Top Bush Aides Involved in Torture Talks
ABC News reports that ‘[i]n dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House, the most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency.’
Unnamed sources told the American news channel that ‘[t]he so-called Principals who participated in the meetings also approved the use of “combined” interrogation techniques — using different techniques during interrogations, instead of using one method at a time — on terrorist suspects who proved difficult to break.’
Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects — whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding.
The high-level discussions about these “enhanced interrogation techniques” were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed — down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.
The officials involved: Don Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, George Tenet and John Ashcroft. Reportedly, all of them agreed that the CIA should be allowed to torture terrorism prisoners. When Tenet had specific questions about whether or not a certain prisoner could be treated in a specific manner, he talked to the “Principals” who then basically told him that “enhanced interrogation techniques” were A-OK, and that the CIA was even allowed to combine several techniques in order to break a suspect.
The report at ABC establishes that top White House officials knew what the CIA was doing exactly, and that they even approved of methods that violate international law. Torturing suspects is in breach with international law. As such, it could very well be argued that the people mentioned above are all guilty of war crimes.
That doesn’t mean that they’ll be prosecuted by a Democratic Justice Department, nor that they should be prosecuted. But they should become political outcasts. The report states that even when the world found out about the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques and the US became increasingly unpopular, Rice still supported them.
They overstepped their boundaries, they became what they despised. John Ashcroft himself reportedly said that he didn’t want to talk about this subject in the White House. “Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly,” Ashcroft reportedly told his fellow ‘Principals.’
No, history will not judge this kindly, nor will peoples of other nations do so.
Maybe I’m missing someething here, but isn’t this exactly how our government is supposed to operate? Those who we have elected take their Constitutional responsibility seriously, develop a continuum of action, and get effective results with the bare minimum of harm to both friend and enemy. Yep, that’s worth a screamer headline all right. What’s next, an expose on how members of Congess got together in committee, hammered out a compromise bill, and voted to pass it? After that, a hard-hitting story on Supreme Court Justices to consulted with each other and reached a decision!
The top people in the Executive Branch did what they were supposed to do. Where is the news here?
Also, please don’t forget that shortly thereafter, the administration briefed top Democrats and Republicans in Congress about the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques well over two dozen times and received only one half-hearted objection that came after the briefings had been given. Indeed, according to those reports, the members of Congress were quite approving of the techniques that were being used.
I believe that history will judge us merciful far beyond what any other nation would have done given the curcumstances and the known threats at the time. I’m sorry, but I find this story to be a lot of hyperventilating over something that is not news at all.
A trial for war crimes? Oh, please.
OK – so you agree that torture is the American Way…and the protection against cruel and unusual punishment by the government is just a "quaint" constitutional notion drafted by some old wooley minded "revolutionaries".
If you recall your history Mr. Jimmie, our forefathers were considered to be "terrorists" in their day. Granted, that they pledged their lives and fortunes to create a free society based on principles of democracy and inalienable individual rights against government oppression and torture….
"…our forefathers were considered to be "terrorists" in their day."
Indeed – in many of Tom Paine’s pamplets were to be found daguerrotypes of Franklin, Adams, , Adams, et. al., sawing the heads off captured redcoats for public consumption. And the widespread tactic of sending suicide bombers from the colonial militias to kill local women and children in the marketplaces from the states they were proposing to "liberate" was doubtlessly done to maximize the difficulties Howe and Cornwallis would have with the press back home. And of course Jefferson oversaw the efforts to impose Salem-style Christianity throughout the colonies; ravaging underage girls deemed insufficiently modest while slaughtering their families for insufficient support of "the cause". Meanwhile, Washington himself issued many religious edicts concerning the elimination of Jews , comparing them with "apes and pigs" (as in his infamous correspondence with Moses Seixas). Why didn’t I see the parallels before?
"…so you agree that torture is the American Way".
Very well, your honor – establish for me where it has been decided definitively by an American court of law that waterboarding constitutes "torture". (international courts have no respect for stare decisis, and so rulings there will not be accepted) . Please provide the legal citations while you are at it. Or if this is too high a burden, please provide citations indicating that the "cruel and unusual" clause is violated there. You might be able to pull that one off, but then you will need to show me where our constitution extends the rights of American citizens, or even Geneva Conventions rights, to "enemy combatants" under the terms of the last Geneva convention to be ratified by the US (1948).
Legally speaking, there is no doubt we are pushing the envelope here. There are good and principled men who believe that this is a slippery slope to actual torture, as well as those who believe that it already constitutes torture (McCain and MvdG among them). Obviously, I disagree with both – but that is my privilege, and theirs. But if you wish to make the point, in support of this, that the US are the moral equivalent of Hussein, Assad, Khomeini/Khameni, etc., then you aren’t convincing anyone.
This is precisely why we have congressional oversight panels such as Jimmie referred to, and why Executive branch personnel confer on such issues before deciding on policy. It would be far more scandalous if the decision were undertaken with no serious consideration of what is being done.
If you want to continue with the "war crimes" thread, continue to do so. From a purely legal perspective again, I would certainly be putting forth the "selective enforcement" defense, as well as requiring the prosecution to show physical harm to the illegal combatants subjected to the practice (weight gain doesn’t count). And if they get that far, those pursuing the prosecution will then be obliged to go after the committee members who chose not to object to the practice. Talk about your slippery slopes.
There are some of us who are both conservatives and Republicans who would dearly love to see a McCain victory in November precisely because his administration could hold war crimes trials without cries of "partisanship!" drowning the fact of the cases. And, having experienced torture personally, he might well have the motivation to do so.
Hmmmm. I wonder who those "highly placed" unnamed sources are? I wonder why this is coming out now after 7 years? I wonder if these "sources" have some sort of agenda or axe to grind? I wonder why I’m so skeptical of these "reports"? ABC knows the answers to all of the above questions, so why won’t they give us the answers we need to make an intelligent assessment of these "reports" from "highly placed" unnamed sources?
Put me down with Jimmie & Hobbes. Looks like they did what I want them to do as well – deliberated seriously and agreed on a path forward. I don’t find any of the methods put forward as "torture" – slapping, pushing, sleep deprivation, or waterboarding.
Compare that to slicing people’s heads off, using electrical drills to drill into body parts, etc – I don’t see the moral equivalence.
I have no issue with CIA or other people doing this in the name of the US, or in my name.
I have to say — I don’t even understand people that are morally outraged by these types of techniques, that can seriously call them torture, can seriously call them "war crimes", and that it somehow brings us down to the level of the people that inflict real torture. Get out of your comfy little zone and go see evil face to face- volunteer and go to Iraq and see what these assholes have done and I think you will never act so morally superior to us.
Bill W, I could and would classify waterboarding (for example) as torture. But I don’t have any need to do so. The government of the United States did that already. After WW II, in trials of Japanese and Nazi officials, waterboarding was one of the examples of behavior which was called torture by the prosecutors, and for which people were convicted of war crimes.
So it appears to me that your position reduces to this: if someone does it to us, it’s torture. But if we do it, it’s not torture. And the reason for that distinction is that the people we do it to are nasty people, while we are not.
Or, at least, the people we oppose are nasty — and they certainly are. The specific individuals we are torturing may or may not be. But hey, what’s a little collateral damage? Even if it involves using a technique which is demonstrably useless at getting accurate information.
As I understand it at present, the key differences between how the Japanese and Americans practice the technique deals with a) the extent and duration, b) safeguards and monitors to protect the subject’s physical health, and c) the restricted and purposeful use of the technique (to obtain information). By contrast, the Japanese employed the tactic in an indiscriminate and widespread manner, and utilized the technique as much (or more) as a tool of repression and retribution rather than a serious interrogation technique. These factors were all taken into consideration during the committee deliberations and legal opinions issued.
Were they justified? Are they correct? As I said before, we can debate the issue of whether waterboarding is torture or not, and do so reasonably – it is a very legitimate question, and one that even those who support the practice as conducted by US personnel can feel uneasy about. You can even argue that the practice diminishes our moral standing in the world, and that would be a legitimate statement as well; whether this should be do has no bearing on whether it is or not. But to suggest we are lowered to the level of moral equivalence between ourselves and the Imperial Japanese (or the Islamist barbarians whose practices Bill W recounts above) as a result of employing the practice as we do is to immediately go beyond the pale of rational discourse.