Wednesday, September 9, 2009

The Ali Soufan Testimonial and the Truth About The Effectifeveness of Torture

This video of former FBI Interrogator Ali Soufan's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee should be required viewing for understanding the torture debate:



Ali Soufan makes two key points:

1. Key information was gleaned from Abu Zubaydah using professional and unquestionably legal FBI techniques. Once torture began, no more useful information was received.

2. The "smoking gun" argument is bogus. Torture (and especially sleep deprivation) takes time. Soufan received untarnished information from Zubaydah in the first hour using his techniques.

With this testimonial, the vast majority of the torture apologist / Dick Cheney argument is dismantled. No smoking gun can wait 180 hours for a sleep deprivation stage. The argument that torture's immorality was overshadowed by its effectiveness is shattered when its use directly caused the end of the information flow.

None of these facts can stop Cheney's fact-free media circuit, but with any luck he will begin to be challenged for his irreverence for the facts of torture's proven ineffectiveness.

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