ABC: CIA officer says Zubaydah waterboarding was torture but also necessary
posted at 5:21 pm on December 10, 2007 by Bryan
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I doubt ABC picked up this report from the Puffington Host.
In the first public comment by any CIA officer involved in handling high-value al Qaeda targets, John Kiriakou, now retired, said the technique broke Zubaydah in less than 35 seconds.
“The next day, he told his interrogator that Allah had visited him in his cell during the night and told him to cooperate,” said Kiriakou in an interview to be broadcast tonight on ABC News’ “World News With Charles Gibson” and “Nightline.”
Funny how Allah’s timing coincides so cleanly with the waterboarding, innit?
Kiriakou says waterboarding is torture and we shouldn’t do it. But.
“What happens if we don’t waterboard a person, and we don’t get that nugget of information, and there’s an attack,” Kiriakou said. “I would have trouble forgiving myself.”
Which is pretty much the same logic I followed regarding the treatment of high value targets in this post. It’s obvious in retrospect that the waterboarding of animals like Zubaydah was an exercise in restraint, not an orgy of mistreatment. In the wake of 9-11 it might have been easy for officers to justify all kinds of treatment that, thank goodness, they don’t seem to have even contemplated. They used one method that was known not to leave lasting damage and that breaks subjects very quickly.
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I wouldn’t forgive you either.
Nor would the very people that want to tie your hands, namely The Dems and John McCain
TheSitRep on December 10, 2007 at 5:27 PM
do it to every single knowledgable al-qaeda operative. every single one, and do it as many times as needed and use as much water as required.
and do it over and over and over until they give up what they have in their stupid Quranic brains of theirs.
bism allah may al-qaeda drown.
blatantblue on December 10, 2007 at 5:29 PM
I don’t care what any expert says. Waterboarding is not torture. The mutilation, limb dismemberment, skin removal, gutting, burning, drilling that those animals do to our guys,,, that’s torture.
Griz on December 10, 2007 at 5:29 PM
Only the weakest-minded people on the face of planet Earth would consider waterboarding torture.
davenp35 on December 10, 2007 at 5:30 PM
Interesting. Prior disclosures about how Zubaydah was treated never quite mentioned that he was waterboarded.
I was surprised that they got as much as they did just by using the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
see-dubya on December 10, 2007 at 5:33 PM
I find it very amusing that what “we” consider torture, is extremely mild and laughable compared to what “they” (terrorists) do to us and others. Standing for long periods of time in cold rooms. Food that is not Islamic!!?!? Wahhh.
We are fighting a bunch of totalitarian, fascist sissies. A people who are not used to being fought back against so when the do lose they have to make up excuses, lies, and cry fouls.
I am mitary, and I would not be afraid of any torture that would not kill, or permanently injure me. It would suck, but I would not be afraid of it. Boot camp would be classified as torture if we keep letting this get out of control. Too late, even boot camp has been wussified in some ways.
El Guapo on December 10, 2007 at 5:33 PM
Libs consider waterboarding torture because it works! And they’re dead against anything that helps America!
stonemeister on December 10, 2007 at 5:35 PM
heck yes guapo
navy SEAL BUD’s is torture for those guys that go there. legalized torture.
hell week is 2 hrs sleep in 7 days i mean give me a break and we’re whining about these stupid mujahideen and jihadeens feelings.
blatantblue on December 10, 2007 at 5:37 PM
We won’t need to torture them. The Jedi Mind Trick will get them to spill everything they know, then forget they told us.
Frozen Tex on December 10, 2007 at 5:38 PM
Awesome! But I think they are also dead against anything that works which someone else proposed or used because it gives them no credit.
El Guapo on December 10, 2007 at 5:38 PM
I agree, waterboarding is not torture. I believe anything that does not cause harm is not torture. And this does not case harm.
Having said that, I don’t have any problem with causing harm to these douchebag either!
conservnut on December 10, 2007 at 5:40 PM
I’m afraid John McCain would consider that torture too.
conservnut on December 10, 2007 at 5:42 PM
Send any of them back to their home countries to be iterrogated by their own security/intelligence agencies. Then they’d be reminded of what torture really can be.
Frozen Tex on December 10, 2007 at 5:42 PM
OT, but has anyone picked up on this?
If there is any truth to it, it sould be all over the place by now.
Victim: Gang-Rape Cover-Up by U.S., Halliburton/KBR
Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she’d be out of a job.
Finally, Jones says, she convinced a sympathetic guard to loan her a cell phone so she could call her father in Texas.
“I said, ‘Dad, I’ve been raped. I don’t know what to do. I’m in this container, and I’m not able to leave,’” she said. Her father called their congressman, Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas.
“We contacted the State Department first,” Poe told ABCNews.com, “and told them of the urgency of rescuing an American citizen” — from her American employer.
Poe says his office contacted the State Department, which quickly dispatched agents from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad to Jones’ camp, where they rescued her from the container.
According to her lawsuit, Jones was raped by “several attackers who first drugged her, then repeatedly raped and injured her, both physically and emotionally.”
Jones told ABCNews.com that an examination by Army doctors showed she had been raped “both vaginally and anally,” but that the rape kit disappeared after it was handed over to KBR security officers.
Legal experts say Jones’ alleged assailants will likely never face a judge and jury, due to an enormous loophole that has effectively left contractors in Iraq beyond the reach of United States law.
MB4 on December 10, 2007 at 5:43 PM
Yeah…. it really used to amuse me…
Back when I was LIVING on US Navy ships (single enlisted guys did NOT get barraks, or BAQ if you were ships company, and this was when I was an E-6!)… they were letting prisoners out of jail because of their living conditions… and they had TWICE the amount of Sqare footage we were allowed.
Romeo13 on December 10, 2007 at 5:44 PM
It’s not torture. It’s creative coercion.
We have club gitmo; the islamofascists have hammers vs. genitals, power drills to the eye balls and people who saw heads off.
Water boarding is not torture.
locomotivebreath1901 on December 10, 2007 at 5:45 PM
waterboarding works, use it on these terrorists…the question for the critics of it is….
if your loved ones would be saved by the information obtained, would you use the waterboarding technique? if they say no they are liars, if they say yes then they should shut up!
robo on December 10, 2007 at 5:45 PM
Well, we’ll just have to make him forget, too.
Republican Jedi: “This add isn’t a campaign contribution.”
McCain: “this add isn’t a campaign contibution!”
RJ: “You won’t sing while campaigning again. It’s undiginified.”
McC: “I don’t think I’ll sing while campaigning anymore; it’s not very dignified!”
Frozen Tex on December 10, 2007 at 5:47 PM
I don’t consider waterboarding torture either.
By the way, haven’t more people been publicly waterboarded by liberal protesters than by the CIA?
CP on December 10, 2007 at 5:48 PM
Waterboarding is a “form” of torture, but in know way is it the equivalent of what John McCain went through in Vietnam or the kind of torture that Saddam put people through.
Where were the wusses when we were blasting Noriega with “The Howard Stern Show”?
.
GT on December 10, 2007 at 5:49 PM
Darn typos. Know = no.
GT on December 10, 2007 at 5:50 PM
Waterboarding is not torture I am sick and tired of the Lib’s and a few rhino’s saying it is. NOT one of them is 100% for this country if they think it is. Look what happens in our own military training. I respect McCain but he isn’t the main authority on torture. If the north vietnamese did water boarding, maybe a lot more of our men would still be alive today. Look at the grabage that happens to our troops in the ME. Give me a break people, grow up and act like men like you were created to be. Stand up to this nonsense and tell them to grow a pair.
bones47 on December 10, 2007 at 5:52 PM
As my son said when I asked hin the difference between torture and interrogation:
“Torture is when you do it for no other reason than to harm people. Interrogation is done to get information”.
Now Let’s play: “Is the Congress/Senate smarter than a 7th grader!!!”
HarryStar on December 10, 2007 at 5:55 PM
I think it would be considered more coercion or harrassment as it doesn’s seem to be a procedure that inflicts pain. The semantic difference doesn’t mean much to some, but there are degrees and I think it matters.
CP on December 10, 2007 at 5:56 PM
Hehehehe.
Theworldisnotenough on December 10, 2007 at 6:00 PM
Waterboarding torture? Not according to Rockefeller and Pelosi.
Hey MB4, what was that container made of Paper? Ever try to send a signal of a cell phone from inside a shipping container? It has been a few years, and technology could have advanced, but a few years ago it would have been impossible for a cell phone signal to penetrate a shipping container…but things change.
*
I miss the good ol days of pulling teeth without a pain killer, than jabbing the wound with a steel probe…
right2bright on December 10, 2007 at 6:02 PM
By McCain’s logic we should stop shooting at our enemies so that maybe they won’t shoot at us.
By the Dem’s logic, we should stop speaking harshly of our enemies and then they will like us.
pedestrian on December 10, 2007 at 6:03 PM
Waterboarding has proven to be a very useful and effective tool for humanely extracting information from very bad people. It causes absolutely zero permanent damage. It causes absolutely zero temporary damage. It doesn’t even really drown people. In fact, it makes people think they are drowning. All waterboarding is to me is the perfect interrogation tool. Sure, it probably sucks going through it but it works, and then the waterboarded is fine. Good as new.
I know why the wacko lefties are against waterboarding. They are against it because it works. They know it works. They hate the fact that it works.
What baffles me is why McCain is against it. It works and it causes no permenant damage. John McCain walks around with one arm longer then the other to this day because of what he went through as a guest at the Hanoi Hilton. So I can see why he would be against breaking a detainee’s arm in seven different places in order to extract information, but waterboarding? I would think a man who has experienced the types of things he has experienced would welcome such an efficient, effective and harmless way of extracting information who wish to set off a nuke in a major US city.
John McCain is too illogical to be POTUS.
Zetterson on December 10, 2007 at 6:06 PM
Bleh. My dad got waterboarded his first day of school at age 13 (in the ’50s). Back then it was called an initiation rite. Now its called torture.
aengus on December 10, 2007 at 6:15 PM
What’s torture is watching the traitorous conduct of the Democrats, putting our lives at higher risk because they don’t like the techniques we use to get information from those who would kill us by the millions.
Their thirst for power by any means is our death sentence.
fogw on December 10, 2007 at 6:16 PM
Paper?
What do you think?
Wood? That would probably work just fine.
Metal? That might not work so well.
I repeat: Finally, Jones says, she convinced a sympathetic guard to loan her a cell phone so she could call her father in Texas.
Do you think the sympathetic guard “beamed” the cell pone into the shipping container to her?
Or do you think that maybe he could have opened it up and let her stick her head out to make the call?
MB4 on December 10, 2007 at 6:21 PM
It has been a few years, and technology could have advanced, but a few years ago it would have been impossible for a cell phone to be “beamed” into a shipping container…but things change.
MB4 on December 10, 2007 at 6:29 PM
But, but . . . I’ve been assured by the Deciders that torture never yields reliable information? How can this be?
Dudley Smith on December 10, 2007 at 7:46 PM
I think this is the money quote from the article
“A former colleague of mine asked him during the conversation one day, ‘What would you do if we decided to let you go one day?’ And he said, ‘I would kill every American and Jew I could get my hands on…It’s nothing personal. You’re a nice guy. But this is who I am.’”
And we’re worried about waterboarding?
Talk about the forest/trees dilemma.
SHEESH
commonsensehoosier on December 10, 2007 at 7:56 PM
Is being forced to breathe in CS (tear) gas and have it billow into your eyes, as a planned military methodology, “torture”?
Then everyone in boot camp told to take their gas masks off during basic training was “tortured”.
You do not tell your enemies what you are capable of doing to them.
That’s how you break them without torture: the fear of the unknown.
If they can be sure of how far “Congress allows the military to go” they will resist with that much more more determination …to the point of having one of our cities turn into the surface of the sun for a millisecond.
And a million charcoal remnants of your family and friends being the moral highground “victory” of this self-eviscerating concern for the enemy’s comfort.
Just don’t videotape the damned procedures.
But do get the info that will prevent mass-murder from these crazed s.o.b.’s.
I think Nick Berg and Daniel Pearl would agree.
(If they hadn’t met some of these maniacs personally.)
profitsbeard on December 10, 2007 at 8:04 PM
Allah you magnificant bastard!
sweeper on December 10, 2007 at 9:38 PM
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