Bush speech brags of success in torture of insane man

Bush speech brags of success in torture of insane man : "Dan Coleman, one of FBI’s top agents on al-Qaida, was assigned to read Zubaydah’s diary. In it, he writes in three incoherent voices, reflecting different personalities, writes Suskind. 'The CIA had long suspected that the ubiquitous Zubaydah was involved in the August 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Africa. He [Coleman] looked for entries in the summer of 1998 in Zubaydah’s diary. Nothing … nothing but nonsense.' Coleman reported to an FBI official: 'This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality.'

Bush was briefed. 'I said he was important,' the president complained to Tenet. 'You’re not going to let me lose face on this, are you?' 'No sir, Mr. President.' So Zubaydah became the first experiment in the new rules on torture in which the Geneva Conventions did not apply. Over at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., a CIA official told Suskind, 'Around the room a lot of people just rolled their eyes when we heard comments from the White House. I mean, Bush and Cheney knew what we knew about Zubaydah. The guy had psychological issues. He was, in a way, expendable. It was like calling someone who runs a company’s in-house travel department the COO.'

But the decision was made to 'torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered.' He was 'waterboarded,' simulating drowning. Zubaydah babbled about terrorist threats to shopping malls, nuclear power plants, supermarkets, and about al-Qaida plans to build a nuclear device. The administration sounded alerts on every unconfirmed threat. In May 2002, New York City was put on high alert over Zubaydah’s torture-incited ravings that the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty were targets. Cheney went on 'Larry King Live' to defend the alerts: 'We now have a large number of people in custody, detainees, and periodically as we go through this process we learn more about the possibility of future attacks.'"

(Via Martini Republic.)