Decision ‘08

Waterboarding A-OK When Bush Was Popular And No One Knew

More hypocrisy from Congressional Democrats:

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA’s overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

“The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough,” said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.

Congressional leaders from both parties would later seize on waterboarding as a symbol of the worst excesses of the Bush administration’s counterterrorism effort. The CIA last week admitted that videotape of an interrogation of one of the waterboarded detainees was destroyed in 2005 against the advice of Justice Department and White House officials, provoking allegations that its actions were illegal and the destruction was a coverup.

Yet long before “waterboarding” entered the public discourse, the CIA gave key legislative overseers about 30 private briefings, some of which included descriptions of that technique and other harsh interrogation methods, according to interviews with multiple U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge.

With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan).

When did the Democrats discover their deep objections to the technique? When the media found out (and after the practice was abandoned):

Only after information about the practice began to leak in news accounts in 2005 — by which time the CIA had already abandoned waterboarding — did doubts about its legality among individual lawmakers evolve into more widespread dissent. The opposition reached a boiling point this past October, when Democratic lawmakers condemned the practice during Michael B. Mukasey’s confirmation hearings for attorney general.

Once again, we see the pattern of Democrats using national security issues as a springboard for partisan sniping. To oppose waterboarding as ‘torture’ is one thing, if the opposition is heartfelt and consistent - but to approve of the practice (and make no mistake, not to oppose is to approve) when it is secret and oppose it when media scrutiny appears and public opinion turns is the very definition of political cowardice…

13 Responses to “Waterboarding A-OK When Bush Was Popular And No One Knew”

1 Ryan Says:
December 9th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
Political cowardice it is. This is one of those moments where my refusal to become a Democrat at least gives me the minor pleasure of saying “a pox on both your houses”. Not that that’s a particularly helpful position for getting anything done. So, while the Democrats are cowards and I know it, I guess I’ll at least sail my ship alongside for as long as they have the right position (whether they reached it for the right reasons becomes a second-order consideration at this point).
2 Scrapiron Says:
December 9th, 2007 at 8:34 pm
The only way the democrats have the right position is that if you are a member of AQ. Now a lot more democrat names have came out that knew that waterboarding (a special forces training tactic) was going to be used. Boo Hoo Hoo
3 Ryan Says:
December 9th, 2007 at 9:17 pm
That’s right: opposing torture means being a member of Al Qaeda. I’m glad I’m the only one around here who gets dinged for my rhetoric. These are your fellow travelers, Mark.
4 Mark Says:
December 9th, 2007 at 9:19 pm
Yes, Ryan, because the whole world knows that every blogger with open comments automatically endorses every statement made by anyone in his comments.

Address your comments to the commenter, please, I’m sure Scrapiron can speak for himself…I didn’t take his comment to be directly calling you a member of Al Qaeda…I addressed the situation with you where you directly called another frequent commenter an idiot and a bigot…but for the record, yes, Scrapiron, that’s a little extreme. I think reasonable people can hold the position that waterboarding is torture…but what I cannot stomach is the hypocrisy of endorsing the action when it counts, then saying “It’s horrible!” when people find out…
5 Mark Says:
December 9th, 2007 at 9:28 pm
And I realize, Ryan, just to be clear, that this doesn’t apply to you…I think you have been consistent in your opposition to the practice, if I recall, and I certainly respect that…it’s not like I’m ‘pro-waterboarding’, to be sure…but like Peter, I wrestle with the idea that there may be some extreme circumstances where it is the lesser of two evils…
6 Ryan Says:
December 9th, 2007 at 11:19 pm
“I think reasonable people can hold the position that waterboarding is torture”

Good thing, because a substantial portion of the civilized world thinks exactly that. As did the United States military as recently as about thirty years ago. If, as Scrapiron insists, Al Qaeda is really that large, we are in serious trouble.

Also, when did Republicans start caring so much about hypocrisy? I used to have a theory that the reason Democrats got so upset about hypocrisy (as during the Limbaugh drug business, Larry Craig scandal, etc) was that, when you basically argue that a lot of “right” and “wrong” is a matter of perception, your only basis for criticism of your opponents becomes inconsistency. Republicans, who insisted on an objective moral order, still had the luxury of being able to criticize for actually being wrong. Turns out, as with so many other things, I underestimated the ability of Republicans to say and do anything in the name of politics.
7 Mark Says:
December 10th, 2007 at 12:29 am
Whatever…I can’t tell you how boring arguments that start with “when did [x] start [y]’ are…such arguments cede the point as unarguable, but then attempt to play the trump card that ‘it’s irrelevant anyway’. When the subject is war, hypocrisy is a serious matter, wouldn’t you agree?

Turns out, as with so many other things, I underestimated the ability of Bush opponents to turn a blind eye toward anything fellow opponents may do…
8 Mark Says:
December 10th, 2007 at 12:38 am
But look here, tongue out of cheek now - doesn’t it bother you in the least that Nancy Pelosi sit in on numerous meetings where waterboarding was discussed and raised no objections, in light of such spectacles as the recent Attorney General confirmation hearings? Is what’s good for the goose good for the gander, or do you get a pass for mouthing opposition when it doesn’t matter when you kept your mouth shut when it did?…
9 Mark Says:
December 10th, 2007 at 12:43 am
Or let me put it another way, in light of your first post above: if the Democrats say they hold a position when it doesn’t count (the waterboarding has ceased), but held the opposite one when it did, is that the ‘right position’? Seems to me that it’s the ‘easy position’. The right position would be to explain why waterboarding was okay then, but not now…and ‘it was close to 9/11′ is a breathtakingly shallow answer.
10 Ryan Says:
December 10th, 2007 at 6:17 am
Of course it bothers me, Mark. It’s the very height of politically-motivated cravenness. That there is anyone anywhere in the world who thinks inflicting that kind of psychological suffering on another human being is ever justifiable breaks my heart. The framers of the Constitution decided that, even if freedom makes us less safe, by God we’ll be free. I hate this president for betraying that legacy, and I hate that I and the people I know have let him betray it while grinning that stupid fratboy grin the whole time. And yes, I hate the Democrats for their complete and total cowardice in the face of this two-bit moral defective doing whatever he wants and shouting “9/11! Terrorists!” whenever anyone dares to point out that he’s apparently taking cues from the Khmer Rouge.

But the bottom line is that everyone is awful at this point. Everyone looks at 9/11 and sees a changed world with changed rules. What they fail to realize is that Al Qaeda won the instant we ceded an ounce of freedom in the name of “homeland security”. And now I’m left choosing the lesser of two evils. For now, I’m pretty sure those are the guys who at least claim to oppose torture.
11 Ryan Bonneville Says:
December 10th, 2007 at 9:58 am
Andrew Sullivan has a nice summary of my position:

“This is not to say that there is no difference between the parties, with the GOP shamefully defending war crimes the United States once prosecuted as such. The Democrats, for the most part, have been their usual selves on this: still in a defensive crouch against any notion that they might be soft on terror, and implicitly adopting the fallacious logic that somehow opposing torture means being soft on terror.”

I will be the first to admit that the Democrats are cowards and the Republicans are thugs. That I support the Democrats - at this moment - does not mean I respect them; it just means that the alternative offends every ounce of my moral fiber.
12 Ryan Says:
December 10th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
I’m not sure why my name keeps changing. I shall try to fix that.
13 Mark Says:
December 10th, 2007 at 8:29 pm
I don’t know, either (on the name change). Well, I won’t beat a dead horse (no pun intended, given the topic under discussion). Whether we’ve ever prosecuted waterboarding as a war crime or as any other type of crime I don’t know, but I’ll let it go for now…