Torture Report: Suddenly Something Becomes Clear

[friendlyskies]

So, one of the great mysteries (to me) of Iraq 2.0 was the fact that we based the whole invasion on intelligence supplied by Manucher Ghorbanifar. The very guy who fucked over Ronald "Our Lord and Savior" Reagan by telling him to sell arms to the incorrect terrorists back during the Iran-Contra Affair. Getting William Casey killed. Ahem.

All of GWBush's inner circle (except Rumsfeld and Rice) were Iran-Contra veterans, they had to distrust and dislike Ghorbanifar on a deeply personal level. The CIA considered him an extremely unreliable asset. And yet they trusted him with almost unbelievable information - that Saddam Hussein had been buying yellowcake uranium (!), to build fucking nuclear weapons (!), from Niger (!) - even though it directly contradicted information gathered by actual CIA agents Valerie Plame and Joseph Wilson? (Please correct me if I've got some or all of this wrong, I'm ranting from memory.)

Now, the conspiracy theorists said that we'd been planning to go to war with Iraq since forever (probably true), and 9/11 provided an excuse (hey why not), so the whole WMD/yellowcake uranium thing was entirely fabricated. Plausible? Erm…. you know I love a good conspiracy theory, but that didn't quite ring true. Why would a bunch of power-tripping egomaniacs, who were already absolute masters of "the sole World Power," risk their reputations on a bizarre and specific claim like "Saddam Hussein is buying nuclear material from Niger in order to build dirty nukes"? When they could just be all vague and say shit like, "He's supportin' al-Qaeda! He's a bad man!"

It always seemed like there was a piece missing. Anyway, as I was going over some of the oversimplified articles about the Senate Torture Report, which I have not read, it hit me:

They got that information from that batch of people that the KSA had originally taken into custody, then handed over to the USA. By using torture. Hence the bad information.

The Saudis probably had some medium-value "terrorists," or more likely activists, lurking around, maybe they had arrested them some time earlier but didn't want to publicize it or kill them for whatever reason. So, when the opportunity presented itself, they handed them to the USA, to wash their hands of some sticky political situation and/or get brownie points from their 9/11-crazed allies. It was, after all, Saudis who pulled that shit off, so their government had to be scrambling too.

Since this was right after 9/11 and all the USAmericans were gung-ho for revenge, it was easy to slide down the torture rabbit hole. Cheney, or whoever, brought in these moron psychologists, who were told to torture these guys for information (not just revenge). Even though torture doesn't tend to get reliable information. But they were knuckleheads. Hence this really fucking over-the-top, amateur-hour torture that this Mitchell guy devised - raping and electrocuting these people, depriving them of sleep, making them listen to the Meow Mix jingle, breaking their hands and feet, chaining them to cold floors, etc etc…. Real subtle stuff, right? Of course the poor bastards are going to make up whatever crazy story they think going to get them some rest and a break from all the raping and Meow Mix and hummus-up-the-butt that had been going on. Of course their friends are going to agree to whatever crazy story the first one thought up when questioned. Sure. All they had wanted to do (for all we know) was bring down the House of Saud. They don't care about protecting Saddam Hussein or Iraq. Yellowcake uranium. From Niger. Sure, why not.

So then Cheney and friends have this wild story handed to them, corroborated by half a dozen torture victims. Since they were the ones that gave the order to torture people, despite the Geneva Convention, and were therefore heavily invested in torture, they had trapped themselves in a psychological consistency loop - on some level, they needed this really fucked-up, inhumane, controversial torture thing to pan out into an amazing and actionable piece of intel. And by George, they got it. Heck, it was even excuse to go to war with Iraq, on their wish list for years. BINGO. They were blinded by their need for consistency (see the book "Influence" for more on that) and made the stupidest decision of their entire careers.

Fast forward a couple of years, and when the whole nuclear WMD thing doesn't pan out, Iraqistan goes pear shaped, China becomes a world power, etc etc. So they blame Ghorbanifar, because they hate him.

Plausible? Maybe? Any other thoughts on the torture report?

[Kurt]

He does not ever just show up and say "Hi, I am Manuchar Ghorbanifar and I am here to help"

Michael Ledeen is usually the coduit in some way.

You would think that if we really had an effective "black ops" program that used international loopholes to circumvent the constitution that one the first things we would do would be to kill Ledeen and Ghorbanifar. Anyone who says assassinations don't work is an idiot. If those two got their melons popped in 2000 we would have avoided all kinds of stupidity that only harmed us and helped no one. The one thing is that the Bush administration proved was that being "Wrong was Right" especially with the number of people strolling around alive, successful and comfortable because of this war when they should be crapping themselves at the end of a rope.


He also found Curt Weldon to be a flying monkey (I would guess Ledeen introduced them) and even claimed this his personal intellegence "source" in Iran claimed Bin Laden died there in 2006

[friendlyskies]

Well, I remember the official story, the Rome Meetings etc etc. But it still seemed like something was off. Because (1) the Bush/Cheney team admitted to Rome, which suggests that it was at least partially a lie, and (2) because Ghorbonifar had fucked them over harder than anyone else in the whole history of ever, why would they risk their careers, reputations, and absolute power, on a ridiculous-sounding story like Niger yellowcake? Especially after the CIA sent their own team in to check it out, and they came back saying it was 100% pure bullshit?

For oil? We didn't even get most of Iraq's oil. Because of Baby Bush's unresolved daddy issues? Maybe they sold it to GWB that way, but come on. No. Cheney believed the Niger yellowcake thing, even though it was a dumb story to begin with, came from a known liar, and was proven false by our own CIA agents. WHY WHY WHY WHY???? The guy is a lot of things, and none of those things is dumb. None of those things is naive.

So what is it that were they lying about? Well, maybe it was the torture. That makes absolute sense, given the timeline and prevailing attitudes of the populace. The Abu Ghraib scandal didn't break until 2004, the internal torture memos weren't until mid-2003, so all that torture, even the little tiny stuff like waterboarding and force feeding, was still very much under wraps.

The Rome Meetings were in December 2001, and James Mitchell's torture program started in early 2002.

So how about this: Ghorbanifar and Ledeen present the Niger Yellowcake fairy tale to Cheney et al, to which Cheney would have most certainly replied, "Ghorbanifar is a lying sack of shit who is in this for money, but nukes are a problem, Saddam Hussein is the kind of guy who might do it, and yes, it would be fun to smash Iraq. Hmmm. Let's send some of our own guys down there to check on the yellowcake story." And we know they came back saying that Saddam Hussein wasn't building nukes. By then, however, the Bush/Cheney team must have been all ready to go to war with Iraq, all they needed was a reason. Maybe then Cheney said, "OK, I'm going to give the CIA permission to do what they always wanted, and ask our terrorists in the dungeon if they know anything about it. By any means necessary."

Think about it. What were they originally asking, by breaking people's hands and feet, chaining them to floors naked etc etc, that was soooooo important that they had to break international law to do it? Now that we're a torture-friendly society, none of that really seems like a super big deal (at least, judging from my FB friends, who are like, "I thought everyone knew we were torturing people duh stupid liberals"), but back then it was considered some Nazi-level bullshit. BUT. Trying to figure out whether or not Iraq was building dirty nukes might of it. 9/11 NEVAR AGAIN, remember? Who wants Saddam Hussein nuking Murica's Walmarts on their watch? Not Cheney. So, let's go ahead and torture the bastards. Makes sense, right? Unless you keep in mind that torture tends to yield bad intel.

According to Robert Cialdini, marketing pop psychologist extraordinaire, once you've committed yourself to something, especially something as extreme and controversial as torture, there's an enormous amount of internal psychological pressure to be consistent with that original decision. http://www.lucifereffect.com/guide_cialdini-b.htm

So, to continue with my scenario, of course the guys being tortured were like, "Sure, you'll stop raping and electrocuting me if I tell you that Saddam Hussein is building dirty nukes? YEP HE'S DOING IT." That gave Cheney everything he needed - justification for torture, justification for war. Boom. And then, based on that information plus a little hunter-gatherer psychological hocus pocus, he made the worst decision of his entire life.

[nowonmai]

According to Robert Cialdini, marketing pop psychologist extraordinaire, once you've committed yourself to something, there's an enormous amount of internal psychological pressure to be consistent with that original decision.

Anything you want to share? The war is over, you inherited the wasteland. You can fess up now.

[friendlyskies]

Hey nowonmai.

[coldharvest]

The truly committed, the ones you need to break, are immune to torture.

The true believers welcome the testing of the fire.

[friendlyskies]

The truly committed, the ones you need to break, are immune to torture.

The true believers welcome the testing of the fire.

And everyone else plans for torture, right? Hell, even in the dippy hippy protest handbooks hailing back to the 1960s, they advise you to form cells where you only know a few people, and tell people only what they absolutely have to know, right before they know it. Almost nobody knows the whole plan. Oppenheimer and Groves didn't know the whole plan, why should you? When I was hanging out with Occupy Atlanta, the "civil disobedience trainers" who came down from the King Center were telling the kids about cells and need-to-know planning etc. You just have to assume that 98% of everyone is going to spill, even with regular old police interrogation techniques.

But whatever. The torturers knew all that, too, and they kept on torturing with apparent glee, and got lots of information. Although the CIA won't tell us about that information, not in the abridged version of the Senate Torture Report anyway. Whenever anyone asks about that information to a CIA torture proponent on the teevee news, they make some vague references to OBL and 9/11, but in the end all say the same thing: "Well Obama supports the drone program, which kills innocent people, what do you think of THAT."

I think you're pivoting without grace, dude.

[nowonmai]

It's all so nostalgic. You're still whining about so-called torture when Islamic State has occupied half of Iraq, while your now-disowned hopey changey fuckwit Obama has been fiddling while Rome burns.

You fuckers deserve everything that is coming to you.

[friendlyskies]

Such a pleasure seeing your witty and insightful comments again, nowonmai! Hope you'll post more often.

[Hitoru]

He's too busy with his BDSM activities.

[ReptilianKittenEater]

He's too busy with his BDSM activities.

You sure it is a he? I've not heard from any flaggot that has met NW.

[Hitoru]

I heard it from a flagette.

[Q]

The bottom line is that Saddam should have been left in power.

This fucks off the right wing, pro Israel crowd because any threat, relevant or not, to that shitty fucking nation that the West has been extorted into supporting, because once all the WMD and 9/11 bullshit went by the wayside, that's all they had to hold onto.

This fucks off the left wing, power to the people, we gotta save all the brown people of the world, dumbfucks, because now it's glaringly clear that Saddam was the asshole it takes to keep non White nations from turning into theocratic fucking messes where sky monkeys rule the day, and if you have a vagina, you = less than cattle.


A pox on both your houses.


Come at me bro.

[coldharvest]

The bottom line is that Saddam should have been left in power.

and Gaddafi
and Assad
and Mubarak

[Osiris]

The bottom line is that instead of the ><$5 trillion spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, all it really took to bring democracy and/or waves of violence to the middle east is one fruit vendor setting himself on fire.