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Was the primary evidence for 9/11 obtained through torture?

aggle-rithm

Ardent Formulist
aggle-rithm
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I have been in a discussion with Jihad Jane in another thread, and I felt it appropriate to move it here.

JJ claims (or at least, suggests) that the primary basis for believing the 9/11 was carried out by middle eastern terrorists was testimony obtained through torture.

I asked several times for his(her?) basis for this claim, and after much dodging and weaving, JJ finally threw the 9/11 Commission Report out there. According to one major news outlet, over 400 citations listed in the footnotes referrenced CIA interrogation of detainees.

So, I dove into the 9/11 Commission report. I haven't finished yet, but so far I have found:

1. Of the 400+ references to interrogation, just over 100 were not corroborated from other sources.
2. When there are conflicts between different sources, or any doubt about the reliability of the source, the report openly admits it.
3. As far as I could tell, the central theory of 9/11, that it was carried out by al Qaeda operatives (or at least Middle Eastern terrorists with significant financial support) was obtained not through these interrogations, but through FBI investigations.

I brought this to JJ's attention, but her(his?) reaction was that the Commission Report was bogus and shouldn't be relied upon as a source. Never mind that JJ was the one who originally brought it up...

So, what I'm looking for is two things:

-- Does "CIA interrogation" mean the same thing as "torture"?
-- Without this torture, do we have enough evidence to point to a perpetrator of 9/11? I'm not looking for a specific person here, but a general enough idea of what sort of group was involved so that we can definitely say whether or not it was an inside job.

I think "not enough evidence" for the first question, and an emphatic "yes" to the second.

What does everyone else think?
 
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aggle-rithm said:
I have been in a discussion with Jihad Jane in another thread, and I felt it appropriate to move it here.

JJ claims (or at least, suggests) that the primary basis for believing the 9/11 was carried out by middle eastern terrorists was testimony obtained through torture.
Click to expand...

ObL was by his own statements well known as an enemy of the US before 9/11 happened, most recently in the attack on the USS Cole (fall 2000). We connected ObL to the Cole attack via signals intelligence (the NSA) and other sources. See Bamford [9].

By his own words, we know that ObL wanted to bait the US into attacking him on his own turf. When the Cole attack failed to do that, he approved a plan that would up being the attacks of 9/11. See [5]

http://911links.webs.com/binLaden.htm

Table Of Contents
[1] NEWS (Jan 2001) Some See U.S. as Terrorists' Next Big Target
[2] (Jan 2001) ObL Tells Reporter that US attacks are comming.
[3] New York Times reports about al Queda about 89 times prior to 9/11/2001
[4] bin Laden quotes
[5] Al Qaeda: Statements and Evolving Ideology
[6] 1996: bin Laden declares war on America.
[7] ObL attacks on America prior to 2001 listed
[8] Specific attack warnings
[9] Bibliography
[10] 1998 ObL Fatwa calling for attack on the US
[11] Complete 9/11 timeline
[12] Answer to "bin Laden not wanted by FBI"
[13] US Government "Wanted" poster for biin Ladem
 
Every report I have heard shows the FBI extracting a lot of useful intel from several people, including KSM, before the CIA and the "contractors" got their grubby hands on them.I have seen no evidence of their having given up anything reliable since then.

Big difference? The FBI operated by the Army Field Manual. The CIA went all Jack Bauer on people.

The al Qaeda leads were developed by the FBI using lawful and scientific methods. CIA just screwed it all up,. perhaps deliberately so, in an effort to frame Saddam, maybe to invent causus belli with Iran.
 
aggle-rithm said:
-- Does "CIA interrogation" mean the same thing as "torture"?
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No it does not. However since most of the so called torture was done under secracy, all interrogation will considered suspicious. However KSM was wanted for terrorism way before 9/11m was the uncle to the planner of the 1993 attacks. OBL has admitted to 9/11 and he is not in custody.

-- Without this torture, do we have enough evidence to point to a perpetrator of 9/11?
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We have tons of evidence of a hijacking and suicide mission and none for an inside job.
 
Don't forget the 1993 WTC bombing is connected to the 2001 attacks.

The CIA did not mess up the 9/11 investigation. The OBL unit was investigating Al Qeida for a decade.

Terrorism existed before 9/11/01.
 
I asked this very question in the "Legitimate Questions" thread about a week ago. I suppose it does deserve its own thread though, so we will see how it goes.

TAM:)
 
Well, to the FBI agents who had to spend their time poring over credit card records, ATM transactions, airline ticket sales, flight school records and so on it might have seemed like torture...;)
 
ktesibios said:
Well, to the FBI agents who had to spend their time poring over credit card records, ATM transactions, airline ticket sales, flight school records and so on it might have seemed like torture...;)
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This just lead them to KSM.

Waterboarding is also used during some military training on serving soldiers in UK - so what. Builds the character.

KSM would have experienced similar training in the camps in Afghan/Pakistan to ready himself for capture. He failed. He should have been stoned in the street. Had a western group of terrorists slammed a few planes into Iran or Iraq and then been caught - they would have been. Security guards and drivers are being beheaded on video. Waterboarding is a walk in the park.

I would much prefare some waterboarding than death by being ripped apart during a high speed collision or being burned to death or crushed to death - all for a mad ideal.

Perhaps Jihad Jane lives on a farm far from the madding crowd - AK47 propping up the back door.
 
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Jackanory said:
This just lead them to KSM.

Waterboarding is also used during some military training on serving soldiers in UK - so what. Builds the character.

KSM would have experienced similar training in the camps in Afghan/Pakistan to ready himself for capture. He failed. He should have been stoned in the street. Had a western group of terrorists slammed a few planes into Iran or Iraq and then been caught - they would have been. Security guards and drivers are being beheaded on video. Waterboarding is a walk in the park.

I would much prefare some waterboarding than death by being ripped apart during a high speed collision or being burned to death or crushed to death - all for a mad ideal.

Perhaps Jihad Jane lives on a farm far from the madding crowd - AK47 propping up the back door.
Click to expand...

while I am tempted to hash out all of the areas in your post above, this is not the place to do so...perhaps in politics.

TAM:)
 
Jackanory said:
Hash away Doc. I dont do politics sorry:)
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You don't dointelligence, either.

They got KSM through normal interrogation, long before the contractor thugs got their hands on the informant.

Waterboarding does not build character. It just tells the soldier how badly it sucks to get caught by barbarians.

I take it you are not a veteran, right?
 
Jackanory said:
Waterboarding is also used during some military training on serving soldiers in UK - so what. Builds the character.
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TRUE...

Oh' it's a bit more than that! I tried it, dare others to draw the same card. Whle I have no issue, with the US doing it to scum of their ilk. It is not for the faint! As it shouldn't be!
 
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Without torture there is plenty of evidence to correctly identify bin Laden, Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, and the 19 highjackers.

The 19 were on the passenger lists. They were seen going on the aircraft. A few were partially identified by phone calls from the planes, some others by recovered artifacts from the impact sites. Mohammad Atta's luggage didn't make it on the plane with him. al-Qaeda claimed responsibility and released martyrdom videos on their own, while still out of reach of the USA entirely. Still more videographic evidence and data was recovered from combat zones, in the form of physical evidence, not interrogations.

A better question would be, "what information was only provided through interrogation, rather than merely used to corroborate what we already knew or suspected?" There will be some, I'm sure, but more contextual only.

And for the record, I am adamantly opposed to torture in all circumstances.
 
Didn't KSM also admit responsibility in a media interview prior to his capture by the US?
 
aggle-rithm said:
-- Does "CIA interrogation" mean the same thing as "torture"?
Click to expand...

No but waterboarding is torture. When you drown, you don't just hold your breath until you run out of oxygen. You hold your breath until you are unable to keep it in, then you reflexively exhale and water pours into your lungs and you die. Waterboarding simulates that process. You try to hold your breath until your "interragator" is out of water. You think it's all done with and you exhale then bam! you don't get oxygen but water. Your brain tells you "this is it". That's the torture part. It's not about holding your breath till it starts to hurt but about simulating drowning. This is why it can take as little as six seconds--as evident in the Mancow video. The water can easily make it to your lungs. It probably won't be enough to kill you if someone does CPR. That's why an EMT has to be there.
 
leftysergeant said:
You don't dointelligence, either.

They got KSM through normal interrogation, long before the contractor thugs got their hands on the informant.

Waterboarding does not build character. It just tells the soldier how badly it sucks to get caught by barbarians.

I take it you are not a veteran, right?
Click to expand...

Perhaps you should read my post again. I made it clear in the first sentence about KSM. The rest should be read as a hint of sarcasm directed towards Jihad Jane's hypocricy and with a little respect of ones own experiences.

Waterboarding is universal. KSM would have experienced it before.

"I take it you are not a veteran, right" - If being an ex british serviceman is classed as a veteran then yes.
 
Originally Posted by aggle-rithm
I have been in a discussion with Jihad Jane in another thread, and I felt it appropriate to move it here.

JJ claims (or at least, suggests) that the primary basis for believing the 9/11 was carried out by middle eastern terrorists was testimony obtained through torture.
Click to expand...

aggle-rithm is misrepresenting my stated position, which is that a large chunk of the "evidence" that informs the widely believed, 'Us verses Them', 911 plot narrative was informed by "evidence" gleaned from torture.

Though balking at using the word torture, Bush-regime insider and executive director of the 9/11 Commission, Philip D. Zelikow, agrees, having stated that "quite a bit, if not most" of [the Commission's] information on the 9/11 conspiracy "did come from the interrogations."

http://deepbackground.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/01/30/624314.aspx




Jackanory said:
Perhaps you should read my post again. I made it clear in the first sentence about KSM. The rest should be read as a hint of sarcasm directed towards Jihad Jane's hypocricy and with a little respect of ones own experiences.

Waterboarding is universal. KSM would have experienced it before.

"I take it you are not a veteran, right" - If being an ex british serviceman is classed as a veteran then yes.
Click to expand...

Would you like to point out how I have been hypocritical, Jackanory?


Jackanory said:
Waterboarding is also used during some military training on serving soldiers in UK - so what. Builds the character.
Click to expand...

I have talked at length with a UK special forces veteran about his training. Far from being character-building he believes that his experience of practice torture crippled him emotionally and physically for life.
 
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