Robert Parry: Connecting CIA Torture to Abu Ghraib

[laststeamtrain]

Connecting CIA Torture to Abu Ghraib

By Robert Parry
April 21, 2009

By blurring the lines between terrorism and combat – and by linking the 9/11 rationale to groups only tangentially connected to al-Qaeda – the Bush administration spread the policy of harsh interrogations far beyond terror suspects who worked directly for Osama bin Laden, newly released Justice Department memos reveal.

Most significantly, the Bush administration let the interrogation policy spill over into U.S.-occupied Iraq, where ambushes of American and allied troops were regarded as the legal and moral equivalent of terrorist attacks against civilians on U.S. soil, one of the memos, dated May 30, 2005, makes clear. That belief, in turn, appears to have set the stage for the Abu Ghaib prison abuse scandal.

The memo – written by Steven Bradbury, then acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel – describes the criteria for identifying a “high value” detainee who would be a candidate for “enhanced interrogation techniques.” While describing the supposedly restrictive nature of the criteria, Bradbury actually reveals how broad the category was.

Such a detainee is someone “who, until time of capture, we have reason to believe: (1) is a senior member of al-Qai’da or an al-Qai’da associated terrorist group (Jemaah Islamiyyah, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, al-Zarqawi Group, etc.), (2) has knowledge of imminent terrorist threats against the USA, its military forces, its citizens and organizations, or its allies; or that has/had direct involvement in planning and preparing terrorist actions against the USA or its allies, or assisting the al-Qai’da leadership in planning and preparing such terrorist actions; and (3) if released, constitutes a clear and continuing threat to the USA or it allies,” the memo states.

In other words, an Iraqi insurgent allegedly linked to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant who led a particularly violent faction of the Iraqi war against U.S. occupation, could qualify for harsh interrogation if he might know about future attacks on American or allied troops inside Iraq.

<more>

http://consortiumnews.com/2009/042009.html

[cliffordu]

1. NOW WE'RE TALKING!!!!! Those photos and the documentation about kiddie rape

and murder at abu Graib will be out any time now....

The shit is about to hit the fan for real.

Stand back, you're going to want to see Cheney's the whole sick oeuvre.

[seemslikeadream]

2. I would think it's going to be a different story when talking about torturing in Iraq

georgie might get away with torture on American soil but Iraq is not the last time I looked.

[seemslikeadream]

3. Calling Mr. Cambone

[TacticalPeek]

4. "Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant who led a particularly violent faction of the Iraqi war"

It's ironic that being linked to Zarqawi was a qualification for harsh treatment. The article goes on to recount the success of interrogator "Matthew Alexander" whose team succeeded in finding Zarqawi using proper interrogation techniques.

“Alexander,” a U.S. Air Force special operations officer, said it was his team’s abandonment of those harsh tactics that contributed to the tracking down and killing of the murderous al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Zarqawi in June 2006.

“Alexander” said he arrived in Iraq in March 2006, amid the bloody civil war that Sunni extremist Zarqawi had helped provoke a month earlier with the bombing of the golden-domed Askariya mosque in Samarra, a shrine revered by Iraq's majority Shiites.

“Amid the chaos, four other Air Force criminal investigators and I joined an elite team of interrogators attempting to locate Zarqawi,” he wrote. “What I soon discovered about our methods astonished me. The Army was still conducting interrogations according to the Guantanamo Bay model. … These interrogations were based on fear and control; they often resulted in torture and abuse.

“I refused to participate in such practices, and a month later, I extended that prohibition to the team of interrogators I was assigned to lead. I taught the members of my unit a new methodology -- one based on building rapport with suspects, showing cultural understanding and using good old-fashioned brainpower to tease out information.”

Breakthroughs

By getting to know the captives and negotiating with them, his team achieved breakthroughs that enabled the U.S. military to close in on Zarqawi while also gaining a deeper understanding of what drove the Iraqi insurgency, “Alexander” wrote.

[Solly Mack]

5. The CIA can be physically placed at Abu Ghraib

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6988054/ (where a detainee died)

The CIA can be physically placed at GTMO (running a prison within a prison)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5918-2004Dec16.html

The CIA can be physically placed at Bagram (where detainees died)
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/11/14/051114fa_fact?currentPage=3

And, of course, the secret prisons

The methods used at both GTMO and Bagram went to Abu Ghraib.

The CIA's bloody hands are all over everything.

[Sharklive6]

6. FOIA

The CIA knows more about life on other planets, than they tell us also.