Washington Post review of Ron Suskind's book:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/19/AR2006061901211_pf.html

Tuesday, June 20, 2006; page C01

THE ONE PERCENT DOCTRINE
Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11
By Ron Suskind
Simon & Schuster. 368 pp. $27

This is an important book, filled with the surest sign of great reporting: the unexpected. It enriches our understanding of even familiar episodes from the Bush administration's war on terror and tells some jaw-dropping stories we haven't heard before.

One example out of many comes in Ron Suskind's gripping narrative of what the White House has celebrated as one of the war's major victories: the capture of Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan in March 2002. Described as al-Qaeda's chief of operations even after U.S. and Pakistani forces kicked down his door in Faisalabad, the Saudi-born jihadist was the first al-Qaeda detainee to be shipped to a secret prison abroad. Suskind shatters the official story line here.

Abu Zubaydah, his captors discovered, turned out to be mentally ill and nothing like the pivotal figure they supposed him to be.

[...] 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.

[...] Abu Zubaydah. "I said he was important," Bush reportedly told Tenet at one of their daily meetings. "You're not going to let me lose face on this, are you?" "No sir, Mr. President," Tenet replied. Bush "was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth," Suskind writes, and he asked one briefer, "Do some of these harsh methods really work?" Interrogators did their best to find out, Suskind reports. They strapped Abu Zubaydah to a water-board, which reproduces the agony of drowning. They threatened him with certain death. They withheld medication. They bombarded him with deafening noise and harsh lights, depriving him of sleep. Under that duress, he began to speak of plots of every variety -- against shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty. With each new tale, "thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each . . . target." And so, Suskind writes, "the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered."

- - Washington Post review of Ron Suskind's book

http://washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_12/012662.php

December 8, 2007
WHAT THE TAPES WOULD HAVE SHOWN

So here's what the tapes would have shown: not just that we had brutally tortured an al-Qaeda operative, but that we had brutally tortured an al-Qaeda operative who was (a) unimportant and low-ranking, (b) mentally unstable, (c) had no useful information, and (d) eventually spewed out an endless series of worthless, fantastical "confessions" under duress. This was all prompted by the president of the United States, implemented by the director of the CIA, and the end result was thousands of wasted man hours by intelligence and and law enforcement personnel.

Nice trifecta there.

— — Kevin Drum

Granted the link wasn't the best but "what the hell" you KNOW better than the rest of us.

-- InnerCynic

Apparently I do. I know that certain people in the blogosphere know enough to tell people like you if there is reason to be concerned about a particular piece of legislation. I don't hear them mentioning it. Do you? I also looked at the bill. Did you? Whenever some wingnut starts screaming about "Thought Crime!" that should be enough for any rational person to think twice. You are the one polluting the ether with the noxious fumes of hysteria and fear, not me. I take people on the left, or more accurately, the antiwar side, to task when they regurgitate falsehoods as well, thereby harming credibility. Iranian small arms for export are marked and labeled in English, after all. Does that lend creedence to claims that Iran's government is supplying them to Iraq? Not at all, but it makes you, left or right, look stupid when you accuse the U.S. Military of lying by saying that Iranian small arms would never be labeled in English because they only speak Farsi in Iran. Guess what? Iraqis don't speak Farsi. English is the "universal language" even if statistically more people on the planet speak Cantonese.

http://www.diomil.ir/images/product/Original/amig/mor81high.jpg

http://www.diomil.ir/en/amig.aspx?search_id=mb81smoke

If you have a problem with me, send Glenn an e-mail. Maybe if you and Shooter both send him an e-mail and complain you can get me banned. Until then I'll point out bullshit and fearmongering no matter who is guilty of it.

LewRockwell.com is sort of a "news aggregator" like AlterNet is. They publish articles from a wide range of sources. As you yourself said, "the link wasn't the best". You "know best" so you can ignore this advice but if I were to rely on that site, (I don't) I'd take 90% of what is found there with a bushel of salt. Same goes for Antiwar.com. But you know best, right? You should take nothing for granted and question everything. Then question it again.

The following is my (and mine alone) perception, and I apologize if I have misinterpreted the intentions of any I mention or allude to.

Having said that, I view Glenn's main thrust as being against the not only imperfect, but intentionally misleading information being broadcast to the American public at large. I have often mused that a democracy cannot function without at least an honest attempt at providing correct information to the voters. A question that rebounds through my mind is: if every vote is to be weighted equally, then what good is an uninformed vote, much less a deliberately misinformed one? Essentially: what good is democracy without accurate information?

I apologize for my inability to pinpoint quotes here, but a common idea I hear is that democracy fails when people figure out that they can vote money for themselves (somebody help me out here on specifics). I argue that the sentiment is correct, but not in the way that it is most often implied. It is not the 'great unwashed masses' that have benefited from voting to enrich themselves, but rather the privileged few. It takes money to make money, so to speak. I have no wealth to back a sympathetic candidate, I have only the power (and what is one vote among millions?) to vote for one who I divine will best fight for my rights. I cannot even be confident in that without accurate information. I can accept imperfect information, but not information that is deliberately distorted to affect an end almost certainly against my interests.

What is my recourse? So far it is to read Glenn and others, taking solace from him and various commentators that at least I am not alone in recognizing that the current American system does not benefit the public.

I grew up being taught that America was a shining 'city on the hill', above the depravities of human nature. A place where the ideals of humanity could not only survive, but prosper. A place where torture, war for profit, and the trampling upon the unfortunate for the benefit of the few was to be reviled, not rewarded. The more I have learned about American history, the more I realize that we have never achieved such a state... but also the more I realize that the fight for such a state has never been abandoned. America has not thrived because of the greedy few, but rather in spite of them.