Washington Post's Cheney-ite defense of torture - Glenn Greenwald

[Swede]

Damn that liberal media.


Who are the Post's sources for this full-scale vindication of Dick Cheney's defense of torture? "Two sources who described the sessions, speaking on the condition of anonymity because much information about detainee confinement remains classified"; "one former senior intelligence official said this week after being asked about the effect of waterboarding"; "one former U.S. official with detailed knowledge of how the interrogations were carried out said"; "One former agency official." It's unclear how much overlap there is in that orgy of pro-Cheney anonymity, but there is not a single on-the-record source to corroborate the Torture-Saved-Us-From-Mass-Death narrative, nor is there even a shred of information about the motives or views of these "officials."

What makes the Post's breathless vindication of torture all the more journalistically corrupt is that the document on which it principally bases these claims -- the just-released 2004 CIA Inspector General Report -- provides no support whatsoever for the view that torture produced valuable intelligence, despite the fact that it was based on the claims of CIA officials themselves. Ironically, nobody has done a better job this week of demonstrating how true that is than the Post's own Greg Sargent -- who, in post after post this week -- dissected the IG Report to demonstrate that it provides no evidence for Cheney's claims that torture helped obtain valuable intelligence.



http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/08/29/post/index.html