Vice President Cheney said this week that dunking terrorism suspects in water during questioning was a "no-brainer," prompting complaints from human rights advocates that he was endorsing the use of a controversial technique known as waterboarding on prisoners held by the United States.
In an interview Tuesday with Scott Hennen, a conservative radio show host from Fargo, N.D., Cheney agreed with Hennen's assertion that "a dunk in water" may yield valuable intelligence from terrorism suspects. He also referred to information gleaned from Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the captured architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, but stopped short of explicitly saying what techniques were used.
"Would you agree a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?" Hennen asked.
"Well, it's a no-brainer for me," Cheney said, "but for a while there, I was criticized as being the vice president for torture. We don't torture. That's not what we're involved in."
Uh-oh! Looks like Cheney put his foot in his mouth. Dunking a terror suspect's head in the water is a "no-brainer" for getting valuable intelligence. But that's okay--a dunk in the water is not considered torture by Cheney.
However, Cheney's remark has certainly angered human rights activists. Amnesty International USA's Executive Director Larry Cox issued the following statement:
"What's really a no-brainer is that no U.S. official, much less a Vice President, should champion torture. Vice President Cheney's advocacy of water-boarding sets a new human rights low at a time when human rights is already scraping the bottom of the Bush administration barrel.
The U.S. Department of Defense specifically prohibited water- boarding in its newly issued Army Field Manual. U.S. Senators have stated clearly that water-boarding is unacceptable.
This administration aims at a radical break with our country's proud human rights tradition. The America we believe in does not torture people."
Human Rights Watch issued the following comment:
Cheney’s comments on the legality of waterboarding contradict the views of the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Defense Department, as well as fundamental principles of international law, and could come back to haunt the United States if not corrected by the Bush administration, Human Rights Watch warned.
“If Iran or Syria detained an American, Cheney is saying that it would be perfectly fine for them to hold that American’s head under water until he nearly drowns, if that’s what they think they need to do to save Iranian or Syrian lives,” said Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch.
These are the responses from two of the big human rights organizations. Cheney's comments have also been picked up in the blogosphere--Carpetbagger Report, Mahablog, The Democratic Daily, Talking Points Memo, and even The Huffington Post--just to name a few here.
With all this criticism coming up on Cheney's water-boarding comments, the Bush administration needed to go into campaign-spin mode. Continuing with the WaPost article:
Asked about Cheney's comments this morning, President Bush said: "This country doesn't torture. We're not going to torture. We will interrogate people we pick up off the battlefield to determine whether or not they've got information that'd be helpful to protect the country."
At the daily White House briefing, White House spokesman Tony Snow was peppered with questions about what Cheney thought the "dunk in the water" question meant and why, in turn, he considered the "dunk in the water" technique a "no brainer."
"Let me give you the no brainers here," Snow said. " . . . No brainer No. 1 is that we don't torture. No brainer No. 2: We don't break the law -- our own or international law. No brainer No. 3: the vice president doesn't give away questioning techniques. No. 4, the administration does believe in legal questioning techniques of known killers whose questioning can, in fact, be used to save American lives."
Snow said his understanding of Cheney's comments came from a conversation with the vice president's spokeswoman, Lee Anne McBride.
"The vice president says he was talking in general terms about a questioning program that is legal to save American lives," Snow said, "and he was not referring to waterboarding."
You've got to love the spin-mode here. President Bush just keeps denying that the United States does not torture--even after Cheney has said that it is a "no-brainer" for dunking suspects’ heads into water. Tony Snow goes down his own "no-brainer" list: We don't torture. We don't break international law. The vice president doesn't give away questioning techniques--wait a minute, didn't Vice President Cheney say it is a "no-brainer" to dunk suspected terrorists’ heads into water? Isn't that a questioning technique? And finally Snow concludes his "no-brainer" list with it is okay to use "legal" questioning techniques against terrorists if such techniques will save American lives. So does dunking a terrorist's head in the water amount to a legal questioning technique? The vice president believes so--it is a "no-brainer" to him. Of course, the Bush administration has "repeatedly declined to say which techniques they believe are permitted under the new [Anti-terrorism] law and have steadfastly declined to discuss methods used in the past." So even here the Bush administration is contradicting itself, where the President and Press Secretary Snow claims the U.S. doesn't torture, Vice President Cheney considers dunking a terrorist's head into water as a "no-brainer" for questioning and torture techniques, and yet the administration refuses to discuss whatever torture or questioning methods they are currently using, or have used in the past.
But it gets so much better here. Continuing again with the WaPost article:
Snow said his understanding of Cheney's comments came from a conversation with the vice president's spokeswoman, Lee Anne McBride.
"The vice president says he was talking in general terms about a questioning program that is legal to save American lives," Snow said, "and he was not referring to waterboarding."
"What could 'dunk in the water' refer to if not water boarding?" Snow was asked during the briefing.
" . . . I will let you draw your own conclusions," Snow said.
"I'm asking for an explanation about what 'dunk in the water' could mean," the reporter said.
"How about a dunk in the water?" Snow said.
"So 'dunk in the water' means what? -- we have a pool now at Guantanamo, and they go swimming?" the reporter said.
"Are you doing stand up [comedy]?" Snow said, to laughter in the briefing room.
In one sense, you just have to laugh at the absurdity of the Bush administration here. The president denies that the U.S. is torturing. The press secretary asks the reporters what they think torture means, and the vice president flaps his mouth, which gets the administration into trouble in the first place--with less than two weeks to go before the elections. I can't even get angry here because I'm watching a Bush White House that is staffed by clowns. The sad thing is that while these clowns are yucking it up, the waterboarding torture continues on in Gitmo, and other American-controlled prisons in Iraq and possibly Afghanistan.
It is a no-brainer all right.
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