Limbaugh falsely claimed that "left-wing blogger" was NYT's source on waterboarding use
SUMMARY: Rush Limbaugh falsely claimed that a "left-wing blogger" was The New York Times' source for an article about waterboarding use. In fact, the Times reported that the information came from an OLC memo and that bloggers discovered the information in the memo.
On the April 20 edition of his program, Rush Limbaugh claimed: "The New York Times today has a story that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was waterboarded six times a day; 183 times, over 200 times total. And their source is a left-wing blogger." Limbaugh went on to claim that Mohammad "go[ing] through waterboarding for 183 times, six times a day" was "a little bit hard to believe" but that "whatever the left-wing blogs print and publish, the drive-by media is going to say is true anyway." In fact, the Times did not report that its "source" for the information was "a left-wing blogger"; rather, the article noted that the data came from a May 2005 Office of Legal Counsel memo by principal deputy assistant attorney general Steven G. Bradbury, which stated that "[t]he CIA used the waterboard ... 183 times during March 2003 in the interrogation of KSM." The Times further reported that the information "came out over the weekend when a number of bloggers, including Marcy Wheeler of the blog emptywheel, discovered" it in the 2005 memo.
From the May 30, 2005, Office of Legal Counsel memo:
From the April 20 New York Times article:
C.I.A. interrogators used waterboarding, the near-drowning technique that top Obama administration officials have described as illegal torture, 266 times on two key prisoners from Al Qaeda, far more than had been previously reported.
The C.I.A. officers used waterboarding at least 83 times in August 2002 against Abu Zubaydah, according to a 2005 Justice Department legal memorandum. Abu Zubaydah has been described as a Qaeda operative.
A former C.I.A. officer, John Kiriakou, told ABC News and other news media organizations in 2007 that Abu Zubaydah had undergone waterboarding for only 35 seconds before agreeing to tell everything he knew.
The 2005 memo also says that the C.I.A. used waterboarding 183 times in March 2003 against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
[...]
The new information on the number of waterboarding episodes came out over the weekend when a number of bloggers, including Marcy Wheeler of the blog emptywheel, discovered it in the May 30, 2005, memo.
The sentences in the memo containing that information appear to have been redacted from some copies but are visible in others. Initial news reports about the memos in The New York Times and other publications did not include the numbers.
From the April 20 edition of Premiere Radio Networks' The Rush Limbaugh Show:
LIMBAUGH: The New York Times today has a story that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was waterboarded six times a day; 183 times, over 200 times total. And their source is a left-wing blogger. Now I'm going to tell you what's going to happen here with the drive-by media. By the way, greetings, folks, and welcome -- Rush Limbaugh back, and broadcast excellence, all yours, three hours, straight ahead. The telephone number if you want to join us today, (800) 282-2882; the email address, elrushbo at eibnet.com.
I'm going to give you the new-media model before I go on to this waterboarding point. The new-media model is going to be this: All these drive-by media outlets -- the mainstream media is cutting back on bureaus and reporters and so forth. And what's going to happen is -- it's already starting to happen. The New York Times, liberal media, TV and radio and newspapers and so forth, are going to start using bloggers as -- left-wing bloggers -- as credible sources for news.
Now, you stop and think about this: 183 times, six times a day, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was waterboarded. His lawyers never complained. He didn't complain to whatever civil rights organizations there were. And I'll tell you, the bottom -- if somebody can be water-tortured six times a day, then it isn't torture. Can we just establish that? If somebody can go through waterboarding for 183 times, six times a day -- which is a little bit hard to believe anyway, but let's acknowledge -- let's just say it's true for the sake of it, because whatever the left-wing blogs print and publish, the drive-by media is going to say is true anyway. Six times a day, it means you're not afraid of it. It means you -- it's not torture. If you have -- if you've found a way to withstand it, it can't possibly be torture.
He's torturing facts & logic, as he's done 5 days a week for 20 years? (over 5ooo times).
I heard Rush refer to Achmedinejad (sp) as a left-wing dictator today, so he may be on the dope again.
He who talks smack is probably on the smack.
But his followers are a bunch of pussies...
Rep. Tiahrt Backtracks, Bows Down: Limbaugh 'Is A Great Leader Of The Conservative Movement'
According to the Wichita Eagle (via Kansas Jackass), Tiahrt's office is now also rushing to apologize:
Haahahahahahahahahahahahaaaaa! Republicans, putting the puss in pussies.
if you've found a way to withstand it, it can't possibly be torture. - Rush
Sounds like his listeners.
Rush's Masochist Nation.
This is one of the more laughable things he's said lately.
If you can withstand what they're doing to you, then chances are they'll make it worse. For instance, if you can withstand waterboarding being done to you once a day, they might make it twice instead. If that fails to produce results, then they'll probably increase it to three. That kind of cycle may continue until at, say, six times a day, you just can't take it anymore and finally crack.
However, if Rush is right and waterboarding's not torture in this particular case, then what is it? What's it's purpose?
Here's my favorite part:
Now, you stop and think about this: 183 times, six times a day, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was waterboarded. His lawyers never complained.
What lawyers? Like they had him in County Jail or something...and he chose not to lawyer up !
Didn't hey have him on an episode of Law & Order?
I distinctly remember Lenny Mirandizing him and he said he didn't need no damned lawyer, Allah be praised.
Don't forget, Rush's father is a lawyer.
We all know how Rush and the gang view the lawyers that do represent these prisoners. It is very likely - if not certain that KSM has never spoken with legal counsel - although some may have filed motions on KSM's behalf and without KSM's knowledge. Rush has to know this if he reads anything at all. Rush is being disingenuous at best here. At worst he is just too stupid to even know what a source is.
Preaching to the choir.
I voted for Obama and happened to hear Limbaugh today say the NYT used a blogger as a source, searched it, and THIS is the first result. Embarassing.
No fence sitter is going to be convinced by this kind of symantic pedantry. Anyone with a brain obviously knows the NYT is not using something a blogger just made up, the point is the blogs had this over a day before the NYT did, in other words the NYT got the story from the blogs. Petty, we refute partisanship and mis-representation with partisanship and misrepresentation. bleh
if you've found a way to withstand it, it can't possibly be torture. - Rush
That would also indicate the torturers were not getting any good information from the torture - contrary to what conservatives often say. I often hear conservatives say waterboarding works because after 30 seconds, KSM was singing like a canary. Apparently not.
It's impossible to torture and get reliable information.
You can certainly "break" a subject. But don't delude yourself (or your bosses) that what's coming out of the subject's mouth is reliable.
This is why professional interrogators- and we have (had?) them - know that torture is counter productive.
Like the stuff that comes out of Rushs' mouth. He is not waterboarded and you still can't trust anything he says.
If one would research it, I believe the two words used most often by MMFA are-- LIMBAUGH FALSELY.
Ah, the brillliant mind of 'elrushbo' at work. And to think some people take this clown seriously.
GOP leader Rush Limbaugh has no problem misleading his ill-informed audience, most who are over the age of 45. He and his partner in crime Sean Hannity's misleading rhetoric is more dangerous to this nation than Gitmo detainees. DHS?
I'm starting to think that over 45 crowd has a high % of alzenheimers patients. That would explain why they can't recall Rush making racist remarks...
Rush is correct.
The NYT admits it. This from the NYT article.
The new information on the number of waterboarding episodes came out over the weekend when a number of bloggers, including Marcy Wheeler of the blog emptywheel, discovered it in the May 30, 2005, memo.
Nice try, AA. The source was the memo. The Bloggers may have raised the red flag, but they were not the source of the information.
If a teacher points out that a kid has lice, is the teacher therefore the source of the lice?
Barney gets thicker every day.
How can anyone be so wrong for so long?
Maybe AA's talent for being wrong is on loan from God. ;-)
Has he been late with the loan payments?
I need a rimshot emoticon, WK. Har!
If he is, he'll qualify for a government bailout.
Fortunately for Barney, he seems to be missing the part of the brain that produces embarrassment,so he keeps the same screen name, and keeps wearing the same clown suit. Much to the amusement of normal people.
Why doesn't AA respond when he's being shredded like this?
A question with no answer. Spectulation is as much as any of us can produce on this. I've felt some sympathy towards AA on occasion. Shortly thereafter he usually produces something outrageous and my sympathy disappears.
He doesn't really even know himself, the pay's good, or?
Ain't that amazing? Either he realizes he flopped on his face and is off to absorb his next batch of BS from Rush, or-
He posts and leaves , never even realizing that he's been shown how he's wrong, or
he's a performance artist doing a "goofiest wingnut on the planet" piece.
But it never seems to affect him. I've been posting here off& on for a few years, AA's been here longer, and this happens all the time. And he comes back the next day posting the same BS from the same sources, and whining that nobody takes him seriously . Amazing.
You raise an interesting philosophical point for the republican party as a whole.
Republican leaders only care about one issue -- tax cuts for the rich. You'd think they'd just flip a coin for their stance on other issues.
Somehow that coin came up tails 98% of the time.
AA,
She discovered the information in the memo, you wrote it yourself. Your post is showing that Rush is wrong.
I guess it would be safe to say that AA shows that Rush is incorrect. Thanks!
You've got to be joking AA. Did anything Marcy Wheeler say or do change the original information in the OLC memo? Please tell me you are joking here.
No Rush wasnt right. He lied...AGAIN. We all know there is NOTHING Rush can say you wont appologize for but at least TRY to stay somewhere in the reality based universe.
My favorite part is when Rush says, "Think about it ..." Obviously, thinking is not his strong suit.
Doh!
This tag of "left-wing" plays to his base, but not to the country as a whole. We know that it's a standard ploy to discredit the source of anything Rush and his cabal of know-nothings reject on the grounds that it makes the Bush administration look like a criminal enterprise. Which it was.
Randy
"The new information on the number of waterboarding episodes came out over the weekend when a number of bloggers, including Marcy Wheeler of the blog emptywheel, discovered it in the May 30, 2005, memo."
The Times cites her blog as the source for the number of uses of the technique- what is Rush "falsely claiming?"
i hadn't read the drivel on this thread yet when I posted. I see now that the burning question among the great minds of the left represented here is: When is a source not a source? And the answer? Why, when Rush says it is one!
MMFA remind me of a robin that keeps attacking a window. There's a lot of bird droppings, but little else of significance.
There is no question of the source here. The source is the memo. The fact that the Times found out about the original source from somewhere is not even close to relevant. Limbaugh is trying to discount the information over something that is not even relevant. I suppose blatant misinformation is not important to you. Duly noted.
WOW are you REALLY this divorced from reality? There is the memo from the OFFICE OF LEGAL COUNSEL. It is reproduced RIGHT ABOVE. The NYTimes talks about the memo and you STILL want to pretend their source for this information was a blogger? Are you for real?
No. You don't understand. The original information comes from the memo. Marcy Wheeler was citing the memo. That makes the memo the original source. Marcy did not change any of the information or provide information that was not in the original memo. This isn't that hard. Sweet Jesus!
Some people are unfamiliar with the English language.
"Source" means the originator of the information or fact. A "source" can be a printed document, as in this case. A "source" can also be a person whose position makes them the authority. e.g. during Watergate, Deep Throat was a source.
Ms Wheeler was not the source of the information, nor was her writing the source, but instead, she pointed to the source, which was the Bradbury document.
Didn't any of you guys graduate from 10th grade? My son is doing this in his research papers.
The above is in response to AA and EdRossinoelwein.
Then I guess the source of every national story printed in my local paper is AP.
Or your dog,Foghorn, if he brings you the paper. These clowns (edross, aa) can't be serious, can they? If so, the effects of the conservative media machine are more effective than I ever imagined.
Dang. I was looking for the perfect analogy. That was it. Nice work.
Edross,
If, for example, I found in the Bible that you don't have to be a Christian to go to heaven, am I the source of that information or is the Bible?
"A former C.I.A. officer, John Kiriakou, told ABC News and other news media organizations in 2007 that Abu Zubaydah had undergone waterboarding for only 35 seconds before agreeing to tell everything he knew."
So, John. Were the other 82 times just for good measure? To make Zubaydah think twice about co-operating with us? Hmmm. It surely looks like John is lying here. Call me crazy.
Kiriakou may be correct in that Zubaydah "broke" in 35 seconds. But torture isn't about obtaining information, it's about REVENGE.
Again, You can't get reliable, actionable intelligence after torture. Once someone breaks they will find different ways to be deceptive.
Well I don't know that these torturers were indeed sadists. (I know that sentence looks really naive out of context.) It is possible the torturers really believed they would extract useful information to save the country from iminent terrorist attacks - however misguided these tactics really are. I am trying to give them the benefit of the doubt. I have to believe the only reason to continue torturing is that the prisoner was not as broken as they thought/claim he was. The high level targets seem like they were seen as too rich a source of information to torture merely for revenge - although I think that made the justification for torture of these individuals ultimately easier for the OLC to endorse.
That may be the purpose of one or two waterboardings. The other 181 or so derive from pure sadism.
Maybe the first 181 were just practice or they were just kidding. The last two were serious and they got the info. YUK YUK
"Six times a day, it means you're not afraid of it. It means you -- it's not torture. If you have -- if you've found a way to withstand it, it can't possibly be torture."
It kind of makes you question how effective it is at producing useful information, doesn't it?
who was it that said it was like learning to swim? Jacka$$es!
Just think how he treated those innocent victims he beheaded, or bombed, or all of the other folks he killed. Do you really think that these folks are going to stop killing people cause we have a President that goes around saying “I’m Sorry”? New Flash, they still do no like us, they still want to kill us and now they know our techniques to gather Intel. Guessing you all would have preferred that we give him a cup of tea and hope at some point he would tell us Intel. Just glad I am not I am counting on any of you to protect my family or me.
1) Why are you so scared?
2) Show us any valuable intelligence derived from torture?
3) Why do you insist on our leaders lowering themselves to the level of terrorists?
"One of the things that I find a little bit disturbing about this recent disclosure is they put out the legal memos, the memos that the CIA got from the Office of Legal Counsel, but they didn't put out the memos that showed the success of the effort," Cheney said. I wonder why the Obama Administration only released about what we did, not what we learned? I look forward to the information be released! Since Obama is into being so open about what was done, I am sure he will tells what was learned as well? From a report in the Washington Times, sounds like there was another group of 17 to attack California. They were able to stop the attack from what the learned from KSM during the waterboarding, up till that time he was not talking during his cup of tea breaks.
"Just think how he treated those innocent victims he beheaded, or bombed, or all of the other folks he killed."
So...torture IS about revenge. Thanks for clearing THAT up.
"now they know our techniques to gather Intel."
They've known that all along. This stuff has been around a LONG time.
"Guessing you all would have preferred that we give him a cup of tea and hope at some point he would tell us Intel. "
If it resulted in REALIABLE intel...then yes, by all means give him the tea. How can you trust the word of someone who will say ANYTHING YOU WANT TO HEAR in order to get the torture to stop?
"Just glad I am not I am counting on any of you to protect my family or me"
You're SURE you aren't? How do you know?