Is this what Cheney meant by all the useful intelligence we got from torturing people?

Jonathan Landay of McClatchy Newspapers, one news organization that distinguished itself by actually doing journalism during the Cheney-Bush adminstration, paticularly on intelligence issues, write in Report: Abusive tactics used to seek Iraq-al Qaida link 04/21/09.

The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist.

Such information would've provided a foundation for one of former President George W. Bush's main arguments for invading Iraq in 2003. In fact, no evidence has ever been found of operational ties between Osama bin Laden's terrorist network and Saddam's regime. [my emphasis]

This is one of the inevitable abuses when a government starts torturing people systematically. In this case, you have to wonder if the main initial motivation of beginning the torture program for some of the senior-level perpetrators was their desire to concoct a phony case to invade Iraq.

Tags: accountability for torture, torture

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