Americans are divided over every issue: the budget, the national debt, social programs, withdrawing from Afghanistan or staying there, immigration, Barack Obama's birth certificate, and the films being screened at Cannes. I believe that if President Obama stood up in a joint session of Congress and read the Lord's Prayer, 150 Republican members of the House and 35 Republican members of the Senate would have reservations; some would request that it be amended, simply because Obama read it (35 Republican members sent a letter to the president, asking him to halt the investigation with interrogators who practiced torture). After the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, another dispute has arisen, over the torture of detainees in secret CIA prisons or at Guantanamo, and whether it brought about the confessions that sent the Navy SEALs to the headquarters of the al-Qaida leader, or did something else help them get there? Torture is a feature of third world countries. The George W. Bush administration committed war crimes; it deliberately falsified the reasons for war, which led to the death of over a million Arabs and Muslims. This administration sent a number of detainees to Arab and other countries to torture them and extract confessions. The world's leading country in terms of human rights descended to the level of oppressive states. The Obama White House has officially announced that it got to bin Laden without using detainees who were tortured. Senator John McCain wrote an article in The Washington Post in which he detailed how he asked Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, about the matter. Panetti told McCain that the thread that led to the leader of al-Qaida did not begin with Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times. American interrogators, whether former or current, have affirmed that Khaled Sheikh Mohammad, Abu Faraj al-Libi and Hassan Ghoul all denied they knew a courier known as Abu Ahmad al-Kuwaiti, who delivered letters for bin Laden. Khaled Sheikh Mohammed argued that al-Kuwaiti left al-Qaida after he got married and moved to Peshawar. There is a significant point here – in 2006 the US Supreme Court ruled that the Geneva Conventions on treating prisoners had to be adhered to. This ended the responsibility of the CIA for them, and they were transferred to the authority of interrogators in Guantanamo. If they had earlier given useful information under torture, bin Laden would have been killed or captured back then. Why do Americans defend the torture of detainees, even though it has been proven to be useless in extracting important information? Before answering this question, I will mention that official American information shows that torture has led to the giving of false information, and perhaps delayed the discovery of bin Laden. Khaled Sheikh Mohammed is proud about how much he lied to investigators, which recalls Abu Zubaida, who "confessed" and did not shut up. In the end it was learned that he was telling interrogators scenes from Godzilla, about the destruction of a bridge, such as the Brooklyn Bridge, or the destruction of the famous Statue of Liberty. Going back to the question, the common denominator among those who defend the torture of detainees is that they were responsible for it, or took part in supporting it. Former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld are behind the permission to torture, even if they deny it. They argued that they could get to bin Laden through the confessions extracted under waterboarding. Liz Cheney, the daughter of Dick Cheney who is an extremist like him, and Bill Kristol, a neoconservative figure, are enemies of Arabs and Muslims. They chose, through the group Keep America Safe, which they launched, to thank American interrogators without mentioning the name of President Obama, who ordered the operation. Also weighing in has been the lawyer John Yoo, who wrote the so-called "torture memorandums," and who many have asked to be tried for war crimes. There is Representative Peter King, who once supported the terror of the Irish Republican Army; he now chairs the Homeland Security Committee in the House and is investigating the "extremism" of Islamic fundamentalists. This extremist congressman has also argued that waterboarding led the US to bin Laden, which contradicts the report of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which says the information that got the Americans to Abu Ahmad al-Kuwaiti did not come from the torture of detainees. The dispute over "enhanced interrogation methods" means only that those who ordered it are the ones who are defending it, and they should be tried with the detainees of Guantanamo, or before them, so that the United States remains the leader of the free world, and not a country in the third world. [email protected]
