Here’s the truly revealing part. Cheney is told about a prisoner, Gul
Rahman, who died after unimaginable brutality – beaten, kept awake for
48 hours, kept in total darkness for days, thrown into the
Gestapo-pioneered cold bath treatment, and then chained to a wall and
left to die of hypothermia. The factors in his death included “dehydration, lack of food, and immobility due to ‘short chaining.” This is Cheney’s response:
3,000 Americans died on 9/11 because of what these guysBut Gul Rahman had nothing whatsoever to do with the 9/11 plot.
did, and I have no sympathy for them. I don’t know the specific details …
I haven’t read the report … I keep coming back to the basic,
fundamental proposition: how nice do you want to be to the murderers of
3000 Americans?
He had engaged in no plots to kill Americans. He was a guard
to the Afghan warlord, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, part of an organization
that began by fighting the Soviets in occupied Afghanistan. It had
alliances with al Qaeda at the time, but subsequently engaged in peace
negotiations with the Karzai government. His brother claims Rahman was
even involved in rescuing Hamid Kharzai in 1994. To equate him with
individuals who committed mass murder of Americans or who were actively
plotting against Americans is preposterous. He was emphatically not a
threat to the US. Yet we tortured him to death. And the man running the
torture camp was promoted thereafter.