illegal. Torture does not work. BushCo ordered torture. They broke the law. Can it be put any simpler than that?

Six Years Ago Today: Media Hailed 'End' of Iraq War

Some interesting remembrances from FOB Greg Mitchell. Yeah, the toppling of the statue was a real grass roots effort, yep. Go read the whole thing, but here are some highlights-

NEW YORK Six years ago today the U.S. media and administration officials who plotted the invasion of Iraq celebrated the fall of Baghdad while expressing few fears about the future. "We're all neo-cons now!" crowed Chris Matthews on MSNBC. Joe Scarborough, also on MSNBC, declared, "I'm waiting to hear the words, 'I was wrong' from some of the world's most elite journalists, politicians, and Hollywood types."

Vice President Cheney dismissed critics of the war as ''retired military officers embedded in T.V. studios'' (consider the irony of that given later revelations). Donald Rumsfeld compared the end of Saddam Hussein's government to the fall of the Berlin Wall - a tragically premature judgment, as we would soon learn.

Dick Morris at Fox News said, "Over the next couple of weeks when we find the chemical weapons this guy was amassing, the fact that this war was attacked by the left and so the right was so vindicated, I think, really means that the left is going to have to hang its head for three or four more years."

(snip)

Fred Barnes, the former newspaper reporter now at Fox News, said, "The war was the hard part. The hard part was putting together a coalition, getting 300,000 troops over there and all their equipment and winning. And it gets easier. I mean, setting up a democracy is hard, but it is not as hard as winning a war."

More fuel: Secret e-mails show Iraq dossier was 'sexed up'

By GottaLaff

Is anyone surprised? .... Anyone....? ::crickets:: Who will be the first one to finally prosecute?

Secret Whitehall emails released yesterday provide damning new evidence that the notorious dossier making the case for invading Iraq was "sexed up".

They disclose that the intelligence services were skeptical over the "iffy drafting" of government claims that Saddam Hussein could mount a missile strike on his neighbours within 45 minutes of ordering an attack.

Officials privately mocked assertions that the Iraqi president was covertly trying to develop a nuclear capability and wisecracked that perhaps he had recruited "Dr Frankenstein" to his supposed crack team of nuclear scientists.

So much for that mushroom cloud. What was that you were saying again, Ari?

The release of a series of confidential memos and emails, following a protracted Freedom of Information battle, reignited the controversy over accusations that Tony Blair's government "spun" Britain into war.

Last night both the Tories and the Liberal Democrats renewed their demands for a full public inquiry into the decision to join the US-led invasion of Iraq.

The 45-minute claim – presented to MPs in a notorious dossier on 24 September 2002, six months before military action began – was central to the Blair government's justification for war.

But a memo sent 13 days earlier by Desmond Bowen, head of the Cabinet Office defence secretariat, to John Scarlett, who was head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, suggested he had grave reservations over the threat. [...]

Another memo, dated 16 September 2002, from an unnamed official, also suggests exaggerated claims were being included in the about-to-be-published report. [...]

Last night William Hague, the shadow Foreign Secretary, said: "This is the latest in a steady stream of damaging revelations about the events leading up to the Iraq war. These minutes shed interesting light on the process by which the caveats in the Joint Intelligence Committee's original assessment of Iraq's WMD programmes were stripped out of the dossier that was presented to Parliament and the British people." [...]

The emails: How 'sexing-up' was achieved:

11 September 2002 Desmond Bowen: "The question we have to have in the back of our mind is: 'Why now?' I think we have moved away from promoting the ideas that we are in imminent danger of attack and intend to act in pre-emptive self-defence... In looking at the WMD sections, you will clearly want to be as firm and authoritative as you can be. You will clearly need to judge the extent to which you need to hedge your judgements with, for example, 'it is almost certain' and similar caveats."

11 September 2002 Mark Sedwill: "I would expand the history of weapons inspections. It is an interesting story and would give the media a better feel for the difficulties they faced and the persistence of the Iraqi obstruction... We need a very simple table somewhere... This should be brief enough to get on to the Sky wall – ie no more than five bullets."

16 September 2002 Unnamed official (thought to be intelligence agent): "I note that the paper suggests that Saddam's biotech efforts have gone much further than we ever feared. Page 4 Bullet 4: '[Iraq] has assembled specialists to work on its nuclear programme' – Dr Frankenstein I presume? Sorry. It's getting late... We have suggested moderating the same language in much the same way on drafts from the dim and distant past without success. Feel free to try again!... Lots of 'ranges' close together – iffy drafting."

At the risk of repeating myself, what more does it take? Now that Bush and Blair are out of office, and troops are coming home, more evidence is being revealed. What excuse can anyone come up with to justify avoiding a full investigation, not just some white-washy commission?

Maybe we the people need to be a little louder with our demands.

Did Saddam Hussein Bug Dan Rather Before the Iraq War?

By GottaLaff

Saddam Hussein really bugged us for a long time, didn't he? What a pain he was. He was an especially irritating source of buggage for Dan Rather... but not the kind you might think:

It was probably the most important interview before the Iraq war: Dan Rather vs. Saddam Hussein. But we learn in the new book Hide and Seek: The Search for Truth in Iraq by Charles Duelfer, longtime United Nations and CIA weapons inspector, that Saddam likely got a peek at Rather's questions. [...]

Rather told reporters that his preinvasion quiz was so important that he practiced his questions before a mirror in his Rasheed Hotel room. But Duelfer notes that Saddam had the city so heavily wired for surveillance that his posse probably heard every question. "It is simply surprising," Duelfer tells Whispers, "that someone as worldly as Dan Rather would not assume his room was bugged in one of the most security-conscious regimes on the planet."

Didn't Rather learn anything from all those James Bond movies?

Putin: “I am going to hang Saakashvili by the balls"

By GottaLaff

The Chimpenfuhrer's legacy, Sarkozy/Putin edition:

With Russian tanks only 30 miles from Tbilisi on August 12, Mr Sarkozy told Mr Putin that the world would not accept the overthrow of Georgia’s Government. According to Mr Levitte, the Russian seemed unconcerned by international reaction. “I am going to hang Saakashvili by the balls,” Mr Putin declared.

Mr Sarkozy thought he had misheard. “Hang him?” — he asked. “Why not?” Mr Putin replied. “The Americans hanged Saddam Hussein.”

Mr Sarkozy, using the familiar tu, tried to reason with him: “Yes but do you want to end up like [President] Bush?” Mr Putin was briefly lost for words, then said: “Ah — you have scored a point there.”

An historic moment: Bush (inadvertently) prevented the torture of another human being.

H/t: Bucky

Gramm-pa McCain's war fixation

By GottaLaff

Gramm-pa McCain is so proud of this line: "I’m not George Bush. If he wanted to run against George Bush, he should have run four years ago.” How about 9 years ago?

Republican presidential hopeful John McCain fixed his sights on Saddam Hussein long before President Bush sent the U.S. military to oust the Iraqi dictator in March 2003.

Four years earlier, the Arizona senator told a Kansas State University audience that Saddam was amassing illicit weapons, and that the U.S. should arm opposition groups to overthrow him, along with North Korea's leaders and other "odious regimes."

Saddam, however, no longer had any chemical, biological or nuclear arms programs. [...]

For years, McCain repeated the same assertions about Iraq's weapons programs and ties to terrorism that the Bush administration later used to make its case for invading Iraq. Today, he insists that the war was right and that last year's surge of additional troops to Iraq has put the U.S. "on the road to victory" there.

Although he's cultivated a maverick image, McCain's fixation with Iraq, and with regime change more generally, is squarely in step with his party's neoconservatives, many of whom now work for his campaign. Neoconservatives believe that the U.S. must preserve its unchallenged global dominance and military superiority, and reshape the world, by force if necessary.

Add that to a volatile temper and it spells "oy":

"There is no question that he (McCain) reflects the hard-line neocon view," said retired Army Brig. Gen. John Johns, a former supporter who's known McCain since his return from Vietnam but is backing Democratic nominee Barack Obama. "With his attitude, his finger on the trigger, the slightest thing will (cause him to) execute that philosophy."

Oy oy!

While McCain has toned down many of his hard-line pronouncements in this campaign, a McClatchy review of dozens of his speeches, interviews, statements and writings over more than two decades traces an evolution from reluctant warrior to advocate of U.S. military intervention on a global scale.

Oy cubed!

In speeches and interviews McCain:

• Has vowed, since at least 1999, to institute a "rogue state rollback" policy of arming rebel forces to replace regimes in Iraq, Iran, Libya, North Korea and other nations. He said such nations were developing weapons of mass destruction, supporting terrorism and threatening "our interests and values." (Background material here, here, here and here.)
• Has advocated sending the U.S. military to "back up" those rebel forces "when they meet with reversals."
• Has said that civilian casualties should be a secondary concern of military operations.
• Has invoked a variety of justifications for using force, from defending the nation's security, allies, interests and "principles and values" to halting genocide in places such as Darfur and Kosovo and salvaging U.S. "credibility."
• Has called for the creation of a "League of Democracies" to circumvent the U.N. Security Council when Russia and China oppose the use of force, tough sanctions or other actions sought by the U.S.

Barack Obama cubed.

Gramm-pa McCain's Transition Chief Aided Saddam In Lobbying Effort

By GottaLaff

Apologies if Paddy already posted this, but as I said, at school I have no access to TPC. A quick copy and paste:

William Timmons, the Washington lobbyist who John McCain has named to head his presidential transition team, aided an influence effort on behalf of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to ease international sanctions against his regime.

The two lobbyists who Timmons worked closely with over a five year period on the lobbying campaign later either pleaded guilty to or were convicted of federal criminal charges that they had acted as unregistered agents of Saddam Hussein's government.

During the same period beginning in 1992, Timmons worked closely with the two lobbyists, Samir Vincent and Tongsun Park, on a previously unreported prospective deal with the Iraqis in which they hoped to be awarded a contract to purchase and resell Iraqi oil. Timmons, Vincent, and Park stood to share at least $45 million if the business deal went through.

Timmons' activities occurred in the years following the first Gulf War, when Washington considered Iraq to be a rogue enemy state and a sponsor of terrorism. His dealings on behalf of the deceased Iraqi leader stand in stark contrast to the views his current employer held at the time. [...]

Virtually everything Timmons did while working on the lobbying campaign was within days conveyed by Vincent to either one or both of Saddam Hussein's top aides, Tariq Aziz and Nizar Hamdoon. Vincent also testified that he almost always relayed input from the Iraqi aides back to Timmons. [...]

Moreover, there was a major financial incentive at play for Timmons. The multi-million dollar oil deal that he was pursuing with the two other lobbyists would only be possible if their efforts to ease sanctions against Iraq were successful.

You'll have to follow the link for the rest. I'm due to teach in a minute.

H/t: Ellen