"Torture's Blowback"
"An alleged Sept. 11 conspirator can't be tried because the
administration thought harsh tactics were a good idea."
Editorial
Friday, May 16, 2008; A18
THE GHOSTS of interrogations past have come back to haunt the Bush
administration. This week, the legal officer supervising the military
trials at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, dismissed
capital charges against Mohammed al-Qahtani, who allegedly would have
been the 20th hijacker during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks
had he not been prevented from entering the country. The decision has
been widely re****ted as a serious setback for the administration's
quest to bring terrorists to justice. It is much more and much worse
than that: It is a palpable reminder of the inhumane acts committed by
U.S. personnel and sanctioned by top officials in the name of
protecting Americans from extremists.
Once described by the administration as one of the "worst of the
worst," Mr. Qahtani was captured in late 2001 and has been held by the
United States ever since. In trying to squeeze information from the
Saudi national, U.S. personnel obtained permission from then-Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to threaten Mr. Qahtani with dogs, force
him to withstand prolonged stress positions, interrogate him for 20
hours a day and subject him to ***ual humiliation in order to break
him psychologically. By most accounts Mr. Qahtani is now indeed a
broken man, unable to communicate meaningfully even with those who
would help him. Susan J. Crawford, who dismissed the charges against
him, either came to believe that Mr. Qahtani's statements were
unreliable and inadmissible because they were coerced; or, perhaps,
that the proceedings against Mr. Qahtani had to be halted to keep a
litany of abuses from being recounted within earshot of the rest of
the world.
In either case, Mr. Qahtani's experience shows that the horrors
****trayed in the photographs from Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, which have
so deeply damaged U.S. prestige and influence around the world, were
not invented on the night ****ft there, as Mr. Rumsfeld claimed, but
were approved by him. Official investigations found that the
techniques used on Mr. Qahtani "migrated" to Afghanistan and Iraq. His
case is testament to the fact that extreme tactics, even when used to
prevent violence, almost always backfire.
There are others awaiting trial at Guantanamo who were subjected to
torture; the administration has admitted, for example, to
waterboarding Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and two
others. Prosecutors are attempting to "cleanse" the statements of
these defendants by extracting the same evidence through more
legitimate interrogation techniques. This may clear the way for
introducing evidence needed to convict the Sept. 11 conspirators. But
it should not be forgotten that by the time the need for such
cleansing arises, serious damage has already been done -- to those who
were subjected to abuse and to the country that authorized it.
http://www.wa****ngtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/15/AR2008051503705.html
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