Bush Administration memos released by the White House on Thursday provide new insight into claims that American agents used insects to torture the young children of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
In the memos, released Thursday, the Bush Administration White House Office of Legal Counsel offered its endorsement of CIA torture methods that involved placing an insect in a cramped, confined box with detainees. Jay S. Bybee, then-director of the OLC, wrote that insects could be used to capitalize on detainees’ fears. The memo was dated Aug. 1, 2002. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s children were captured and held in Pakistan the following month, according to a report by Human Rights Watch.
While an additional memo released Thursday claims that the torture with insects technique was never utilized by the CIA, the allegations regarding the children would have transpired when the method was authorized by the Bush Administration.
At a military tribunal in 2007, the father of a Guantanamo detainee alleged that Pakistani guards had confessed that American interrogators used ants to coerce the children of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed into revealing their father’s whereabouts. “The Pakistani guards told my son that the boys were kept in a separate area upstairs and were denied food and water by other guards,” the statement read. “They were also mentally tortured by having ants or other creatures put on their legs to scare them and get them to say where their father was hiding.”
“According to eyewitnesses, the two were held in an adult detention center for at least four months while U.S. agents questioned the children about their father’s whereabouts,” the report said.“When KSM was being held at a secret CIA facility in Thailand, apparently the revamped Vietnam War-era base at Udorn, according to Suskind, a message was passed to interrogators: ‘do whatever’s necessary,’” Kevin Fenton writes at History Commons. “The interrogators then told KSM ‘his children would be hurt if he didn’t cooperate. However, his response was, ’so, fine, they’ll join Allah in a better place.’”
Fenton has two questions: “Did the Khans invent the allegations or garble them in some way and then ‘get lucky’ two years later, when it was revealed the CIA was, at least, contemplating the techniques they alleged it used at the time in question?” and “Given that nobody heard of the CIA using insects for another two years, why would they invent these specific allegations, which sounded bizarre when they were made?”
Hilarious. Is this what the left wing nuts were crying about? We did harsher stuff to each other as kids.
Ahhhhhh! its a bug (squish)
Everything Bush does is torture. Got it.
Are using a Reverse Polish parser or something?
Bush is no longer president and Obama is pretty much taking the same line as Bush did. Yet the leftist buffoons who purposely search for any story to trash Bush on here so conveniently ignore that BiCrack Obumba has conveniently gone against his campaign rhetoric.
When will the left start to hold Obama responsible for his own lies?
[Excuse me, but if it happened on Bush’s watch, I will report it, If it happens on Obama’s watch, you’d better believe, I will post it – ed.]
Has anyone else noticed that there are no credible witnesses?
All the evidence is entirely circumstantial. No evidence at all that this tactic was actually used. Guilt by innuendo.
Warden said “When will the left start to hold Obama responsible..”
We all know the answer – Never.
I see the echo chamber is in full effect. There continues to be the oddity that the witnesses, credible or not, were describing techniques not revealed until years later, which suggests either psychic intuition, espionage, or that they are, in fact, witnesses to something like this. Then, of course, there is John Yoo saying on the radio a few years back that crushing the testicles of children would be acceptable if the president ordered it. . .you know, it’s not torture if we do it!
Anyhow, O stopped these practices, and now he’s slowly revealing the memos that justified it. How, exactly, did he lie in respect to the torture issue?
By the way, I’m having the damndest time with this comment system. I had to edit my post in a text editor and copy it over. . .
As usual, the ijit right wing nuts don’t have a clue what this is about. I Also guess they have never had a ant bite them.
Anyone that can justify torture is nothing more than a scum bag.
I’ve had scores of red ants bite me at the same time. I guess if you are the biggest wimp on the planet you MIGHT consider it torture, if you were looking for sympathy…
I stand ready to be convinced of the need to use “enhanced interrogation” techniques on PROVEN terrorists. But, terrorizing children crosses any boundaries of civilization we have left. Having said that, The memo says they never used the technique, just that they were authorized to use bugs. So, what do we have? Someone who hates us reports that someone reported that someone else knew it happened. Gimme a break. .
And PLEASE, give me a break from this screwy right justified comment format .
my brother once put a moth in my mouth…alive, and then held my mouth closed….I still cringe when I see a moth flying about (and keep my mouth tightly shut). Does this mean my brother was ahead of his time in interrogation techniques?
>> The Warden says:
>> Obama is pretty much taking the same line as Bush did.
Yes, if “taking the same line” means “ending it.”
They sanctioned the use of buggery? Figures…
Bush was in fact the lowest period in US history, stop denying it. We are well aware Obama is not following what he said in campaigns. You will see us bitch about him as needed just like we did Bush.
So now anything that makes someone uncomfortable is torture.
There was a dead, tortured (bloody) guy in the Abu Ghraib photos.
Nothing funny at all about detaining children for four months
using interrogation techniques for this amount of time is torture in itself. Who knows exactly what techniques were used in that time. Enough is enough, I don’t think the ends justify the means in this case. If we don’t mark limits as to what were willing to do to achieve our objectives, then we’re no better than the terrorists..
LOL. Once again spineless libs owned. No prosecutions as there was no “torture” as defined by law.
Oh, my lord. You guys are so stupid about this.
YES, I too played with bugs and snakes as a kid. We teased other kids with them.
But, if there was a kid who had a SNAKE PHOBIA, we didn’t lock him in a box and fill it with snakes!
That’s what future serial-killer kids do! That would be psychopathically cruel to do to someone with a phobia.
(Yet, some of you seem to dig on this. Hmmm.)
What were the ends, and what were the means?I don’t think the ends justify the means in this case.>
Mike N,
Ends- Obvious objective to get information of whereabouts of terrorist father of the children.
Means- Dentention of children for interrogation
I say leave the kids out of this, I don’t want some asshole justifying this, saying he’s defending my freedom doing this kind of shit.
Torture destroys the torturers as thoroughly as it destroys those tortured. I guess we can add that it destroys the minds of those who defend it, as well..
Better than ‘Snakes on a plane!’
There were reports (from the ACLU) of children were being raped in front of their parents in order to get the parents to talk. But hey, the ends justify the means, regardless of the means, right?
joe says:
There were reports (from the ACLU)
Well, that’s you’re 1st mistake. Taking the American Communists Liberal Union seriously.
man, not even in the criminal underworld do you men with a man’s kids.
Cow Patty, you effen asshole excuse for a waste of oxygen.
Reports of torture by the CIA and Guantanamo are well documented by the FBI and International Red Cross. Contrary to anything you might have heard, torture will not make YOUR penis any bigger.
Why they haven’t put bullet or two in their tiny heads? Sure they are children now, but not more than 5 years later they will plant IEDs and 10 years later they may board airplane *you* may take as well…