THE OSCAR ISSUE / HUFFINGTON / 02.10-17.13
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evidence, in my view.)
The rationale for the invasion of Iraq
was based on the false testimony of Ibn
Sheikh al-Libi. Following productive, lawful interrogation by the FBI al-Libi was
handed over to the CIA, rendered to Egypt
and tortured there. He was not waterboarded by the CIA. Under “harsh interrogation,” he confessed to connections
between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein,
which was used to justify the invasion of
Iraq. Around a year later, after it was too
late, the CIA admitted al-Bibi had given
false testimony. Whoops!
While the filmmakers do show American brutality, they suggest it was necessary. Absent any other kind of interrogation, viewers must conclude that beating
people is the only way to get answers.
3) WHAT IS MISSING
“Inspired” by the military’s SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape)
program (intended to teach soldiers how
to resist the torture of immoral regimes),
three individuals were officially waterboarded by the CIA: Abd al-Rahim alNashiri, Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh
Mohammed. Advocates of the CIA program like to cite Zubaydah as an example
of how waterboarding worked. But in
fact, before Zubaydah was waterboarded
83 times, he was interrogated by an FBI
agent named Ali Soufan. Soufan used
lawful interrogation techniques to get all
the valuable information AZ had to offer,
alex gibney
including the identity of Khalid Sheikh
Mohammed. More relevant to the film is
the fact that KSM, during his waterboarding program, denied the importance of bin
Laden’s courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti —
a man who ultimately helped lead investigators to bin Laden. So confident was the
CIA in the effectiveness of waterboarding
— despite evidence to the contrary — they
assumed KSM was telling the truth about
the unimportance of al-Kuwaiti when he
was lying. Their unjustified confidence
in waterboarding likely derailed the hunt
for bin Laden’s courier until the the name
of al-Kuwaiti surfaced during the interrogation of Hassan Ghul. (In the film, the
detainee character named “Ammar” was
likely a composite of Ghul, Ammar alBaluchi and Mohammed al-Qatani, who
revealed information about al-Kuwaiti
through traditional interrogation techniques, long before Ghul. )
Boal and Bigelow, by all accounts, are
frustrated that the discussion of their film
has been bogged down in a political debate
that they want no part of. I would say, in
response, that the debate is not political
at all. The subject of torture is one of the
great moral issues of our time.
Boal and Bigelow shouldn’t run
from it. They should engage it.
Alex Gibney is an Oscar-winning documentarian. To read the full version of this
article, tap here. For a defense of ZD30 by
documentarian Michael Moore, tap here.