False Confessions

Posted on 05/16/2009 at 12:54 pm by Bob Cesca

Joe Conason:

Whether Bush, Cheney and their associates were seeking real or fabricated intelligence, they knowingly employed methods that were certain to produce the latter — as American officials well knew because those same techniques, especially water torture, had been used to elicit false confessions from captured Americans as long ago as World War II and the Korean conflict.

They were absolutely seeking false information. However insane, the Cheney people aren’t idiots. That had to have known that these torture techniques were specifically designed to elicit false confessions. There’s no other way to explain why they would’ve wheeled out the coffins and waterboards when legal techniques were working nicely.

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  • http://tarackian.deviantart.com J M Ashby

    They either knew it would give them the false information they wanted, or they did it out of bigotry.I’m willing to bet on both motives coming into play.

  • JDS

    Absolutely. Fabricated intelligence was what would support their positions/actions.

  • http://www.xkcd.com/ ∇•B=0  Silly Ratfaced Git  ∇•D=ρ

    We need a special prosecutor to begin an investigation. Investigate everything. Start by investigating Nancy Pelosi.We have far more evidence of wrongdoing than was present for any other special prosecutor to be appointed and begin an investigation. The WhiteWater investigation began because a handful of republicans ‘had a strong feeling of wrongdoing’. This isn’t a strong feeling we have here, we have nearly enough evidence for a conviction.Start investigations now.

  • likala

    They were breaking the anyway, so why waterboard people when they could just have easily lied and said they got what they wanted legally. Now that it’s all coming out, they would look a little better for having “just lied” than having tortured to get those lies. The only thing that makes sense to me is the bigoty mentioned above by Ashby.

  • likala

    should have been “breaking the law anyway”and bigotry instead of bigoty.

  • http://www.osborneink.com Matt Osborne

    Repeating myself:Torture NEVER serves intelligence. Torture is, and has always been, a form of political violence.

  • D. C.

    They may have known that torture doesn’t get reliable intelligence, but they’ve managed to so obscure the issue that they have the American people now chasing our tails arguing over whether or not it is effective. And that was probably their intent once it came out: Wast time over the effectiveness debate while hiding the fact that they never once actually used it for their fantasy “ticking bomb scenario”.

  • rogect8

    >>>There’s no other way to explain why they would’ve wheeled out the coffins and waterboards when legal techniques were working nicely.What about good old-fashioned sadism?

  • ceu

    It’s so much worse than waterboarding