I heard Hayden flat out lie and say they DID get actionable intelligence from torturing Abu Zubaida, which totally contradicts the CIA's own report covered in the Washington Post which said that his torture produced NO actionable intelligence!

WHat the hell is wrong with these people??

Updated:

Torture serves as a means of control, according to a great article byNaomi Klien back in 2005.

But she mentions only fleetingly but pointedly that torture serves as a means of control by inducing terror.

So it is tool of Terrorists, a means of Terror. Terror Terror Terror.

Aren't we supposed to be AGAINST the terrorists and terrorism?

Maybe we need to remind Americans thatit's the Republicans who are proudly claiming to be modeling the Taliban insurgency of Afghanistan in their politics.

I usually don't quote The Washington Post so much, but they did a nice little Five Myths About Torture post a couple of years ago that lays it out pretty plainly.

It concludes that torture does not work to get valid information. Even post Nuremberg trials, (updated with redacted Godwin's law reference.) the records kept by German secret police showed that they were good at torture, but that was because they were not that good at interrogation. Two different things entirely.

According to the article, the

"secret police got most of their information from public tips, informers and interagency cooperation."

As the war drew on and their interrogators became more scarce, the torture increased.

It's possible to get a prisoner to say anything you want him to say with enough torture, but does that mean it works?

How many confessions came out of the Salem witch trials? Is a forced confession all that we are looking for? I'd like to think not, but this seems to explain what's been going on in the name of National Security.

Perhaps that's why they kept torturing Abu Zubaida. He kept saying anything they wanted to hear, and they believed him.

Which brings me to my main point...

Are we still so reactionary that we just want to find someone to proclaim guilty, never mind if the actual culprits are out there?

This is why the ends do not justify the means.

A case could be made that this is an inherent problem with our own law enforcement mentality. I mean, who hasn't been pulled over on a highway and felt like the officer was searching for any shred of evidence that would help him to identify you as a criminal? Driving while being black is more of a targeting issue, but what I'm talking about is more like invading the wrong damn country because we just want to "get back" at somebody.

The ends do not justify the means!

Or is it something deeper?

Do we just want to find someone, anyone... to assign blame to, in order to satisfy some primal desire for retribution? Payback? Or is it something even more inherent in our DNA that makes our adrenalin race until we have been avenged?

What will we say about Gitmo 20 years from now? Years and years of incarceration and torture because we have to find someone guilty to "justify" our torture?

Tortured logic has never been more blatant or ironic, and I am frankly sick of it!

I don't know if there will be prosecutions of those who allowed torture, but I hope there is. I also hope that due process is returned to all prisoners and due process and nothing more than due process is accorded our failed leaders of the Bush era.

I like freedom of speech too.

I just wish more people would get their voices heard who counter the outright lies and "artificial facts" that come out of Foxnoose and the ever talkative Bush era sycophants and apologists.