Is this really a debate? Are we still talking about this?

Waterboarding is Torture… Period (Links Updated # 9) (SWJ Blog)

I’d like to digress from my usual analysis of insurgent strategy and tactics to speak out on an issue of grave importance to Small Wars Journal readers. We, as a nation, are having a crisis of honor.

Last week the Attorney General nominee Judge Michael Mukasey refused to define waterboarding terror suspects as torture. On the same day MSNBC television pundit and former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough quickly spoke out in its favor. On his morning television broadcast, he asserted, without any basis in fact, that the efficacy of the waterboard a viable tool to be used on Al Qaeda suspects.

Scarborough said, "For those who don't know, waterboarding is what we did to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is the Al Qaeda number two guy that planned 9/11. And he talked …" He then speculated that “If you ask Americans whether they think it's okay for us to waterboard in a controlled environment … 90% of Americans will say 'yes.'” Sensing that what he was saying sounded extreme, he then claimed he did not support torture but that waterboarding was debatable as a technique: "You know, that's the debate. Is waterboarding torture? … I don't want the United States to engage in the type of torture that [Senator] John McCain had to endure."

In fact, waterboarding is just the type of torture then Lt. Commander John McCain had to endure at the hands of the North Vietnamese. As a former Master Instructor and Chief of Training at the US Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, California I know the waterboard personally and intimately. SERE staff were required undergo the waterboard at its fullest. I was no exception. I have personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people. It has been reported that both the Army and Navy SERE school’s interrogation manuals were used to form the interrogation techniques used by the US army and the CIA for its terror suspects. What was not mentioned in most articles was that SERE was designed to show how an evil totalitarian, enemy would use torture at the slightest whim. If this is the case, then waterboarding is unquestionably being used as torture technique.

Powell's Books - Review-a-Day - The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration by Jack Goldsmith, reviewed by The New Republic Online

Jack Goldsmith's book is quite possibly the first sober account of the pressures that a post-9/11 president faces in the attempt to respond under the rule of law to the security threats facing this country. The book is largely a memoir of Goldsmith's service as an assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), and of his terrible predicament as he found himself in the midst of an extraordinary debate among administration officials about how best to respond to the threat of terrorism. While OLC operates in relative obscurity for most Americans, it is in fact a genuinely significant institution of American government: all thorny legal questions within the executive branch are supposed to be submitted to this tiny elite office. OLC is the "decider" of these questions, and its judgments bind the entire executive branch.

In the fulfillment of his duties at OLC, Goldsmith said no to the White House on various matters, including torture and electronic surveillance. As a result, he soon left his Justice Department position and decamped to Harvard Law School. Now he has written this remarkable book -- a book that anyone concerned about civil liberties in the war on terror must read. Goldsmith is not a civil libertarian. And this is not a kiss-and-tell book. It is a serious book with a serious lesson: that the war on terror is here to stay and will continue to pose extraordinary challenges to our current legal framework. Those inclined to think that the next administration will instantly shut down mass detention centers such as Guantanamo, or promptly terminate massive electronic surveillance under the Patriot Act, are likely to be sorely disappointed, no matter who sits in the Oval Office.

Mixed messages on torture | Salon News

In the war on terror, abusive interrogations of suspects don't work. You get faulty information. The rough stuff has been proven worthless and should be banned.

Or, harsh interrogation tactics have been a successful and indispensable tool that has generated crucial intelligence to foil terror plots that would have otherwise caused death and destruction inside the United States.

Both versions were true in Washington on Wednesday, depending on whom you asked -- the Pentagon or the White House -- and depending on whether you watched the president's nationally broadcast afternoon press conference or a press conference by a general on a cable channel little seen outside military bases

unrepentant old hippie: They can't stop lying

Why can't they stop lying? They already practically wrecked this guy's life by scooping him off the street and sending him to some middle east shithole for a year of competitive swim lessons torture. None other than Condi Rice has admitted that the US government mishandled the case. He got a public apology from US Congress. The Canadian government gave him financial restitution. He. Is. Innocent.

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