National Interest (published by the Nixon Center)
Torture Is Not A Republican Value
http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=16118
“But I do not know a single working-level intelligence or law enforcement officer who approves of torture as an interrogation tool. Torture produces bad information. As every intelligence officer or police officer who has had access to information believed to be produced through harsh interrogation knows, the information that comes from physical abuse is unreliable and frequently false. Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi was rendered to the Egyptians, who tortured him. He told interrogators that Al-Qaeda had sent operatives to Iraq for training in biological and chemical weapons, false information which was included in Colin Powell’s unfortunate address to the UN Security Council in February 2003.
...
Even the Israelis no longer use torture—they have learned that they can obtain much more from their prisoners by treating them well and using normal police-style questioning. Ironically, using coercive interrogation methods can make stopping terrorists more problematic, as many foreign intelligence services and police forces are reluctant to share information with any agency that is known to torture.
Finally, if the United States accepts that torture is a permissible practice it opens the door to the same or worse treatment for U.S. soldiers and diplomats who fall into the hands of terrorists. That is a door that should not be opened.
Philip Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism expert and presently serves as the Francis Walsingham Fellow for the American Conservative Defense Alliance.”
Ron Kessler’s new TERROR WATCH: INSIDE THE DESPERATE RACE TO STOP THE NEXT ATTACK (2007) book (see New York Post article today) says this about anthrax:
“in the initial questioning, KSM provided vital information on al Qaeda’s efforts to secure biological weapons. He admitted having met three individuals involved in the organization’s efforts to produce anthrax, a deadly biological agent. One of the individuals he identified as a terrorist named Yazid Sufaat.
Khalid al-Mihdar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, the two hijackers who slipped into the United States in July 2001, were known by the intelligence community to have attended an Al Qaeda summit in January 2000 at Sufaat’s apartment at Kuala Lumpur.
KSM apparently believed that the United States already knew about Sufaat, because Sufaat had been captured and taken into foreign custody before KSM’s arrest. [Sufaat was captured in December 2001].
If fact, U.S. intelligence did not now about Sufaat’s role in al Qaeda’s anthrax program.”
Information from Sufaat then helped lead to the capture of his two principal assistants in the anthrax program, preventing al Qaeda from developing anthrax for attacks against the United States.” (p. 59).
His assistants were Barq and Wahdan. One was Egyptian and one was Sudanese.
The passage refers to KSM’s capture. He was arrested, I believe, on March 1, 2003. I believe the subject of the article posted in this thread was arrested on March 7, 2003. It seems that KSM’s capture may have led to Memon’s capture, perhaps through a traced call.
Sufaat was captured in December 2001, news of the arrest was public in March 2002, the FBI first briefly interviewed him in November 2002, focusing their questions on how he knew Zacarias Moussaoui.
You are kidding, right? Do you have any idea what these people have done to our soldiers that they HAVE captured?
I am talking about the ones we have found DEAD after the fact? Do you know what these beasts do to people? Do you have any IDEA what our troops found in Fallujah when they took down the city? People chained to walls and left to STARVE to death. People WITH THEIR LEGS cut off in a way so they wouldn't die right away, left to die in a slow, excruciating fashion.
Our Marines found execution buildings that had written SCHEDULES...what time to bring the victim in...how long it would take to film...how long to cut off their heads...how long to assemble the video and what time to leave the premises to get the tape out for the next news cycle.
You think that ANY forbearance shown to these subhuman scumbags is going to result in BETTER or MORE HUMANE treatment of any captive they manage to obtain? What kind of absolute IDIOCY is that? Do you think that perhaps they might saw off the heads of their captives faster or something to make it hurt less?
Do you, or any of these supposedly erudite boneheads think that if we play nice games of patty-cake, make them our buddies and feed them orange glazed chicken with rice pilaf, that they are going to change their ways?
What planet do you and those people live on?