President Bush vetoed Saturday legislation meant to ban the CIA from
using waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics, saying it
"would take away one of the most valuable tools on the war on terror."
"It is shameful that George Bush and John McCain lack the courage to
ban torture," said Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean. Washington Post.
"This president had the chance to end the torture debate for good," one
of its sponsors, Senator Diane Feinstein of California, said in a
statement on Friday evening when it became clear Mr. Bush intended to
carry out his veto threat. "Yet, he chose instead to leave the door
open to use torture in the future. The United States is not well-served
by this." New York Times.
This could have interesting consequences as it pertains to election politics. The Iraq War hasn’t been at the front of the nomination campaigns–the economy has. And yet, the Republican nomination of Senator McCain, who is not interested in the economy and does not know anything about economic issues, is likely to help push the debate back to how we can most effectively kill Muslims. McCain’s opposition to this bill, the support for it from Senators Obama and Clinton, and the fact that torture is still shocking enough to make ordinary people have opinions about it–the confluence of these factors should help to shift the debate.
The coverage of President Bush’s veto is also interesting. I don’t know what the law was actually going to be, but it seems safe to say that it was going to expressly ban waterboarding. Was it also going to announce a rule that the CIA is bound by the Army Field Manual? In any event, if you read the New York Times and Washington Post articles and the quotations from the President and prominent Republicans and Democrats contained therein, you would be justified in thinking that the debate must be over the efficacy and moral cost of torture, which currently is or may be done lawfully.
No mention of the fact that torture–and waterboarding, regardless of whether it rises to the level of "torture"–is already unlawful. That strikes me as an odd thing to leave out of the discussion.
This is really just bizarre. President Bush is falsely claiming that waterboarding and/or other sorts of physically cruel and coercive interrogation are effective weapons against Islamic terrorism, Dr. Dean is falsely implying that torture is somehow not already banned, and Senator Feinstein is falsely implying that there is currently a debate over the legal status of torture. And our nation’s two best mainstream newspapers are going along for the ride without correcting these serious misstatements.
Accidental Blogger 
2 responses to “Bush Vetoes… Anti-Torture Legislation? (Joe)”
This is really very confusing. I did a search of the UN page on Human Rights and Convention against Torture and also found a website about waterboarding in particular. While I understand that torture in general is banned according to the Geneva Convention, I cannot see any specific reference to waterboarding — whether or not it is classified as tortue by the UN or whether intelligence agencies like the CIA are exempt from the rules listed in the US Army Field Manual (which I haven’t read). I think that the definition of torture (not the ban) is kept purposely vague exactly so that it can be debated or defined down by those who wish to use certain techniques.
This particular senate vote was aimed specifically at waterboarding (and other “harsh” interrogation methods). So even though most of us understand what torture is and waterboarding certainly qualifies, unless Congress can persuade the Justice Dept. to officially classify waterboarding as “torture,” politicians like Bush and McCain can vote against its ban and still claim to be against “torture.” Pretty convenient, no?
I just heard McCain on TV giving some unspecified campaign speech. It was all about war, strategy, Islamic terrorism, insurgency, death toll, surge …. and doing things right in Iraq unlike what was done in Vietnam. What? Is he going to use his presidency to exorcise his own ghosts of Vietnam like George Bush used his to prove his manhood to his dad? It was horrible listening to McCain.
But now Hillary has endorsed McCain by aligning herself with him on national security. By painting Obama as a sissy who will sleep through the 3am phone call and who will talk to our enemies (gasp!) she has practically urged Democrats to vote for McCain in case she herself is not the nominee of her party. So there will be not much paradigm shift if either she or McCain is elected. Bill Clinton had once warned Democrats that to neutralize the Republicans’ edge in toughness, the Dems should outsmart them by acting more tough. His sage advice? “Strong and wrong beats weak and right!” With this kind of political ethics in place, why worry about a little waterboarding?
Significantly, both Obama and Clinton were absent at the session when voting occurred on this particular bill. Both have said that they support the ban. I don’t know if McCain’s “Nay” vote will have redemptive powers with his right wing critics. Just a couple of days ago I heard the host of a right wing radio show excoriate McCain’s credentials thus:
“How can we trust him? He is against tax cuts, against drilling in ANWR, against immigration reform and against waterboarding!”
Well, he is not any more.
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Internet broadcasters We Hit & Run (http://wehitandrun.info) used waterboarding as a political satire and on-air stunt…
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