Part 3 of a series on the McCain amendment

Part 3 examines one of the matters raised by the letters discussed in Part 2, namely that use of torture makes little or no sense because it does not produce reliable information.

The view of the former military commanders

The first letter from the former military commanders said the following in regard to one of Gonzales's memos :

Indeed, the August 1, 2002 Justice Department memo analyzing the law on interrogation references health care administration law more than five times, but never once cites the U.S. Army Field Manual on interrogation. The Army Field Manual was the product of decades of experience--experience that had shown, among other things that such interrogation methods produce unreliable results and often impede further intelligence collection. Discounting the Manual's wisdom on this central point shows a disturbing disregard for the decades of hardwon knowledge of the professional American military.

(emphasis added). Thus, there were statements months ago from leaders of organizations--the military--with decades of actual experience and knowledge gained from that experience in matters of interrogation. And instead of looking to that experience and knowledge, the Bush administration went to a bunch of lawyers, led by Gonzales, with no experience in these matters (examination of a witness in court ain't the same thing) who were conducting an analysis of legal principles that had nothing to do with the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of these techniques.

The October 18 letter from the former military commanders said that the Army Field Manual (which the McCain amendement sought to establish as the across-the-board standard)

applies the wisdom and experience gained by military interrogators in conflicts against both regular and irregular foes. It authorizes techniques that have proven effective in extracting life-saving information from the most hardened enemy prisoners. It also recognizes that torture and cruel treatment are ineffective methods, because they induce prisoners to say what their interrogators want to hear, even if it is not true, while bringing discredit upon the United States.

Once again, here were people with the experience and knowledge saying what needed to be done and why, and yet it took Bush almost two more months to "agree."

Another voice of experience

In the November 21, 2005, issue of Newsweek, John McCain wrote a column entitled "Torture's Terrible Toll." Therein, he described his own experience as a POW in giving inaccurate information in response to torture.

In my experience, abuse of prisoners often produces bad intelligence because under torture a person will say anything he thinks his captors want to hear—whether it is true or false—if he believes it will relieve his suffering. I was once physically coerced to provide my enemies with the names of the members of my flight squadron, information that had little if any value to my enemies as actionable intelligence. But I did not refuse, or repeat my insistence that I was required under the Geneva Conventions to provide my captors only with my name, rank and serial number. Instead, I gave them the names of the Green Bay Packers' offensive line, knowing that providing them false information was sufficient to suspend the abuse. It seems probable to me that the terrorists we interrogate under less than humane standards of treatment are also likely to resort to deceptive answers that are perhaps less provably false than that which I once offered.

Oh, but is there any proof that something similar has ever happened in the war on terror? Well, yes, there is, and such evidence is found in the story of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi.

"Enhanced techniques" produced false information which was made a basis for the war.

As reported in an August 1, 2004, Washington Post article entitled "Al Qaeda-Iraq Link Recanted,"

Al-Libi was once in bin Laden's inner circle and a senior operative who ran the Khaldan paramilitary camp in Afghanistan. He was captured in the fall of 2001 by Pakistani forces and turned over to the CIA in January 2002, although CIA interrogators had access to him before that, according to intelligence and U.S. law enforcement sources.

The story of Al-Libi is important for several reasons. First, he provided the information that Iraq had provided biological and chemical weapons training to Al Qaeda. Second, that information (according to "Al Qaeda-Iraq Link Recanted")

formed the basis for the Bush administration's prewar claim that Osama bin Laden collaborated with Iraq, according to several U.S. officials.

In an October 2002 speech in Cincinnati, for example, President Bush said: "We've learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and gases." Other senior administration officials, including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell in a speech to the United Nations, made similar assertions. Al-Libi's statements were the foundation of all of them.

Third, that information from Al-Libi turned out to be inaccurate. Now this is where the story starts to get interesting. As described in the November 10, 2005, issue of Newsweek, the magazine reported in July 2004 that Al-Libi recanted his story. But wait, there's more...In February 2002--more than a year before the war--the Defense Intelligence Agency doubted the veracity of Al-Libi's claims. At that time, the DIA issued a

Defense Intelligence Terrorism Summary (DITSUM) that strongly questioned al-Libi’s credibility. The report stated it was “likely” al-Libi was “intentionally misleading” his debriefers and might be describing scenarios “that he knows will retain their interest.” A DIA official confirmed to NEWSWEEK that the DITSUM report—which also questioned whether the “intensely secular” Iraqi regime would provide such assistance to an Islamic fundamentalist regime “it cannot control”—was circulated at the time throughout the U.S. intelligence community and that a copy would have been sent to the National Security Council.

A November 6, 2005, Washington Post article reported that

the DIA took note that the Libyan terrorist could not name any Iraqis involved, any chemical or biological material used or where the training occurred. As a result, "it is more likely this individual is intentionally misleading the debriefers," a DIA report concluded.

But wait, there's still more..

While the DIA was the first to raise red flags in its February 2002 report, the CIA itself in January 2003 produced an updated version of a classified internal report called “Iraqi Support for Terrorism.” The previous version of this CIA report in September 2002 had simply included al-Libi’s claims, according to the newly declassified agency document provided to (Senator Carl) Levin in response to his inquiries about al-Libi. But the updated January 2003 version, while including al-Libi’s claims that Al Qaeda sent operatives to Iraq to acquire chemical and biological weapons and training, added an important new caveat: It “noted that the detainee was not in a position to know if any training had taken place,” according to the copy of the document obtained by NEWSWEEK. It was not until January 2004—nine months after the war was launched—that al-Libi recanted “a number of the claims he made while in detention for the previous two years, including the claim that Al Qaeda sent operatives to Iraq to obtain chemical and biological weapons and related training,” the CIA document says.

As a result, the CIA

“recalled and reissued” all its intelligence reporting about al-Libi’s “recanted” claims about chemical and biological warfare training by Saddam’s regime in February 2004—an important retreat on pre-Iraq war intelligence that has never been publicly acknowledged by the White House. The withdrawal also was not mentioned in last year’s public report by the presidential inquiry commission headed by Judge Laurence Silberman and former Sen. Charles Robb which reviewed alleged Iraq intelligence failures.

I have to go off on a bit of a tangent here. This shows not only that there was intelligence BEFORE THE WAR that disproved the Bush administration's claims, but that the Bush administration KNEW of this intelligence AND did indeed "cherry pick" the intelligence it cited to make the case for war. Back to the reasons why Al-Libi's story is important...

Fourth, Al-Libi was subjected to "interrogation" which employed the very things sought to be prohibited by the McCain amendment. As reported by the New York Times on December 9, 2005, Al-Libi's most specific claims about Al Qaeda-Iraq ties were made after the CIA turned him over to the Egyptians, and Al-Libi claims that those statements were coerced. On November 18, 2005, ABC News reported that

According to CIA sources, Ibn al Shaykh al Libbi, after two weeks of enhanced interrogation, made statements that were designed to tell the interrogators what they wanted to hear. Sources say Al Libbi had been subjected to each of the progressively harsher techniques in turn and finally broke after being water boarded and then left to stand naked in his cold cell overnight where he was doused with cold water at regular intervals.

So what we have is 1) a primary reason and justification for war being based on information from one person; 2) that information turned out to be false; and 3) that false information was given as the result of "enhanced" interrogation techniques that McCain, former military leaders, and others said are not effective because a person will give false information when subjected to these techniques.