by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700

Copyright May 2, 2009
All Rights Reserved.

              When President Barack Obama defined waterboarding as torture in a nationally televised new conference April 29, he reiterated the White House position that the legal opinion of his Justice Department banning so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques.” In the days following Sept. 11, the White House and Pentagon were dumbfounded to explain the intelligence lapses that left the country vulnerable to the worst terrorist attack since Pearl Harbor.  Obama announced April 16 he has no intention of prosecuting military or CIA personnel engaged in waterboarding or other “enhanced interrogation techniques.”  Five days later, he said he wouldn’t rule out prosecuting former Bush administration officials that approved waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques.”  Former White and Pentagon officials admitted they had scant intel to prevent future attacks.

            When the U.S. drove the Taliban out of Kabul Nov. 13, 2001, the CIA and Pentagon had no other source of intelligence for future terrorist attacks other than prisoners from the Afghan battlefield.   White House and Pentagon officials hastily redefined prisoners as “enemy combatants” or “battlefield detainees,” skirting the Geneva Convention that strictly prohibited “enhance interrogation techniques.”  From the get-go, White House lawyers, including former Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzaless and his former lieutenants Berkeley Law School Professor John Yoo and U.S. 9th Circuit Court Judge Jay S. Bybee, wrote the legal excuse for approving waterboarding and “enhanced interrogation techniques.”  President George W. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and others believed that Yoo and Bybee’s gave them a license for waterboarding and “enhanced interrogation techniques.”    

            Today’s issue regarding “torture” should be refocused to determine whether or not the White House got sound legal advice from Yoo and Bybee.  Obama and many other legal scholars believe the Bush White House went too far making up their own definitions.  Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld insist that the U.S. did not torture.  They disntort every common sense definition of torture to justify waterboarding and “enhanced interrogation techniques.”  Rice got into a dustup with Stanford students April 30, arguing over whether or not she or the Bush White House approved torture.  “The president instructed us that nothing we would do would be outside our obligations, legal obligations under the Convention Against Torture,” said Rice denying that she authorized anything.  Rice and other former Bush administration officials insist they followed legal advice and did nothing wrong.

            Tortured logic or Procrustean exercises inventing new legal definitions doesn’t excuse illegal action.  Nor does an eccentric legal definition by attorneys working for the White House constitute legal precedent or standards.  Bush officials didn’t ask Congress or the courts for advice because they knew the answer:  Waterboarding and “enhanced interrogation techniques” were torture.  CIA and Pentagon officials felt so proudly of their interrogation methods that they reportedly destroyed all taped records.  Only written logs exist as to what really happened to suspected terrorists Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohamed, both waterboarded a combined 266 times.  Adding a twist to the story, ABC News reported that two “psychologists,” Bruce Jessen and Jim Mitchell, designed, implemented and certified that the CIA interrogation program was both safe and effective.

            Jessen and Mitchell were reportedly paid $1,000 a day for designing and conducting the CIA’s harsh interrogation program of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay or secret overseas prisons.  It turned out that neither “psychologist” had waterboarding or interrogation experience.  “They went to two individuals who had no interrogation experience,” said Air Force interrogator Col. Steven Kleinman.  Regardless of who performed the interrogations, questions remain as to what constitutes torture.  Former Bush administration officials insist that waterboarding and “enhanced interrogation techniques” were not torture.  “The use of these tactics tends to increase resistance on the part of the detainee to cooperating with us.  So they have the exact opposite effect of what you want,” said Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), arguing against torture.

            Whether or not waterboarding or “enhanced interrogation techniques” worked is anyone’s guess.  Levin’s assertion that coercive tactics don’t work can’t be proven, anymore than Cheney’s claim that “enhanced interrogation techniques” yielded actionable intelligence.  Bush officials tortured logic and legal definitions for the ostensible noble purpose of saving the country from another terror attack.  Former Bush officials insist that waterbaording “enhanced interrogation techniques” saved lives and did not constitute torture.  While it’s true that bamboo was never inserted under detainees’ fingernails, it’s also true that the Bush White House did back-flips to redefine torture and get intel from Afghan prisoners.  Instead of blaming the past administration, Obama would be better off reducing semantic confusion and helping to clarify appropriate standards of common definitions.

  About the Author

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news.  He's editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.

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