more bushco** LIES. It would be nice if someone in the WH press corps would ask snow about this whopper...
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Bush's ballyhooed speech, full of swaggering braggadocio about his now-acknowledged secret prisons and the tortures his minions practice there (which Bush, using the usual prissy euphemisms favored by state-terror sadists, calls "an alternative set of procedures), made much hay of the information squeezed out of al-Qaeda factotum Abu Zubaydah. But as Ron Suskind noted in his piercing book, The One Percent Solution -- and notes again in a new Salon.com interview below -- Zubaydah is literally insane, suffering from a severe multiple personality disorder. He was never a top al Qaeda operative, as Bush claimed yet again in his bluster yesterday; and the "information" he spewed out under torture was almost entirely garbage -- yet, as Suskind notes, it sent American agents on wild goose chases all over the world.
I mentioned here yesterday that as the Bush era endgame begins, these thugs will grow more brazen in their depredations, and more open about their brutal tactics. It's getting harder to hide the massive extent of their lawbreaking, and if the Democrats take Congress in November, it will be harder still. So what they must do now is simply break down all notions of law and morality, destroy the notions of justice and honor. They must make up down and turn black to white: Torture is not bad, it's not a crime; torture is good, it keeps us safe. You want to be safe, don't you? You want your children to be safe, don't you? Then we must use these "alternative procedures." And to keep us safe, the president must be able to do anything he pleases, without hindrance from the "pre-9/11 mindset" of the Constitution: he can spy on us, he can imprison us without charges, he can hold us indefinitely, he can even murder us in "extrajudicial killings" without arrest, trial, jury -- or warning. What's wrong with that, if it keeps your family safe? Do you want your children to die? Because that's what will happen if you oppose the president!
All of this must be made to seem normal, acceptable -- even laudable -- if the Bush Faction is to remain in power and escape prosecution. Like ABC's "Road to 9/11" propaganda film, Bush's speech is part of a larger campaign of moral and political subversion that will only grow in frenzy and intensity in the months to come.
http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=836&Itemid=135<snip>
Ron Suskind's One Percent Solution discusses Abu Zubayda. His sources in the intelligence community revealed to him that Abu Zubayda turned out not to have been a high level planner, as Rumsfeld had announced. He was more like a low level travel agent for the families of al-Qaeda operatives.
And he could barely pull off that basic job, since he seems to suffer from multiple personality syndrome. The CIA captured his diary. The entries were by his three distinct personae, Hani-1, Hani-2 and Hani-3 (a boy, a young man, and a middle-aged man).
The entries contained exhaustive detail about making travel arrangements for his clients. It was useless, junk detail, compulsive in nature and completely unhelpful. It went on forever. Dan coleman, then the FBI's lead man in fighting al-Qaeda said the diary was about "what people ate, or wore, or trifling things they said. . . This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality."
Suskind says that the agents briefed Bush and Cheney about all this, how Abu Zubayda was a small looney fish, not a big clever one. And the agents were shocked to see Bush and Cheney nevertheless continue to mischaracterize Abu Zubayda as a major al-Qaeda leader to the American public. How shocked they must be to see Bush go on this way even after the appearance of Suskind's book!
http://www.juancole.com/