{"id":342,"date":"2014-12-24T03:22:00","date_gmt":"2014-12-24T03:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/melangedmaculateme.wordpress.com\/2014\/12\/24\/ex-bush-official-us-tortured-prisoners-to\/"},"modified":"2023-07-28T16:25:46","modified_gmt":"2023-07-28T20:25:46","slug":"ex-bush-official-us-tortured-prisoners-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/melange.dmaculate.me\/home\/2014\/12\/24\/ex-bush-official-us-tortured-prisoners-to\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-Bush Official: U.S. Tortured Prisoners to Produce False Intel that Built Case for Iraq War"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Since the release of Senate findings earlier this month, the assumption that the CIA\u2019s torture program\u2019s sole motive was post-9\/11 self-defense has gone virtually unchallenged. There has been almost no recognition that the George W. Bush administration also tortured prisoners for a very different goal: to extract information that could tie al-Qaeda to Saddam Hussein and justify the invasion of Iraq. While the Senate report and other critics say torture produced false information, that could have been one of the program\u2019s goals. We are joined by retired Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2002 to 2005. Wilkerson helped prepare Powell\u2019s infamous February 2003 speech to the United Nations wrongly accusing Iraq of possessing weapons of mass destruction. The claim was partially based on statements extracted from a prisoner tortured by Egypt on the CIA\u2019s behalf, who later recanted his claim. Wilkerson says that beginning in the spring of 2002 \u2014 one year before the Iraq War and just months after the 9\/11 attacks, the torture program\u2019s interrogations “were as much aimed at contacts between al-Qaeda and Baghdad and corroboration thereof as they were trying to ferret out whether there was another attack coming like 9\/11. That was stunning to me to find that was probably 50 percent of the impetus.”<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Ex-Bush Official: U.S. Tortured Prisoners to Produce False Intel that Built Case for Iraq War<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since the release of Senate findings earlier this month, the assumption that the CIA\u2019s torture program\u2019s sole motive was post-9\/11 self-defense has gone virtually unchallenged. There has been almost no recognition that the George W. Bush administration also tortured prisoners … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"link","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[360],"class_list":["post-342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-link","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-torture","post_format-post-format-link"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1185,"url":"https:\/\/melange.dmaculate.me\/home\/2012\/01\/07\/iraqi-torture-scandal-touches-highest-levels-of\/","url_meta":{"origin":342,"position":0},"title":"Iraqi Torture Scandal Touches Highest Levels of NATO","author":"aslam","date":"January 7, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Via Scoop.it - Rights & LibertiesA scandal unfolding in Denmark over the transfer of Iraqi prisoners by Danish forces to Iraq authorities, even as they knew they would be tortured, threatens to implicate the current Secretary General of NATO Anders Fogh Rasmussen, formerly prime minister of Denmark from 2001-2009.Via truth-out.org","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1651,"url":"https:\/\/melange.dmaculate.me\/home\/2011\/06\/02\/a-memo-on-torture-to-john-yoo-vincent-iacopino\/","url_meta":{"origin":342,"position":1},"title":"A memo on torture to John Yoo | Vincent Iacopino | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk","author":"aslam","date":"June 2, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Via Scoop.it - Rights & LibertiesFor starters, the US invasion of Iraq was justified, in part, on the basis of the false confession of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi who, under pain of torture, confessed to knowledge of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Torture not only aided in the justification of\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1110,"url":"https:\/\/melange.dmaculate.me\/home\/2012\/02\/08\/court-rehears-whistleblowers-torture-suit-against\/","url_meta":{"origin":342,"position":2},"title":"Court Rehears Whistleblower\u2019s Torture Suit Against Rumsfeld | The Dissenter","author":"aslam","date":"February 8, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Via Scoop.it - Rights & LibertiesThe suit, brought by Donald Vance, a US navy veteran and former defense contractor, and Nathan Ertel, also a former defense contractor, alleges Rumsfeld is responsible for \u201cintentional mistreatment\u201d that occurred when they were tortured in an American-run prison in Iraq for nearly one hundred\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1242,"url":"https:\/\/melange.dmaculate.me\/home\/2011\/12\/22\/tortures-other-victims-us-soldiers-truthout\/","url_meta":{"origin":342,"position":3},"title":"Torture’s Other Victims: US Soldiers | Truthout","author":"aslam","date":"December 22, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Via Scoop.it - Rights & LibertiesJoshua Phillips is the author of \u201cNone of Us Were Like This Before: American Soldiers and Torture,\u201d a harrowing book about the torture of prisoners in Iraq and the deep psychological scars it left on the members of one battalion who dispensed pain to their\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1325,"url":"https:\/\/melange.dmaculate.me\/home\/2011\/12\/02\/senate-amendment-calls-for-a-return-to-bush-era\/","url_meta":{"origin":342,"position":4},"title":"Senate Amendment Calls for a Return to Bush-Era Torture | Truthout","author":"aslam","date":"December 2, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Via Scoop.it - Rights & LibertiesAn amendment by Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-New Hampshire) to the current Defense Authorization Bill (SA 1068) now before Congress would roll back the 2009 Obama executive order against torture by re-establishing a secret \u201cclassified\u201d set of interrogation techniques and then attaching them to the current\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":358,"url":"https:\/\/melange.dmaculate.me\/home\/2014\/12\/11\/timeline-the-tortured-history-of-the-senates\/","url_meta":{"origin":342,"position":5},"title":"Timeline: The Tortured History of the Senate\u2019s Torture Report","author":"aslam","date":"December 11, 2014","format":"link","excerpt":"Timeline: The Tortured History of the Senate\u2019s Torture Report","rel":"","context":"In \"CIA\"","block_context":{"text":"CIA","link":"https:\/\/melange.dmaculate.me\/home\/tag\/cia\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/melange.dmaculate.me\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/melange.dmaculate.me\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/melange.dmaculate.me\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melange.dmaculate.me\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melange.dmaculate.me\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=342"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/melange.dmaculate.me\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2344,"href":"https:\/\/melange.dmaculate.me\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342\/revisions\/2344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/melange.dmaculate.me\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melange.dmaculate.me\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melange.dmaculate.me\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}