The White House's Perverse Argument

Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, writing in Newsweek, explain the odd timing of the White House announcement. They describe a debate within the administration about how much to disclose.

"In little-noticed public comments in Geneva last November, John Bellinger, the State Department's chief legal adviser, said there was a 'need for greater clarity about what is permitted and what is prohibited' when it came to interrogation techniques. A lack of clear guidelines, he said, 'makes it more difficult for the United States to reaffirm our commitment to international law in the world.'

"But Bellinger's argument that the United States needed to have greater 'clarity' about its interrogation practices ran into a brick wall in the form of Vice President Dick Cheney and his top aide, David Addington, according to a senior administration official. . . .

"The debate over what to say or not say continued until last week, when Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte casually let drop, in an interview with National Journal, that 'waterboarding had not been used in years.' . . .

"Negroponte's comments, which were seen as confirmation that waterboarding had in fact been used before that, were not cleared beforehand and caught White House officials off guard, according to the senior administration official. 'It was an accidental disclosure,' said the official. It also forced a reassessment of whether the administration should at least publicly confirm Negroponte's remarks, if only to reap whatever public-relations benefit could be derived from the slip."

Public-relations benefits? I don't see them.

Dan Eggen writes in The Washington Post: "Independent legal experts have called the technique torture and said its use is barred by U.S. laws and treaties under all circumstances. . . .

"Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, said the Bush administration's admissions about waterboarding mark an important milestone. 'It's not an abstract debate anymore,' Malinowski said. 'They've acknowledged that they've waterboarded people, and virtually every legal authority in the United States believes that waterboarding is torture and a crime.'

"Democrats and Republicans have criticized the CIA's use of waterboarding. The current front-runner in the Republican presidential race, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), and two other Republican senators said in a letter to Mukasey in October that 'we were personally assured by Administration officials' that a 2006 law governing interrogations by the CIA and other agencies 'prohibited waterboarding.'"

Jennifer Loven of the Associated Press relates Fratto's comments in the off-camera gaggle yesterday morning: "'There's been a lot written out there -- newspaper, magazine articles, some of it misinformation,' Fratto said. 'And so the consensus was that on this one particular technique that these officials would have the opportunity to address them -- in not just a public setting, but in a setting in front of members of Congress, and to be very clear about how those techniques were used and what the benefits were of them.'"

Opinion Watch

Although the second part of what Fratto promised -- "what the benefits were" -- has never been specified, the ends-justify-the-means argument has found some disciples.

The Wall Street Journa l editorial board wrote yesterday: "Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri planned the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole. Abu Zubaydah was the mastermind of the foiled millennium terrorist attacks, which had Los Angeles airport as one of its targets. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed directed the September 11 attacks, and has claimed to have personally beheaded Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl.