9/11 Detainee lied to CIA, Cheney discredited

Self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed told U.S. military officials that he had lied to the CIA after being abused, according to documents made public Monday, a claim likely to intensify the debate over whether harsh interrogation techniques generated accurate information.

Mohammed made the assertion during hearings at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he was transferred in 2006after being held at secret CIA sites since his capture in 2003.

"I make up stories," Mohammed said, describing in broken English an interrogation probably administered by the CIA concerning the whereabouts of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. "Where is he? I don't know. Then, he torture me," Mohammed said of his interrogator. "Then I said, 'Yes, he is in this area.' "

Mohammed also appeared to say that he had fingered people he did not know as being Al Qaeda members in order to avoid abusive treatment. Although there is no way to corroborate his statements, Mohammed is one of the militants whom the CIA repeatedly subjected to the simulated-drowning technique known as waterboarding.

The newly released information could amplify calls for the Obama administration to make public more details about the treatment of terrorism suspects or allow a broader inquiry into the George W. Bush administration's interrogation policies. Monday's disclosure represented a rare allegation by a detainee that he had lied while being subjected to harsh practices.

A lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, which obtained the documents through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, said Mohammed's statements raised questions about the effectiveness of the CIA's interrogation program.

"It underscores the unreliability of statements obtained by torture," said Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU's National Security Project.

via Detainee says he lied to CIA in harsh interrogations - Los Angeles Times.

I never noticed how crooked Cheney's bottom teeth are.  Anyway, yeah, duh. People lie to avoid pain. Either Cheney is too dumb to know this, which I doubt, or he has reasons to want false confessions.

As someone commented, asking if torture works is like asking if rape works.  Anyone advocating either one should be instantly recognizable as mentally ill. Why is Cheney not locked up in a mental hospital? I just don't get it.

The supposed mastermind of 9/11, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, made up stories because he was tortured. Recall what Cheney said about Gitmo about 6 months ago:

(... from ABC News' Jonathan Karl's exclusive interview with Vice President Dick Cheney on Dec. 15, 2008 in the Executive Office Building.)

CHENEY: ... Guantanamo has been the repository, if you will, of hundreds of terrorists, or suspected terrorists, that we've captured since 9/11. They -- many of them, hundreds -- have been released back to their home countries. What we have left is the hard core.

Their cases are reviewed on an annual basis to see whether or not they're still a threat, whether or not they're still intelligence value in terms of continuing to hold them.

But -- and we're down now to some 200 being held at Guantanamo. But that includes the core group, the really high-value targets like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. - abc

It's a scam.  Cheney is discredited by government trial transcripts.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, an accused top Al-Qaeda operative and self-confessed mastermind of the September 11 attacks, claimed to have lied under torture by the CIA, according to government transcripts released Monday."I just make up stories," he said in broken English, telling a 2007 military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay of an interrogation session during which he was asked about the location of Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.

"Where is he? I don't know. Then he torture me," said Mohammed, the self-confessed mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

"Then I said: 'Yes, he is in this area or this is Al-Qaeda...' I said no, they torture me."

Although he said he made false confessions, in the same hearing, Mohammed had a personal representative read a statement in which he admitted to having taken part in 31 separate terror plots and responsibilities.

Of which, all 31 may well be false confessions. He may be innocent. What is the actual evidence in each case? Why is Cheney not in jail for what now seems obviously to be a big scam involving horrid human rights violations and/or war crimes?

Another "high value" detainee, Abu Zubaydah, said he almost died under interrogation.

"After months of suffering and torture, physically and mentally, they did not care about my injuries that they inflicted to my eye, to my stomach, to my bladder, and my left thigh and my reproductive organs... Doctors told me that I nearly died four times," Zubaydah said.

"They say, 'this in your diary.' They say, 'see you want to make operation against America.' I say no, the idea is different. They say no, torturing, torturing. I say 'okay, I do. I was decide to make operation.'" - ap

Read this letter from 1628 written by a man named Junius to his daughter. Junius was an innocent person burned at the stake by believers in torture. Has nothing changed in 380 years? Digusting.  [Image: Water Torture - a woodcut in Damhoudere's (1556) ]

Then I had to tell what crimes I had committed. I said nothing.

. . "Draw the rascal up!" So I said that I was to kill my children, but I had killed a horse instead. It did not help. I had also taken a sacred wafer, and had desecrated it. When I had said this, they left me in peace.

Now, dear child, here you have all my confession, for which I must die. And they are sheer lies and made-up things, so help me God. For all this I was forced to say through fear of the torture which was threatened beyond what I had already endured. For they never leave off with the torture till one confesses something; be he never so good, he must be a witch. Nobody escapes, though he were an earl. . . .

Dear child, keep this letter secret so that people do not find it, else I shall be tortured most piteously and the jailers will be beheaded. So strictly is it forbidden. . . . Dear child, pay this man a dollar. . . . I have taken several days to write this: my hands are both lame. I am in a sad plight. . . .

Good night, for your father Johannes Junius will never see you more. July 24, 1628.

Burr's note: And on the margin of the letter he adds:

Dear child, six have confessed against me at once: the Chancellor, his son, Neudecker, Zaner, Hoffmaisters Ursel, and Hoppfen Els--all false, through compulsion, as they have all told me, and begged my forgiveness in God's name before they were executed. . . . They know nothing but good of me. They were forced to say it, just as I myself was. . . .