Khalid Sheik Mohammed: "I Gave A Lot Of False Information" To Make Torture Stop

For all the attention that the Bush administration torture memos have been receiving over past month, those documents pale in comparison to the revelations documented in the leaked 40-page report issued by the International Committee for the Red Cross following two rounds of private interviews it held with the 14 "high value detainees" held at Guantanamo Bay.

If you want to know what our country did to those detainees -- especially Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah, and Rahim al-Nashiri (all three were waterboarded and suffered the worst treatment) -- then read the Red Cross report. It will leave you with a very sickening feeling about the depths to which President Bush and Vice President Cheney were willing to go to try to justify its disastrous war in Iraq (while the detainees were providing ample information during FBI interrogations about the 9/11 plot, the torture apparently began as they sought evidence about the non-existent al-Qaida/Iraq link) and how we morphed into the very monsters that we once condemned when it came to the actions of other nations.

Of enormous importance is the fact that it is the Red Cross which is the body designated by the Geneva Conventions to supervise treatment of prisoners of war and to judge that treatment's legality. They are the ones that are charged to make the initial finding as to whether war crimes have been committed.

Here's what the Red Cross declared in its report:

The allegations of ill-treatment of the detainees indicate that, in many cases, the ill-treatment to which they were subjected while held in the CIA program, either singly or in combination, constituted torture. In addition, many other elements of the ill-treatment, either singly or in combination, constituted cruel and inhuman or degrading treatment.

...The totality of the circumstances in which the fourteen were held effectively amounted to an arbitrary deprivation of liberty and enforced disappearance, in contravention of international law.

So, according to the group which the U.S. has agreed would determine whether a country violated the Geneva Convention, they have found us guilty. Again, read the report if you want to be sickened over how we treated these despicable detainees.

The Red Cross report was presented to President Bush in February 2007. As you might expect, no action was ever taken by the administration.

Finally, the report ends with a summary of its interview with Khalid Sheik Mohammed that is worth remembering as former Vice President Cheney sadly continues to insist that torture worked, when it did not:

Mark Nickolas is the Managing Editor of Political Base, and this story was from his original post, "Khalid Sheik Mohammed: "I Gave A Lot Of False Information" To Make Torture Stop"

 

Comments

[research]

The tortured are brutalized puppets.

The torturers, consciously or not,

Manipulate the puppet with pain and suggestions

to say whatever sounds "true".

[Politisizer]

It's ironic that the torture deniers / sympathisers that are posting comments in this thread have to use 'tortured' logic to try to prove their points.

[Taaif Mehadi]

Its amazing soulless tortures, like yourself, uses tortured logic to justify that whcih is already illegal.

[oafishcad]

Did the Roman's torture of Jesus "work"? Has any torture ever worked? People will talk for sure, but no more accurately than with modern questioning techniques. Torture is a disgusting shame on America. People defending this shame is just as shameful.

[oafishcad]

Torture doesn't work. It's immoral and illegal, but more importantly, It doesn't work.

[rlugbill]

Yes, torture doesn't work. People will say anything when they are tortured to make it stop, with much of the information being false and all of it being unreliable. You can't act based upon information obtained through torture because it is so unreliable. Experienced interrogators know this and use effective techniques to get accurate information, instead of cruel techniques to get useless information.

But, I disagree that this is more important. It is immaterial whether torture "works" or not. What is more important is that it is immoral and illegal. Immoral and illegal techniques cannot be justified because they "work". Such a rationale would make any horrendous act justifiable if it "works".

[k-fresh]

And I would definitely believe what KSM says. He's a very honorable person.

[ConcernedAmerican]

I guess you believe that KSM committed every terrorist act known to man since that is essentially what he confessed to while being tortured.

Either he's the greatest terrorist of all time or he told his torturers what they wanted to hear in order to stop the torture.

Is it so hard for you torture supporters to believe that someone would lie to make the torture stop?

And is it so hard to figure out that using time and resources to chase down bogus leads is counter-productive?

Did any of you torture fans bother to read the memos where they basically admitted torture didn't work?

Bueller...­..Bueller.­......

[GodBlessAmerica]

Um .. 9/11?

He *is* the greatest terrorist of all time.

[Grada3784]

He was just saying what has been said about torture since the days of the Inquisition.

[JazzSax UT]

I believe that the only reason Conservatives who think torture works, is because it would work on them. They believe that all people are as weak principled as they are, so torturing them would provide actual intel. Now, a terrorist is a different being. They are willing to give up their life for something they believe in. This means that they could endure torture longer than your average Conservative.

[Enlightened22]

It seems to me that one of the main argument against torture is rarely presented. We call those people terrorists for one good reason. Their goal is to create terror. Looking at the actions of Bush, Cheney after 09/11 and you can't help but think they basically gave up all American values after one attack, surrendering to terror and admitting defeat. It is, for me, a supreme case of treason.

[ConcernedAmerican]

I agree. Condi all but admitted that their own terror was what prompted them to throw our country into the gutter.

Isn't it funny how the ones who talk the toughest are always the biggest cowards?

[Loompa]

What makes me laugh is that these Bush haters need to bash him in any manner so will take the word of an admitted terrorist as gospel truth to prove(?) their ridiculous points.

[CrisOmg]

Even if you discount what the terrorists said, the overwhelming amount of evidence coming out should be fairly convincing, I would think.

But what makes me laugh is that these Bush backers need to justify him in any manner so will take the word of an admitted terrorist (Cheney, in this case) to prove(?) their rediculous points.

[HurryUp1212009]

And then there are Bush lovers like you, who continue to believe the series of delusions and outright lies fed to the American Public by an airhead President and a psychotic Vice President. Sir, there were no WMDs in Iraq;
There was no connection between Sadaam and Al Queda;
There was no connection between Sadaam and 9/11;
We did not go into Iraq to topple Sadaam, we went in to steal the 2nd largest oil reserves on Earth;
We did torture people;
We did eavesdrop on US citizens, both domestically and abroad;
We hanged Japanese military officers for waterboarding our troops;
I could go on and on, but
You'd rather believe their lies than face the facts.
That's what makes you a good little "Conservat­ive"....
Quick, Rush went on the air 15 minutes ago!

[johndtuttle]

We hate Bush for betraying American principles and taking us into the gutter. No POTUS had ever authorized torture since the formation of the Union.

You think about that and the profound turn for the worse that Bush represented.

[i am nav]

Aren't statements retrieved via torture inadmissible in the courts? Doesn't that mean that there is a high probability that the information gained is inaccurate? If it's inadmissible in court, it should be inadmissible to the intelligence community.

Totally unsurprising that KSM gave a lot of false information.

[ignorantwillyharper]

I wonder when Dubya was a young guy and sticking firecrackers up frogs butts and setting them off, was he able to ascertain any information about the cause of warts?

[brandnewstuff]

The Worse Bush/ Cheney depleteed American funds chasing false leads- blowing the budgets, and torturing to death when will AG Eric Holder force special prosecutor-

After May 18 when more photos outed or after the Holy grail of Torture?

[wwwFIXNEWSNOWorg]

sending our young men to die chasing their phantoms and inner demons...

[UltraClassic]

I fully expect this character to be a guest on "Countdown with KeithO." What a sweet pair they would make, going on and on about how they hate GW.

[valkyrie607]

It cannot be emphasized enough that the torture techniques used by the Bush administration were SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED by the Koreans, Chinese, and Soviets to elicit false confessions; they were successful at eliciting false confessions by American captives; and the Bush administration was using these techniques for exactly that purpose. Notice that THEY THEMSELVES admit that they did not turn to using torture until they needed evidence of a link between Al-Qaeda and Iraq, which was of course nonexistent. Torture is immoral, illegal, and worse than useless.

[Politisizer]

I don't know what I find most distastefu­l...

1. The fact that people have beed tortured.
2. The debate on whether things previously classed as torture can now be classified as not being torture.
3. The debate on whether torture is worthwhile as long as it yields information.

[Grunty1]

Easy: the Rushpublican Party, which is the source of all three.

[Loompa]

Real torture is reading this leftie drivel trying to save Pelosi from her lies and trying to deny that democraps knew nothing about enhanced interrogation. What a crock and complete hypocrisy.

[Libbyland]

The 30-story state government building I worked in after 9-11 was the proud recipient of Tennessee's Department of Homeland Security. It was a joke. The department was supposed to be ultra-secure so the whole building had to be made more 'secure." What a joke. We had state nametags that were so easy to make a home it was a farce. Every day when the lowly employees walked in, therefore, we had to submit to driver's license inspections and if the threat level was colorful enough (now, I presume, when a tortured detainee told a story) submit to purse and briefcase and shoe searches. However, anyone upper level enough who parked in the lots below the building (department heads and lawyers) just walked right in. If they brought people in with them, no matter. Nobody thought about making the entrances to the parking lots secure.
So basically, the employees were the only people considered to be a threat to the security of the homeland. The legislators, assorted bigwigs, bosses and lawyers were not, as if they have proven themselves to be a trustworthy lot.....