At first, it seems like an admission of guilt. And shame. CIA agent John Kiriakou steps forward on ABC, saying that the US has used waterboarding, and that waterboarding is torture.
A former CIA officer said interrogators used a simulated drowning technique on a senior al-Qaida member, and that he believes the method is torture.
Kiriakou presented his story with a lot of aww, shucks, we're better than that, and White House press conferences were temporarily enlivened by attempts to get Dana Perino to confirm the use of waterboarding.
But there was another message delivered in Kiriakou's "confession." That message is: torture works.
So the CIA waterboarded Abu Zubaydah – controlled drowning – and afterward he provided information. Kiriakou said tapes of the interrogation, now apparently destroyed, would show "a lot of very long and very boring conversations about the minutiae surrounding the leadership of al-Qaida." Kiriakou said he believes this information "disrupted a number of attacks."
The story advanced by Kiriakou might not be quite so neat as the scenarios put forward on 24, but it's very close. Tough al-Qaeda leader refuses to give any information to interrogators. Then, after mere seconds of exposure to waterboarding, said bad guy is forever broken. He becomes a motormouth, spewing forth literally hours of details on dozens of upcoming attacks. That information isn't just gibberish, but real data that saves real people, including halting an attaack against a school. Kiriakou, unable to look the camera directly in its glassy eye, then concludes that, shameful as the torture was, not torturing would have been worse. Besides, says Kiriakou, we only waterboarded two people. both of them very bad guys.
In Kiriakou's story, torture becomes safe, effective, and rare. And the media swallowed. Hook, line, and sinker.
Funny thing though, specifics on those many -- "dozens" in some interviews -- of incidents that were halted from this spew of accurate information gleaned from torture are more than a little lacking. That school that was saved was British in one account. American in another. The hours of details that were taped, were among those tapes conveniently destroyed. The information provided so vague that neither its source nor its effect can be tested.
If Kiriakou is confident that torture produced accurate information, and he's willing to explain exactly who was tortured, along with when, where, and how they were tortured. Why does he not provide the specifics of the disrupted operations? These supposed operations already squelched, and our sad-eyed CIA torturer has already revealed source of the information. Those "very long and very boring" conversations that Kiriakou waves off in interviews, is exactly the kind of evidence that would be... well, any evidence at all that Kiriakou is telling the truth. Larry Johnson has already expressed his doubt that Kiriakou is telling the truth.
With more than the ten minutes of consideration apparently applied by ABC, it's hard to see Kiriakou's story as anything but an attempt to redeem the use of waterboarding, and other forms of torture, as effective means of interrogation. After all, say torture supporters, why would people keep using torture if it doesn't work?
Why? Because it's satisfying, that's why. Because when you have someone who you think is a bad guy in front of you, someone you think is scum, you don't want to befriend them. You don't want to feed them and give them some damn mat to pray on. You want to hurt them. And then hurt them some more. People want torture to be effective for the same reason that people endlessly sift statistics for some sign that capital punishment is effective. Because vengeance is fun.
Kiriakou comes like Santa, bringing all the little pro-torture boys and girls an excuse to get out the whips and electrodes.