Posted on 04/19/2009 3:29:29 PM PDT by lewisglad
According to the May 30, 2005 Bradbury memo, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in March 2003 and Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in August 2002.
On page 37 of the OLC memo, in a passage discussing the differences between SERE techniques and the torture used with detainees, the memo explains:
The CIA used the waterboard “at least 83 times during August 2002″ in the interrogation of Zubaydah. IG Report at 90, and 183 times during March 2003 in the interrogation of KSM, see id. at 91.
Note, the information comes from the CIA IG report which, in the case of Abu Zubaydah, is based on having viewed the torture tapes as well as other materials. So this is presumably a number that was once backed up by video evidence.
Waterboarded six times a day for a month????? I find that very hard to believe. Something is fishy here.
I think being forced to live with hogs would have been more effective.
I agree. The story is bogus. KSM folded after the first session and started singing like a canary, giving up actionable intelligence that prevented terror attacks in the pipeline.
I read the same thing that KSM held out the longest before spilling his guts and telling everything he knew.
The Fed and Treasury are silent as to some basic questions of what they are doing, yet this news, which should be classified, is shouted from the rooftops. There is nothing wrong with what has been done, in fact, it is effective, and saves American lives. Yet, this is leaked to try and make the country look bad.
muslims lie to infidels... it is what they do.
LLS
since he took the credit for beheading Danny Pearl personally among his other confessions, i think that turnabout is fair play. waterboarding doesn’t seem
“proportional” and we all know how the libs love proportionality.
Oh, that poor man!
That horrible Bush and Cheney should be put on trial for this!
Is force feeding them bacon torture?
That was sarcasm for those who engage mouth before putting brain in gear.
A Nation too paralyzed to only allow interrogation techniques of foreign terror suspects, or enemy combatants, less “enhanced” than those used on volunteers in a popular American reality-TV show, is a nation that will never see Victory because it does not value Victory enough. It is also a nation that does not know what “torture” really is.
On, April 17, 2009, the MSN headlines began, reports and commentary detailed what the NY Times lead article described as “brutal interrogation techniques”. President Obama, CNN commentators from the left and right (Gergen; Rollins), ACLU spokesman (Jameel Jaffer), law professor Jonathan Turley and a host of MSNBC agitator/spokesman, in response to the disclosures feigned horror and anguish, and decried the use of such techniques by the CIA against select terror suspects following the 9 - 11 attacks as “torture”, and repudiated as immoral and unlawful, the actions of the US in so doing. The specific techniques which were the basis of this daylong marathon of condemnation, and which have been and continue to be the basis for an ongoing series of international apologies by President Obama, intended in part to demean and stigmatize the prior administration’s foreign policy policies, were comprised, it was shown by the released memos, by the following (in addition to a proposed but unused plan to place a catepillar in the cell of one uncooperative detainee intended to distress the detainee into cooperation with interrogators):
1. The Attention Grab: The interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt front of the prisoner and shakes him.
2. Attention Slap: An open-handed slap aimed at causing pain and triggering fear.
3. The Belly Slap: A hard open-handed slap to the stomach. The aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury. Doctors consulted advised against using a punch, which could cause lasting internal damage.
4. Long Time Standing: This technique is described as among the most effective. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding confessions.
5. The Cold Cell: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water.
6. Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner’s face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt. “
Note: Water Boarding specifically has been reported to have been used on a very low number (3) of “high value” detainees. Water Boarding is a procedure routinely used upon US Military personnel in training to handle hostile capture and interrogation. Several reporters have voluntarily undergone “water boarding”, which has its effect generally in less that two minutes. No one seems to enjoy the experience.
In contrast consider a formerly popular reality tv show that grossed over $600 MM while broadcasting volunatary contests for a $50K prize award and a “no fear” designation for the winners, and which broadcast in the relevant period of 2001 -2006 in the US, “Fear Factor”. A representative sample of the events for which there appeared to be no limit of volunteers during the shows run on NBC and in syndication, as well as a widespread popular audience, included the following:
1.) Fear Factor Pizza - Episode 317 (Season 3): This stunt must have made some of the contestants give up on eating pizza ever again. With a crust made from cow bile, coagulated blood paste for sauce, rancid cheese and topping choices like live red worms and fish eyes, Although most contestants ended up puking up their tasty treat, all contestants managed to complete the stunt and move on to the next round.
2.) Rat Bobbing - Episode 416 (Season 4): During Couples’ Fear Factor, the girls had to lie down in a plexi-glass tank, and then were covered in 400 rats. The guys then had to retrieve ten chicken’s feet from the tank, using only their mouths! One couple bowed out of the stunt cuz it was just too gross! The couple who won this stunt won an all-expenses paid trip to Las Vegas .
3.) Eat Buffalo Testicles - Episode 104 (Season 1): Ever tried a Rocky Mountain Oyster? Peeps in Colorado think they’re pretty tasty when they’re breaded and fried, but bull’s testicles aren’t as tastily prepared on Fear Factor. Contestants had to eat two large bull’s testicles in four minutes or else they would be eliminated. Before being able to eat the testicles, contestants would need to bite through and then peel back a veiny membrane that was holding the “meat” inside. - only the two guys were able to complete the stunt.
4.) Bug Body Bag - Episode 433 (Season 4): This All-Female edition of Fear Factor included one truly gruesome stunt. Contestants were stuck inside a morgue drawer, in a body bag filled with giant hissing cockroaches, flesh-eating worms, crickets and stink beetles. Locked in the pitch black of the morgue drawer, the girls were locked in chains and had to fumble around to find the right key to unlock themselves.
5.) Eat African Cave-Dwelling Spiders - Episode 408 (Season 4): This stunt was not for elimination but instead to win a brand new car. Contestants lined up at a table full of African cave-dwelling spiders and had to grab hold of them, and then eat them alive. We’re not talking run-of-the-mill basement spiders either. These bad boys looked like a cross between a spider and a crab and even had the little pinchers to prove it. This stunt brought one contestant to tears and she almost forfeited the challenge. In the end, all of the contestants ate a couple of spiders. The winner ate a whopping 12!
6.) Cow Eye Juice - Episode 403 (Season 4): For this Fear Factor stunt, contestants had to stick their face in a jar full of cow eyeballs, pick them up without using their hands and then puncture them with their teeth, letting all of the juices fall in to a cup. Once the cup was full, the contestants would then have to drink the cow eyeball juice. As if it’s not bad enough putting slimy, gooey eyeballs in your mouth, you would then have to drink the ooze from inside the eye too!
7.) Eat Horse Rectum - Episode 313 (Season 3): This challenge started out with the contestants playing a game of horseshoes. They would get three tosses. There were four rings around the horseshoe peg with the numbers 8, 6, 7 and then 8 again. If the contestant got their horseshoe around the peg, that would give them a score of 0. The goal of this game? To see how many inches of horse rectum the contestants would have to eat! Both girls attempted the stunt, but only one was able to complete it which meant that she won $25,000 dollars for choking back 13 inches.
8.) Fear Factor Spaghetti - Episode 211 (Season 2): Another Fear Factor specialty was served up for this stunt. Fear Factory Spaghetti was made up of live night crawlers and coagulated blood balls. Mmmm. This stunt was so gross that none of the contestants made it through their plate of spaghetti. Wonder why?
9.) Intestine Chew, Milk and Chug - Episode 422 (Season 4): Here’s yet another stunt that involved the contestants sitting in a glass coffin covered in something disgusting. This time around, Fear Factor’s weapon of choice was cow intestines. Contestants were covered in hundreds of pounds of intestines which they then had to puncture with their mouth, suck out the liquid and fill a glass with it. At the end of course, they had to drink the chunky mixture and hope that they could do it faster than their fellow opponents.
10.) Slugs and Bile - Episode 312 (Season 3): First up on the Fear Factor menu for this stunt were 10, fat, slimy slugs. Each contestant had to choke down their 10 slugs, followed by a shot of cow bile. One contestant tried rubbing the slime from the slugs off on her arm, but that only made them more agitated (making them excrete more goo!).
Note: The above list was complied from a popular internet site for children (Kidzworld).
Not all viewers were unaverse to the Fear Factor stunts. Apparently one viewer had sympathies similar to the weak stomach and timid sensibilities of the MSN commentators and our current crop of national leaders. In January 2005, an episode featuring a stunt involving blended rats aired in its normal prime time slot. Austin Aitken, a part-time paralegal from Cleveland, sued NBC for $2.5 million USD for airing the show, claiming that he felt so disgusted from watching the stunt, his blood pressure rose until he felt dizzy and lightheaded and subsequently vomited. He claimed that his disorientation was so severe that he ran into a doorway and seriously injured himself, however, in March 2005, U.S. District Judge Lesley Wells threw out the lawsuit.(Wikipedia). Apparently, however, the new administration and the democrat congress along with the MSN are aligned with Mr. Aitken and unable to stomach even lesser non-lethal, non injurious efforts to preserve our national security.
When America comes under real attack from foreign states or terrorists as happened in 2001, an American government that fails to value Victory above public relations and political expediency (the ongoing implied that the Bush administration engaged in unlawful conduct - when the truth is opposite - that Bush prolonged the war by years of wasted effort negotiating with the UN and operating with ROE that obscured and delayed an American Victory) America is and will be the loser. Can anyone imagine Gen. Sherman waiting for Justice Department guidance before determining how to prosecute the war?
I would have waterboarded him 184 times in a month, only the last time I would have drown the m...
Did it work? If it did, do it again.
The al Qaeda mastermind, known as KSM, stubbornly held out for about two minutes -- far longer than any of the other "high-value" terror targets who were subjected to the technique, the harshest from a list of six techniques approved for use by the CIA and Bush administration lawyers, sources said.
"Then he started talking, and he never stopped," this former officer said. KSM was never water-boarded again, and in hours and hours of conversation with his interrogators, often over a cup of tea, he poured out his soul and the murderous deeds he committed.
More: http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/09/how-the-cia-bro.html
This makes me wonder if the numbers, 83 for Zubaydah and 183 for KSM are actually the number of seconds the waterboarding session lasted.
That is it? I hope that means they had more time for the car batteries..
The ACLU might compensate him for $183,000,000 or more.
Sorry to hear they took it easy with the POS.
This is disgusting. We should have chopped a few limbs off, bathed him in pigs’ blood, and left him to die.
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