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Blogs Eric Reads
Rice Lied About Torture
The newest mini-documentary from Brave New Films shows how then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice lied under oath, telling Congress the the United States did not torture, at the same time that she authorized the CIA to torture detainees.
Sign the petition calling on Rice to resign at condimustgo.com
Someone Tell Huckabee that Torture Isn’t Funny
Republicans have made some pretty ridiculous comments about waterboarding. Attorney General Mukasey and Director of National Intelligence McConnell have both said that waterboarding would be torture if it were done to them. Mukasey also won’t say whether waterboarding is illegal and wouldn’t prosecute anyone who did it even if it was. Missouri’s own Sen. Kit Bond compared waterboarding to swimming lessons, and right-wing war hawk Bill Kristol is “ambivalent on torture.” Today, though, presidential candidate Mike Huckabee takes the cake:
This morning, CNN ran a story “tracking the strain furious campaigning puts on the human body” for the presidential candidates. During the segment, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee joked that his campaign schedule is not providing enough time to sleep and that, for him, is “like being waterboarded”:
HUCKABEE: I’m finding just out how long I can go sleep deprived. You know, running for office is sort of like being waterboarded, I think.
Our soldiers agree that waterboarding is torture, but Mike the Huckster thinks it’s a joke? This man, this so-called “Christian,” wants to be the President of the United States and the leader of the free world, and he thinks that torture is something to laugh about? Truly sickening.
Breaking: DOJ Says Waterboarding NOT Legal
So, remember how we waterboarded people? Remember how the White House defended waterboarding? Remember how Tony Fratto told us that we might use waterboarding again? Remember how AG Mukasey refused to prosecute Americans who used waterboarding because the Justice Department told them it was okay?
Well, now the Justice Department has decided that waterboarding isn’t legal anymore.
“The set of interrogation methods authorized for current use is narrower than before, and it does not today include waterboarding,” Steven G. Bradbury, acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, says in remarks prepared for his appearance Thursday before the House Judiciary Constitution subcommittee.
“There has been no determination by the Justice Department that the use of waterboarding, under any circumstances, would be lawful under current law,” he said.
No determination by the Justice Department that waterboarding would be lawful under current law? Well, silly things like the law didn’t stop them in 2005:
Bradbury in 2005 signed two secret legal memos that authorized the CIA to use head slaps, freezing temperatures and waterboarding when questioning terror detainees. Because of that, Senate Democrats have opposed his nomination by President Bush to formally head the legal counsel’s office.
Of course, all this really means is that the next time the government uses waterboarding, we won’t hear about it.
Kristol: “Ambivalent on Torture”
By now it’s no secret that the American people just can’t get a straight answer from the Bush Administration on whether or not waterboarding is torture, but the answer we do get isn’t usually as blunt as what Bill Kristol said on “A Daily Show” last night:
I’m ambivalent on torture, I’ve got to say. I’m a bit of a squish on torture. I respect Senator McCain and he says it’s unwise and unnecessary and wrong for the U.S. to do. On the other hand, it does seem that the three people who seem to have been waterboarded, gave up, perhaps, very important information that may have prevented further attacks. So I think it would be a tough call, if you, one were in a position of responsibility, in all honesty.
He’s ambivalent on whether or not we should be torturing people. It’s not even the “question” of waterboarding, this is straight-up, however-you-define-it torture! The thing that resulted in the convictions of Japanese soldiers after World War II. The thing that ex-Liberian president Charles Taylor’s son is being tried for right now. This is what Bill Kristol thinks about and says, “Golly gee, I’m just not sure what to do!”
As for his defense, with which Supreme Court “Justice” Antonin Scalia agrees, that waterboarding has produced evidence that has prevented terror attacks, even the FBI isn’t sure if the evidence obtained from Abu Zubaida (one of the three men the CIA admits to waterboarding) is reliable. Terrorism experts have been saying for years that torturing suspects “often produces false information because people subjected to waterboarding will tell their interrogators anything to stop it,” and even Colin Powell has said that using torture “would put our soldiers at risk.” If Bill Kristol is so sure that he supports our troops, how is he still “ambivalent” on torture?
The Nuremberg Defense for the 21st Century
Move along, there’s nothing new to see here.
Attorney General Michael Mukasey told Congress this afternoon that his Department of Justice will not only refuse to prosecute those who took part in the waterboarding of detainees, but the department won’t even investigate whether a crime was committed:
“Waterboarding, because it was authorized to be part of a program … cannot possibly be the subject of a Justice Department investigation,” Mukasey said in response to questions from panel Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.).
“That would mean that the same department that authorized the program would now prosecute someone for taking part” in it, he said.
Having trouble wrapping your head around that one? It’s okay; it took me about 15 minutes before I could finally condense it into a meaningful sentence. Here it is, the Mukasey Doctrine on Torture: waterboarding is only “legal” because we said it was, so how can we prosecute someone who was only following orders?
It’s the Nuremberg Defense for the 21st century, but who in Congress is going to call Mukasey out on it?
Bush Is OK With Torture, But the Rest of the World Isn’t
Well, the cat’s out of the bag now: the United States of America tortures. We did it, we think it’s okay that we did it, and we’d do it again. This is hardly news since Canada knew that we tortured and the international media knew that we tortured. Even some Americans outside of the Bush Bubble knew that we tortured. So the White House can no longer say “The United States does not torture” and be taken seriously, but they’re okay with that.
Unfortunately for Bush & Co., the rest of the world isn’t:
“This is absolutely unacceptable under international human rights law,” said Manfred Nowak, the U.N. special rapporteur on torture. “Time has come that the government will actually acknowledge that they did something wrong and not continue trying to justify what is unjustifiable.”
…Nowak, who has clashed with the U.S. over his failed efforts to investigate at Guantanamo Bay, said he has received more allegations of waterboarding. But he said he did not have proof to back up those allegations, partly because the U.S. will not allow him to speak with high-level terror detainees who were previously held in CIA-run secret prisons.
“If it concerns secret places of detention, it is very difficult to prove,” Nowak told The Associated Press by telephone from Vienna, Austria. He added that all allegations of waterboarding were from the “early years” of the war on terror, consistent with Hayden’s testimony.
The United Nations official charged with investigating allegations of torture has been prevented by my government from fully investigating the United States (not that I expect the Bush Administration to respect the UN), but he can still conclude that the U.S. government is illegally torturing detainees. And the problem goes far beyond simply waterboarding:
“I’m not particularly worried about waterboarding. If it’s now three cases of 10, it doesn’t make much of a difference,” he said. “It’s the whole attitude, of course, of downplaying their interrogation methods and trying to justify them still.”
…
“The evidence is so clear … and the legal evidence is as clear,” Nowak said. “I’m not willing anymore to discuss these questions with the U.S. government, when they still say that this is allowed. It’s not allowed.
The rest of the world doesn’t buy in to this myth of “if the President says we don’t do it, I guess we don’t do it.” The rest of the world doesn’t listen to the Attorney General’s refusal to say whether or not torture is legal and respond with “Oh, well it must be legal or he’d say it’s illegal.” The rest of the world has put all the pieces of the puzzle together.
The United States government uses waterboarding. Waterboarding is torture. Torture is illegal. The United States government broke the law.
A parting message to all those Bush apologists who said that we had to believe President Bush when he said we didn’t torture, that what we did wasn’t illegal, and that there was no proof of any wrongdoing: you were lied to, you were wrong, and yes there is.
Mukasey: Waterboarding Me Would be Torture
It’s finally here! All throughout Michael Mukasey’s confirmation hearings, the Attorney General-to-be refused to tell Senators whether or not he thought waterboarding was torture. But today, finally, in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Kennedy was able to evoke an answer from Mukasey.
[KENNEDY:] So I won’t even bother to ask you whether waterboarding counts as torture under out laws because I know from your letter that we won’t get a straight answer, so let me ask you this: Would waterboarding be torture if it was done to you?
MUKASEY: I would feel that it was.
So there you have it. If the United States government tied up Michael Mukasey, blindfolded him, and poured water over his face to convince him that he was drowning, that would be torture. But to do the same thing to anyone else:
Well, it might be torture, it might not be. He can’t say. You know, national security and all that business.
Of course, Mukasey’s answer is hardly original. You might recall Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell’s comments a few weeks ago:
“If I had water draining into my nose, oh God, I just can’t imagine how painful!” McConnell said in the article. “Whether it’s torture by anybody else’s definition, for me it would be torture.”
But he rejected a suggestion that he personally condemned the practice.
Of course, a few days later, McConnell would clarify his comments by reminding us that The United States Does Not Torture™ so there really isn’t anything for us to worry about and we should stop wasting our time with these silly things.
Mukasey continues to regurgitate administration talking points, and the United States will continue to torture.
Waterboarding Americans? Now That’s Torture
First of all, a hello and Happy New Year to everyone! I’m back from my trip to Israel. Pictures will be along shortly.
Now, let’s talk about waterboarding. It’s a very controversial issue these days. Some people say it’s torture. Some people say it’s not torture. Still others won’t even bother to answer the question. That’s why, no matter how many times we watched waterboarding in action, nobody could definitively say where it fell on the spectrum of legality in the United States.
Until now.
Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell has cleared up the question of whether waterboarding is torture once and for all. His answer… well, see for yourself.
U.S. intelligence chief Mike McConnell said in a magazine interview that waterboarding would be torture if it was used against him personally, but stopped short of condemning the controversial interrogation technique.
Wait, what? There’s no possible way that last sentence could be right… is there?
McConnell, Director of National Intelligence, was quoted in the New Yorker edition released on Sunday as defining torture as “something that would cause excruciating pain.”
Asked if waterboarding — the practice of covering a person’s face with a cloth and then dripping water on it to bring on a feeling of drowning — fit that definition, McConnell said that for him personally, it would.
“If I had water draining into my nose, oh God, I just can’t imagine how painful!” McConnell said in the article. “Whether it’s torture by anybody else’s definition, for me it would be torture.”
But he rejected a suggestion that he personally condemned the practice.
Wow. So, if somebody strapped you down and tried to convince you you were drowning, that would be torture. But do it to someone else… and you can’t say? Only the twisted mind of a true Bushite could justify this unique kind of hypocrisy.
Thanks for clearing up those sticky legal questions, Mike. Anyone waterboarding Americans: torture. Americans waterboarding anyone else: not torture.
Hey, world! This could be you!
Kit Bond Keeps Digging on Waterboarding
The other day, Senator Kit Bond (R-MO) played down waterboarding, saying that it’s just like swimming. Today, Sen. Bond decided to clarify his remarks, although he kept up the pretense that we aren’t actually using waterboarding even though everyone knows that we are.
Bond explains that there are multiple types of waterboarding. There’s the freestyle, the backstroke, the sidestroke… oh, wait, that was yesterday. Nevermind.
One of the types of waterboarding is the kind that the Japanese used on American POWs during World War II, and for which they were convicted of war crimes. That, of course, is torture. There’s also the “practice” waterboarding that we use on our soldiers as part of an interrogation survival training course, which is not torture.
Now, Bond is so caught up parroting that we don’t use waterboarding that he doesn’t quite mention where what the United States is doing at Guantanamo and elsewhere fits on this spectrum, but it looks to me like there are two categories of waterboarding.
- Something one country does to punish and interrorgate its enemies (torture).
- Something one country does to teach its own, volunteer soldiers how to survive such tactics (not torture).
Which of those two categories does Kit Bond think the United States fits into?
Watch Kit Bond “clarify” here.
Waterboarding: Just Like Taking a Swim
Missouri’s own Senator Kit Bond is the expert on what is and is not torture. And what’s at the top of the “Not Torture” list? Waterboarding, of course.
GWEN IFILL: Do you think that waterboarding, as I described it, constitutes torture?
SEN. KIT BOND: There are different ways of doing it. It’s like swimming, freestyle, backstroke. The waterboarding could be used almost to define some of the techniques that our trainees are put through, but that’s beside the point. It’s not being used.
It was a long time ago, but I still remember my first swimming lesson at summer camp. They taught us the breaststroke, the backstroke, and then they waterboarded us!
Yeah, right. Do the right-wingers really think we’re going to believe that waterboarding is like a day at the beach? Even though we have the video evidence showing what it really is?
And what’s that last bit about waterboarding “not being used.” Bullshit, Senator. The United States uses waterboarding, and the whole world knows it. Why isn’t lying under oath of office not considered “lying under oath?”
Watch Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) lie through his teeth to the American public below.
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