WASHINGTON–A former CIA agent's detailed description of the waterboarding of an Al Qaeda suspect provided a spectacular public backdrop to closed Capitol Hill hearings on a burgeoning scandal yesterday.
CIA chief Michael Hayden met behind closed doors with a Senate committee for 90 minutes, pledging to lay out all the facts behind the 2005 decision to destroy videotaped interrogations of key suspects in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
The hearing came as a heretofore unknown agent named Mike Kiriakou told reporters about the interrogation of suspect Abu Zubaydah. (there is no Mike Kirakou, I assure you. But the CIA has correctly calculated that CONgress and the CIA-dominated press isn't gonna question that, for ahem! national security reasons, you know, how death, torture, rape, suicide seems to follow everywhere the CIA goes .. and no one says a word about it. Same with other various contentions that are made. Why trouble your little minds over another lie? But I digress .. )
In interviews with ABC News, then NBC, CNN and The Washington Post, Kiriakou revealed that Zubaydah asked him to smother him with a pillow when he emerged from a coma in U.S. custody after being shot by Pakistani police during his capture in 2002.
"No, no,"Kiriakou said he replied.
"We have plans for you."
Kiriakou said the waterboarding was approved by the White House and it worked.
(how are we to know "it worked" - worked for what? To keep a coverup going? To "prove" torture works? To start another complex issue that causes overwhelm among the US taxpayes who are PAYING FOR ALL THESE CRIMES SO THAT THE US OIL AND GAS CARTEL CAN SMASH MIDDLE EAST COUNTRIES INTO SUBMISSION? JUST HOW DID IT WORK??? How did this work for the person it was done to? And for US international standing in the world? HOW DID IT WORK? For God's sake - someone tell me
JUST HOW DID IT WORK?
(What a stoopid twat comment!!!!!!)
However, he said he has since struggled with the now-outlawed procedure, and considers it torture and something Americans should not do. (no, that's strictly for the MURKAN plutocracy to do - and then for us to say that every nation that indulges in it SHOULD NOT DO. Oh, friggin great! Such rue this man shows. Real friggin regret, eh? Give me a break.)
He said Zubaydah was able to withstand 35 seconds of the procedure, which involves covering a prisoner's mouth with plastic or cloth and pouring water over his face. The prisoner quickly begins to inhale water, causing the sensation of drowning.
Kiriakou said when he was subjected to waterboarding as part of his training he could last only five seconds.
"It's entirely unpleasant,"he told CNN.
"(Your body) almost seizes up. You're so full of tension that you just tense up. Your muscles tighten up, and it's very uncomfortable."
Kiriakou said he did not personally witness the waterboarding but was told by other agents that after Zubaydah was subjected to it, it was like "flipping a switch" and he soon told his interrogators Allah had visited him in his cell and told him to co-operate to make things easier for his brothers.
He told his interrogators about alleged Sept. 11 accomplice Ramzi Binalshibh, and the confessions of the two of them led the U.S. to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, whom the U.S. government said was the mastermind behind the attacks.
The White House would not be drawn into a discussion of specifics on interrogation, despite Kiriakou's public statements.
"All interrogations have been done within the legal framework that was set out after Sept. 11,"said White House spokesperson Dana Perino.
(and what friggen legal framework is that dear ole stoopid Dana, the grrrrrl who cannot recall the Cuban Missle crisis? Oh, you are such a pro!)
"They are measures that have been tough and limited. They are safe, and they've been very effective in helping prevent terrorist attacks on this country."
(Yeah, let's get that ole terrorism BACK ON THE TABLE! UNPROVABLE ALLEGATIONS ABOUT IT ABOUND, BUT ALL THESE TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS SPENT ON WAR DESTRUCTION, VIOLENCE, DRUGS, GENOCIDE, CORRUPT DEFENSE CONTRACTORS HAVE ALL BEEN DEFENSABLE, EH WHAT? you are feeling safe and confident are you Dana! You think all this is so defensible and rational? You are delusional IN THE EXTREME!)
She repeated the Bush administration assertion that the government does not torture.
It's called catapulting the propaganda, dear Dana! Yer boss said so.
But on the Senate floor, Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada upped the ante, saying torture and the destruction of the CIA tapes strips the U.S. of its moral authority in the world.
"This damage to our moral authority will matter to the history books, but more importantly, it matters right now,"he said.
"It puts our troops at greater risk if captured. It impairs our relationships with nations who ought to be our allies. It impedes our ability to fight an effective war on terror."
The CIA is believed to have waterboarded at least three prisoners but says it has not used the technique since 2003. Hayden outlawed the practice when he took over the agency last year. Hayden's appearance yesterday was brief because he was not the CIA chief when the tapes were made in 2002 or when they were destroyed in 2005.
(yeah, how goddammed convenient! And who thought that up? "Hey! they said, "let's get someone on board who cannot be 'nailed to the ground' for the use of torture and the violation of international law when the erasures of Saudi Arabian involvment in 9/11 surfaces! Someone we can trot out when, finally, at very long last, one of these highly questionable cases makes it to the Supreme Court! Now there's an idea!"
Again, my guess is that the tapes were destroyed not because of the practice, but the information on 9/11 that came to light that clearly implicated Saudi Arabia in the 9/11 plot to destroy America.
Meanwhile the BAE investigations continue to stonewalled and covered up. How bloody convenient. It just never stops, does it?)
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