Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
In the wake of the release of OLC memos authorizing torture, Bush apologists are frantically trying to show that torture worked. Former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post that claimed that torturing Khalid Sheik Mohammed had foiled a second plot to use airplanes to attack the highest skyscraper on the West Coast, the Library Tower. He wrote:
Specifically, interrogation with enhanced techniques "led to the discovery of a KSM plot, the 'Second Wave,' 'to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into' a building in Los Angeles." KSM later acknowledged before a military commission at Guantanamo Bay that the target was the Library Tower, the tallest building on the West Coast. The memo explains that "information obtained from KSM also led to the capture of Riduan bin Isomuddin, better known as Hambali, and the discovery of the Guraba Cell, a 17-member Jemmah Islamiyah cell tasked with executing the 'Second Wave.' " In other words, without enhanced interrogations, there could be a hole in the ground in Los Angeles to match the one in New York.
Timothy Noah pretty much shreds this claim in an article in Slate, where he points out a pesky little fact:
What clinches the falsity of Thiessen's claim, however (and that of the memo he cites, and that of an unnamed Central Intelligence Agency spokesman who today seconded Thessen's argument), is chronology. In a White House press briefing, Bush's counterterrorism chief, Frances Fragos Townsend, told reporters that the cell leader was arrested in February 2002, and "at that point, the other members of the cell" (later arrested) "believed that the West Coast plot has been canceled, was not going forward" [italics mine]. A subsequent fact sheet released by the Bush White House states, "In 2002, we broke up [italics mine] a plot by KSM to hijack an airplane and fly it into the tallest building on the West Coast." These two statements make clear that however far the plot to attack the Library Tower ever got--an unnamed senior FBI official would later tell the Los Angeles Times that Bush's characterization of it as a "disrupted plot" was "ludicrous"--that plot was foiled in 2002. But Sheikh Mohammed wasn't captured until March 2003.How could Sheikh Mohammed's water-boarded confession have prevented the Library Tower attack if the Bush administration "broke up" that attack during the previous year? It couldn't, of course. Conceivably the Bush administration, or at least parts of the Bush administration, didn't realize until Sheikh Mohammed confessed under torture that it had already broken up a plot to blow up the Library Tower about which it knew nothing. Stranger things have happened. But the plot was already a dead letter. If foiling the Library Tower plot was the reason to water-board Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, then that water-boarding was more than cruel and unjust. It was a waste of water.
Oops.
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Thank you, Ed, I wanted to write about this op-ed on my own blog, but didn't have the time or energy.
Oh, and check out the bio piece at the end of the article:
The writer, a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, served in senior positions in the Pentagon and the White House from 2001 to 2009, most recently as chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush.
Notice they don't describe exactly WHICH "senior positions" Theissen held? The only job they specify is "chief speechwriter," which puts him in league with another Bush Jr. speechwriter who made a career out of lying through his teeth, Michhael Gerson. So why is a speechwriter out in front defending an intelligence policy? And why should we trust a speechwriter when his assertions are in such direct conflict with those of actual military and intelligence people?
Posted by: Raging Bee | April 23, 2009 9:32 AM
then that water-boarding was more than cruel and unjust. It was a waste of water.
While I agree whole-heartedly with the sentiment, isn't this a little like complaining that the intruder who killed two family members left mudprints on the carpet to boot?
Posted by: Odie | April 23, 2009 9:37 AM
And once again in the WaPo we have a supposedly legitimate media outlet allowing its opinion forum to be used to distribute false assertions. IMHO, the biggest competitive advantage traditional media outlets could have over new media is its traditional approach to fact-checking; by making it even more robust and by extending those standards to its opinion pages, letters to the editor by printing corrections immediately below the article thereby exposing the liars.
Posted by: Michael Heath | April 23, 2009 9:50 AM
could you link to the fact sheet and the press release?
often, the original sources help me out a lot when arguing with right-wing torture apologists.
Thanks!
Posted by: likeslinkes | April 23, 2009 11:04 AM
answered my own questions:
http://articles.latimes.com/p/2005/oct/08/nation/na-terror8
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20070523.html
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2006/02/20060209-4.html
http://www.slate.com/id/2216601/
Posted by: likeslinks | April 23, 2009 11:25 AM
The argument above is leading right into a trap. The argument against torture is NOT whether it ever produces results (indeed on some rare occasions it might). The first quantifiable success subverts that argument qed.
The case against torture is far more related to our ethics as a nation, our constitutional background, our international stature.
Posted by: jay | April 23, 2009 11:40 AM
Given that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times, this would put the effectiveness of waterboarding as an information acquisition tool as ~0.6% if the claim in the article was true, which it apparently isn't.
If torture worked, one might be able to make the argument that there are certain circumstances that could justify it; if it doesn't work, there should be no argument. It doesn't work.
Posted by: Brad | April 23, 2009 11:44 AM
You have a blog? Would you be willing to give a link to it? I couldn't find it with Google.
Posted by: JuliaL | April 23, 2009 11:46 AM
Timothy Noah claims title to many italics, but Ed Brayton seems to have taken them away. Will poor Noah ever see them again?
Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | April 23, 2009 11:48 AM
Yes, well, the past 8 years have revealed that we, as a nation, apparently have no ethics, don't give a shit about our constitutional background, and believe that the be-all and end-all of our international stature is a strong military.
With that in mind, the only argument that has any chance of working is: "No, see, when you're watching 24, and Kiefer Sutherland keeps finding himself in 'ticking bomb' situations, and torture gets him fast, accurate information? That's fiction. In real life, torture doesn't work that way - or at all, really."
Posted by: Seraph | April 23, 2009 11:57 AM
JuliaL: my blog is titled "Moderates of All Nations, Unite!" and it's at http://motherwell.livejournal.com.
I used to enter the URL when commenting here, but my PCs don't remember the info, and I haven't posted any new stuff in months, so I haven't bothered with manually typing the URL with each comment.
Thaanks for asking, and hope you enjoy the writing...
Posted by: Raging Bee | April 23, 2009 12:06 PM
Crap, a bit of a typo. Try this link:
http://motherwell.livejournal.com/
Posted by: Raging Bee | April 23, 2009 12:08 PM
The Romans found that crucifiction "works", too. I guess that makes it OK.
Posted by: noel | April 23, 2009 12:52 PM
noel: crucifixion was used as a punishment and deterrent, not as a means of extracting information. And to the extent that it deterred people from engaging in rebellion against Roman order, it did indeed "work," and did indeed save lives. (It didn't work in the case of Jesus, of course, but that was because those who crucified him did so out of misunderstanding of Jesus' intentions.)
Posted by: Raging Bee | April 23, 2009 12:58 PM
Before we argue the efficacy of torture or even our ethics and ideals, we need to stay focused on the law. If an argument for torture can't surpass that hurdle, then the subsequent arguments really do not matter.
There appears to be an overwhelming amount of evidence piling up that President Bush on down and possibly including members of Congress broke the law. They should all be criminally investigated accordingly and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
If we don't uphold the law, all is lost, there is no standard to argue. I continue to believe that Ford's pardon of Nixon provided a sea change event that put our top officials beyond the reach of the law. Not prosecuting criminal acts now will lead to even worse criminal behavior later.
Posted by: Michael Heath | April 23, 2009 1:26 PM
Michael,
"I continue to believe that Ford's pardon of Nixon provided a sea change event that put our top officials beyond the reach of the law."
Some would argue he did the country a service by doing that. I tend to agree with you, but regardless of WHY he did it, I think you can safely say it cost him dearly politically. I can only imagine what people would say about Obama if he got on the tube and gave Bush a pardon.
Posted by: Sean | April 23, 2009 1:45 PM
Sean,
heh--your comment reminded me of two Saturday Night Live political commercials running in 1976. One purportedly paid by the Ford Campaign read off parts of Carter's Playboy interview about "sinning in his heart" and the one purportedly paid by the Carter campaign simply showed the video of Ford pardoning Nixon. Classic.
Posted by: Shawn Smith | April 23, 2009 1:58 PM
"noel" and "Raging Bee"
You might throw into your calculations that the Romans considered crucifixion to be one of the more humane forms of execution. Tied to a stake, feet slathered with tar, a slow fire lit under your feet so the meat slowly roasts off your toes ... then feet ... then lower legs so it takes days to die from shock and infection was far worse. They had many other methods. A very creative people.
Death by crucifixion was considered something of a favor. Even more so because by custom people were crucified at mid-morning, too early and you lose your audience, and were terminated before sunset to keep the convict from becoming a folk hero by lasting too long. This also meant they were quickly buried, the dead are required by Jewish law to be buried by sundown, so there was less time for large and well organized funeral procession. All this designed to limit the ability of any resistance movement to create martyrs and organize around any figure.
Xians got around this by, better than sixty years after the fact, creating the whole mythology that was to shift Jesus, a entirely human resister who fought against Roman occupation, into a demi-God, Christ.
This shift forced Xians have to embellish the original story and to maintain that their favored figure, as opposed to the thousands of other people who faced worse, presumably without a resurrection card in their pocket, suffered more than any other human, ever, but the facts just won't support the claim. The Romans knew how to make people suffer and make it last.
Then again the Romans were all about death. Skeletons adorn nearly every house and death was a common subject. The admonition to live life fully 'for tomorrow we die' a fixture of Roman culture. Death, in and of itself, was not considered special or even a reasonable penalty. Everyone dies.
So within a culture where people died by the thousand by disease, criminals were thrown to wild animals for entertainment and slaves, and wives, were sometimes expected to kill themselves after their master died. Death, by itself, was considered mundane. Crucifixion was punishment and example so there had to be some suffering but, by Roman standards, not so much.
Posted by: Art | April 23, 2009 3:17 PM
Michael;
Some things have changed, but I admit not for the better. Some low-level soldiers are now considered to be expendable - sorry, in reach of the law, as they did have their careers destroyed for their roles in prisoner abuse in Iraq. Thirty years ago Gordon Liddy, another low-level soldier, one of Nixon's, had his sentence commuted by Carter. I've never understood either Nixon's pardon or that commutation.
Posted by: dean | April 23, 2009 7:32 PM
Bush was a crook.
I can see we're going to be hearing about his exploits for years.
Posted by: Glenn Davey | April 23, 2009 9:02 PM
dean:
Carter commuting his sentence is strange enough, but I don't understand how he was not only able to avoid being permanently demonized, but he actually became a famous public figure on talk radio, as if everyone had just forgotten that he was an integral part of the worst criminal conspiracy in the history of the federal government. A bit like Chuck Colson finding religion and suddenly becoming a hero (enough to get the Presidential Medal of Freedomeven ...).
Posted by: Sean Michael | April 23, 2009 10:41 PM
By this twisted logic, I must off the hook for robbing a bank if I get money from it? Especially if I get a legal opinion from a lawyer for a seat on a US appeals court?
Posted by: Bill from Dover | April 23, 2009 11:10 PM
Sean - I agree about Liddy and Colson. I know people who still talk about Liddy being a true hero and man of integrity. The scarier thing is that they've bought into the "Silent Coup" (I think that's the name of the book he hawked) notion as the reason behind Watergate.
Posted by: dean | April 24, 2009 7:44 AM
Art - any actual primary sources or are you just pulling it out of your rectum? -DJ
Just a hint Art, those that were crucified during the Second Servile Uprising (inculding the slave Sparticus) were not crucified at any particular time, nor were they tarred, nor were they buried "before sunset in accordance with Jewish Tradition". Learn some history, then comment.
Posted by: DingoJack | April 24, 2009 11:22 AM
I don't think it was KSM who provided 2002 information on Library Towers. That story was probably tortured out of Zubaydah when Zubaydah was captured in February, 2002.
Of course, torturing the story out of Zubaydah didn't foil KSM plot, and it seems likely that there was no meaningful plot to foil, even after KSM named the arrested conspirators in 2003 or 2004.
Zubaydah appears to have had mental problems before the torture began, now it appears that Bush prosecutors thought that, after the torture, there was not enough left of Zubaydah's personality and humanity to be indicted for his crimes. He seems to have become one of those who "cannot be tried and cannot be released."
Posted by: Jack Selvia | May 21, 2009 9:52 PM