Dubious, yes, because they can hide behind a veil of "national security" without having to offer the burden of proof- and doubly dubious( George Dubious Bush !) because as we know, the yellowcake did not exist, there was no smoking gun, and there were no wmd's. Now we have a real threat that was ignored by Bush the Taliban, (that Eastern version of the GOP extremists).

and oh, by the way where's Bin Laden and Al- Zarkhawi?

Our economy is in tatters and people microparse about how TORTURE is ok as long as it saves lives. NO, It's not OK. Once you torture you lose the high ground and stop being the "hero".

I can see it now.......

"Rescued ship captain says pirates tortured him while in captivity. The pirates responded this morning saying, 'Yea, but you don't understand. We needed information from him and he gave it to us when we tortured him, so, it's A-OK."

There are many dubious examples of the Bushies ginning up so called "plots" as examples of how we were winning the war on terror. Anyone remember the Miami group that were set up by a government plant and were so poor and disorganized they asked the operative for money to buy shoes.They only went along with it because the guy offered to give them money. This coupled with the terror alert levels(seen any of those lately?) that were trotted out before every election proceeded to make a joke of the whole WOT

How could Sheikh Mohammed's water-boarded confession have prevented the Library Tower attack if the Bush administration "broke up" that attack during the previous year?

Time travel. Duh!

When Hambali was arrested, the stated reasons were the bombing in Bali and suspicion that he intended to bomb an APEC meeting (Not OPEC as Bush called it). You might think the Library Tower plot would have been high enough to include on the list . Of course, that assumes...

"Hey Dick, torture don't work!" A retort not limited to Richard Cheney regarding the absurd reasoning used among torture apologists! -Kevo

With the Library Tower devoting an entire wing to a collection of lst Editions "My Pet Goat", WHEW!

But, that interrogation did allow Rod Taylor to step out of his Time Machine, just in the nick of time.

The sheer threat of torture kept me from hatching a truly nefarious plot that would have brought down civilization as we know it. Phew!

I hope a wealthy progressive would take out a full page ad in Washington Post attacking the Thiessen op-ed and exposing its lies. I am assuming, of course, that the Post will not issue its own rejoinder and correction.

Top 10 actionable intelligence Cheney obtained via torture:

Mohammad Atta's secret meeting in Prague
Iraq's WMD were stashed in Syria
The Insurgency is in its last throes
Saddam Hussein's connection to Osama bin Laden
Al Qaeda is on the run
The Bush Administration has achieved everything they set out to do
Iraq is the central front in the War on Terror
Yellowcake!
Hussein was behind 9/11
Cheney never said Hussein was behind 9/11

Facts!???!??

We don't need no stinkin' facts!

/snark

I do find it interesting that they're all getting in lockstep to defend the use of torture and Bush and Cheney's legacy. Because they're such silly, myopic creatures no one among them is stepping back and saying, "um, fellas, this is NOT helping the GOP. Bush, Cheney and torture are all VERY unpopular. Just shut up already."

(the former president would often call the Library Tower the "Liberty Tower")

Technically, it's called U.S. Bank Tower.

Wonder how long before the Bush Press Secretary document "disappears"?

that plot was foiled in 2002. But Sheikh Mohammed wasn't captured until March 2003.

Just one more Wash Post Op-Ed lie for which a correction will not be published.

Unless KSM was receiving his messages via courier, and even then, KSM had ample time to know that the Library Tower plot had already been broken up by the time he was captured.

So knowing he was captured, and knowing he was never going to see the light of a free day, he probably used what he knew about a plot that was already dead in the water to stop the torture. He probably gave his interrogators little drips and drabs over as long a period as possible to maximize the amount of time that the CIA abstained from torturing him. It didn't mean anything to him. He wasn't undermining an ongoing operation he was giving them a freebie in his mind. It is the classic example of a smokescreen. By giving the CIA worthless outdated information, but information that had kernels of truth to it, they would exhaust themselves exploring that information until the reached the end of the line, another U.S. agency (FBI?), who had gotten there first. But by then they wasted precious time and resources and probably gave real terrorists ample to time to get out of Dodge.

There he is--upside down being tortured by the most powerful country in the world and he is playing them for chumps. Pathetic. Truly.

One has to wonder whether the terrorists or the Bushies or the morons from Can't-Investigate-Anything knew what they were talking about at all.

I refer to the fact that "the library tower" is hardly "the tallest building on the West Coast." I think the Wells Fargo building is considerably taller than the L.A. Library tower, just here in downtown L.A. Then there's the TransAmerica pyramid in San Francisco, which I think is still a contender for the title.

Surprise surprise, they have no clue. About anything!

"the Wells Fargo Tower," now known as the "U.S. Bank Tower" is NOT "the Los Angeles Library Tower."

I don't know whether Thiessen's claims are correct or not, but this is a terrible Timothy Noah article. The first comment on Slate points out what's wrong with it, because it's so obvious no one who clicks on Noah's links could miss it, but I'll reiterate it here anyway. Noah cites this LAT article:

http://articles.latimes.com/p/2005/oct/08/nation/na-terror8

Which says this:

"The White House said Thursday that U.S. authorities disrupted the so-called �West Coast Airliner Plot� in mid-2002, stopping terrorists from attacking �targets on the West Coast of the United States using hijacked airplanes. The plotters included at least one major operational planner involved in planning the events of 9/11.�

The brief White House document offered no details about the timing of the airliner plot, or potential targets. White House officials on Friday confirmed that one of the targets referred to in the document was the Library Tower, which was renamed the US Bank Tower in 2003.
...
Federal counter-terrorism officials on Friday disclosed for the first time that during his interrogations, Mohammed said he hadn�t completely abandoned the prospect of a second wave of attacks, but had turned the idea over to a trusted aide named Hambali, the chief of operations for an Al Qaeda affiliate group in South Asia, Jemaah Islamiyah.

Hambali, also known as Riduan Isamuddin, in turn is believed to have chosen several men to launch the attacks, including a pilot, and had set aside some money to pay for them, according to one senior counter-terrorism official.

Those men were soon captured, however, and the plot never progressed past the planning stages, according to several counter-terrorism officials."

The Bush administration's/Thiessen's claim is that the plot was disrupted in 2002, but KSM's capture and torture led to the discovery that plot had not been completely abandoned and the capture of the person KSM had put in charge of it, Hambali. I don't know if this claim is true, but apparently it would be somewhat difficult to respond to because Noah just ignores it. Instead he pretends that his opponents are just rearranging the timeline and that once a terrorist plot has been "broken up" it can never be put back together.

Technically, it's called U.S. Bank Tower.

Well, yeah, but try telling someone you'll meet them downtown at "US Bank Tower." No one calls it that, except US Bank employees.

Actually adfafd, none of what you cited is sourced either--or germane. How valid could continuing a disrupted plot be? As well, it appears that much information was already known in 2002. Political cover was needed, 2003-2009. . .