U.S gathered terror intel from crazy man

[Black Dog]

WTF?

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. 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.

....

Which brings us back to the unbalanced 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."

Supporters of the war on terror operate on the basic assumptions that not only will the methods chosen produce the desired results but that those developing the policy as wel as those carrying it out are capable and competent. As this case study shows, those are dangerous assumptions to make.

[BHS]

Supporters of the war on terror operate on the basic assumptions that not only will the methods chosen produce the desired results but that those developing the policy as wel as those carrying it out are capable and competent. As this case study shows, those are dangerous assumptions to make.

The alternative being that we assume there is nothing wrong, that vigilence and investigation are a waste of time and money, and that we can just go back to the Sept. 10 world where we assume our peace and security are invulnerabe by divine right.

[Black Dog]

The alternative being that we assume there is nothing wrong, that vigilence and investigation are a waste of time and money, and that we can just go back to the Sept. 10 world where we assume our peace and security are invulnerabe by divine right.

Uh...no. That, friend, is a false dilemna. IOW there's a world of options between ignoring the problem and running around like a chicken with its head cut off.

[Shady]

Why even waste time with this thread. It's just another attack on President Bush/U.S. Military/C.I.A/F.B.I. It's the MO of the kook-left. Black Dog's intelligence agency must have already determined that this particular person had no useful information to provide, while at the same time, instantly accessing his mental capabilities.

[Shakeyhands]

and the MO of the Kool Aid drinking Right is to denegrate anyone who disagrees... right Shady?

[BHS]

The alternative being that we assume there is nothing wrong, that vigilence and investigation are a waste of time and money, and that we can just go back to the Sept. 10 world where we assume our peace and security are invulnerabe by divine right.

Uh...no. That, friend, is a false dilemna. IOW there's a world of options between ignoring the problem and running around like a chicken with its head cut off.

Right. And the only right ones are the ones that George doesn't persue. Gotcha.

[Black Dog]

Why even waste time with this thread. It's just another attack on President Bush/U.S. Military/C.I.A/F.B.I. It's the MO of the kook-left. Black Dog's intelligence agency must have already determined that this particular person had no useful information to provide, while at the same time, instantly accessing his mental capabilities.

Glad to see your track record of contributing sweet FA remains unsullied.

Right. And the only right ones are the one that George doesn't persue. Gotcha.

A false dilemna and a strawman in the same thread! Are you trying to set a record or something?

For the record, the salient point is this: while there's no surefire way of knowing whether or not any suspect has any information of any value, it seems clear that this particular suspect not only was known to be a minor player, but was also off his rocker. Nonetheless information gleaned from him (using methods of dubious practical and moral value) was followed up on not because it was solid, but to preserve the President from embarassment. IOW, it's an example (the Iraq WMD debacle would be another) of how the intellegence system is undermined for partisan political purposes, which would call into question many of the bedrock assumptions about how the "war on terror" is being prosecuted.

[killjoy]

It comes as no surprise to me.

American intelligence works almost exactly the way major media outlets work.

Both idioms work on the basis of gathering information on not only the specific topic, but also on the specific story. IOW, each element from the ground up understands the story the people immediately above them are trying to build and tries to prove it. Each individual passing the information they gather to the one directly above them.

By the time it gets to the intended market it sounds as good (or as bad) as they can make it sound, but by then one has to multiply the story by a bullshit factor of at least 0.10.

.

[BHS]

Right. And the only right ones are the one that George doesn't persue. Gotcha.

A false dilemna and a strawman in the same thread! Are you trying to set a record or something?

Yes, theoretically a strawman, in that I'm putting words into your mouth and ideas into your head, whereas in reality there is some point of public policy out there espoused by GWB that you agree with. Though I've never seen any evidence that such a point of policy exists.

And for the record, my false dilemma argument is being applied to your own strawman, based on the above definition for what makes a strawman argument. Touche.

[Liam]

My brain hurts.

[GostHacked]

It comes as no surprise to me.

American intelligence works almost exactly the way major media outlets work.

Both idioms work on the basis of gathering information on not only the specific topic, but also on the specific story. IOW, each element from the ground up understands the story the people immediately above them are trying to build and tries to prove it. Each individual passing the information they gather to the one directly above them.

By the time it gets to the intended market it sounds as good (or as bad) as they can make it sound, but by then one has to multiply the story by a bullshit factor of at least 0.10.

.

Your words reminds me of this famous Simpsons eppisode 'Purple. Monkey. Dishwasher'.

Also another crazy man the U.S. depended on for the so called chem labs in Iraq was found to be a little off his rocker as well.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/06/25/...reut/index.html

CIA officer Tyler Drumheller said he personally crossed out a reference to the labs from a classified draft of a U.N. speech by Secretary of State Colin Powell because he recognized the source as a defector, code-named Curveball, who was suspected to be mentally unstable and a liar.

[killjoy]

Your words reminds me of this famous Simpsons eppisode 'Purple. Monkey. Dishwasher'.

Never saw it.

.

[Temagami Scourge]

U.S gathered terror intel from crazy man

What!? someone asked Bush Jr. about something?