"not a single significant plot"

Just go read today's article from the Washington Post. It has no gruesome details to churn your stomach though moral nausea is guaranteed. The link is to the print version, so you should have no photographs (beyond an advertisement).

These two paragraphs are nothing new but everyone really needs to be aware of them.

The officials who authorized or participated in harsh interrogations continue to dispute how effective such methods were and whether important information could have been obtained from Abu Zubaida and others without them. In March, The Washington Post reported that former senior government officials said that not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida's coerced confessions.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, in a 2007 report made public this year, said the application of harsh interrogation methods, "either singly or in combination, constituted torture."

[Emphasis mine]

The CIA loves them some torture until they have to witness it.

The two men threatened to quit if the waterboarding continued and insisted that officials from Langley come to Thailand to watch the procedure, the former official said.

After a CIA delegation arrived, Abu Zubaida was strapped down one more time. As water poured over his cloth-covered mouth, he gasped for breath. "They all watched, and then they all agreed to stop," the former official said.

A 2005 Justice Department memo released this year confirmed the visit. "These officials," the memo said, "reported that enhanced techniques were no longer needed."

The immediate engineers of torture were under pressure from Langley to come up with something. One cannot help wondering who was putting the pressure on Langley. My vote, of course, would be RBC but there may have been others. THAT is where the war crimes trials need to go.

--the BB