Torture's Smoking Guns

"'I asked that . . . [then-attorney general John] Ashcroft personally advise the NSC principles whether the program was lawful,' Rice wrote. . . .

"Rice, now secretary of state, portrayed the White House as initially uneasy about a controversial CIA plan for interrogating top al-Qaeda suspects. . . .

"But whatever misgivings existed that spring were apparently overcome. Former and current CIA officials say no such reservations were voiced in their presence."

Today's news doesn't substantially change the already well-documented torture narrative, which puts the responsibility for approving waterboarding and other abusive tactics squarely at the highest levels of the White House. See, for instance, my April 14 column, Bush OK'd Torture Meetings, and my July 14 column, The Outlaw Presidency, about author Jane Mayer's tale of fear and its exploitation by Vice President Cheney.

Ostensibly, of course, this was all to protect the nation from terror attacks, and President Bush himself has claimed success. In a February Fox News interview, for instance, Bush said: "The American people have got to know that what we did in the past gained information that prevented an attack. And for those who criticize what we did in the past, I ask them, which attack would they rather have not permitted -- stopped? Which attack on America did they -- would they have said, well, you know, maybe it wasn't all that important that we stop those attacks."

But there's absolutely no evidence in the public domain to support Bush's assertion -- and no thwarted attacks to choose between.

And despite repeated assertions by Bush and his aides that " we don't torture," waterboarding -- a method of controlled drowning -- has been an iconic and almost universally condemned form of torture since the Spanish Inquisition.

Furthermore, interrogation experts say torture is counterproductive. There is nothing remotely logical about embracing torture, unless your goal is to extract confessions.

It remains unclear what tactics the CIA is still approved to use in the future. Bush in March successfully vetoed a bill that would have imposed on the CIA the same anti-torture prohibitions mandated by the Army Field Manual -- prohibitions against such tactics as waterboarding, prolonged exposure to freezing temperatures, forced nudity, sexual humiliation, mock executions, the use of attack dogs, the application of electric shocks and the withholding of food, water and medical care.

Incidentally, Steven Aftergood blogs for Secrecy News: "A newly reissued Department of Defense directive explicitly prohibits several of the more controversial interrogation techniques that have previously been practiced against suspected enemy combatants.

"So, for example, the new directive states that 'Use of SERE [Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape] techniques against a person in the custody or effective control of the Department of Defense or detained in a DoD facility is prohibited.' Waterboarding, in which a sensation of drowning is induced, is one such SERE technique."

Signing Statements Watch

Charlie Savage writes in the New York Times: "President Bush asserted on Tuesday that he had the executive power to bypass several parts of two bills: a military authorization act and a measure giving inspectors general greater independence from White House control.