"The bill Congress sent me would take away one of the most valuable tools in the war on terror -- the CIA program to detain and question key terrorist leaders and operatives. So today, I vetoed it."
President George W. Bush, March 8, 2009 (Weekly radio address - audio)
Torturers Know When It's Torture - For The Rest Of Their Lives
If you're like me, you might not like getting water in your nose while taking a shower. Nasty sensation, even a few drops, plus it makes you cough and sneeze for a while afterwards. But there's nothing to worry about - you're in control, and no, you're not going to drown.
"Waterboarding," or simulated drowning, carries none of these reassuring safeguards for the waterboardee, despite the President's assurances about "these safe and lawful techniques." Imagine yourself strapped down, possibly naked (why not?) on some freezing, dirty toilet floor (the use of nudity and extreme temperatures has been a constant in American "alternative procedures," as the President called them yesterday). And if you're going to get the maximum effect out of your procedure, who says that the water has to be clean, or even has to be water?
So on a Saturday morning, on a weekend where most Americans might be worried about setting their clocks forward to Daylight Savings Time, President Bush announces that he's going to veto what a majority (but crucially, not a veto-proof two thirds majority) of the Senate and the House of Representatives has deemed a standard of American decency: that US intelligence agencies be limited to using those interrogation techniques found in the Army Field Manual. That is what Bush vetoed.
Maybe I'm old-fashioned in thinking that it's only the creepy enemy guys in black leather trench coats who torture their prisoners in dingy basements - perhaps I've seen too many films (but, after enjoying the first season of TV's "24," I had to turn it off in the first minutes of the second season, when, as Vice President Cheney would say, the gloves came off). I guess that I'm in that 32% of Americans who oppose torture - which means that more than 60% approve of torture.
I hope some of these armchair torturers read "Am I a Torturer?" in the current Mother Jones (part of an issue entitled "Torture Hits Home"), where writer Justine Sharrock interviews Ben Allbright, a young Iraq War veteran and former prison guard at Camp "Tiger." Ben, who is trying to answer his own question through his blog "Operation Comeback" (devoted in part to fellow veterans who suffer from PTSD), at least does not have this on his conscience:
About a month after Ben left Tiger for good, an insurgency leader detained there, Maj. General Abed Hamed Mowhoush, was suffocated in a sleeping bag—a technique that, like waterboarding, Ben had heard was used but had never seen. The General, as he was known, was one of the 160-plus detainees who have died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since August 2002, according to ACLU attorney Hina Shamsi. Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer, the man accused of murdering Mowhoush, claimed he'd been following orders. In 2006, he was convicted of negligent homicide and dereliction of duty and sentenced to 60 days of barracks confinement, the equivalent of house arrest.
Confined to barracks for the murder of a prisoner of war - a Major General no less? But Americans are immune - because we say we are - from international jurisdiction over war crimes. If an American major general, or major, or private were murdered in the custody of a foreign army, would there not be a massive outcry? Maybe if the victim's name were Jones or Smith, instead of Abed Hamed...
Words like "program" or "tools" and Orwellian euphemisms like "alternative procedures" have their equivalent in the Bush Administration's approach to war, where "targets" (not people) are flattened, and "collateral damage" is inflicted (on civilians whose misfortune is to be Iraqi). Maybe the 60% who condone torture are reassured by the President's use of these terms, or his deeming it "an effective program," like a TV ad for an anti-allergy regimen.
Daddy, Were You In The SS Or The Wehrmacht?
Yesterday's presidential veto - supported, yes, by the Senate's sole torture victim, John McCain - may only provide transitory reassurance to Americans who have been involved in torture. See "Central Intelligence Anxiety" by Laura Rozen in the same issue of MJ:
[A] division emerged between what a former senior Agency official described to me as the "SS crowd" and the "Wehrmacht crowd," the "hard edged" and the "smarter and better informed." He said, "People managed not to take assignments. There were senior people who would not go to meetings if they thought that extraordinary rendition or enhanced interrogation techniques were going to be discussed."
When CIA people start dividing themselves into "SS" and "Wehrmacht" camps and voting with their feet, you know things are going to come to a head, probably starting circa January 21, 2009.
Senators Clinton and Obama, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, were "absent from the vote but have said they support the vetoed bill. Neither has made it a campaign issue, however, and neither commented on Bush's veto." So here's their chance to stake out a common Democratic candidate position, in contrast to McCain: if they indeed support the vetoed bill, they should - jointly or separately - pledge to sign it when they enter the White House.
If George W. Bush wants Waterboard to be his middle name, that's his personal legacy issue. As an American citizen, I do not want my country to be branded "Torturers R' Us" - and I would appreciate Madam Experience and Mister Change deigning to vote for a future version of this bill. Unless either of them are President, in which case they should simply sign it, and start turning the page on this sorry chapter of American history.