It’s been a banner week for water-boarding. This centuries-old practice of simulated drowning to extract false confessions and false testimony has really benefited of late from a good old legal reassessment and a smoking-hot PR campaign. In the course of a few short years, water-boarding has morphed from torture that unquestionably violates both federal and international law to an indispensable tool in the fight against terror. [complete article]
Waterboarding should be prosecuted as torture: U.N.
The controversial interrogation technique known as waterboarding and used by the United States qualifies as torture, the U.N. human rights chief said on Friday.
“I would have no problems with describing this practice as falling under the prohibition of torture,” the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, told a news conference in Mexico City. [complete article]
Cheney defends U.S. use of waterboarding
The debate over waterboarding flared Thursday on Capitol Hill, with the CIA director raising doubts about whether it’s currently legal and the attorney general refusing to investigate U.S. interrogators who have used the technique on terror detainees.
Vice President Dick Cheney, meanwhile, said “it’s a good thing” that top al Qaeda figures underwent the harsh interrogation tactic in 2002 and 2003, claiming they were forced to give up information that helped protect the country and saved “thousands” of American lives. [complete article]
Justice Dept. ‘cannot’ probe waterboarding, Mukasey says
The attorney general yesterday rejected growing congressional calls for a criminal investigation of the CIA’s use of simulated drownings to extract information from its detainees, as Vice President Cheney called it a “good thing” that the CIA was able to learn what it did from those subjected to the practice.
The remarks reflected a renewed effort by the Bush administration to defend its past approval of the interrogation tactic known as waterboarding, which some lawmakers, human rights experts and international lawyers have described as illegal torture. [complete article]
CIA chief doubts tactic to interrogate is still legal
Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, told a Congressional committee on Thursday that waterboarding may be illegal under current law, despite assertions this week from the director of national intelligence and the White House that the harsh interrogation method may be used in the future.
General Hayden said that while “all the techniques we’ve used have been deemed to be lawful,” laws have changed since waterboarding was last used nearly five years ago.
“It is not included in the current program, and in my own view, the view of my lawyers and the Department of Justice, it is not certain that the technique would be considered to be lawful under current statute,” General Hayden said before the House Intelligence Committee. [complete article]
Waterboarding: Two questions for Michael Hayden
My questions for Mr. Hayden are simple. Firstly, if it’s true that only three detainees were subjected to waterboarding, then why did a number of “former and current intelligence officers and supervisors” tell ABC News in November 2005 that “a dozen top al-Qaeda targets incarcerated in isolation at secret locations on military bases in regions from Asia to Eastern Europe” were subjected to six “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques,” instituted in mid-March 2002?
According to the ABC News account, the six techniques used by the CIA on the “dozen top al-Qaeda targets” were “The Attention Grab,” “Attention Slap,” “The Belly Slap” and three other techniques that are particularly worrying: “Long Time Standing,” “The Cold Cell,” and, of course, “Waterboarding.”
“Long Time Standing” was described as “among the most effective [techniques],” in which prisoners “are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours.” The ABC News report added, “Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding confessions.” In “The Cold Cell,” the prisoner “is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water.”
The description of “Waterboarding” was as follows: “The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner’s face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.” [complete article]
Editor’s Comment — There’s a simple reason why the simple-minded don’t think that waterboarding is torture. In “real” torture, the person being tortured is the innocent victim; the torturer is the evil party. When Cheney ventured over to the dark side it was in order to give good people the freedom to do bad things to bad people. If the person being tortured is bad, then it can’t be torture. It’s perverse logic but it explains how a vice president with a twisted mind can have a “clean” conscience.
