Ridding Iraq of Uday and Qusay Hussein is commendable for all the reasons you say, but the killings raise a simple question: If American forces were capable of using intelligence in Iraq to discover the exact location of two people, why hasn't the same sort of intelligence been useful in locating any of the alleged weapons of mass destruction?
And contrary to what the CIA told Congress, the White House and the public, interrogations produced hardly any useful intelligence.In this section America's police on trial Shock therapy Crisis revisited Heal thyself Fears of a bright planet ReprintsThe rebuttal has been furious (see article).
Which is a roundabout way of illustrating the point that the idea of an omniscient organisation – let alone the NSA – processing the totality of human knowledge into anything resembling useful intelligence remains firmly in the realms of science fiction. .
"Suffice it to say," the judge added, citing the classified record, "the C.I.A. program was effective in obtaining useful intelligence from Ghailani throughout his time in C.I.A. custody".
Though the recent Senate Torture Report called into question the efficacy of torture in garnering useful intelligence, 53 percent of the public in the December ABC News/Washington Post poll believed that the CIA's treatment of suspected terrorists produce important information that could not have been obtained by other means.
It's doubtful they were engaged in useful intelligence work.
Nor are many details known about how and when the operation was mounted, or whether it ever succeeded in collecting useful intelligence.
The judge noted that his period in C.I.A. custody had "served compelling interests of national security" and that the interrogation program had been "effective in obtaining useful intelligence from Ghailani".
According to press stories and statements by Feinstein and other senators, the first draft concluded that C.I.A. and Bush Administration officials had greatly overstated the interrogations' role in generating useful intelligence, and that the C.I.A. had seriously misled Congress as well.
Officials said that the CIA's interrogation programme yielded little useful intelligence and was not helpful in the hunt for al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden or anything else of value.
