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Waterboarding
Michael Mukasey's nomination for Attorney General focused attention on his refusal to admit waterboarding is torture. (Watch a demonstration of waterboarding for Current.tv by Kaj Larsen to make up your own mind.) But why should the focus be exclusively on Mukasey? Let's find out what everyone in Washington thinks.
| Is it torture? | Is the U.S. doing it? | Mukasey nomination | |
| George Bush | |||
| Dick Cheney | |||
| Ed Gillespie, Counselor to President | 10/31/07 "We don't know that it's been used by the government or ... confirmed by the US government." | ||
| Michael Hayden, CIA Director |
10/31/07 "Judge Mukasey cannot nor can I answer your question in the abstract. I need to understand the totality of the circumstances in which this question is being posed before I can give you an answer." | 10/31/07 harsher interrogation techniques are used in "small, carefully run operations" that have been applied to fewer than 35 prisoners since 2002. | |
| Judge Advocates General (JAGs) | 11/3/07 "Waterboarding detainees amounts to illegal torture in all circumstances." | ||
| Malcolm Nance, waterboarding supervisor | 11/1/07 “Waterboarding is slow-motion suffocation with enough time to contemplate the inevitability of blackout and expiration. When done right, it is controlled death. When performed with even moderate intensity over an extended time on an unsuspecting prisoner – it is torture, without doubt. Most people cannot stand to watch a high-intensity, kinetic interrogation. One has to overcome basic human decency to endure watching or causing the effects. The brutality would force you into a personal moral dilemma between humanity and hatred. It would leave you to question the meaning of what it is to be an American." | ||
| Lindsay Graham (R-SC) | 10/28/07 "this technique violates Geneva Convention common article three, the War Crimes statutes, and many other statutes that are in place." | Supported on the basis of Mukasey's evasive letter and was quickly rewarded with a Bush fundraiser | |
| Pat Leahy (D-VT) | 11/2/07 "No American should need a classified briefing to determine whether waterboarding is torture. Waterboarding was used at least as long ago as the Spanish Inquisition. We prosecuted Japanese war criminals for waterboarding after World War II" | ||
| John McCain (R-AZ) | 11/2/07 "waterboarding is by any definition torture and cannot be condoned." | 11/1/07 "I have been briefed enough to know we are not doing that today anywhere in America's government." | |
| Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) | |||
| Chuck Schumer (D-NY) | 11/2/01 "Under this administration, {the president’s} nominee will certainly never share our views on issues like torture and wiretapping." | ||
| Arlen Specter (R-PA) | 10/25/07 "as I carefully read Judge Mukasey’s letter, I don’t know how much more he could say than what he has said, considering the exposure to people in collateral circumstances and considering the impossibility of predicting what may be faced with respect to a future potential danger, if the so-called ticking bomb hypothetical were to reach fruition." | ||
| Rudy Giuliani |
11/2/07 criticized Senator John McCain for his blanket rejection of waterboarding: "Intensive questioning has to be used; torture should not be used. The line between the two is a difficult one." 10/25/07 "I'm not sure it is either. It depends on how it's done. It depends on the circumstances. It depends on who does it." |
||
| AP | 10/31/07 "It is believed [by whom? And why should we believe them?] that fewer than five high-value detainees have been subjected to waterboarding, and the technique has not been used since 2003." | ||
| NY Daily News | 10/18/07 "used by CIA interrogators on Al Qaeda detainees Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Ramzi Binalshibh and Abu Zubaydah several years ago." | ||
| U.S. Law | 1903 U.S. soldiers were court-martialed for waterboarding during the Spanish-American war |
And who is responsible for authorizing waterboarding? Scott Horton says "Dick Cheney, David Addington, Donald Rumsfeld, Jim Haynes and a handful of others."
Here's another question: was Congress actually briefed about the use of waterboarding?
| Ed Gillespie, Counselor to President | 10/31/07 "Members of the United States senate have been briefed on the program and they have said that it is -- it complies with all laws." |
| Sen. Jay Rockefeller, chairman of Intelligence Committee | 10/31/07 “The Administration refused to disclose the program to the full Committee for five years, and they have refused to turn over key legal documents since day one. As I have said from the beginning, Congress has a constitutional responsibility to determine whether the program is the best means for obtaining reliable information, whether it is fully supported by the law, and whether it is in the best interest of the United States.” |
- Bob Fertik's blog
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Violation of Terrorists Rights?
(Buzzer Sound) Wrong! I don't care if I'm the 2nd to last person in this country to say I support any tactic that recieves any form of information from terrorists, that will prevent another terrorist attack on this country. If it prevents another 9/11 I'm 300% behind it.
Oh No Booo Hooo a terrorist had his civil rights violated. Lets let him go with our most sincere apologies so that he will tell all his little terrorist buddies what a truely magnanimous and generous people we are. Lets let them consider that right before they attack us and another wave of 3000+ are summarily attacked and killed. I know! Maybe he'll go back to his little cave in the mountains surrounding Afghanistan and Pakistan and before he chops the head off of an American or Coalition prisoner whether its military, civilian, or the occasional journalist, he'll pause, and maybe even a tear will appear in the corner of his eye right before he swings the sword that will decapitate his bound and helpless prisoner.
(Pauses to cry with tears of joy because he just knows that the terrorists will be so overjoyed that we protected their rights, they will cease all attacks and anti-american sentiments and everyone, everywhere will be able to board the good ship Lollipop!)
Lets remember all they deserve to have the same rights as those people who died in NYC on 9/11 were denied.
Its still so unimaginable to me that you people have already forgotten the scenes of people having to make a desicion between burning to death soaked in aviation fuel, or jumping from the highest reaches of the WTC. Those memories are permanently burned into my mind's eye and will haunt me till the day I die. I never want to have to see that again.
In case you need a reminder.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJNqSsWBWxs
wwolf
Well now, how naive is that?
Anyone who is being tortured is going to tell you whatever he thinks is going to get you to leave him alone.
As in - massive quantities of WMD in Iraq.
Duh.
Torture as a device is useless. To believe in its utility, one must believe there is honor in terrorists and that they speak the truth when they're being threatened with dogs, instead of lying through their teeth to you.
Do you think there is such honor in a terrorist?
Typical right-wing
Typical right-wing Republican point-of-view. It's not the so-called "terrorists'" rights that we're concerned about you twit -- it's American's rights. It's about living up to the same standards that we held the Nazis to after WWII in Nuremberg, and the Geneva Conventions.
You see Bubba, in a nation of laws both the good guys and the bad guys are protected from government abuse. Thousands more Americans die from auto accidents, guns, and murder by fellow citizens each year than the singular 9/11 event. Would you suggest that we torture drivers, NRA members, and all Americans suspected of criminal activity, to coerce a confession from them? Wow, that would unclog the courts wouldn't it?
I feel sorry for you Kool-Aid drinkers from the Right who have been brainwashed by your neocon heroes in the Dubya administration. You seem to be willing to give up the freedoms given to you by generations of patriotic Americans, because "your" president has convinced you that there are "terrorists" under your beds.
The real terrorists in the United States are not under your beds, they are in the Whitehouse, and in Congress.
The problem, wwolf, is that
The problem, wwolf, is that you see a difference of opinion as black v. white. There is no nuance in your little world, everything is simply right or wrong, good or bad. I am sure you believe that everyone the CIA has picked up is guilty of terrorism [forget those who have been let go, because they were turned in for a reward or by someone with a grudge]. Forget the fact that torture has been proven over and over to be counter productive. Forget the fact that torture is against international law. International law that we helped to write to keep our soldiers and our citizens safe in time of war. Forget it all. The truth is that it makes you feel good to think that our cowboys are kicking some raghead ass. Yeeeeeee HAaaa!!!!!
"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag, carrying a cross." ~ Sinclair Lewis
"I'm just pissed off that not enough other people are pissed off."~Bill Maher
Furthermore,
if I had a kid in Iraq, I wouldn't want the Iraqi family of someone who had been waterboarded to find my kid wounded in the ditch. Visions of someone I love being treated worse than civilized people treat animals is not exactly something I think is 'cool.'
I really don't care how republicans get their jollies but when it endangers our servicemen/women, it has to go.
And, since we're discussing it, McSame's silence on the matter is deafening...