Former Attorney General John Ashcroft: Waterboarding Isn't Torture

by Damozel | Do you know what evil looks like when it finds a voice?  It looks like an upstanding member of the religious right arguing perfectly damn seriously that the end (national security) justifies the means (torture) if you truly believe that the nation is craven enough to sell out its principles and decency and that torture works.  It speaks through the mouth of a family man in a sober suit on sitting on a big pile of good intentions with the flag in one hand and a Bible in the other, earnestly arguing there are times when it's right -- even courageous -- to do wrong.  It uses him and his education, family values, patriotism, and other virtues to make its case.

And it makes me sad.  I look at the tape of Ashcroft (after the jump) and I just feel so bad for him.  Not as bad as I feel for the victims of torture, the Constitution, the reputation of our nation, and our honor as a people, but still:  pretty bad.  He may be a man who aspires to do the right thing -- I believe this --- but the ideas speaking through him are so wrong. They've been around since the human race evolved and they've always been wrong and they won't go away.

Anyway.

Former Attorney General John Ashcroft is not in favor of torture.  He opposes torture, he wishes to assure us.(CNN) He just doesn't happen to think that waterboarding ('as defined and described by the CIA') is torture.(CNN)

He added, "the Department of Justice has on a consistent basis over the last half-dozen years or so, over and over again in its evaluations, come to the conclusion that under the law in existence during my time as attorney general, waterboarding did not constitute torture."  (CNN)

Well, I don't know about you, but that's all I needed to hear:  that the Department of Just-Us Under W thinks waterboarding isn't torture.  Never mind that international law and every civilized nation, oh NEVER MIND.  I've said it all before.

This position was recently contradicted by right-wing pundit Christopher Hitchens, who decided that direct experience is the best arbiter and tried it himself.  Having done so, he wrote in Vanity Fair:

[I]f waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.  (emphasis added)

Hitchens also said:

I...wish that my experience were the only way in which the words “waterboard” and “American” could be mentioned in the same (gasping and sobbing) breath. (emphasis added)

Hitchens also addressed a point that's been argued a number of times in the recent past:  the non-reliability of torture in gaining reliable (i.e., useful) information.  Experts who have testified before Congress have contradicted the view that it is operationally effective.  Oddly enough, it seems, people being tortured will actually lie to make the torture stop. 

Let's let  Think Progress call out the former attorney general out on his little mistakes of law and fact:

John Ashcroft falsely claimed that waterboarding has “consistently” been defined as “not torture” and refused to agree that the use of enhanced interrogation techniques — including waterboarding — on captured U.S. soldiers is “unacceptable” or “criminal.”... . [W]aterboarding “has been prosecuted in U.S. courts since the late 1800s and was regarded by every U.S. administration before this one as torture.”

So, so much for the 'it's not criminal if the DoJ decides it isn't' argument.

Representative Maxine Waters (D-Cal.) -- clever lady -- forced Ashcroft to rationalize his false position all the way to its wrong and detrimental evil conclusion.

WATERS: Based on all of that information, those descriptions, your understandings, and the conclusions, if in fact these pactices were applied to American soldiers do you think that conclusion would be a good one or do you think that if these techniques were used on American soldiers that they would be totally unacceptable and even criminal?

ASHCROFT: My subscription to the memos and my belief that the law provides the basis for these memos persisted even in the presence of my son serving two tours of duty overseas in the Gulf area as a member of our armed forces. I know that his training included a number of activities that I think would be very, very difficult for any of us to sustain, including having to deal with evil chemistry and the like.

But my job, as Attorney General, was to try and elicit from the experts and the best people in the Department definitions that comported with the statues enacted by the Congress and the Constitution of the United States. And those statutes have consistently been interpreted so as to say, by the definitions, that waterboarding, as described in the CIA’s request, is not torture. (Think Progress)

This answer brings him into line with other Bushies who painted themselves into the same corner.

Ashcroft’s non-answer with regard to the torture of captured American service men and women is reminiscent of State Department Legal Adviser John Bellinger’s refusal to condemn “the use of water boarding on an American national by a foreign intelligence service.” His comments are also in line with the sentiments of Guantanamo Bay’s legal adviser, Brigadier General Thomas W. Hartmann, who refused to answer whether or not the use of waterboarding by Iranians on U.S. service men and women would constitute torture.

Via Think Progress, let us recall the resignation of Lt. Cmdr. Andrew Williams,  a JAG Officer with the Naval Reserve, who wrote:

The final straw for me was listening to General Hartmann, the highest-ranking military lawyer in charge of the military commissions, testify that he refused to say that waterboarding captured U.S. soldiers by Iranian operatives would be torture.

His testimony had just sold all the soldiers and sailors at risk of capture and subsequent torture down the river. Indeed, he would not rule out waterboarding as torture when done by the United States and indeed felt evidence obtained by such methods could be used in future trials. (Think Progress) 

Other military and intelligence officials oppose its use because of the potential for endangering US personnel.

But of course,  Ashcroft thinks that the torture in question 'served a valuable purpose.'  '"The reports that I have heard, and I have no reason to disbelieve them, indicate that they were very valuable," Ashcroft said, adding that CIA Director George Tenet indicated the "value of the information received from the use of enhanced interrogation techniques...the value of that information exceeded the value of information that was received from all other sources (CNN)."

So we also get the 'pragmatic' argument that -- hey! -- torture works!  Never mind that most experts disagree.

To explain his resignation, JAG officer Andrew Williams also provided a brief  synopsis of the long, long history of waterboarding and those who have employed it.

Thank you, General Hartmann, for finally admitting the United States is now part of a long tradition of torturers going back to the Inquisition.

In the middle ages, the Inquisition called waterboarding “toca” and used it with great success. In colonial times, it was used by the Dutch East India Company during the Amboyna Massacre of 1623.

Waterboarding was used by the Nazi Gestapo and the feared Japanese Kempeitai. In World War II, our grandfathers had the wisdom to convict Japanese Officer Yukio Asano of waterboarding and other torture practices in 1947, giving him 15 years hard labor.

Waterboarding was practiced by the Khmer Rouge at the infamous Tuol Sleng prison. Most recently, the U.S. Army court martialed a soldier for the practice in 1968 during the Vietnam conflict.  (Think Progress)

Silent Patriot at Crooks and Liars likewise offers 'a little history of waterboarding', just in case you still don't get it.

Blue Girl, Red State writes:

We know that there were people arguing against it, touting the proven method of building rapport. We have defined deviancy down to the point where monstrous things are commonplace discussion. Flippant, ridiculous, self-serving and intellectually bankrupt defenses of waterboarding signal many, many years of batshit crazy discourse ahead....[W]e're seeing the deviancy up close, and it's truly an awful thing. Awful.

What's amazing, as she points out, is that there are Americans who hear Ashcroft's dreadful misrepresentations and rationalizations and actually think there's a credible position in there somewhere.

As you know, W vetoed a bill that would have banned waterboarding by the CIA; and our principled Congress couldn't muster the 2/3 vote needed to override the veto.  'The White House said the restriction "would have eliminated the legal alternative procedures in place in the CIA program to question the world's most dangerous and violent terrorists."(CNN)' [By the way, 'McCain 'Democrats'': John McCain voted against the bill to ban waterboarding . ---Won't you consider throwing your vote to a third party if you MUST vote against Obama?]

Memeorandum is here.

RELATED POSTINGS 

Hitchens:  'If Waterboarding Isn't Torture, There's No Such Thing as Torture'

Were Gitmo Interrogation Techniques Based on Chinese Brainwashing Techniques Used on American Servicemen in Korea?

Bush Confirms Torture Policy (Part 2) to the Sound of Crickets Chirping

Bush Aware of  National Security Team's Discussions of Torture

Sources Tell ABC News:  Bush Administration Officials Participated in War Crimes

Bush to Veto Anti-Torture Legislation 

 A Great Fall:  McCain Votes Against Bill to Ban Waterboarding   

CIA Director Admits to Use of Waterboarding   

Torture:  A Moral Issue

Despite Veto Threat, Retired Generals & Admirals Support Bill Restricting CIA’s Detainee Treatment; Bush Demands Freedom from Restrictions on Torture (Updated)   

Another Expert Explains Waterboarding to Congress  (Updated)   

Military Interrogator:  Torture isn't Operationally Effective

US Military & Intelligence Officials Weigh in on Torture Issue (Deaf Ears Dept)

Comments

[jay Davis]

I think it would be a great idea for John to demonstrate on tv just how over blown all this is and gladly submit to water boarding to put this issue to an end. i'm sorry but is is a spineless Republican as are most the rest of the late Bush administration are. Its sure too bad that 8 years ago they weren't all put into the past tense. America would be a better country today

[attorney]

Nice article.
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Karen Walter