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Today's Must Read
The more Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell talks, the worse it gets.
Consider: McConnell, whose nomination early last year was applauded by lawmakers from both parties, has twice provided false information to Congress -- and in both cases, they were statements that served to distort the surveillance debate. In the heat of the surveillance bill debate, McConnell claimed that three German terrorism suspects had been arrested due to intercepts made possible by the administration's Protect America Act; it turned out the intercepts were obtained under the old FISA bill. Only a couple weeks later, McConnell told Congress that rulings by the FISA Court had prevented the NSA from surveilling Iraqi insurgents who had kidnapped U.S. soldiers for 12 hours. That turned out to be, at best, a misleading explanation for the delay.
He's also said, over and over, that the public debate over surveillance law is endangering American lives.
But this one, to my mind, takes the cake. This week's New Yorker features an extended piece on McConnell by Lawrence Wright, based on a number of interviews over several months (not available online). It's a piece that I think even McConnell would agree is a fair portrayal. He comes across as a patriot obsessed with the security of the country. And yet, he also comes across as incredibly unreflective about the issue of torture.
According to McConnell, the issue isn't complicated. "We don't torture," he says, but then goes on to explain that tactics critics call torture have been enormously successful. It's gotten us "tons" of meaningful information and saved "tons" of lives. He confidently offers the example of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (Wright duly notes that the reliability of Mohammed's confessions have been "widely questioned"). And then there's this:
McConnell asserted that it was not difficult to evaluate the truthfulness of a confession, even a coerced one. "And as soon as they start to talk we can tell in minutes if they are lying," he said. "One, you know a lot. And you know when someone is giving you information that is not connecting up to what you know. You also know when to use a polygraph."
Never mind the debate over Abu Zubaydah. Apparently you can torture without any concern about false information.
But that's just a warm up for McConnell's take on waterboarding, which really has to be quoted in full to capture the full force of its thoughtlessness. For those who'd like a contrast with McConnell's views, see the descriptions of waterboarding here and here. From Wright's piece:
"You know what waterboarding is?" [McConnell] asked. "You lay somebody on this table, or put them in an inclined position, and put a washcloth over their face, and you just drip water right here" -- he pointed to his nostrils. "Try it! What happens is, water will go up your nose. And so you will get the sensation of potentially drowning. That's all waterboarding is."I asked if he considered that torture.
McConnell refused to answer directly, but he said, "My own definition of torture is something that would cause excruciating pain."
Did waterboarding fit that description?
Referring to his teen-age days as a lifeguard, he said, "I know one thing. I'm a water-safety instructor, but I cannot swim without covering my nose. I don't know if it's some deviated septum or mucus membrane, but water just rushes in." For him, he said, "waterboarding would be excruciating. 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."
I queried McConnell again, later, about his views on waterboarding, since this exchange seemed to suggest that he personally condemned it. He rejected that interpretation. "You can do waterboarding lots of different ways," he said. "I assume you can get to the point that a person is actually drowning." That would certainly be torture, he said. The definition didn't seem very different from John Yoo's. The reason that he couldn't be more specific, McConnell said, is that "if it ever is determined to be torture, there will be a huge penalty to be paid for anyone engaging in it."
The AP's headline gives the impression that McConnell condemned waterboarding. He didn't. He's saying that if you have a deviated septum, then waterboarding is torture -- because it just feels like you're drowning. If not (and the interrogator doesn't go overboard), then apparently it's a-ok. It seems to be an easy distinction for him. The subtlety might be lost on others.
Torture has nothing to do with gaining information. It has everything to do with creating a new class of super-monsters (the torturers) that can be turned against any form of opposition.
January 14, 2008 10:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
Billy - Or in the case of waterboarding, and indefinite incommunicado detention, it's to aid in the forced forgetting and maintenance of information that would potentially hurt the US.
January 14, 2008 10:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
THIS is the money quote:
>>The reason that he couldn't be more specific, McConnell said, is that "if it ever is determined to be torture, there will be a huge penalty to be paid for anyone engaging in it."<<
January 14, 2008 11:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
Deviated Septum???!!!
Half the population has a deviated septum, that would make no difference at all. What a putz!
So I guess McConnell has put out a memo having all potential waterboardees submit to an exam by an ENT before they get tortured? These Bush people must really think the US public is just a bunch of morons.
January 14, 2008 11:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
He really used the expression "tons" of lives saved? Really? This highly-decorated, educated man speaks like a teen-ager? A mass unit in place of where a very important number is required? Does he realize how unprofessional that sounds/reads?
Good f'in Lord. They're incompetent/careless in more ways than I imagined.
January 14, 2008 11:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
McConnell doesn't even understand the basics of waterboarding. Water fills the lungs. It doesn't merely enter the nose. Waterboarding is controlled drowning, not simulated drowning. It is shameful for our leaders who so adamantly declare the correctness of our country's torture policy to be so uninformed.
January 14, 2008 11:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
So, then, we're having all our detainees examined by an otolaryngologist, to determine whether they have deviated septums or mucus membranes or whatnot before we use this technique? No?
January 14, 2008 11:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
Any action that uses fear and pain to get information is torture, and its got nothing to do with a deviated septum. The pain comes when the water goes into your sinuses, and coupled with the fear of drowning its a torture winner.
Don't these fools realize that these conversations that they have over justifying torture are the same ones that other tortures have had for years. The ends justify the means, and I won't be prosecuted for it anyway. Besides waterboarding, how about some of the other Gitmo specials. Like putting a suspect in a freezing room until they loose fingers and toes to frostbite. Maybe you would have the guard shackel your hands and feet to a ring in the floor for 14 hours, bentover with no relief. Isolation with no human contact for years. I would pray for death, but even that wouldn't be possible because silent guards with black hoods would come in and roughly shove a tube down your nose to keep you alive for more torture.
Those responsible must be brought to trial for violating what it means to be an American.
January 14, 2008 11:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
So, according to McConnell's ethics, we should ask each detainee whether they would consider waterboarding torture FOR HIM, and if he answers "Yes", we do not subject him to it. And I'm sure that is what we do. His description of waterboarding is not accurate, and he knows this full well. When it does become clear that our government is engaging in torture, and the time of reckoning arrives, it is not only the direct torturers, but also Bush, Cheney, Gonzales, McConnell, and the other direct abettors who should spend a long time in prison.
January 14, 2008 11:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
So according to McConnell, in order for waterboarding to NOT be defined as torture, the potential waterboard subjects must be asked first if they have a deviated septum, or if they think they might possibly have a deviated septum, or anyone in their family history might have had a deviated septum, or indeed if there are any other physical, medical, psychological, or emotional reasons why they would suffer in excess of what a perfect human physical specimen convinced of their own righteousness would suffer, to eliminate any possibility of "torture" being inflicted on anyone, and thus avoiding the triggering of all those nasty war crime thingy's the Bush administration is so intent on avoiding. I applaud Mr. McConnell's unusual clarity on this topic. His testimony should immediately be enacted, and become known as the McConnell Law. Under the McConnell Law, all other applications of waterboarding would clearly fall into the "torture" category and America would once again have a coherent and transparent policy. Applicants for waterboarding should immediately be compelled to fill out a detailed medical history form (the McForm)to ensure that the reputation of America, so laboriously assembled by the founders and defenders of freedom and justice over the entire history of America, is not completely obliterated by one relatively inept president and his fascistic minions and controllers.
January 14, 2008 11:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Shorter McConnell: "Of course it's torture. That's why we do it. But I know I'll go to jail if I admit that, so I have to pretend -- oh, wait, is that recorder on?"
January 14, 2008 11:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
McConnell obviously thinks he's guilty of having committed a crime; why esle for the 'setting myself up to plead the 5th' comment?
Susan is dead right- the quote tells you all you need to know.
**The reason that he couldn't be more specific, McConnell said, is that "if it ever is determined to be torture, there will be a huge penalty to be paid for anyone engaging in it."**
January 14, 2008 12:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
these people in the Bush club must believe that the torture of US airmen shot down or captured during the VIET NAM war was gustfied .
January 14, 2008 12:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
No, in countries where waterboarding is recognized as torture, there will be a huge penalty to be paid for anyone who ordered it. That's the reason McConnell blathers like this.
January 14, 2008 12:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
These guys justify waterboarding based on tests on Special Forces and the like. Special Forces are physically and mentally the toughest people we've got. Punch one of those guys in the stomach as hard as you can and they'll laugh at it. Punch any of the rest of us 99% the same way and you will rupture an organ or break something. Waterboarding in that context, especially when it is their friends doing it to them, is a joke. Probably no tougher than some other parts of their normal training. (They know that, that's what makes the argument disingenuous).
I say waterboard Cheney, Chimpy (he thinks he is in great shape), or ANY of their kids to prove to us that it is not torture. THEN I'll believe it.
These stupid opinions are given by people whom MAY have seen it once on a grainy film to a guy they'd like to see dead. Just because pulling out fingernails may be worse, doesn't change how bad waterboarding is.
In short; don't listen to any claims that it isn't torture by anyone who hasn't EXPERIENCED it.
This whole thing is making me feel foolish: it took 50 years for me to see that the ideals I thought my country stood for are now lies. What's left for me to tell my kids "that's what makes our country great"? I am out of ideas.
January 14, 2008 12:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
We need to see Chimpys pastor to see what guideline Jesus left about how to torture your enemies, since every one of these psychopaths claims to be devout "Christians" (including Chimpys direct line to god).
January 14, 2008 12:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
When we are torturing people, we already know the information that we're trying to torture out of them; that's how we know when they're lying. So, tell us again why we torture - for confirmation of what we already know??? So, how has torturing people, per se, saved lives, if we knew the information going in?
Sounds like there's some other reason for torturing. What?
January 14, 2008 12:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Polygraphs measure stress, how the F... do you torture someone while they are being tortured without the stress ? Someone is lying again...
January 14, 2008 1:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Do asthmatics get a free pass out of waterboarding too?
January 14, 2008 1:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, he's 'deviated' all right, just not his septum...
UnAmerican piece of garbage, you should be in chains!
January 14, 2008 1:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
"He really used the expression "tons" of lives saved? Really? This highly-decorated, educated man speaks like a teen-ager?"
You sound more authoritative if you pretend to be able to speak of "tons." Like the number is so overwhelming that to name it would take a million years and a billion fingers.
Waving the hand dismissively and looking away, as if those tons of lives were passing before your eyes, is also helpful. Then laugh at your interlocutor like Kevin Costner.
January 14, 2008 1:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
The reason that he couldn't be more specific, McConnell said, is that "if it ever is determined to be torture, there will be a huge penalty to be paid for anyone engaging in it."
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a new low! Let's give the man a hand.
January 14, 2008 1:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
NIXON LIVES: If we're doing it, that means it's not torture.
(Kind of a paraphrase of Nixon's "If the president does it, that means, it's legal" (or not illegal, or something like that).
January 14, 2008 2:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
So I guess McConnell is saying that Cheney and Bush "knew" that al-libi was lieing when they offered up the tortured to order info about Iraq training camps. Good to know.
It's a sad thing, the men who are allowed to wear the uniform of the United States military these days.
**"...if it ever is determined to be torture, there will be a huge penalty to be paid for anyone engaging in it."**
IF? So, no one bothered to tell him about the "whens" that waterboarding has been determined to be torture? It's like they truly believe that offering up doddering old codgery confusion from guys in uniform like Hayden and McConnell will somehow make all the criminal activity seem warm and fuzzy and grandfatherly instead of just making it a horrible stain on the uniform for all time.
And it kind of goes hand in hand with all the "legal" warrantless surveillance that will nonetheless give rise to "massive" liability if cases go to trial, and the need to constantly fib to Congress and the American people.
I do agree that sometimes, even without a polygraph, you can tell when someone is lying. Unfortunately for McConnell, that hurts, rather than helps, him.
January 14, 2008 2:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
I really can't be more specific about whether or not smashing a man's testicles with a hammer is torture, since, if it ever is determined to be torture, there will be a huge penalty to be paid for anyone engaging in it.
January 14, 2008 2:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
So, if it turns out there was reasonable doubt that what those Japanese soldiers did that we hanged them for was torture, maybe we owe them an apology?
Or the Catholic Church. Is our revulsion to what the Inquisitors did just some deep-seated prejudice against the Catholics?
I just want to know what to think.
(But if the answer is that when WE do it it's not torture, but when others do it it is, then that's not good enought.)
I just hope that the EU is taking notes, and that when people whose names are attached to this scandal travel across the pond in years to come that the authorities over there will scoop them up. I'm for letting the International Criminal Court decide if, say, Rumsfeld or Alfredo Gonzalez have taken part in torture. That would be highly entertaining.
January 14, 2008 3:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
The McConnell interview is available online in PDF form:
http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/WashWire.pdf
January 14, 2008 4:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
So, basically McConnell is saying if it was doen to HIM it would be torture, but not if he did it to someone else.
January 14, 2008 4:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why hasn't there been impeachments yet of the torturers?
January 14, 2008 4:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Why hasn't there been impeachments yet of the torturers?" re:parrot
Because all the rich, greedy,sadistic SOBs who run the country have info gained from illegal wiretaps on the people who could stop it.
January 14, 2008 6:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
On the waterboarding issue, does anyone know who came up with the “simulated” drowning phrase?
Its my understanding that water in your lungs or larynx will make you gag and cough to try and get it out... after that you will have to inhale. Thats fine if you can inhale air, but if someone is forcing water into your nose and mouth then you will inhale that and the force of your lungs will pump it up even if you are fully upside down. Then the complex broccoli like structure of your lungs will keep the water in. They can cought out some water and air, but with each breath only water can come in.
Of course, when your head is held down the water starts in your larynx and works its way up, so it takes longer from the moment you feel the drowning to the moment you run out of oxygen. So you are contentious for more of it... but thats the only difference with drowning right side up.
So wouldn't prologued drowning or contentiousness-enhanced drowning be more accurate descriptions?
There is nothing safe about it. If someone keeps pouring the water you will die! I imagine thats why there are doctors watching. I bet the guy who froze to death after being chained to the floor, naked, in an Afghan winter and the guy who suffocated during a beating in a sleeping bag taught the CIA that death people have remarkably little “intelligence value”, even by the already low CIA and GITMO standards. Did I say people? Sorry, I meant death non-people, we aren't talking about something as sacred as frozen embryo`s here as the recent ruling confirmed!
Waterboarding.org has a little more, but its not like you can easily find experimental data online.
January 14, 2008 8:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, Mr. McConnell, my ex-wife was just alittle pregnant three times before we had our three children. Oh the chicken-shit of the Bush administration will live in imfany! -Kevo
January 14, 2008 10:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, let's see. I can't go into the water without plugging my nose. So if anybody waterboarded me, it would be torture. And anybody with a conscience would know it, because they would see me suffering. But if it's torture, then it would be illegal...so that's why we tried not to tell anyone with a conscience that we were doing it.
Mr. McConnel may have just provided the statement that confirms illegality. It will be interesting to see how it plays out.
January 15, 2008 10:28 AM | Reply | Permalink