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November 29, 2005
The Torture debate viewed from Poland
The Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza runs an article summarizing the recent torture debates in America. It reprises for Polish audiences debates that by now are familiar to most people following US news - the introduction of the McCain ammendment, the question of drawing a line for interrogation techniques, the new vulnerability of the Bush White House on this issue. A few interesting remarks are made that haven't cropped up elsewhere, however. The article notes that this is far from a new issue - the New Yorker and other higher-end news magazines have been sustaining this discussion for over a year, but it took Congress taking up the issue for it to break into the mainstream imagination.
More interesting, however, is a detail that emerges when the piece examines the effectiveness of torture in intelligence gathering. Apparently in 2002, Ibn Sheikh al-Libi, a senior Al-Qaeda operative caputured in Afghanistan, revealed under torture that Al-Qaeda had sent agents into Iraq, although he later reversed these statements. This information became part of the case for the Iraq invasion and was used to brief Colin Powell before his now infamous session at the UN.
Posted November 29, 2005 01:25 AM
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