US intelligence czar Mike McConnell equated waterboarding with torture in an interview released Sunday, but denied that the United States tortures terror suspects during interrogation."Waterboarding would be excruciating," the US director of national security, in overall charge of intelligence, said in the interview in the New Yorker magazine, speaking of the simulated drowning technique that many regard as torture.
"If I had water draining into my nose, oh God, I just can't imagine how painful! Whether it's torture by anybody else's definition, for me it would be torture," he said.
When asked to define torture, McConnell replied: "My own definition of torture is something that would cause excruciating pain."
While denying that US officials sanctioned the torture of terror suspects, McConnell told the New Yorker that the Central Intelligence Agency's "special methods" of interrogation had yielded "meaningful" intelligence.
"Have we gotten meaningful information? You betcha. Tons! Does it save lives? Tons! We've gotten incredible information."
But he told the magazine flatly: "We don't torture."
The full text of the article isn't available yet, either through their site or thru Lexis, so I can only go on what's being reported here, but... isn't this McConnell simultaneously admitting that a) waterboarding is torture, b) the US has used waterboarding to obtain intelligence, but c) that "we don't torture."
I realize this really isn't anything new, but still...I'm not sure I've ever seen them make it so ridiculously clear just how illogical their position really is. Yes, it is torture. Yes, we have done it. No, we don't torture.
War criminals. There really is no other way to describe it.
UPDATE: Brian Beutler nails it:
One of the White House's torture policies is to destroy videotapes of people being tortured. Another is to call the few people we've released after we tortured them liars. A third is to keep innocent people we've tortured in prison indefinitely because--as victims of torture--they possess classified information about the way we treat our prisoners. All very savory stuff.
Somewhere Stalin is looking up from hell and smiling.
UPDATE II: David Kurtz points to an interesting interpretation I hadn't considered. McConnell wasn't saying all wterboarding is torture. He was saying that were it to happen to him it would be torture. McConnell, you see, has a deviated septum, so the whole simulated drowning thing is much, much worse for him than it would be for others.
OK, I'll bite. If this is the key distinction, are we examining the nasal septums of all terror suspects before waterboarding them? If not, how can we be sure we aren't torturing some of them?
Good lord.
Subscribe to this blog's feed
