Huffington Magazine Issue 35-36 | Page 23

THE OSCAR ISSUE / HUFFINGTON / 02.10-17.13 v o i c e s 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.