CIA abuse is medieval madness

[struggle4progress]

Michael Otterman: Why CIA abuse is medieval madness
Torture can produce unreliable confessions, while non-coercive methods often reach the truth

March 22, 2007

SINCE medieval times, water-boarding, or forcing water into captives' lungs, has been used to compel prisoners to confess. During the Inquisition, water-boarded prisoners admitted to shape-shifting and cavorting with the devil ...

... Former CIA field officer Robert Baer told Time: "(KSM) is making things up. I'm told by people involved in the investigation that KSM was present during Wall Street Journal correspondent Danny Pearl's execution but was in fact not the person who killed him. There exists videotape footage of the execution that minimises KSM's role. And if KSM did indeed exaggerate his role in the Pearl murder, it raises the question of just what else he has exaggerated, or outright fabricated."

Pearl's father told ABC News in the US the facts "don't match (KSM's) story". Asra Nomani, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who knew Pearl well, said: "Anyone who saw the tape of Danny's murder could confess to those details." She added: "From everyone I've talked to in Danny's family there isn't closure ... there's not convincing evidence that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was the killer." ...

Today, most of KSM's "facts" are inseparable from fiction. Sadly this was avoidable. Rather than stripping him naked, holding him in a dark cold cell for months on end, blasting loud music and strobe lights at him, threatening violence against his two sons, and nearly drowning him, US officials should have used non-abusive techniques proven to build trust. These methods yield reliable evidence ...

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21423633-7583,00.html