April 23, 2009
Just for the record...
You might keep in mind this article from the Washington Post, December 9, 2007, Hill Briefed on Waterboarding in 2002. (From a good piece by Hugh Hewitt.)
This is similar to the abu Ghraib scandal, in which members of Congress knew of the problem months before it hit the news, knew it was being corrected and the guilty were due to be punished...then, when those pictures surfaced, they suddenly discovered that betraying their country with fake outrage would be a big partisan winner.
Same with "torture." Democrat leaders never gave a damn about waterboarding. Not until America was in difficulties. Then the dirty turncoats jumped-ship to what looked like the winning side—al Qaeda.. Leftist fake outrage about torture is treason pure and simple.
And any talk or action now about prosecuting Bush administration officials for things Congress was in agreement with at the time, and declined to make illegal....is not only vile injustice, but treason.
In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.Posted by John Weidner at April 23, 2009 08:18 AM
Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.
"The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough," said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.
Congressional leaders from both parties would later seize on waterboarding as a symbol of the worst excesses of the Bush administration's counterterrorism effort. ...
...Yet long before "waterboarding" entered the public discourse, the CIA gave key legislative overseers about 30 private briefings, some of which included descriptions of that technique and other harsh interrogation methods, according to interviews with multiple U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge.
With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan).
Individual lawmakers' recollections of the early briefings varied dramatically, but officials present during the meetings described the reaction as mostly quiet acquiescence, if not outright support. "Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing," said Goss, who chaired the House intelligence committee from 1997 to 2004 and then served as CIA director from 2004 to 2006. "And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement...
...and the headline on CNN's website today?
"Top Bush Aides OK'd Waterboarding"
You know, my first instinct is that success has a million fathers and failure is an orphan - that's human nature and politicians are no different. Except that the policy was a success, at least as far as extracting info - i.e., it did exactly what it was intended to do.
What is being lost here is even the opportunity for reasoned debate in our society. I'd love to have an intellectually honest debate about "harsh interrogation techniques". It's a debate a democracy at war with an unconventional enemy should be having.
What is acceptable? Under what circumstances? At what level is the decision made? How do we keep our methods secret and yet maintain accountability? I'd love to hear what the best minds in the country have to say about these questions.
But that has been made impossible by a biased media ready to use anything as a club to advance their agenda. This is just another piece of evidence that this country has still not gotten serious about fighting this war.
Posted by: Mike Plaiss at April 23, 2009 09:51 AM"...any talk or action now about prosecuting Bush administration officials for things Congress was in agreement with at the time, and declined to make illegal....is not only vile injustice, but treason."
Yes and no. You're too easy with the word "treason." Save it for when you'll really need it, otherwise you'll find it a blunt instrument, as the left found with the word "fascism."
But I agree that is it a vile injustice. The government should also prosecute the members of Congress who signed off on torture--and, indeed, is required to do so by international laws to which the U.S. is signatory and which are therefore, according to the Constitution, the law of the land.
But it won't. In the end, all of this will be swept under the rug in a sort of ex post facto legalization. After all, as IOZ points out, torture is not particularly an aberration in our imperial state:
"As a nation, we arrogate to ourselves the right to send flying robots over any country in the world and murder people, to topple governments, to impose economic blockades on entire nations of millions of people, and the great moral flap is slapping around some prisoners? Now I am not saying that torture is anything but abhorrent, wholly morally repulsive, but fuck you, America. The so-called debate over torture has preempted the already under-argued, under-reported actuality: that as we bicker about "enhanced interrogation techniques" and whether or not Barack Obama is a good guy for releasing them or a bad guy for not sending a bunch of spook hacks to jail, we are all over the world, killing the fuck out of people and blowing that shit up. The idea that our interrogations are a unique moral stain is cracked and insane. Waterboarding is not the disease, merely one observable symptom of a deeper and more pernicious pathology."
And Mike, you say that you would love to have an intellectually honest debate about "harsh interrogation techniques". I suggest you start your intellectual honesty by dumping the scare quotes and calling it what it is: torture. As has been pointed out many other places, after WWII, we executed Japanese soldiers for waterboarding Americans, and executed Nazis for far less stressful practices.
Posted by: Dave Trowbridge at April 23, 2009 03:53 PMDave Trowbridge quoted:
> ...fuck you, America.
That, in a nutshell, is the Democratic Party today.
Mike
Trust me Dave, they're not scare quotes. You will find no advocacy of any particular procedure anywhere in my statement. I have no problem at all with someone who says, no waterboarding at any time for any reason. The reason for the quotes? What about loud music? A 64 degree room to stay in? Different people are going to disagree on whether those are harsh treatments.
I think Alan Dershowitz had it about right very early on. We as a society need to decide exactly what is and isn't acceptable, and when. I understand you are a pacifist (or at least that is what I remember from your prior statements), but understand that you are in the minority. Most people in this country would condone outright torture in a true ticking time bond scenario.
Now, was that the case with Khalid Sheik Mohamad? I don't know. Who decides when it is and when it isn't? And if it is, what do we do about it. These are the kinds of questions we should be asking. I contend that we are not having that debate because people are afraid to have it. That is a shame.
Posted by: Mike Plaiss at April 23, 2009 05:06 PMI'm aware that using the word treason is a bit de trop, but I do it to try to stir up debate. SO, thank you all for your comments, and I'll try to answer when I get a bit more time, which may be tomorrow.
The story about executing Japanese for water-boarding is false. Here are the facts.
Posted by: John Weidner at April 23, 2009 05:20 PMA reply posted here...
Posted by: John Weidner at April 24, 2009 12:58 AMAnother popular lie about water-boarding debunked here.
Posted by: John Weidner at April 24, 2009 12:16 PMJust remember Duke Peasley's uncle's dying words when thinking about how to handle our extremist enemies......
Posted by: Nostromo at April 25, 2009 07:02 AM
