IT'S TAKEN A LONG TIME, but the Bush administration has finally admitted
what we've all more than suspected: that the United States has employed waterboarding in the interrogation of supposed terrorists.
CIA Director Michael Hayden this week admitted his agency used waterboarding to obtain information
from detainees following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. “We used it against ... three
detainees because of the circumstances,” Hayden told the Senate Intelligence Committee.” Hayden said he banned
the technique — designed to induce a feeling of drowning in the person being questioned — in 2006, although National
Intelligence Director Mike McConnell told the same senators the practice remains in the CIA arsenal as long as
it is expressly OK'd by the president and has the legal approval of the attorney general.
That Attorney General Michael Mukasey has refused to define waterboarding
as a form of torture is absurd. It absolutely is a form of torture, designed to cause severe physical and mental anguish,
and wasn't developed during the Spanish Inquisition as a way to put a victim at ease. That Mukasey has resorted to subterfuge
when asked so direct a question about waterboarding only proves the extent to which he is President Bush's man interested
primarily in protecting the chief and not in seeing that justice is upheld. Nations around the world have condemned waterboarding,
and we would challenge any member of the administration who is fuzzy about it to volunteer for a session and then let us know
what they think.
It's more than a little incredible to hear Hayden's candid admission,
inasmuch as the United States long ago joined so many other civilized nations in banning the use of torture.
That he would offer the explanation “because of the circumstances” is even more unbelievable. What he said is
basically akin to professing unqualified adherence to the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech ... unless, of course,
the speech in question is judged to be somehow threatening, in which case to hell with freedom. Those in the administration
who believe waterboarding is acceptable “because of the circumstances” and people who support any and all harsh
treatment of suspected terrorists have to understand that the laws guaranteeing our accepted freedoms and basic human rights
are not in place to protect things we agree with but with things we don't.
If the administration is going to suspend prohibitions against torture
when it feels the need, then what good are such prohibitions? The government might as well tear up any agreements or protocols
against such practices and just admit it will do whatever it thinks is necessary to obtain the information it wants. At least
then we'd be honest about it.
Article's URL:
http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/318-02072008-1484051.html
