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Why Don’t They Claim al-Nashiri’s Waterboarding Worked?

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As I noted last night, Liz “MiniCheney” Cheney very pointedly avoided claiming that al-Nashiri provided important intelligence as a result of being waterboarded. In a non-sequitur response to Norah O’Donnell’s assertion that waterboarding is torture, MiniCheney offered this as rebuttal to O’Donnell’s point (at 2:15).

There were three people who were waterboarded, and two of those people are people who gave us incredibly important and useful information, information that saved American lives after they were waterboarded, both Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah.

That’s pretty shocking, coming as it does from someone trying hard to claim waterboarding is effective. The implication is that Rahim al-Nashiri did not give such information after he was waterboarded.

But it turns out the 9/11 Commission actually used more information from al-Nashiri in its report than it did from Abu Zubaydah (though still not a lot), a total of 16 references–and the Commission may have included more information gathered immediately after waterboarding. There’s some confusion about when al-Nashiri was captured (the contemporaneous public announcement placed it in early November 2002, whereas the ICRC lists October 2002 without the specific date; the ICRC also reports that al-Nashiri was allegedly interrogated by Dubai agents for a month before being handed over to the Americans), and we have no reporting on precisely when al-Nashiri was waterboarded. Nevertheless, al-Nashiri gave information that was used in the 9/11 Report closer to his capture date than AZ and as close as a few of the KSM reports. And reports were generated consistently in all four months after he was captured:

November 20, 2002: One citation
November 21, 2002: Two citations (one contradicted by later reporting)
December  26, 2002: Three citations (one labeled “may not be true”)
January 14, 2003: One citation
January 27, 2003: One citation
January 28, 2003: One citation
February 10, 2003: One citation
February 20, 2003: One citation
May 21, 2003: One citation
February 21, 2004: Four (probably) citations, all presumably in response to 9/11 Commission questions

Thus, if al-Nashiri was waterboarded in any of the four months following his capture, information collected in the same month made it into the report. (Note, much more of this testimony was corroborated than AZ’s or KSM’s.)

In other words, they did get information from al-Nashiri, at least in the 9/11 Report, more than they did from Abu Zubaydah. And while we can’t be sure, it may have been collected using waterboarding. But for some reason, MiniCheney carefully stops short of claiming they got information from al-Nashiri.

Now, there are several possible reasons why MiniCheney doesn’t want to claim that waterboarding worked with al-Nashiri. Read more →

Fellatio for Cheney from the Politico

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picture-80.thumbnail.pngI guess it’s no surprise that Dick Cheney chose Pool Boy and his two sidekicks, John Harris and Mike Allen, for his first propaganda piece after stepping down as Vice President. And it was a good choice for Cheney, as they apparently assiduously avoided any of the questions that Cheney ought to be asked.

For example, when Cheney asserted,

Protecting the country’s security is “a tough, mean, dirty, nasty business,” he said. “These are evil people. And we’re not going to win this fight by turning the other cheek.”

Real journalists might have asked, "then why the fuck didn’t we finish the job in Afghanistan rather than turning our attention to a war of choice in Iraq?"

Similarly, when Cheney said,

*The potential consequences of $1 trillion in deficit stimulus spending: “It’s huge, obviously – potentially huge. You worry about what ultimately happens to inflation. You worry about what’s going to happen to the ability of the government to borrow money. … I’m nervous.”

Real journalists might have asked why Cheney showed no concern when he was racking up $1 trillion (and counting) of deficit spending for the aforementioned war of choice in Iraq. For that matter, real journalists might even have asked what happened to Cheney’s claim that "Reagan proved deficits don’t matter," now that he’s out of office.

But I suppose it would take more than a real journalist–it would take a DFH blogger, most likely–to point out that, in fact, many people did foresee the colossal fuck-up the Bush Administration was making of the economy.

*Whether the Bush administration should have done more about the economy: "We did worry about it, to some extent. … I don’t think anybody actually foresaw something of this size and dimension occurring. It’s also global. We only control part of the world economy – a very important part."  

The article ends by quoting Liz Cheney teasing her dad that he doesn’t need a press aide–he can do it on his own. And I guess, given that he did such a good job of arranging a fluffer designed to attack Obama some more for reversing Dick’s failed policies–Liz Cheney has it about right.