National Security -- Embracing Torture

February 7, 2008

by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matt Corley, Ali Frick, and Benjamin Armbruster

NATIONAL SECURITY

Embracing Torture

Earlier this week, CIA Director Michael Hayden acknowledged for the first time publicly that the agency had used the tactic of waterboarding on at least three prisoners nearly five years ago. Waterboarding is an interrogation practice in which, "the victim's lungs fill with water until the procedure is stopped or the victim dies." As Malcolm Nance, a counterterrorism specialist who taught at the Navy's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) school in California, told Congress, "Waterboarding is a long-standing form of torture used by history's most brutal governments, including those of Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, North Korea, Iraq, the Soviet Union and the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia." Yesterday, "after years of dodging and dissembling, the Bush administration boldly embraced" its record of torture and said it would "definitely want to consider" using it again. "It will depend upon circumstances," White House spokesman Tony Fratto said, adding that future acts of waterboarding would "need the president's approval," and the White House would notify "appropriate members of Congress."

LEGAL PARSING: In 1947, the United States charged a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for waterboarding a U.S. civilian. "Water boarding was designated as illegal by U.S. generals in Vietnam 40 years ago." Former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge said in an interview this month, "There's just no doubt in my mind -- under any set of rules -- waterboarding is torture." But inside the Bush administration, such clarity has succumbed to legal parsing. "I would feel" waterboarding was torture "if it were done to me," Attorney General Michael Mukasey told Congress recently. But Mukasey, who promised to lead a legal review of the practice before being confirmed, is now refusing to brief Congress on the legality of waterboarding. Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell told the New Yorker in January, "Whether it's torture by anybody else's definition, for me it would be torture." But this week, McConnell said his comments should not be interpreted to reflect an official administration position. When he said waterboarding was "torture," McConnell explained to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), he meant he just personally didn't like water up his nose.

FROM DENIAL TO OPEN ADVOCACY: For years, the White House had done its best to deny the obvious: that it had employed waterboarding against prisoners. When Vice President Dick Cheney told a conservative talk radio host in Oct. 2006 that it would be a "no-brainer" to "dunk" an individual in water if it would save lives, the White House tried to dispel any notion that Cheney was embracing waterboarding. Now the White House strategy has changed -- "the administration has apparently decided that this is a debate they can win out in the open." The switch comes as Congress is considering legislation that "if passed, would require all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies to abide by the Army Field Manual's prohibition against waterboarding." The White House said yesterday it wants to retain the option to use waterboarding, even while President Bush has frequently claimed "we do not torture." "Torture is illegal," Fratto said yesterday after McConnell's testimony. "We don't torture -- we maintain and as we have said many times that the programs have been reviewed, and the Department of Justice has determined them to be legal."

SPOTLIGHT ON THE SENATE: In December, the House passed an amendment that extends the current prohibitions in the Army Field Manual against torture to U.S. intelligence agencies and personnel. Senate Intelligence Committee ranking member Christopher Bond (R-MO) has said he would lead an effort to remove that requirement when the legislation reaches the Senate floor. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who in the past has made a series of statements against the use of waterboarding, has placed a hold on the anti-waterboarding bill. A number of key Republican swing votes -- including Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) -- will likely make the difference if the bill comes to a vote. McCain has previously called waterboarding a "horrible, odious" technique that "should never be condoned in the U.S."

ECONOMY -- SENATE CONSERVATIVES BLOCK ECONOMIC STIMULUS PACKAGE: Senate conservatives on Wednesday blocked an economic stimulus package that included "$600-$1,200 rebate checks for more than 100 million Americans," as well as "$44 billion in help for the elderly, disabled veterans, the unemployed and businesses." The measure was backed by unlikely allies including automakers Ford and General Motors, home builders, realtors and mortgage bankers, and the AARP. The plan "attracted the votes of all 51 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, as well as of eight Republicans," but the measure still fell one vote short of the 60 needed under Senate rules to move forward. Both Sens. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Barack Obama (D-IL) returned from the campaign trail for the Senate debate. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has repeatedly told audiences that that the "first thing we gotta do is pass the stimulus package through the Senate" and promised to vote for the measure. Yesterday, however, he decided to skip the vote, even though his plane landed in Washington, DC in time. McCain said he had been "too busy."

IRAQ -- WHITE HOUSE CLAIMS IT WILL ABANDON LONG-TERM 'SECURITY GUARANTEE' WITH IRAQ: The Bush administration has backed down from its attempt to secure a treaty-like long-term "security guarantee" with Iraq due to bipartisan pressure from both houses of Congress. In November, President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki signed a non-binding "Declaration of Principles for a Long-Term Relationship" that committed the United States in concept to helping "deter foreign aggression against Iraq" as well as â€œdefending its democratic system against internal and external threats." The White House said at the time that the arrangement would not need "input" from Congress because it was not intended to "lead to the status of a formal treaty." Critics of a permanent presence in Iraq blasted Bush's effort to cut Congress out of the process, saying the President had "absolutely zero credibility" to "unilaterally negotiate an agreement with Iraq on security." Bills have been introduced in both the House and Senate that would bar the White House from making any such deals without Congressional approval. Administration officials appear to have taken the opposition to heart. CQ quoted one senior official as saying the arrangement is "not going to have a security guarantee," and Defense Secretary Robert Gates gave congressional testimony that "any strategic framework agreement" will not "contain a commitment to defend Iraq."

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS -- BUSH'S BUDGET SHORTCHANGES U.N. PEACEKEEPING: This week, President Bush submitted his record breaking $3.1 trillion budget to Congress, including over a half a trillion dollars for the Department of Defense and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- the highest defense budget since World War II. While Bush's budget purports to "end conflicts, restore peace, and strengthen regional stability," the $1.5 billion proposed for U.N. peacekeeping missions "falls more than half a billion dollars short of U.S. obligations for the 17 UN peacekeeping operations around the world, which include those in Darfur, Haiti and Lebanon." The $610 million shortfall that this gap creates "will only add to the $1.195 billion that the U.S. still owes in arrears to UN peacekeeping." Bush's defense budget "dwarfs the State Department budget of $39 billion and strongly suggests a heightened focus on military defense over diplomacy and peacekeeping." The Atlantic's Matthew Yglesias noted that "in the U.S. there's a strong tendency for discussions of humanitarianism abroad to emphasize very costly and destructive combat operations and totally neglect cheaper, easier, and more effective methods like participating in and funding consensual peacemaking."

Influential Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has ordered his Mahdi Army "to maintain its six-month ceasefire as members of the militia clashed with U.S. and Iraqi soldiers in Baghdad." "Some members of Sadr's bloc are pressuring him not to extend" the ceasefire, "which expires later this month and has been vital to cutting violence in Iraq."

Top Pentagon officials yesterday testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee "that the Bush administration's plan to withdraw some 20,000 U.S. troops from Iraq this summer will do little to relieve the stress on the Army and Marine Corps."

$170 billion: Cost of the Iraq war in fiscal year 2009, according to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Gates added that the price tag "will inevitably be wrong, and perhaps significantly so."

The U.S. Forest Service "has approved a permit allowing a British mining company to explore for uranium just outside" the Grand Canyon. "If the exploration finds rich uranium deposits, it could lead to the first mines near the canyon" in nearly two decades.

"U.S. drivers could enjoy a drop of up to 50 cents per gallon in gasoline prices by this spring as high fuel prices and the threat of a recession force them to conserve, experts said on Wednesday."

"The crime wave that hit New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina shows little sign of abating, more than two years after city officials said taming the outbreak was among their top priorities."

And finally: "Sen. Arlen Specter's (R-PA) one-senator war against the New England Patriots has a big problem: The three-time Super Bowl-winning team has its own Senate patron in Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy." Specter has been pushing an investigation of "Spygate," the Patriots' "surreptitious videotaping of opponents' signals on the field." Leahy, a die-hard Patriots fan, so far doesn't seem to be "giving much credence" to the probe, but promises to "do whatever is correct regardless."

"The Iraqi government announced Wednesday that it's taken initial steps to rebuild the famed Golden Dome shrine in Samarra, whose destruction two years ago helped unleash sectarian warfare between Iraq's Sunni and Shiite Muslims."

ALASKA: Despite protests from environmental groups, the Interior Department announces winning bids from companies seeking to drill for oil and gas in Alaska's waters.

MISSOURI: State House proposes legislation tightening Missouri's immigration laws.

COLORADO: State lawmaker yesterday derogatorily refers to "unmarried, pregnant teenagers and the fathers."

THINK PROGRESS: White House claims it will abandon long-term "security guarantee" with Iraq.

WAR ROOM: Fox's Bill O'Reilly claims that if politicians "dodge" Fox News, it is at their "peril."

THE BLOTTER: Sexual assault case against Halliburton and KBR in Iraq is effectively killed by "secretive arbitration process."

"I understand that the Agency did so only after it was determined they were no longer of intelligence value and not relevant to any internal, legislative, or judicial inquiries -- including the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui."
-- CIA Director Michael Hayden, 12/6/07, on the destruction of CIA interrogation tapes

VERSUS

"At the time that the Central Intelligence Agency destroyed videotapes of the interrogations of operatives of Al Qaeda, a federal judge was still seeking information from Bush administration lawyers about the interrogation of one of those operatives."
-- New York Times, 2/7/08

Think Progress

Embracing Torture

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