I’m sure Richard Cohen begs to differ, but:
Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent who investigated the East Africa embassy bombings and interrogated some prisoners with alleged ties to al-Qaeda, plans to tell senators that so-called enhanced interrogation techniques were ineffective and unreliable, and “as a result harmful to our efforts to defeat al-Qaeda,” according to a copy of his written remarks.
But Soufan will take care not to advocate prosecution for people involved in enacting the policy. Rather, his statement says, he only wants the country to recognize the trouble with the previous interrogation regime and not return to such practices in the future. “It was one of the worst and most harmful decisions made in our efforts against al Qaeda,” his statement says.
Update. And here’s more from a Bush administration pinko:
Zelikow’s advance testimony says he would express “no view” on whether former officials should be prosecuted, and notes that the factual and legal story is “more complicated than is generally recognized.” He adds that Justice Department memos on the subject, since renounced, were “unsound, even unreasonable.”
But he does call for a “thorough public inquiry” to understand and evaluate the origins of the program and the government’s new approach to the issues.
“The U.S. government adopted an unprecedented program of coolly calculated dehumanizing abuse and physical torment to extract information,” Zelikow is scheduled to say. “This was a mistake, perhaps a disastrous one. It was a collective failure . . . Precisely because this was a collective failure it is all the more important to comprehend it and learn from it.”
The Moar You Know
Why does Ali Soufan hate America?
Zifnab
But Dick Cheney said…
slag
As Shep Smith would say…I don’t care if it works. We don’t do it.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
This is good news for McCain!
Punchy
Rape is bad, too. But let’s not prosecute rapists; let’s just ask that they attempt to stop raping in the future, cuz it looks bad on their resume. Or something.
kay
@slag:
“This was a mistake, perhaps a disastrous one. It was a collective failure . . . Precisely because this was a collective failure it is all the more important to comprehend it and learn from it.”
We’re going to get the other side today.
I would like to know why Zelikow considers the decision to use torture “disastrous”. I don’t think he means morally. If Cheney wants to make an argument based on the value of torture, he’s left the door open to talk about the negative consequences of the torture policy.
What were the disastrous consequences?
Cat Lady
Dick “dick” Cheney is going to be Exhibit A to the “be careful what you wish for” adage. Shoes are going to drop all over the place. Not prosecuting CIA interrogators is going to work out just fine.
John PM
No, it was not a mistake or a collective failure. Zelikow’s first sentence actually gives away the game. You cannot adopt a program that is “coolly calculated” and call it a mistake. This was a criminal conspiracy, and as more information comes out, it appears more and more likely that it was a conspiracy not to hunt down Al Queda, but to 1) fabricate intelligence to take us to war in Iraq and 2) increase the power of a Republican president.
I am not a conspiracy theorist (I clash in tin foil), but the more I read about what Bush did, the more certain and sickened I become that at the end of the path we will find a wire transfer from the CIA to Osama Bin Laden and a record of fake documents provides to 19 middle eastern men, many of whom happen to be from Saudi Arabia.
kay
I’d just like it noted, because it has gotten lost, that Yoo and Co. did lousy, sub-standard work. They neglected to cite a recent case that is on-point and relevant, because it went the other way.
One is a federal judge and one is a law professor and they wrote garbage that no one can defend, and that was withdrawn. The Best and The Brightest, on the right, in the legal community.
And Yoo thinks he’s fit to stand in judgment of Obama’s SCOTUS nominee. He submitted a load of crap. His legacy.
CatStaff
@John PM: Ah yes, John, but if they can get everyone thinking the “collective failure” way, then there’s no one to actually punish, because we’re all at fault.
Comrade Dread
Well, at least we’ve moved past denial, the appeal to partisanship, the appeal to the future, and we’re now squarely in the “Mistakes were made” weasel dance.
Progress, of a sort.
anon
“coolly calculated dehumanizing abuse and physical torment to extract information,”
hmmm…
i hope that zelikow’s phrasing there does not an avoidance of the word “torture”.
Fulcanelli
Ali Soufan is systematically dismantling the pro-torture argument in his testimony.
Heads are exploding as he speaks in greater wingnuttia.
Balconesfault
Man, it must have been killing these people during the last election, knowing that the only hope for shedding light on and disinfecting this evil was an Obama victory … and being constrained from speaking out on why the election was so important.
I expect for Cheney to bring up more memos that need releasing.
The Tim Channel
Collective failure is now a euphemism for conspiratorial torture? Perhaps I have learned something ‘from it’.
Enjoy.
Legalize
Um, I hate to point out the obvious, but “Ali Soufan” is not a Heartland-inspired name like, for example, “John H. Jesus,” or “Wilbur J. Christian.” This person is likely an islamo nazi, and I would not be surprised if he is homosexual. Therefore, shut up, that’s why. Also.
Look for this to be central to Malkin’s point in 5 … 4 … 3 …
mvr
Zilikow’s main point seem right to me — that there is reason to investigate whether or not there is reason to prosecute. That this program was a big mistake needs to be recognized and we need to know more about how it happened if we want to avoid it.
I also tend to think that once the facts are fully out it will be clearer that somebody needs to be held responsible. That’s why even investigation is getting so much push-back. But the need to investigate remains even if we don’t punish anyone.
geg6
Not that I want to beat up on a couple of guys who apparently, finally want to come clean…
But wtf is up with “collective failure?” Collective on whose part? Not mine. Don’t put me in that group who collectively failed. I had nothing to do with it. In fact, just the opposite.
I railed against installing Shrub as president. I marched and wrote emails and letters screaming bloody murder against the Iraq invasion both before and long after. I gave money and time to candidates who opposed the war. The minute I heard of renditions, military prisons in Iraq, and Gitmo, I started talking about how it was all a setup for torture to provide cover for their invasion and for the decimation of civil liberties for Americans. I all but set myself on fire, talking about this and urging people to look it into back in 2003 and 2004.
You know who listened to me? Nobody, unless it was to reply to me that I was both an insane paranoid person and a traitor to my country and fellow citizens that just wanted the terrorists to win.
So dude better be talking about the collective failure of our intelligence agencies, our Congress, the Executive branch, and anyone who voted for George W. Bush (and doubly so for those who voted for him twice). Because I ain’t takin’ responsibility for this shit. No fucking way. No fucking how.
Zifnab
@Fulcanelli:
Ali Soufan? Yeah, that sounds like the name of a fifth columnist defeatocrat traitor to me.
slag
@kay:
I’m all on board for seeking new information whenever possible. I was just acknowledging my personal bias, which is unlikely to change no matter what the costs and benefits of torture might have been. Some issues don’t necessarily lend themselves to a cost-benefit analysis, and I would count this one among them.
Lupin
You forgot to mention Scott Beauchamp somehow.
Seriously, someone should explain to the US (present company excepted) that this — the whole torture/Iraq shebang — isn’t just a domestic issue.
As long as Pinocheney continues to haunt the airwaves and it looks like there is a “rational” public “debate” between sane people and psychopaths in the US media, we look very very bad in the eyes of the world and continue to pour gasoline on the embers — which I’m sure is what Evil Dick wants anyway. The man has orgasms at the idea of another 9/11.
Gorbama might be in charge, but we’ve got to disband SMERSH.
Cat Lady
@geg6:
Word.
kay
@slag:
I’ve been waiting for someone to challenge Cheney on “what happened”. There has been a lot of blather about “live’s saved”.
Were live’s lost? “Disastrous” is a strong word.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@Fulcanelli:
Is this hearing on CSPAN?
bayville
What a difference a few days make?
“…so-called enhanced interrogation techniques”? – WaPo, 5/13/09
<a href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/13/business/media/13yoo.html?_r=1&scp=3&sq=torture&st=cse“>NYT today on new Philly Inky columnist – John Yoo.
This past Friday, NYT obituary
Fulcanelli
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: MSNBC.com
Xenos
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: CSPAN3.
Catsy
Rats, sinking ships, etc. But seriously, it looks like panic is starting to set in. Cheney has been all over the media, snarling and digging himself deeper and deeper. The beautiful thing is that the more he admits to on camera, the more we don’t have to get declassified. Every word he utters is subject to discovery.
A lot of these people know two things: that 1) an investigation is inevitable, and 2) the result of that investigation will be criminal prosecutions. In many cases, of them or people they know.
Stefan
“Harold E. Fischer Jr., an American Flier Tortured in a Chinese Prison, Dies at 83”
Shouldn’t that be “Harold E. Fischer Jr., an American Flier Aggressively Interrogated in a Chinese Detainee Facility, Dies at 83”?
Oh, right. It’s only torture when they do it.
slag
@kay:
Agreed. But I’m dubious as to whether or not a lot of new information on this subject will actually change many people’s minds on it. I’d like to think it will (esp given the disappointing polling data on our collective tolerance for torture), but I have my doubts. Maybe it’s because my own mind is already made up on the subject that I have a hard time believing others will change. I’ll be happy to be proven wrong.
But maybe a little more leadership on torture will compel much of America to reach the conclusion that there are some things you just don’t do. Perhaps a role model is in order.
/moral absolutism
Stimpy
You don’t torture to get information. You torture to get confessions. I wish this point would be driven home more when this is discussed.
The Tim Channel
Is slicing up a guy’s junk with a scalpel considered torture? That’s the latest new homoerotic sexual perversion I’ve recently heard attributed to these sadomasochistic freaks. And let’s not forget Yoo’s infamous TORTURING TODDLERS TESTICLES dilemma whereupon he couldn’t make a judgment as to the limits of the President’s power even in that regard.
These are some truly sick bastards, and those that are making excuses and rationalizations for them ought to be held accountable right along with the perps. We’ve got the entire lot of them torture cheerleading on TV as evidence of collusion. Nobody in their right mind if pro torture. Don’t be misled by the consistent application of the lie that half of America approves. You know better.
Enjoy.
Delia
This just in from talkingpointsmemo
All together now:
“NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!”
redbeardjim
Dear god the blockquote formatting sucks. Never effing mind.
Lilly von Schtupp
Cheney’s heart is finally going to give out from all this back tracking he’s been doing on these shows. Then, the Democrats will be blamed for killing him because they was mean to him!
That will be ironic.
TenguPhule
Fuck these piddling fuckers dancing around the topic.
It was Torture and those that both authorized it and performed it need to be taken out and shot, then dumped out at sea for the sharks because burial on US soil is too good for them.
And then their names need to be put in every history text in America as the worst traitors in US history since the Revolutionary War.
JenJen
Ali Soufan is an American hero.
Reading this article in Newsweek, shouldn’t it be apparent to everyone that it makes more sense to be a smart interrogator than an evil one? For example, one of the ways Soufan earned the trust of Abu Zubaydah was caring for his battle wounds and helping him to heal. He also, somehow learned the nickname Zubaydah’s mother used for him.
I guess I’m not in the GOP so torture doesn’t turn me on? What does intrigue me is sitting here wondering how Soufan got that information; that’s the part of the “black arts” that should make everyone proud, you know?
JenJen
Can’t edit for some reason… this is the Newsweek article I referred to in #37, for those interested.
gwangung
Yes, but not if you’re capable of being smart, as these Bushies seem to be…
asiangrrlMN
@geg6: Word. I read an article that said we all bore the shame of the Iraq invasion, and I wrote a piece at the time saying I refused to take shame for that. I told people there were no WMDs. My friends and I agreed there were no WMDs. I take no blame for this, which makes it doubly offensive to me when people say, well, we elected them, so we have to bear responsibility for what they did in our name.
No. That gives us way too much power and too little simultaneously. Ultimately, THEY committed crimes under our name. THEY broke the law. THEY were ‘just following orders’. Not me. Not you. Not even, though I hate to admit it, Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh (though they were rah-rahing all the way). THEY did all this shit, and THEY need to be at least investigated.
I am the first to feel shame when I do something wrong (and often times, when I don’t), but I do not feel one iota of shame or guilt about what has happened over the last eight years. Sorrow, rage, depression, pain, despair, and disgust–yes. Guilt and shame–hell no.
Oh, and if what is being reported in the Newsweek story and elsewhere is true, the W. administration, CIA operatives, and everyone else involved in this sordid affair KNEW they were breaking the law. The FBI were fucking prescient about the whole thing.