Democracy Has Prevailed.

October 27, 2006

Cheney Confirms That US Is Water-boarding Detainees

"It's a no-brainer for me" - Dick Cheney

From McClatchy Washington Bureau:

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney has confirmed that U.S. interrogators subjected captured senior al-Qaida suspects to a controversial interrogation technique called "water-boarding," which creates a sensation of drowning.

Cheney indicated that the Bush administration doesn't regard water-boarding as torture and allows the CIA to use it. "It's a no-brainer for me," Cheney said at one point in an interview.

Cheney's comments, in a White House interview on Tuesday with a conservative radio talk show host, appeared to reflect the Bush administration's view that the president has the constitutional power to do whatever he deems necessary to fight terrorism.

The U.S. Army, senior Republican lawmakers, human rights experts and many experts on the laws of war, however, consider water-boarding cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment that's banned by U.S. law and by international treaties that prohibit torture. Some intelligence professionals argue that it often provides false or misleading information because many subjects will tell their interrogators what they think they want to hear to make the water-boarding stop.

Lee Ann McBride, a spokeswoman for Cheney, denied that Cheney confirmed that U.S. interrogators used water-boarding or endorsed the technique.

"What the vice president was referring to was an interrogation program without torture," she said. "The vice president never goes into what may or may not be techniques or methods of questioning."

[snip]

CIA spokeswoman Michelle Neff said, "While we do not discuss specific interrogation methods, the techniques we use have been reviewed by the Department of Justice and are in keeping with our laws and treaty obligations. We neither conduct nor condone torture."
A transcript of the interview is posted at the White House website here.

On October 17, 2006, George W. Bush signed into law a bill that shreds the Geneva Conventions, pisses on the Bill of Rights, and terminates the 800 year-old right of habeas corpus. It allows Bush to decide what is and isn't torture.

From Wikipedia:

A Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, was tried in 1947 for carrying out a form of waterboarding on a U.S. civilian during World War II, and was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor. The charges against Asano included other abuses of prisoners.
On the issue of waterboarding, the United States charged Yukio Asano, a Japanese officer on May 1 to 28, 1947, with war crimes. The offenses were recounted by John Henry Burton, a civilian victim: After taking me down into the hallway they laid me out on a stretcher and strapped me on. The stretcher was then stood on end with my head almost touching the floor and my feet in the air. They then began pouring water over my face and at times it was impossible for me to breathe without sucking in water. The torture continued and continued. Yukio Asano was sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor.
On September 6, 2006, the United States Department of Defense released a revised Army Field Manual entitled Human Intelligence Collector Operations that prohibits the use of waterboarding by U.S. military personnel. The revised manual was adopted amid widespread criticism of U.S. handling of prisoners in the War on Terrorism, and prohibits other practices in addition to waterboarding. The revised manual applies to U.S. military personnel, and as such does not apply to the practices of the CIA.
Also from Wikipedia:
In the United States, military personnel are taught this technique, to demonstrate how to resist enemy interrogations in the event of capture. According to Salon.com, SERE instructors shared their techniques with interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp.
This video demonstrates water-boarding:


Remember, this is not torture if Bush and Cheney say it isn't.

We've always been at war with Eurasia.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

what do you want them to do? tickle their toes to get info-you morons!

Anonymous said...

thats absolutely ridiculous! removing human rights is not an acceptable method of gaining information. clearly you are moronic if you don't mind #1 blindly following leaders; #2 allowing leaders to usurp our fundamental rights, our quintessential "American-ism"; and #3 allowing others to be TORTURED and VIOLATED, furthermore without a trial just so you can get your "info". You're a good American, aren't you?

Anonymous said...

francesca couldnt be anymore right...greats points

Unknown said...

Whatever happened to interrogators who are actually skilled at psychological manipulation, who can produce information that is accurate and reliable, as opposed to that which is suspect by the simple fact that a victim of torture will say whatever they think their tormentor desires to hear in order to make it stop? Anybody who supports this sort of practice is simply an ignorant, sadistic barbarian; torture does not result in reliable information, nor does it result in people becoming willingly helpful or converting to a different point of view. Academic study and simple historical observation back this up. It's nothing more than sadism. The fact that you (i.e., any given individual) don't understand the concepts of psychological manipulation does not mean that nobody else does, or that it doesn't work.

Southern Yankee said...

Water boarding is absolutely and emphatically NOT torture. The definition of torture is that the subject must be presented with a circumstance that would cause them eminent death, loss of limb or a simulation of either. There is a very good example of Water Boarding in Denzel Washington's "Safe House". This is harsh and pretty scary, but the persistent sensations are only within the mind of the subject. IT will not kill you and I do a similar process when I flush my sinuses, only I do it with a motorized pump and use pressure. Water boarding is done using no pressure, just gravity. Grow up. These are evil people looking to harm civilians. That is also why we prosecuted the Japanese for thie. They were using it on civilians. Khalid Sheik Muhammad is no civilian.