"we lost the torture debate completely"

[OnyxCollie]

15. Marc Thiessen is an asshole.

Marc Thiessen: Brennan must defend CIA’s terrorist interrogation program
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/marc-thiessen-brennan-must-defend-cias-terrorist-interrogation-program/2014/04/07/ba0382d2-ba7f-11e3-96ae-f2c36d2b1245_story.html

It is clear that Feinstein and the Democrats on the Intelligence Committee don’t understand the value of interrogation, because they failed to question one single CIA official involved with the program as part of their investigation. How you do issue a 6,300-page report on a CIA program without even speaking to the people who actually ran the program? It would be as if the 9/11 Commission (which, by the way, relied on CIA interrogations for one-quarter of all its footnotes) had failed to question one single senior government official in determining what went wrong on Sept. 11, 2001. Why on Earth would Feinstein fail to interview the CIA officials she presumes to sit in judgment of and fail to hear their side of the story — unless, of course, she was not interested in their side of the story?

This past week, Obama’s former deputy CIA director, Michael Morell, gave an interview to Charlie Rose in which he vigorously defended the effectiveness of the interrogation program. “I’ve really studied this, and I believe the techniques were effective,” Morell declared. “I’ve looked at the information provided by detainees prior to the techniques and the information provided after the use of the techniques. . . . The information prior to the techniques was limited, vague, not specific. After the techniques? Volumes of information, specific, actionable. There is a big difference.”

Morell explained how Khalid Sheik Mohammed’s questioning was critical to the successful effort to find Osama bin Laden. “When we questioned {KSM} about Abu Ahmed, the courier who eventually took us to bin Laden, he denied knowing Abu Ahmed. When he went back to his cell, we were monitoring him, and we heard him tell other detainees ‘don’t say anything about the courier.’ ” KSM’s efforts to protect the courier are what alerted the agency to his importance — and eventually led the agency to bin Laden’s lair in Abbottabad.

Former CIA director Mike Hayden has been even more blunt, comparing “interrogation deniers” like Feinstein to “birthers” who deny that Obama is an American citizen and to 9/11 “truthers” who claim that 9/11 was a Bush administration plot.

Former Bush Speechwriter: CIA Torturers Are ‘American Heroes’
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2009/01/26/35286/mark-thiessen-bush/

Today, in an interview on WAMU’s Diane Rehm Show, Thiessen again lashed out at Obama, this time for Obama’s executive order closing Guantanamo. “I think this is the most dangerous decision that any president has made within 48 hours of his inauguration,” he said, saying that torture is “singularly responsible” for stopping attacks on the U.S. Thiessen listed a long chain of events that were all allegedly sourced to the torture of Abu Zubaydah:

THIESSEN: The CIA developed these alternative interrogation techniques, and all of a sudden he started talking. Zubaydah’s information led us to Ramsey bin al Shibh, who was was one of the 9/11 hijackers. Together, they gave us the information that led the capture of KSM. Then, KSM gave us information about another al Qaeda operative, Majid Khan, who was in CIA custody. He told us that Majid Khan had been tasked to give $50,000 to an operative named Zubair, who was developing plots with a Southeast Asian group called JI.
Later, Thiessen bristled in response to a conversation about investigating Bush administration officials for torture. Bush’s torturers, he said, are really “American heroes”:

THIESSEN: They’re not torturers. They’re heroes. … And the thought that we’re sitting here discussing whether these people should be prosecuted or investigated is just outrageous. These people are American heroes who saved lives and stopped the next Sept. 11.

Zubaydah’s torture is a textbook example of why coercive interrogations do not work. Zubaydah was reportedly driven mentally insane from his torture, and Canadians tossed out evidence from the CIA’s interrogations of Zubaydah. In fact, from Zubaydah’s interrogations, the U.S. gleaned false information about links between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.

In calling Bush’s torturers “heroes,” Thiessen is echoing Bill Kristol, who suggested in November that the “CIA agents who waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammad” receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom.