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News Clips - Retired Military Leaders Speak Out Against Torture in South Carolina and Florida
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A matter of morality
A Times Editorial
Published February 13, 2008
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CIA director Michael Hayden confirmed last week for the first time that waterboarding, or simulated drowning, was used on three al-Qaida suspects. Now, though, he says the technique, shelved in 2006, may be illegal under current law. Nonetheless, the White House quickly asserted that President Bush retains the right to authorize waterboarding, and Vice President Dick Cheney cheered its use to a conservative audience.
Waterboarding is torture and has been clearly viewed as such for more than 100 years. A U.S. major was court-martialed in 1901 and sentenced to 10 years' hard labor for having used waterboarding against a prisoner in the Philippines. We have prosecuted enemy combatants for using it against our troops.
So when Attorney General Michael Mukasey says he won't open a criminal investigation into the CIA's waterboarding because the Justice Department had approved the technique, he is playing a game. In the Bush administration, all it takes for crimes to get excused is for a willing and complicit Justice Department to pre-approve it. How convenient.
To bring our nation back into line with international law and our own moral code, some members of Congress are trying once again to outlaw any techniques that meet the definition of torture. A section of the intelligence authorization bill passed by the House, largely along party lines, would clearly and unequivocally bar the use of any interrogation tactic not authorized by the U.S. Army Field Manual by the CIA and civilian contractors.
The intelligence community and its contractors would be explicitly bound by the tried-and-true methods in the field manual that have served to deliver actionable intelligence without the use of physical pressure.
Retired Brig. Gen. David Irvine, who taught POW interrogation to hundreds of soldiers, Marines and airmen, said these field manual techniques are effective, generate accurate information and save lives of American soldiers. Whereas the use of physical pressure in interrogations is as likely to elicit false information as the truth, and is likely to turn a prisoner who might not be a real enemy when captured, into one.
Irvine is among dozens of retired three- and four-star generals and admirals with intelligence-gathering expertise and experience who are traveling the country and meeting with the presidential candidates to fervently oppose the use of torture and harsh interrogation tactics on detainees. These military leaders say it is a matter of upholding American values and protecting the safety of our troops.
Whether the field manual provision survives in the intelligence authorization bill is up to the Senate, which is expected to take up the measure in the coming weeks. Senators should ignore President Bush's promised a veto. This is a vote of conscience.
To his credit, Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., will support the measure. A spokesman said that through Nelson's work on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, he has come to the conclusion that using the field manual tactics exclusively is in our nation's best interests and best represents what we stand for.
Florida Republican Sen. Mel Martinez, however, has not made a decision. We urge him to draw a clear line between the way the United States comports itself with prisoners and how Fidel Castro does.