Tel Aviv daily reports on Israeli agents posing as "Muslims"

[Jeff]

There was a time in my life when I thought Gaddafi was evil incarnate but it was mercifully brief...

Between his periferal involvement in Lockerbie and the La Belle bombing, I always sorta figured Gaddafi was probably a CIA asset.

Al-Libi, Torture, and the Case for the War in Iraq

— By Nick Baumann
| Thu May. 14, 2009 9:08 AM PDT

On Monday, I wrote about the "suicide" of Ibn Shaikh al-Libi in a Libyan jail. Al-Libi was the man whose false confession, obtained under torture, of a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda provided the Bush administration with its casus belli for war with Iraq. It didn't seem to matter that al-Libi's claim that Bin Laden had sent operatives to be trained in the use of weapons of mass destruction by Hussein's people didn't make any sense. "They were killing me," al-Libi later told the FBI about his torturers. "I had to tell them something." A bipartisan Senate Intelligence committee report would later conclude that al-Libi lied about the link "to avoid torture."

The al-Libi story has been moving forward at a breakneck pace since it first broke in the Arab press over the weekend. Human Rights Watch, whose staffers last spoke to al-Libi on April 27, called for an investigation into his death in a press release issued late Monday afternoon. (When HRW spoke to al-Libi on the 27th, he refused to be interviewed, instead asking, "Where were you when I was being tortured in American jails?")

But the biggest news so far in the al-Libi case comes from former Colin Powell aide Lawrence Wilkerson. In a post on Steve Clemons' Washington Note, Wilkerson writes:

[W]hat I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002—well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion—its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa'ida.

So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney's office that their detainee "was compliant" (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP's office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods. The detainee had not revealed any al-Qa'ida-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, "revealed" such contacts. Of course later we learned that al-Libi revealed these contacts only to get the torture to stop.

Wilkerson is saying that getting the false "information" from al-Libi about an Iraq-Al Qaeda link wasn't an unexpected "bonus" of the torture—it was the goal of the torture. Kevin Drum's caution is very important here: "One way or another, Wilkerson is going to have to tell us how he knows this. It's not enough just to say that he 'learned' it." But if Wilkerson's information is reliable—and he's been reliable in the past—this changes everything about the torture debate. Josh Marshall explains:

The basis of most of the anti-torture push has been the assumption that torture was used for the purpose of eliciting information about future terrorist attacks. Whether it was illegal, wrong-headed, misguided, immoral—whatever—most have been willing to at least give the benefit of the doubt that that was the goal. If the driving force was to gin up new bogus intel about the fabled Iraq-al Qaida link, politically it will put the whole story in a very different light. And rightly so.

There's another connection back to the al-Libi story. Wilkerson doubts al-Libi's death was a suicide at all. He continues:

(Incidentally, al-Libi just "committed suicide" in Libya. Interestingly, several U.S. lawyers working with tortured detainees were attempting to get the Libyan government to allow them to interview al-Libi....)

Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball at Newsweek published a piece on Tuesday casting further doubt on the idea that al-Libi's death was a suicide:

Hafed al-Ghwell, a Libyan-American and prominent critic of the Kaddafi regime, says there were plenty of reasons to question the report that Libi had committed suicide.... "This idea of committing suicide in your prison cell is an old story in Libya," Al-Ghwell explains. In the past, he adds, there have been a number of cases where political prisoners are reported to have committed suicide. Then the families get the bodies back and discover the prisoners had been shot in the back or tortured to death. "My gut feeling is that something fishy happened here and somebody in Libya panicked," he says. With the prospect that the Obama administration might release more Bush-era documents about the treatment of CIA detainees, officials in the Kaddafi regime had reasons to be concerned that their "complicity" in the U.S. war on terror would be exposed, Al-Ghwell says.

http://motherjones.com/mojo/2009/05/al- ... e-war-iraq

[lupercal]

But the biggest news so far in the al-Libi case comes from former Colin Powell aide Lawrence Wilkerson. In a post on Steve Clemons' Washington Note, Wilkerson writes:

[W]hat I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002—well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion—its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa'ida.

So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney's office that their detainee "was compliant" (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP's office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods. The detainee had not revealed any al-Qa'ida-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, "revealed" such contacts. Of course later we learned that al-Libi revealed these contacts only to get the torture to stop.

Wilkerson is saying that getting the false "information" from al-Libi about an Iraq-Al Qaeda link wasn't an unexpected "bonus" of the torture—it was the goal of the torture.

Okay, but a "bonus" to whom is the question. So Cheney et al used torture to gin up propaganda. That's not exactly big news, and frankly has nothing to do with Gaddafi, or Mubarak for that matter, unless you're suggesting they played some role in 911 or had any interest in it whatsoever? Because that would be news. As for al-Libi, the US also runs a torture chamber in Guantanamo, so does that make Fidel and his brother torturers? I imagine Time-NYT shills would say yes indeedy, because all US rivals are by definition evil tyrants, but I politely disagree.

[Jeff]

As for al-Libi, the US also runs a torture chamber in Guantanamo, so does that make Fidel and his brother torturers?

FYI:

http://www.historyofcuba.com/history/fu ... uantan.htm

[lupercal]

As for al-Libi, the US also runs a torture chamber in Guantanamo, so does that make Fidel and his brother torturers?

FYI:

http://www.historyofcuba.com/history/fu ... uantan.htm

Interesting. Salient excerpt:

On June 14 2002, at the United Nations General Assembly, Cuba demanded that Guantánamo territory be returned to the island.

The issue of returning Guantánamo to Cuba is complicated by the agreement signed by Batista in 1934. The agreement states: "Until the two Contracting Parties agree to the modification or abrogation of the stipulations of the agreement in regard to the lease to the United States of America of lands in Cuba for coaling and naval stations… the stipulations of that Agreement with regard to the naval station of Guantánamo shall continue in effect."

To the U.S. this means an "open-ended duration" that can only be terminated by mutual agreement. To Cuba it means that Guantánamo Bay is "occupied territory."

So we're not in disagreement that the answer to my question is no?

[AlicetheKurious]

As to the millions in Cairo. Have you ever marched in a demonstration Nordic? I have and let me tell you the numbers reported are extremely fungible. I don't personally see how Tahrir square could hold more than 50,000 and don't forget they also required overnight accommodations and facilities. Oh yes, all supplied through the miracle of Twitter, but where were all those shitters, campfires and pup tents? And you're trying to tell me there were over a million camping there? Please. Turn off the freaking TV.

You and Stratfor's George Friedman and his ilk, as far as I know, are the only people who still deny that the number of demonstrators in Tahrir were in the millions (not just one million, but up to three, at one point) -- though even Friedman estimated the number at around 300,000. Why would you do that? Is it because, like Friedman, your conclusions simply don't hold up given the actual facts, so you have to make stuff up?

Also, nobody has claimed that millions camped in Tahrir Square overnight. Many wives and children went home before sundown and those who spent the night were for the most part men, including people who'd come from distant towns. Some had come from as far away as Upper Egypt and stayed two weeks or more in Tahrir Square. One of the men I spoke to when I was there was from Beheira Province and said he'd been there every day for 18 days. I personally know two young men who stayed there but went home every few days to shower and sleep. To keep up with their news, we had to keep calling their wives, who came and went when they could, to avoid emptying the cell-phone batteries of the people in the Square.

There are two mosques off Tahrir Square and people used their facilities to wash and use the bathroom. There were portable toilets in the Square, behind a big sign that said "Headquarters of the National Democratic Party". Everybody who went there brought as much food and water as they could carry and distributed them freely. People were collecting money from the rest of us to buy as much as possible. There were bakeries that took enormous orders at cost. Some went around with loaves of fino bread (which is like a short, thin baguette) and triangles of La Vache Qui Rit cheese.

Others distributed dried dates, others brought biscuits, plain or chocolate or filled with dates. Still others brought plastic containers of koshary, a very cheap but nutritious meal of lentils, pasta and rice with a garlic/tomato sauce, or of ful, a traditional Egyptian bean dish, or falafel. Others brought tea and sugar. One of my friends brought bags of nuts. Thousands brought blankets. In fact, some friends told me about how, early on, when it started getting cold, the people living in apartments overlooking Tahrir Square actually threw down blankets from their own beds to the demonstrators from their balconies. Later, thousands came from all over Cairo carrying several blankets each.



I find your sneers inexplicable.

Though I would be the first to acknowledge that a lot remains to be done, you have no idea, no idea at all, what it took to accomplish even what the revolution has already achieved, something that was widely viewed as impossible: getting rid of a regime that formed a cornerstone of American and Israeli (and IMF and World Bank) strategy in the Middle East. It literally took an entire nation coming together with their hearts on fire: not just in Cairo, but in every city and town. It took unarmed demonstrators facing the full brutality of a police state in places as far away from each other as Suez and Ismailia and the cities of the Nile Delta and Alexandria and Aswan and Marsa Matruh on the Libyan border. Even so, it may not have succeeded if the sheer numbers hadn't simply overwhelmed the regime's security forces and forced them to withdraw, if the demonstrations hadn't spread far beyond Tahrir Square even in Cairo and its suburbs, if workers all over the country hadn't defied their regime-appointed union bosses and gone on strike, if the army officers and air force pilots hadn't refused to shoot, if prominent journalists working for state media hadn't publicly resigned and joined the demonstrators.

Bloggers are important, but this went way, way beyond bloggers. Remember, Egypt is a country where the internet is used by just over 21% of the population, not all or even most of them readers of political blogs. Egyptians didn't need bloggers to tell them that they live in a repressive police state where the "security" forces of the regime could, and did, do anything to anybody they pleased under the legal fiction that Egypt was in a "state of emergency", while well-connected criminals responsible for the deaths of thousands were beyond accountability or the reach of the law.

Egyptians didn't need bloggers to tell them that their state-funded media or government did not represent them, but a tiny class of super-rich bloodsuckers who constantly congratulated themselves on how well the economy was growing even as the people sank further into poverty and despair. They didn't need bloggers to tell them that the vast majority of Egyptian citizens are deprived of decent housing, education, health care and employment even as billions in public money went to build mansions, luxurious private schools and highly advanced medical facilities for the new class of billionaires, proud owners of overnight empires built on nepotism and corruption. Egyptian workers didn't need bloggers to tell them that their union bosses didn't represent them, but the regime that appointed them, the same regime that was selling their factories at dirt-cheap prices to foreign and local regime-linked "investors" who kicked them out and sold the land at exorbitant prices to luxury compound developers.

They sure as hell didn't need bloggers to make them ashamed of their government's subservience to the US and especially to Israel. They didn't need bloggers to make them feel rage when the state's "security" forces beat them and arrested them for demonstrating against Israel's siege, or the settlements, or the bombing of Gaza, or when the regime prevented their hard-earned donations of food and medical supplies from reaching their Palestinian brothers and sisters and left them to rot at the border instead.

This was a whole nation coming together in joy and rage and desperation because its people love their country and each other and believe they deserve much, much better than to live under a regime that exists to sell them for pets or meat to foreign and domestic predators.

Maybe, Lupercal, it's the revolution's core, non-negotiable demands that lead you to suspect that the CIA is behind it? You know, like demanding a sovereign government that actually represents Egyptians and is accountable to them rather than to America and Israel? Demands like freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, social justice and a more equitable distribution of wealth, an end to political and economic corruption, an independent judiciary, the right to establish independent trade unions, the right to strike? Or maybe it's the revolutionaries' demand for solidarity with the other Arab peoples, with the Palestinian people?

Are you saying that Egyptian people could not possibly want these things, even though they've demonstrated that they're willing to fight and even die for them?

Or are you saying that the West, which even after January 25 was strongly supporting its puppets Mubarak and Suleiman and lauding the "stability" and the "importance to the peace process" of its client regime, was really working to overthrow it and hand Egypt over to the Egyptian people who view the West with justifiable resentment and suspicion?

I give up.

[lupercal]

Thousands, yes, possibly two or three in that photo, which is exactly what I'm talking about. How many tents are there the "campsite"? A few dozen? And please tell me the "KFC clinic" is not what I think it is. Anyway Alice you told us yourself you were getting your news from Al-Jazeera and if you haven't figured out that AJ is an MI6 operation you will when you see what you're about to get, or lose, which in addition to the Suez canal and the Nile river is a lot you didn't even know you had. I'm tempted to say you deserve it but of course you don't. And Palestinians definitely don't deserve what's in store in Gaza and you seem to have lost all concern for them.

Or are you saying that the West, which even after January 25 was strongly supporting its puppets Mubarak and Suleiman and lauding the "stability" and the "importance to the peace process" of its client regime, was really working to overthrow it and hand Egypt over to the Egyptian people who view the West with justifiable resentment and suspicion?

Yes, US and UK spooks were working overtime to overthrow Mubarak, who finally had to be carried out on a stretcher. And in case you haven't noticed, they didn't hand Egypt to the Egyptian people, they handed it to the Army, which they control. In any case Alice I don't hold your views against you because you've been through a traumatic event, like the US was after 911, and it took us all a lot of time to work through that one, and some still haven't, including some here. But you're going to have to sooner or later. Sorry to be the Laocoon but if you remember your Virgil, Laocoon was right about that horse.

[Nordic]

Alice it seems to me that Lupercal is as mad as Hugh.

It's like talking to a wall.

Or a homeless lady on the street the other day who thought I was an orderly in the hospital and wanted me to bring her some water.

[DevilYouKnow]

Thanks hava, you've cut to the chase. The connection that originally occurred to me is that some of those youthful bloggers might be offspring of such marriages, but it's only speculation.

"Speculation" is putting it somewhat mildly.

[DevilYouKnow]

There were portable toilets in the Square, behind a big sign that said "Headquarters of the National Democratic Party".

[AlicetheKurious]

It's like talking to a wall.

Evidently. For the record, the KFC outlet in Tahrir Square was taken over by the demonstrators and used as a free clinic where volunteer doctors treated the wounded and the sick.

[lupercal]

^ Thanks Alice, and that's just what I was hoping it wasn't.