Torture used to try and establish Al Qaida Iraq connection

This is from the Guardian.

Cheney and Rumsfeld did more to corrupt and damage intelligence services than Obama can ever do. Instead of collecting intelligence the services were put to work trying to provide evidence for Rumsfeld Cheney theories that were most improbable but important for justifying their policies.


Shedding some light on why it could have possibly been necessary to waterboard someone 183 times – as was done to al-Qaida planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – McClatchy reported that, according to "a former senior US intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue," former vice-president Dick Cheney and defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld "demanded that intelligence agencies and interrogators find evidence of al-Qaida-Iraq collaboration".

According to McClatchy's source, for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld were "demanding proof of the links between al-Qaida and Iraq. … There was constant pressure on the intelligence agencies and the interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the detainees, especially the few high-value ones we had, and when people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people to push harder."