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Gonzales: "Not So Clear" That Waterboarding Violates Geneva Common Article 3
New vistas in humanitarian law from Alberto Gonzales: Waterboarding, the process in which a detainee is forced to believe he is drowning, may not be "beyond the bounds of human decency."
Senators Dick Durbin and Ted Kennedy pointed out that the executive order President Bush issued on Friday on CIA interrogations interpreting Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions specifies certain activities for outright banning due to their contravention of "human decency": sexual humiliation or the threat thereof, or religious denigration, for instance. Why, then, the senators asked, doesn't the order specify prohibitions on suspected interrogation techniques that military judge-advocates general have testified are also contraventions of the convention -- namely, threatening detainees with dogs, prolonged stress positions, forced nudity, mock executions and waterboarding?
Gonzales, going way further than intelligence chief Mike McConnell has, said that some of those measures are "possible techniques used by the CIA," even after the executive order. It wasn't confirmation, by any stretch, that waterboarding will still occur. But in response to the specific question, Gonzales told Kennedy that "some acts are clearly beyond the pale, and that everyone would agree should be prohibited. ... There are certain other activities where it is not so clear, Senator, and again, it is for those reasons that I can't discuss them in a public session." The order, naturally, received DoJ review before it was finalized.
There you have it, from the nation's "top cop": waterboarding and mock executions don't "clearly" shock the conscience.
KENNEDY: Did the department review the executive order...GONZALES: Yes.
KENNEDY: ... (inaudible) put out?
GONZALES: As a matter of custom we would do that, yes.
KENNEDY: OK.
And did you produce any memoranda or any other documents assessing the legality of the order? GONZALES: Senator, I don't know.
We certainly provided advice, yes, about the order. I can't tell you whether or not we provided a legal document...
(CROSSTALK) KENNEDY: Can you make those available to the committee? Can you make those available about the department's analysis of...
GONZALES: I will take that back and see what we can do, Senator.
KENNEDY: In the particular document, at paragraph E, it mentions certain activities by definition that violate human decency. It specifies those. It says in paragraph E, "outrageous acts of personal abuse, done for the purpose of humiliating or degrading the individual in a manner so serious that any reasonable person, considering the circumstances, would deem the acts to be beyond the bounds of human decency." Then it specifically prohibits certain activities. Certain activities are prohibited in the executive order.
KENNEDY: It says, "such as sexual or sexual indecent acts undertaken for the purposes of humiliation." Those are prohibited. It says, "forcing the individual to perform sexual acts or to pose sexually." Those are prohibited. "Threatening the individual or sexual mutilation, or using the individual as a human shield," those are prohibited. "Acts intended to denigrate the religion, religious practices or religious option," they are prohibited. So the question is, why aren't you willing -- if those are prohibited, why aren't you willing to prohibit the other kinds of activities that were outlined earlier in terms of the waterboarding, in terms of stress, dogs, nudity, mock executions? GONZALES: Senator...
KENNEDY: If you prohibit these activities, why don't you prohibit those?
GONZALES: Senator, there are certain activities that are clearly beyond the pale and that everyone would agree should be prohibited. And so, obviously, the president is very, very supportive of those actions that are identified by its terms in the executive order. There are certain other activities where it is not so clear, Senator. And, again, it's for those reasons that I can't discuss them in the public...
KENNEDY: Well, the only point -- and it's been made superbly by my colleague, Senator Durbin -- what you're basically saying to this committee and the rest of the world that these acts which are mentioned in the executive are prohibited, but these other activities -- the five other activities which have been the subject of a good deal of our own hearings and we talked about your confirmation problems -- are not. They don't rise to the point where they are prohibited.
Comments (53)
Jane wrote on July 24, 2007 1:12 PM:Nothing will shock your conscience if you don't have a conscience to shock.
Jake D. wrote on July 24, 2007 1:13 PM:That what Harvard Law professor, Alan Dershowitz, would say too. I mean, it's not just one person, Alberto Gonzales, against everyone else on the issue.
judyinnm wrote on July 24, 2007 1:15 PM:Maybe it's time for Congress to use some of those "not so clear(ly)" beyond the pale forms of interrogation on Gonzo, just to get him to give them clear answers to their questions. If it ain't torture, why not?
Richard L. Adlof wrote on July 24, 2007 1:17 PM:Jake D. is correct . . . We need to water-board Gonzo to get the truth outta him.
Jake D. wrote on July 24, 2007 1:20 PM:Only if the President of the United States certifies Gonzales is a terrorist. Good luck getting that ; )
Anonymous wrote on July 24, 2007 1:24 PM:Whitehouse, had a document with Gonzos signature on that over rode the document from Ashcraft regarding those communications with depts, and staff. Gonzo put in office of the vice president!!
That is your smoking gun!!!
CX wrote on July 24, 2007 1:28 PM:Hey Jake Off, didn't Alan Dershowitz help get a double murderer acquitted?
Pick better sources idiot.
Anonymous wrote on July 24, 2007 1:33 PM:Whitehouse, had a document with Gonzos signature on that over rode the document from Ashcraft regarding those communications with depts, and staff. Gonzo put in office of the vice president!!
That is your smoking gun!!!....
the connection is..
1. The office of the vp had inside information regarding the Plame/scooter Liby case...
2. The staff from ovp and AG office were communicating back and forth about the infor.
Now, just take that a step futher, and "bam" you have your smoking gun with the connection of the VP and the courts with the Scooter case!
Austin Cooper wrote on July 24, 2007 1:34 PM:Gonzales is a weasel, and a liar, and a punk.
Richard L. Adlof wrote on July 24, 2007 1:36 PM:Let's all pause a moment . . . and rewind . . .
During AG THE AG's interchange with Leahy . . . He denied that the program was the warrentless wiretap of . . . Well . . . us. Suppose he just slipped up and disclosed yet another illegal spying program. Comey would not say what the program that he and Ashcroft dissented from . . . There may be something even worse out there.
Jake D. wrote on July 24, 2007 1:38 PM:CX:
Even double murderers are entitled to the right to effective counsel -- he's a liberal, though, teaching at Harvard Law -- I could find more examples. My point was that it's not just one person, Alberto Gonzales, against everyone else in the legal community on the issue.
biggerbox wrote on July 24, 2007 1:41 PM:You can't denigrate a person's religion, but you can make him think he's going to drown? What next, you can't insult his mother but you can electrocute his testicles?
What do these guys consider "decency?" I do not think that word means what they think it means.
Richard L. Adlof wrote on July 24, 2007 1:51 PM:Again about the undisclosed program . . . Comey said it needed to be re-upped on March 11th. If the program was being renewed every six months . . . The program coulda went into effect on 9-11.
INQUIRY: What sorta heinous crap did they have prepped and ready to put in place on the date of a surprise attack?
Tonight may be a drinking night.
JT wrote on July 24, 2007 1:51 PM:"My point was that it's not just one person, Alberto Gonzales, against everyone else in the legal community on the issue." - A paid troll
Correct, it is a small number of authorian cultists and pro-Israel extremists against the tradition of justice in America, the Constitution, the Rule of Law, the values of Western Civilization, and basic human decency.
1oldlady wrote on July 24, 2007 1:51 PM:From firedoglake's web site...
SEN. WHITEHOUSE QUESTIONS: The path to the truth with you and the WH is so convuluted — I have no choice looking at the facts in front of us that you had no intent other than to try and lead us away from the dispute over the NSA domestic spying program that Comey referenced. [CHS notes: come on, you can say it — Gonzales is lying to cover his own butt and others.] If you are setting up administrative barriers to protect the DOJ from improper influence of politics, isn’t the WH the number one locus of potential influence that prior administration’s have all tried to wall off from too much contact? Gonzales dances around answering. Talking about the letter from Janet Reno to Lloyd Cutler, instigated by questions from Orrin Hatch, restricting DOJ/WH contact to seven people total. You recall the graphic that I showed you for this WH which was substantially higher — you seemed to agree with me that it was important to restrict contacts between the DOJ and the WH on criminal prosecutions. You agree with me that contact needed to be limited. I then showed you the letter from then AG Ashcroft which kicked open the door to much higher contact between the WH and the DOJ. You agreed this was a problem. I’d like to bring to your attention a May 2006 document which is a subsequent one to the Ashcroft memorandum which is signed by you — why don’t you take a look at it?
Here’s what concerns me: in the Ashcroft memo, there was that paragraph which changes the whole memo which allows the AG to communicate directly to the President, the Veep, Counsel to the President, officials and staff of the various officials staffs as well. And I see from your May 2006 memo things which concern me even more: for convenience, executive functions of the Vice President are referred to by OVP — communications between the EOP (Office of the President) apply similarly with the OVP. What on earth does the office of the OVP have to do with the DOJ? Gonzales says that’s a good question, and he doesn’t know the answer to it. Whitehouse says he’d like an answer as to how that got into the memo. “President, VIce President, their Chiefs of Staff, Counsel to the President or Vice President” — someone took the trouble to write in Vice President and give them access to criminal investigations and matters. [CHS notes: Including, one might add, the Fitzgerald investigation, which was ongoing at that time, I might add.]
anonymous wrote on July 24, 2007 1:57 PM:JakeD: "That what Harvard Law professor, Alan Dershowitz, would say too."
Unless it was Jews being waterboarded by Arabs.
Then Dershowitz would find that it was torture.
Question for Gonzales, Bush, and JakeD (and McCain): if Islamic radicals or any other enemy of the United States waterboarded a US citizen, not even a soldier but of course also any US soldier, would it be torture?
Simple answer, JakeD, "yes" or "no": would waterboarding a US citizen by an enemy of the US be torture?
JNagarya wrote on July 24, 2007 1:57 PM:That what Harvard Law professor, Alan Dershowitz, would say too. I mean, it's not just one person, Alberto Gonzales, against everyone else on the issue.
Posted by: Jake D.
Date: July 24, 2007 1:13 PM
Dershowitz is a hypocrite on the issue: he doesn't object to Israel using torture. But he would object to torture being used on Jews.
Of course, Dershowitz isn't actually a liberal, "Jake," so bringing him up as element in your attempt to argue that "He's for it too"/"Two wrongs make a right!" won't work. Nor will you're off topic dragging him in manage to change the subject away from the fact that torture, which is a war crime that cannot be made legal, is authorized by the Bushit criminal enterprise.
Nor will it go unnoticed that you support and defend criminality because you too hold the criminal worldview, that being essential to being granted membership in the anti-American Republican party.
Torture is evil, "Jake"; so are, therefore, those who approve, and authorize, and impose, and defend it. That includes not only the Bushit criminal enterprise, and Dershowitz, but also you, "Jake".
Now try to pretend you're "objective," swamp-slime.
anonymous wrote on July 24, 2007 1:57 PM:JakeD: "That what Harvard Law professor, Alan Dershowitz, would say too."
Unless it was Jews being waterboarded by Arabs.
Then Dershowitz would find that it was torture.
Question for Gonzales, Bush, and JakeD (and McCain): if Islamic radicals or any other enemy of the United States waterboarded a US citizen, not even a soldier but of course also any US soldier, would it be torture?
Simple answer, JakeD, "yes" or "no": would waterboarding a US citizen by an enemy of the US be torture?
anonymous wrote on July 24, 2007 2:01 PM:JakeD: "Only if the President of the United States certifies Gonzales is a terrorist."
There you go lying again.
If waterboarding is not torture, as Gonzales, Cheney, Bush, and you claim, then it is irrelevant whether Gonzales is certified as a terrorist or not, even under Bush's loose rules and interpretation of international law.
Richard L. Adlof wrote on July 24, 2007 2:02 PM:JT @ July 24, 2007 1:51 PM,
Wrong Middle East regional player . . . With the Current Administration, the country is question is Saudi Arabia. No country with a name beginning with an "I" is listened to . . . Or even heard. No matter whether its name ends with a "Q", an "N" or an "L".
Additionally, the Admin spells Saudi Arabia: O-I-L.
Hobodeluxe wrote on July 24, 2007 2:03 PM:Does anyone have a video of Whitehouse's questioning of Gonzales?
Richard L. Adlof wrote on July 24, 2007 2:03 PM:JT @ July 24, 2007 1:51 PM,
Wrong Middle East regional player . . . With the Current Administration, the country is question is Saudi Arabia. No country with a name beginning with an "I" is listened to . . . Or even heard. No matter whether its name ends with a "Q", an "N" or an "L".
Additionally, the Admin spells Saudi Arabia: O-I-L.
JNagarya wrote on July 24, 2007 2:07 PM:Only if the President of the United States certifies Gonzales is a terrorist. Good luck getting that ; )
Posted by: Jake D.
Date: July 24, 2007 1:20 PM
1. Read Art. I. of the US Constitution, in which is stipulated the branch of gov't authorized to resolve election disputes, such as that in 2000. It is CONGRESS, not the unelected SC. The SC's intervention was an unconstitutional usurpation of that authority; thus Bushit unconstitutionally occupies the office.
2. Bushit cannot, under the Constitution, cannot lawfully take upon himself the powers of legislative, executive, judicary, and executioner.
You're thinking his doing so is "funny" is despicable -- and reveals your hatred for Constitution and rule of law, and country.
mbbsdphil wrote on July 24, 2007 2:09 PM:t again you demonstrate you're swamp-slime.
Fredo is a water carrier, just as Bush is a professional cheerleader. Since Yale, he's not had the guts to lay it on the line on the playing field, just as he preferred to defend the skies over the saloons and brothels of Texas rather than drop bombs on the Vietnamese in a war he claimed to support.
But let's be clear. The prohibitions in the president's EO against such things as sexual and religious denigration only apply where such things are done for the purpose of humiliating the prisoner.
Where they are done for another purpose - such as to get someone to talk or to threaten another more valuable witness/prisoner in order to get them to talk (remember, Cheney threatens to torture wives and children of valuable prisoners) - they are NOT prohibited. That EO prohibits very little; it is window dressing and has more qualifiers and exceptions than Fredo's testimony.
If Shrub and Big Dick are off limits for impeachment, Fredo should not be. His incompetence and repeated lies are manifest. Toss out him out and let Cheney and Bush find another lapdog-cum-human shield to protect their illegal behavior.
JNagarya wrote on July 24, 2007 2:15 PM:Even double murderers are entitled to the right to effective counsel -- he's a liberal, though, teaching at Harvard Law -- I could find more examples. My point was that it's not just one person, Alberto Gonzales, against everyone else in the legal community on the issue.
Posted by: Jake D.
Date: July 24, 2007 1:38 PM
Neither Harvard nor Dershowitz are liberal, or Liberal, or "lib-brul," regardless how you want to spell it.
cds wrote on July 24, 2007 2:21 PM:Called every senator on the Judiciary Committe and urged them all to impeach the LIAR.
Elizabeth wrote on July 24, 2007 2:23 PM:From a March 2005 story about the Bulgarian nurses who were returned from custody in Libya today: >
My brother-in-law worked in military interrogation in Iraq. Like all professionals worth their salt, he will tell you that torture is ineffective because any information obtained is inherently unreliable. The unwillingness of this administration to understand that fact makes one believe they just get off on inflicting pain for no good reason.
anonymous wrote on July 24, 2007 2:24 PM:JakeD: "My point was that it's not just one person, Alberto Gonzales, against everyone else in the legal community on the issue."
As usual, you have not point, since no one has claimed that Gonzales is the only person in the legal community with that particular viewpoint.
He is, however, in the distinct and very, very overwhelmed minority, a minority that has specific biases and self-serving motives for adopting this particular position.
The fact that a few other persons believe the world is flat is of no comfort and supplies no credibility for a person who states that the world is flat, particularly when your supporting cast itself has no credibility on the issue.
So, answer the question: would waterboarding of an American citizen by a foreign enemy power constitute torture?
Remember, if you and McCain and Gonzales and Bush and Cheney answer in the affirmative, no American soldier can ever complain about being tortured after being waterboarded and no American conservative can complain about the treatment of our soldiers by any foreign power imposing such a method, because you will have admitted that it is a perfectly legal and justified technique for obtaining information.
ifthethunderdontgetya wrote on July 24, 2007 2:25 PM:I think we should make calls and send emails urging the Senators on the Judiciary Committee to ask that the House impeach Gonzales for lying under oath.
Elizabeth wrote on July 24, 2007 2:25 PM:Sorry, the story quotation was deleted from my post above. It should read: The verdicts were based on confessions that the nurses, who remain jailed, say were extracted under torture.
JEP wrote on July 24, 2007 2:28 PM:Well, concerning the severity of waterboarding, and how these "punishers" love it so, I'll give Gonzo the same response I gave some arrogant neocon troll recently.
Try it, toughguy.
Then after you spew out all the water you sucked-in, we'll wait for a truly informed opinion.
Waterboarding causes damage to the vacuoli in the lungs. That constitutes a violation according to the latest edict.
Or is that too technical for all you frog-shooters and cat-dissectors?
JNagarya- you are exhibiting a great deal of personal restraint lately, avoiding those insulting comments we have all come to expect.
It works, your message isn't any less meaningful, and while I agree you have every right to be mad as hell, you are much more effective when you state your case without calling names.
Thanks, and you do realize if you were the kettle, I'd probably be the pot. But I usually try to allocate my insults only to the most outrageous idiots.
anonymous wrote on July 24, 2007 2:31 PM:British sailors admitted they were in Iranian waters and they weren't even waterboarded or subjected to anything remotely similar to what the individuals in Gitmo and secret CIA prisons are being subjected to.
But, then, I guess you could believe that the British sailors were telling the truth and the Iranians were in the right.
Or you could just employ the double standards favored by JakeD and Dershowitz.
anonymous wrote on July 24, 2007 2:36 PM:JEP: "But I usually try to allocate my insults only to the most outrageous idiots."
JakeD should then send you into paroxysms of expletives and derisive jeering, since he is the most outrageous of idiots (well, next to Gonzales and Bush, of course - justice where it's due!).
Anonymous wrote on July 24, 2007 2:39 PM:Does anyone have a video of Whitehouse's questioning of Gonzales?
Posted by: Hobodeluxe
Date: July 24, 2007 2:03 PM
Go to cspan 3 on their web site and you can watch it there.
JEP wrote on July 24, 2007 2:47 PM:"therefore when it is aspirated, a large influx of water occurs in the alveoli causing the surfactant that is so desperately needed for respiration to be washed away."
http://lungdiseases.about.com/od/generalinformation1/a/drowning_lungs.htm
I will say it again...Waterboarding causes internal organ damage; I said vacuoli, which was technically improper, it is specifically the alveoli that are damaged in drowning and near-drowning events...
But is this just too technical for frog-shooters?
Jake D. wrote on July 24, 2007 3:12 PM:JEP:
Are you under the impression that waterboading includes water actually getting into the subject's mouth and nose? That would in fact be DROWNING, not waterboarding, in which the physical experience of being underneath a wave of water seems to be secondary to the psychological experience. The subject's mind believes he / she is drowning -- the gag reflex kicks in as if choking on all that water -- even though it does not get anywhere near the alveoli. Try at least reading Wikipedia next time.
JO wrote on July 24, 2007 3:58 PM:How long will it be until the Democratic senators take a step back and look at the overall picture painted by Gonzo: a Justice Department that, like the rest of this administration, acts as it pleases. The technical details of waterboarding are really not the issue; it is clearly a form of torture, widely recognized as such, that someone (presumably someone in the CIA) wanted to preserve...thus it was not on the list of prohibited activities and thus the Justice Department is prepared to argue nonsensically to defend it. The testimony by Gonzo in fact supports a wider thesis: that the American people, represented by their senators and congressmen, have allowed these activities to proceed; have failed to demand that their representatives use the legal tools at their disposal (impeachment, contempt of Congress) to force a halt and to enforce the Constitution. These are dark days indeed for every American citizen.
judyinnm wrote on July 24, 2007 4:00 PM:Bush didn't specifically exclude torturing children, to get their parents to talk, in his new directive. John Yoo said it was okay - no one asked Gonzo....
TerriLS wrote on July 24, 2007 5:56 PM:Hi,
anonymous wrote on July 24, 2007 9:46 PM:see new shoking video here
Answer the question, JakeD: would waterboarding conducted on American soldiers by enemies of the US be torture?
What is the matter, JakeD, afraid to answer the question?
You are always demanding that others answer your questions, even after they already have, so why won't you answer questions?
Because you are a lying ass?
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rd wrote on July 25, 2007 12:37 PM:Gonzalez is something you'd find crawling out from under a flat rock. He is a despicable specimen of humanity. The fact that he occupies the "top cop" office of the USA should be a source of deep shame for anyone who supports his hefty his salary via taxes.
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