[Vision2020] being fair and even

[nickgier at adelphia.net]

Hi Roger,

When you say that one Al Qaeda was waterboarded and then "sang," you must be referring to Abu Zubaydah.  You forgot to add that his singing was nothing but gibberish. Here is a paragraph from my column on torture:

"President Bush became personally involved in the case of Al Qaeda suspect Abu Zubaydah, who was known to have mental problems.  In his book "The One Percent Solution," Ron Suskind reports that Bush asked CIA chief George Tenet if torture really worked.  Zubaydah was water boarded and he began talking about all sorts of plots, but not a single one was verified in a huge waste of resources.  The Roman jurist was correct: under torture the weak will say anything, but experience has also shown that very little valuable information is gained from anyone who is tortured."  www.home.roadrunner.com/~nickgier/torture.htm

Recently NPR had a series on secret operations during WWII.  Top Nazi prisoners of war were brought to the U.S. and interrogated under the most civil conditions. Sometimes the interrogators took them out to dinner, even played golf with them.  The Nazis talked and we gleaned valuable intelligence from them.

Let me repeat some legal history of about water boarding: U.S. soldiers in the Spanish American War were prosecuted for doing it to Filipinos; Japanese soldiers were prosecuted for doing it; and Bush administration officials may well be arrested for OK'ing it if they travel outside the U.S.

Nick