Yes, Virginia, There Is a Torturer
Posted on | May 21, 2008
Turkish citizen Murat Kurnaz described for Congress yesterday the years of torture and beatings he endured at the hands of US interrogators. As usual, this is only the tip of the iceberg:
While he was detained in Kandahar, Kurnaz testified, he was chained by his arms to the ceiling with his feet dangling and subjected to electric shocks. Kurnaz also alleges U.S. interrogators tried to force him to sign papers admitting his guilt…
While the CIA has admitted to waterboarding three al Qaeda detainees, the Justice Department inspector general’s report, released today, details other instances of detainees having water forced down their throats.
The report noted an instance from a 2004 interrogation of a detainee in Iraq.
“[An FBI Agent] recalled that, at some point during the interrogation, the military officer ‘put water down’ a seated detainee’s throat,” the report said. “He said he guessed that the purpose of the water was to give the detainee the sensation that he was drowning, so that he would provide the information that the interrogator wanted. [The agent] stated that the detainee was gagging and spitting out water. He said that the detainee appeared to be uncomfortable, and assumed that he had trouble breathing.”
This is what was done in our name. Though German intelligence had told American officials that Kurnaz was no terrorist, he was not released until 2006.
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One Response to “Yes, Virginia, There Is a Torturer”
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May 21st, 2008 @ 2:26 pm
The subtext, from reading Curveball, is that CIA and German intel hold each other in contempt. CIA considers their German counterparts to be borderline incompetent. This is not untrue, as their service had been infiltrated up to the highest echelons by the Stasi without their ever guessing (then the wall came down). The Germans first alerted us to Curveball and his “intelligence” on Saddam’s WMD programs.
What this episode demonstrates is that CIA has dropped to the level of the Germans in quality of intel, and far lower in terms of tactics.