Newsweek reported yesterday that CIA personnel staged mock executions as part of their interrogation of terror suspects. According to CIA documents, suspected USS Cole bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri was threatened with a gun and a power drill during questioning by the CIA.
purpose was to scare him into giving [information] up," said one of the
sources. A federal law banning the use of torture expressly forbids
threatening a detainee with "imminent death."
The
report also says, according to the sources, that a mock execution was
staged in a room next to a detainee, during which a gunshot was fired
in an effort to make the suspect believe that another prisoner had been
killed. The inspector general's report alludes to more than one mock
execution. (Link)
This morning the Washington Post published additional information:
A third former U.S. official
who has read the full, classified report said that it contained an
entire section listing ways in which the CIA and contracted
interrogators had "gone beyond what they were authorized to do -- a
whole variety of deviations." The official said that what struck him
most strongly was that the report suggested these techniques were
"really not effective."
He
said he concluded that "there has to be a better way to do this" but
that the CIA resisted suggestions then that it should back away from
the program. Asked why, the official said he could not say for sure,
but he added that "maybe it was that if you change, then it means you
were wrong" in pursuing the harsh interrogation methods in the first
place.
As hard as John Yoo and the other Office of Legal Counsel lawyers tried, even they were apparently unable to imagine interrogation scenarios that included power drills and convincing detainees they would soon be getting a bullet in the back of the head. The Bush Administration allowed interrogations, euphemistically referred to as "enhanced" interrogations, that were brutal and illegal. Can even the most craven Bush Administration apologist condone these methods?
(That's Dick Cheney's cue to endorse mock executions as necessary and effective interrogation tools.)
No comments:
Post a Comment