“Comically Dishonest”

Greg Sargent once again reacts to my critique of his argument without responding to its substance. And, after some throatclearing, accuses me of cherrypicking. Sargent claims that I cherrypicked the IG report “in a comically dishonest way.” His evidence? I quoted part of the IG report on Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, but, according to him, didn’t include this sentence: “Because of the litany of techniques used by different interrogators over a relatively short period of time, it is difficult to identify why exactly al Nashiri became more willing to provide information.” Sargent calls this a “pretty clever omission.” It was not omitted. Apparently Sargent did not read my posts or the IG report very carefully. In my original post about his work I not only quoted the passage he accuses me of omitting, I quoted it twice. After quoting it the first time, I wrote:

Let’s examine those last two sentences again. “Because of the litany of techniques used by different interrogators over a relatively short period of time, it is difficult to identify why exactly al Nashiri became more willing to provide information.” The context makes the meaning clear: We cannot specify which EIT made al Nashiri more willing to provide more information. And in case there were any doubt, the final sentence is categorical. “Following the use of EITs, he provided information about his most current operational planning and [redacted] as opposed to the historical information he provided before the use of EITs.”

I’ll let his correction be the last word.

Related Content