Are You Angry Yet? (Episode 6,572)

You remember this guy, Abu Zubaydah? Abu Zubaydah was supposedly one of the highest-ranking Al Queada members whom America has captured so far in the war on terror.

You remember those interrogation tapes the CIA destroyed because after 2 years, they were deemed "of no intelligence value"? Turns out some of them were of Abu Zubaydah being interrogated.

You remember a couple of years ago when you heard about those terror plots on American soil against all manner of places including nuclear power stations, shopping malls, financial districts, bridges, et cetera? The information about those terror plots mostly came from Abu Zubaydah's mouth.

But you know, it's okay really: The tapes really were of "no intelligence value." It turns out the CIA knew that the threats this guy was talking about were false all the time. You see, this Zubaydah guy was completely worthless, crazy, and an Al Quaeda nobody... but they needed to torture the guy because President Bush didn't want his credibility damaged.

Abu Zubaydah, his captors discovered, turned out to be mentally ill and nothing like the pivotal figure they supposed him to be....Abu Zubaydah also appeared to know nothing about terrorist operations; rather, he was al-Qaeda's go-to guy for minor logistics.

Which brings us back to the unbalanced Abu Zubaydah. "I said he was important," Bush reportedly told Tenet at one of their daily meetings. "You're not going to let me lose face on this, are you?" "No sir, Mr. President," Tenet replied. Bush "was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth," Suskind writes, and he asked one briefer, "Do some of these harsh methods really work?"

Interrogators did their best to find out, Suskind reports. They strapped Abu Zubaydah to a water-board, which reproduces the agony of drowning. They threatened him with certain death. They withheld medication. They bombarded him with deafening noise and harsh lights, depriving him of sleep. Under that duress, he began to speak of plots of every variety — against shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty. With each new tale, "thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each...target." And so, Suskind writes, "the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered." [emphasis mine]

That's right. Let me summarize this for you, so you can really take in the breathtaking audacity of what your government is doing.

1. The government painted this guy as a powerful terrorist mastermind, captured him, and made a big deal out of it.
2. The government then found out that he was worthless and crazy, but President Bush had already boasted so much about this man's capture that he couldn't allow the government to admit that the capture was actually worthless.
3. The government then tortured this guy until he started spouting terrorist plots just to make the torture stop.
4. The government then sent law enforcement agencies running around to check out the madman's threats, and even leaked the false threats to the news media, which helped fuel the fear and paranoia that has gripped America since 9/11.
5. The government then destroyed any evidence regarding this captive's interrogation.

So, are you angry yet?