How The FBI Broke Saddam - Without Using Torture

The Daily News :

Where were Iraq's WMD? How close was Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda, really?

These were vital - but still unanswered - questions when the Iraqi despot was yanked out of a spider hole in December 2003 and placed in U.S. military detention. Lives were at stake - along with the entire political rationale for the U.S.-led coalition invading Iraq.

Only one man could say for sure, and now that the U.S. finally had him in custody, they had to find out.

There was only one way: Break Saddam.

Read the whole story: The Daily News

Comments

[ikez78]

The FBI didn't "break" Saddam nor where they the first or only agency to interview him. I wrote this up after making a lot of phone calls here....
http://regimeofterror.com/archives/2009/06/saddam_husseins_fbi_interview/

[Dolmance]

I'm sure the very real fear he must have felt about being turned over to the Iraqi government which would have skinned him alive must have had something to do with it.

[RoseMerry]

No torture! We make him our friend. We put him in power. We tell him it is okay to invade Kuwait and then attack him for it. Then we invade his country AFTER he has destoryed the WMDs. We murder about a million of his people. We turn him over to his enemies to execute.

Oh, but we never tortured him, nooooo!

[demrepub]

More food for the nutr00ts. What a joke. When the history of this story is fully disclosed it will become clear that lives were saved using EITs on the terr0.rists who planned the 9/11 attacks. I have called my republican senators and representative to encourage them to support a truth commission and to urge the president to release ALL interrogation documents. Selective administration politically motivated disclosure does a disservice to himself and the country.

[obamanomics]

The problem with what you said is history is written by liberals.

[Eoin45]

That's because Liberals can read and write. But really, prove what you said is true. Even if it is, what's to prevent conservatives from writing history if they don't already? Laziness? Lack of knowledge? If you don't like the way Liberals write history get off your lazy butt, do some research and write some of your own.

[MajorKong]

Our "enhanced interrogation" techniques were reverse engineered from techniques used by the Vietnamese and North Koreans on American POWs to extract false confessions.

In other words - they were designed to make you lie.

[CheneysACoward]

They made him listen to , " Joe the Plumber"

[AliMB]

Part I

This article by the "Daily News" is an archetype of dec.eptive journalism.

While I understand that the purpose of the piece was to discredit the utility of 'enhanced interr0gations', even with that aim the article is an abysmal failure. Several points need to be addressed:

First, the concept of 'breaking' someone during interrogation usually means that you take a non-cooperative detainee and get him to spill information. In the case of SSA Piro and Saddam Hussein, this doesn't seem applicable. It appears that the former Iraqi dictat0r was chatty and cooperative from the onset; as the interrogation progressed, Saddam divulged more information. I believe this was partly due to the fact that Saddam was obsessed with providing a historical account that would vindicate his reign, making him predisposed to continuing a productive 'conversation'.

Saddam's interrogation is not equivalent to a high-value terr0rist in CIA custody (e.g. KSM). The let.hal operative KSM was brazenly uncooperative upon his collaring; his braggadocio and menacing statements ostensibly authorizing his 'harsh treatment'. For example, when asked about future att.acks, KSM menacingly repeated "Soon you will Know". This is a far different interrogation situation than that of Saddam.

...continued below

[Eoin45]

There is no such thing as enhanced interrogation. It's torture. Obfuscation by re-naming it cahnges nothing.

[AliMB]

Part II

Second, 'breaking' a detainee according to predominant nomenclature usually implies that valuable and actionable intelligence was extracted by the interrogator. I've poured over the FBI documents, and I can find little (if any) that qualifies. The information reported is mostly a historical account of policy decisions (fitting considering the detainee). Frankly, a comparison of a FBI non-coercive interrogation to the CIA's EIT program is prime facie fallacious; Saddam was the President of a Republic, not a terr0rist operative.

Third, the objective of the article (and likely the reason that this website included it on its front-page) is to push the narrative that non-coerci­ve/rapport­-building interrogations are effective. While true, this argument is also redundant. Even the CIA concurs that 'soft' interrogations are usually productive and always preferable.

In fact, according to a declassified 2005 legal memo, the Agency reported that its personnel only applied EITs on 28 of 94 detainees. Of those 28 detainees, I believe that reasonable individuals (including the harshest of EIT critics) would conclude that in the majority of these interrogations did not constitute t0rture. The infamous waterb0arding technique was applied to 3 terr0rists. If Saddam had been held in CIA custody, the interrogation plan would have been the same.

In sum, the tagline is flagrantly misleading.

[MaximMaximus]

In sum, you're trying to find a cover for torture and you're a apologist for torturers. Get a spine.

[Eoin45]

In sum, you're a shil fro immoratity.

[RegLib]

In sum, you will have no objections when captured Americans are tortured in some future military conflict.

[Palemoon]

This article has to be the biggest waste of time I've ever spent on HuffPo, along with it being the biggest propaganda hit piece I've seen since Novak outed Plame.

Now, all of a sudden, ALL Palestianians are considered "terrists"?? I always knew the Bush administration considered an entire race of people as such, but that's the only thing I saw newsworthy in the whole entire article.

I don't know what's worse, wasting the time to read it when I could have been doing something else, or the fact that I was duped into thinking this was a story to begin with.

[PeaceIsMyName]

What secrets did Saddam reveal or what did he confirm that was already suspected?

I think I missed something reading that article?

[instagladiator]

Ho hum. Here comes another fiction.

[S1m0n]

The FBI? He'd been three weeks in Kurdish hands before they tranqed him up and stuck him back in the hole for the TV cameras and the special forces to find.

[marco01]

Reeeally. That's a new one. Credible link please.

[MaximMaximus]

The Kurds cannot wipe their backsides without US approval. So, are you saying that his capture was simply a photo op?

[confidance government]

I would think the Kurds would have killed him on the spot if they had captured him.

[marco01]

No Doubt

[Vieux Charles]

This headline is completely misleading. They didn't "break" Saddam. Not a shred of actionable intelligence was documented in his interrogations.

[marco01]

This is only part 1

[Yasmine]

FBI was capable of using Saddam's psychological situation at the time of having been caught and knowing that he would be killed anyway....­..........­....he was like a person who had NOTHING to lose., so he would tell the truth.....­..........­.resigned to his fate.
I can believe the FBI did not maltreat him and since Saddam had been maltreated at first. , he probably appreciated the FBI treatment., and gave them the truth without being tortured.

The more we appreciate the FBI , the more it will do well to deserve the peopl's trust.
That is the second time the FBI got better results than the other mercenary torturers.
SO, Bravo to the FBI.......­.........k­eep up the good work.

[lianmolive]

Impossible. Saddam broke without torture? I don't believe it. We're being lied to be the LEFT.

Torture is the only thing that breaks those sub-human species.

[Billy Hell]

Sub-human like the republican species?

[lianmolive]

Exactly.