Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Tortured Confession 2

Keith Olbermann again referred to the Kiriakou “confession” in not one but two of his segments on Countdown last night. In so doing he rather decided to have his cake and eat it too, as in one segment he quoted Kiriakou in evidence that the White House was aware of the torturing, and in the other he exposed the assertion that Kiriakou made as to the effectiveness of that torture as being unlikely in the extreme (as did my post yesterday).

Olbermann is guilty of some rather bad journalism, here; using a source to prove a point in one story and then totally discrediting that same source in another story. Wtf?

Watching Kiriakou on the various shows on which he has appeared, the man comes across as not only a liar, but not even a particularly skillful liar. I see no reason to believe one single word that this man says.

He admits he was not present at the torture session and then goes on to describe it in loving and meticulous detail. His descriptions of the permission needed for each step of the process and how that permission was obtained is damning indeed, but it is also utterly ridiculous.

“You may slap him one time in the face with an open hand and then call me back and I'll tell you what you may do next.” Yeah, right.

The White House may have been involved in the decision to commit these atrocities, and probably was. But the statements of a blatant, obviously lying non-witness to events is not the way to prove it.

Other sources contradict Kiriakou’s claim that the subject he is talking about provided valuable information that deterred “dozens of attacks.” Those sources, who did participate in the interrogation admit that the subject was insane and provided nonsense for the purpose of making the pain stop. Which we know to be the usual result of torture.

Yesterday I seemed to be alone in suspecting this guy’s story was phony. Today I have quite a lot of company.

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