You know how those crazy liberals kept saying torture is wrong and doesn't work? Well, the Bush administration's Exhibit A for the efficacy of torture, it turns out, is proof of just that, according to a Washington Post story (and a great commentary on the same subject) that's nothing less than devastating to the Bush torture apologists:
When CIA officials subjected their first high-value captive, Abu Zubaida, to waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods, they were convinced that they had in their custody an al-Qaeda leader who knew details of operations yet to be unleashed, and they were facing increasing pressure from the White House to get those secrets out of him.
The methods succeeded in breaking him, and the stories he told of al-Qaeda terrorism plots sent CIA officers around the globe chasing leads.
In the end, though, not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida's tortured confessions, according to former senior government officials who closely followed the interrogations. Nearly all of the leads attained through the harsh measures quickly evaporated, while most of the useful information from Abu Zubaida — chiefly names of al-Qaeda members and associates — was obtained before waterboarding was introduced, they said.
Moreover, within weeks of his capture, U.S. officials had gained evidence that made clear they had misjudged Abu Zubaida. President George W. Bush had publicly described him as "al-Qaeda's chief of operations," and other top officials called him a "trusted associate" of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and a major figure in the planning of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. … Abu Zubaida was not even an official member of al-Qaeda, according to a portrait of the man that emerges from court documents and interviews with current and former intelligence, law enforcement and military sources.
Good thing we abandoned our principles for that, then.
I can't wait to see the absurd arguments that will get trotted out to deal with this one by the two or three remaining Bush fans (I've got a checklist of those arguments, just waiting to get fulfilled). But in the end, it'll still turn out that torture doesn't work, and didn't work even when it worked…
