I’m surprised that I have seen absolutely nothing in the blogosphere about Jack Goldsmith’s piece in today’s WaPo, which argues that the Obama Administration should forgive and forget when it comes to the Bush Administration’s torture policies:

[Both prosecution and a bipartisan commission are] bad ideas. They would bring little benefit, and they would further weaken the Justice Department and the CIA in ways that would compromise our security. . . .

Second-guessing lawyers’ wartime decisions under threat of criminal and ethical sanctions may sound like a good idea to those who believe those lawyers went too far in the fearful days after Sept. 11, 2001. But the greater danger now is that lawyers will become excessively cautious in giving advice and will substitute predictions of political palatability for careful legal judgment. . . .

When the CIA was asked to engage in aggressive tactics early in the Bush administration, it knew from bitter experience that the political winds would change and that it might be subject to “retroactive discipline.” And so it sought approval from the president and his Cabinet, informed congressional leadership many times about what it was doing and got what it thought were airtight legal opinions from the Justice Department.

But these safeguards failed, and the CIA is once again mired in investigation and controversy. The lesson learned by many at the agency is that politically sensitive counterterrorism actions should be avoided, even if they are deemed legal and even if they have the express approval of political officials. We are going to be living with this skittishness for a long time, to the detriment of our security.

Yet another round of investigations during the Obama administration, even by a bipartisan commission, would exacerbate this problem. It would also bring little benefit. The people in government who made mistakes or who acted in ways that seemed reasonable at the time but now seem inappropriate have been held publicly accountable by severe criticism, suffering enormous reputational and, in some instances, financial losses. Little will be achieved by further retribution.

Jack Goldsmith emerged as a hero among critics of the current Administration’s torture policies, largely as a result of his tenure as head of the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department.  During his brief time there, Goldsmith stood up to David Addington, Alberto Gonzales, and Dick Cheney by withdrawing John Yoo’s infamous 2002 memo, which had redefined torture as physical suffering “equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury” or mental suffering that had to “result in signifcant psychological harm. . .lasting for months and years.”  Goldsmith deserves significant credit for his courage, and for writing The Terror Presidency, which described in detail his efforts to rein in Addington, Gonzales, and, ultimately, Cheney and Bush.

But he’s dead wrong to suggest that an Obama Administration should forget the past.

The first thing that struck me about Goldsmith’s piece is that, other than the headline (which most likely was written by someone at WaPo, not Goldsmith himself), he bends over backwards not to use the word “torture”: Instead, he uses a number of increasingly ridiculous euphemisms:  “what many view as the Bush administration’s harsh, abusive and illegal interrogation program,” “interrogation and related programs,” “wartime decisions,” “aggressive tactics,” “politically sensitive counterterrorism actions,” “mistakes” and “ways that seemed reasonable at the time but now seem inappropriate.”

Goldsmith apparently can’t bring himself to admit that the Bush Administration actually tortured people.  It’s not hard to recognize the reason for his reluctance:  prior to becoming Assistant Attorney General, Goldsmith held other posts, including in the Office of the General Counsel in the Pentagon.  Despite his decision to withdraw the Yoo memo, he could face legal jeopardy should any future investigation recommend prosecution.  So, as he himself acknowledges, it is in his interest to argue against any investigation.

But there are greater problems with Goldsmith’s arguments than merely self-interest.  The first is his suggestion that “Second-guessing lawyers’ wartime decisions under threat of criminal and ethical sanctions may sound like a good idea to those who believe those lawyers went too far in the fearful days after Sept. 11, 2001.”  The irony, of course, is that it was Goldsmith himself who was one of the first to second-guess Addington and Yoo.  His June 14, 2004 decision to withdraw Yoo’s memo was the beginning of the end of the Bush Administration’s unfettered license to do as it saw fit with those it detained.  For Goldsmith now to suggest that others should not do what he already did is at best inconsistent and at worst, smacks of a cover up of other memos or actions that have not yet seen the light of day.

The second is Goldsmith’s attempt to further muddy the waters by suggesting that current investigations by Congress, Justice, and the CIA should also look at Congress’s role and potential illegalities approved under the Clinton Administration.  Although I agree with Goldsmith that Clinton-era officials must be held accountable for approving the rendition of drug offenders, it is a bit disingenuous to suggest that the policies of the Clinton Administration should be put on the same footing as those of its successor.  To assign equal weight to Clinton- and Bush-era policies is not unlike suggesting that someone who smokes pot occasionally should be subjected to the same level of accountability as a drug kingpin.

The third and by far most significant problem with Goldsmith’s piece is his suggestion that any investigation and/or prosecution would lead “many government lawyers to be more risk averse and politically sensitive than ever. . . .The lesson learned by many at the [CIA] is that politically sensitive counterterrorism actions should be avoided, even if they are deemed legal and even if they have the express approval of political officials. We are going to be living with this skittishness for a long time, to the detriment of our security.”

To begin with, Goldsmith’s argument that government lawyers might be more “risk averse” and “politically sensitive” in the future ignores the fact that Bush-era lawyers (with the exception of Alberto Mora and Goldsmith himself) did what they did because they didn’t want the wrath of Cheney, Addington, and Gonzales brought down on their heads.  They understood that challenging the Administration’s stated determination to shred existing laws prohibiting torture and war crimes would quickly end their careers as government lawyers.

Such fears weren’t unfounded.  In some cases, such as that of Jesselyn Radack, who challenged the some of Administration’s actions during the detention of “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh, the Administration not only pushed people out of government, but tried to blackball them with potential future employers.  In Radack’s case, they even put her on the no-fly list.

To put it another way, part of the problem with what happened over the past eight years is that so many lawyers were exactly what Goldsmith suggests they shouldn’t be: utterly risk averse and politically sensitive.  They didn’t speak out because they feared the consequences.  It’s not like Goldsmith didn’t understand this — he submitted his letter of resignation two days after he decided to withdraw Yoo’s memo and, in all likelihood, before he could be fired.

Goldsmith’s concern about limiting the ability of the CIA to conduct “politically sensitive counterterrorism operations” is equally supect.  Since Nuremberg, “legality” has never been a sufficent defense for committing war crimes and crimes against humanity.  The reality is that senior CIA officials were just as unwilling to stand up to the Administration’s desire to torture those in its custody.  In fact, some in the Agency, including Cofer Black, were eager to “take the gloves off” long before Yoo started drafting memoranda.

And as the recent controversy over the possible appointment of John Brennan to serve as CIA Director demonstrates, even those not directly involved in policy decisions are now viewed as accountable merely for being in the room when some of these decisions were discussed.

In the end, Goldsmith’s arguments simply don’t stand up to closer scrutiny.  They represent little more than a weak apologia for policies that he may slowed but nonetheless did not stop.  In fact, had Goldsmith stayed (and, in fairness, had he not been fired), he would have had to draft a replacement for the memo he withdrew.  Chances are that he would have drafted something not unlike that put forward by Dan Levin, his successor, which stated that the CIA could not be held criminally responsible for actions authorized by the Yoo memo.

It really is a shame that Goldsmith has chosen to tarnish his reputation by trying to protect the very people whom he once so courageously opposed.

Note:  As is usually the case when it comes to questions of the Bush Administration’s torture policies, Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side was indespensible in helping me reconstruct time lines and roles.

Related posts

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• What’s Missing at DNC: Torture, Guantanamo. . .and Cheney
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Over at TPM Cafe, Jane Mayer, author of The Dark Side, asks the same question that I’ve been asking:

While both McCain and Obama have spoken out against torture, neither has spelled out what he plans to do about holding Bush Administration officials accountable who may have committed or authorized crimes. Understandably, this is a toxic subject, reeking of political payback. But I have personally interviewed CIA officers who have said they refused to partake in the “enhanced interrogation” program because they feared that eventually it would lead to criminal charges. They had seen this happen before, and wanted nothing to do with it, even if it meant in some instances, leaving the CIA. The threat of prosecution clearly acted as a deterrent.

My question is what happens if there is no accountability for America’s first program of state-authorized torture? Does it send a green light to torture again when the next attack takes place? Is it an invitation to other forms of lawlessness by the U.S. Government? But, if top officials of the Bush Administration who were acting in what they believed to be the best interests of the country’s security, are now prosecuted, is that just? Will the public support it? Particularly if Obama is elected, wont this become exhibit A that the Democrats are soft on terrorism, and members of the “Blame-America-First” Club?

. . . [O]n a morning when accountability seems to have evaporated in the financial world - I’d like to know what we do about accountability at the top of our government for authorizing the abuse- and in some cases the killing of U.S.-held prisoners, all of which were criminal until the day before 9/11.

My answer is that we need to prosecute everyone responsible, from Bush down to the CIA agents, military interrogators, and even translators and medical personnel who participated.  It is not political payback, but justice — let us not forget the fundamental principle that came out of Nuremberg:  “I was just following orders” is no excuse for participation in heinous acts.

I suspect that the American people are going to want the Bushies held accountable for everything they’ve done, and that Republicans, who have spent so much time and effort lately running away from their President, will not be in a position to defend him or any of those responsible.

But let’s start from the top, not at the bottom as was done in Abu Ghraib.  We need to take down the twelve individuals who designed and implemented America’s first-ever Presidentially sanctioned torture regime:  Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft, Gonzales, Rumsfeld, Addington, Yoo, Flanigan, Haynes, Chertoff, Tenet, and Rice.  All of them knew what was happening.  All of them signed off on these policies.  All of them should go to jail.

As Mayer notes, accountability has evaporated under this disastrous regime.  We must do everything we can to ensure that it returns, not merely in financial matters, but across the board.

Image via Wikipedia, in the public domain.

Related posts

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When the history of the Bush Administration is written, few individuals will be held as responsible for its excesses as David Addington.  He is the G. Gordon Liddy of attorneys, a one man dirty tricks squad — except in his case, he wasn’t working outside the law, he was rewriting the law.

In an excerpt from Angler that ran in yesterday’s Washington Post, author Barton Gellman describes what happened when the Justice Department ruled that the warrantless surveillance program was illegal.  Cheney determined that the program should nonetheless be reauthorized and ordered Addington to get it done.

Addington opened the code-word-classified file on his computer. He had a presidential directive to rewrite.

It has been widely reported that Bush executed the March 11 order with a blank space over the attorney general’s signature line. That is not correct. For reasons both symbolic and practical, the vice president’s lawyer could not tolerate an empty spot where a mutinous subordinate should have signed. Addington typed a substitute signature line: “Alberto R. Gonzales.”

What Addington wrote for Bush that day was more transcendent than that. He drew up new language in which the president relied on his own authority to certify the program as lawful. Bush expressly overrode the Justice Department and any act of Congress or judicial decision that purported to constrain his power as commander in chief. Only Richard M. Nixon, in an interview after leaving the White House in disgrace, claimed authority so nearly unlimited.

The specter of future prosecutions hung over the program, now that Justice had ruled it illegal.  “Pardon was in the air,” said one of the lawyers involved.

It was possible to construct a case, he said, in which those who planned and carried out the program were engaged in a criminal conspiracy. That would be tendentious, this lawyer believed, but with a change of government it could not be ruled out.  “I’m sure when we leave office we’re all going to be hauled up before congressional committees and grand juries,” Addington told one colleague in disgust.

Addington may only be a minion, but particularly effective henchmen often can be as dangerous and destructive as their dark lords.  Cheney made the decisions that led to torture, rendition, indefinite detention, and other such abominations, but Addington gave Cheney the legal cover to justify his actions as within the law.

As Jane Mayer notes in The Dark Side, Addington’s interpretation of the law was, in essence, that there was no law, only executive authority:

The Bush legal team, as former New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis observed, spent an extraordinary amount of effort figuring out how to steer top administration officials around criminal conduct.  Their “memos,” Lewis wrote, “read like the advice of a mob lawyer to a Mafia don on how to skirt the law and stay out of prison.  Avoiding prosecution is literally a theory of the memoranda.”  Behind these contortions was the reality that the White House lawyers, like crminial litigators, were using their skills to provide rationales for a path their clients had already taken.

Let’s not mince words here.  What Addington, John Yoo, and other Administration lawyers did was nothing less than criminal behavior.  If a private organization were to act in this way, federal authorities would not hesitate to prosecute it under the Racketeering in Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO):

Under RICO, a person who is a member of an enterprise that has committed any two of 35 crimes—27 federal crimes and 8 state crimes—within a 10-year period can be charged with racketeering. Those found guilty of racketeering can be fined up to $25,000 and/or sentenced to 20 years in prison per racketeering count. . . . Under the law, racketeering activity means:

• Any violation of state statutes against gambling, murder, kidnapping, arson, robbery, bribery, extortion, dealing in obscene matter, or dealing in a controlled substance or listed chemical (as defined in the Controlled Substances Act);
• Any act of bribery, counterfeiting, theft, embezzlement, fraud, dealing in obscene matter, obstruction of justice, slavery, racketeering, gambling, money laundering, commission of murder-for-hire, and several other offenses covered under the Federal criminal code (Title 18);
• Embezzlement of union funds;
• Bankruptcy or securities fraud;
• Drug trafficking;
• Money laundering and related offenses;
• Bringing in, aiding or assisting aliens in illegally entering the country (if the action was for financial gain);
• Acts of terrorism.

Pattern of racketeering activity requires at least two acts of racketeering activity, one of which occurred after the effective date of this chapter and the last of which occurred within ten years (excluding any period of imprisonment) after the commission of a prior act of racketeering activity.

I’m not a lawyer, but I would argue that Cheney and Addington (and others in the Administration) committed at least four such acts:  conspiracy to murder (CIA personnel may have, as a result of their use of “vigorous” interrogations promoted by Cheney and Addington, been responsible for the death of at least six detainees); kidnapping (the rendition program was essentially a federally sanctioned kidnap operation); fraud (inserting the signature of Alberto Gonzales instead of John Ashcroft); and obstruction of justice (as Gellman notes above, Addington, at Cheney’s instruction, attempted to override a Justice Department determination that the warrantless surveillance program was illegal).  That means they’re eligible.

Before you start arguing that the RICO statute cannot be used against government officials, know this:

In June 1984, the Key West Police Department in Monroe County, FL was declared a criminal Enterprise under the Federal RICO statutes after a lengthy United States Department of Justice investigation. Several high-ranking officers of the department, including Deputy Police Chief Raymond Cassamayor, were arrested on federal charges of running a protection racket for illegal cocaine smugglers.  At trial, a witness testified he routinely delivered bags of cocaine to the Deputy Chief’s office at City Hall.

To paraphrase Pogo, we have met the government and it is the mob.

Photo:  Getty Images via Daylife

Related posts

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So far we’ve seen dozens of speakers at the Democratic National Convention.  They’ve attacked Bush and McCain.  They’ve touted solutions to energy and climate change.  They’ve talked about Supreme Court justices and choice.  They’ve talked getting out of Iraq, and winning the war against the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan.  A few have even mentioned, in passing, that the United States needs to rebuild its relationship with allies, once agan leading rather than dictating to the rest of the world.

But there is one set of issues that we haven’t heard about yet — not once in two days of banal blathering.

Call it the destruction of American values.  It includes a number of things.

Like torture.

Guantanamo.

Abu Ghraib.

Indefinite detention of American citizens.

Denial of habeas corpus.

Waterboarding.

Rendition.

Black sites.

It’s as if the books by Jane Meyer, Jack Goldsmith, Philippe Sands, and so many others have gone right down the memory hole.

Where’s the anger at this desecration of everything America supposedly stands for?  Where’s the condemnation of the Bush Administration’s trashing of the Constitution?  Where are the demands that these things stop, and stop immediately?

And where are the attacks on the man who most needs to answer for his role in not just allowing, but promoting these abominations?  Where is the condemnation and vilification of Dick Cheney?

There isn’t a politician more unpopular in America today.  More importantly, there isn’t anyone more responsible for the trashing of America’s reputation in the world.

Yet after two days, we’ve heard nothing about him or his comprehensive attack on human rights and civil liberties.  Nothing about his single-minded shredding of the Bill of Rights, Geneva Conventions, and Convention against Torture.  Nothing about waterboarding, sleep deprivation, the use of dogs, or forced confinement.  Nothing about the fact that our allies now believe that this Administration has committed war crimes.

We’ve heard plenty about windmills and wages, but nothing about Cheney’s conscious destruction of American values.

In less than a week, Dick Cheney will take the Darth Vader world tour to the Republican National Convention in St. Paul.  In his primetime speech, he will call Democrats weak, inept, and unwilling to face down “evil.”

If the Democrats fail to call him out on his own evil this week, he’ll be right.

Are Democrats afraid?  Are they unwilling to confront Bush, Cheney, and McCain on foreign policy?   Are they afraid of John McCain because he keeps reminding people on every possible occasion that he was a POW?

There’s a simple way to handle this.  All the Democrats have to say is that the Bush Administration believes that it doesn’t torture.  Then talk about all the things that they now do that the North Vietnamese did to John McCain.  And then point out that according to George Bush and Dick Cheney, John McCain wasn’t tortured. And then say how dare they implement polices once used against our brave servicemen and women.  And also make sure that people know that John McCain actually sanctions torture, as long as it’s committed by the CIA.

It’s the truth.  It reminds Americans of what we stand for without dragging them through the muck and horror of the past seven years.  It also has the advantage of putting both McCain and the Bushies on the defensive.

We’ve heard that Obama-Biden will be different, that they will no longer concede the high ground on foreign policy issues to the Republicans.  But if they never mention torture, Guantanamo, or any of the other terrors that Cheney, Addington, Yoo and company have inflicted on America and the world, then they are just as fearful and timorous as past candidates.

And next week, the Republicans will have free reign to make them look like apologists and traitors.

And in November, Barack Obama will lose.

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I took some time today to read John McCain’s 1973 account of his confinement in Vietnam, as published by U.S. News and World Report.  It is, as you can imagine, difficult to read:  McCain is unblinking in his portrayal of how he and others were treated (and unfiltered in his opinion of his captors).

I did this neither to question whether or not his account of the cross in the dirt is accurate, nor to question his courage or honor. I find no utility in pursuing the former (I think he deserves the benefit of the doubt) and very much believe that he and others deserve our respect and admiration for what they went through.

Rather, my purpose is to explore further the contrast between what happened to him in Vietnam and what the Bush Administration has done in the war on terror.  If you’re new to the blog, you can find more on this here and here.

I’d like to acknowledge up front that these passages are not a complete account of McCain’s captivity.  My intent is to highlight two elements of the North Vietnamese treatment of McCain:  confinement and torture, and then look at what the Bush Administration has said and done.

Let’s start with confinement.

McCain, describing conditions from March 1968 (the link in the story is to photos of the cell in which he was held):

I remained in solitary confinement from that time on for more than two years. I was not allowed to see or talk to or communicate with any of my fellow prisoners. My room was fairly decent-sized—I’d say it was about 10 by 10. The door was solid. There were no windows. The only ventilation came from two small holes at the top in the ceiling, about 6 inches by 4 inches. The roof was tin and it got hot as hell in there. The room was kind of dim—night and day—but they always kept on a small light bulb, so they could observe me. I was in that place for two years.

As far as this business of solitary confinement goes—the most important thing for survival is communication with someone, even if it’s only a wave or a wink, a tap on the wall, or to have a guy put his thumb up. It makes all the difference.

It’s vital to keep your mind occupied, and we all worked on that. Some guys were interested in mathematics, so they worked out complex formulas in their heads—we were never allowed to have writing materials. Others would build a whole house, from basement on up. I have more of a philosophical bent. I had read a lot of history. I spent days on end going back over those history books in my mind, figuring out where this country or that country went wrong, what the U. S. should do in the area of foreign affairs. I thought a lot about the meaning of life.

It was easy to lapse into fantasies. I used to write books and plays in my mind, but I doubt that any of them would have been above the level of the cheapest dime novel.

People have asked me how we could remember detailed things like the tap code, numbers, names, all sorts of things. The fact is, when you don’t have anything else to think about, no outside distractions, it’s easy. Since I’ve been back, it’s very hard for me to remember simple things, like the name of someone I’ve just met.

During one period while I was in solitary, I memorized the names of all 335 of the men who were then prisoners of war in North Vietnam. I can still remember them.

McCain, about events in June 1970:

The pressure continued on us to see antiwar delegations. By early in June I was moved away from Colonel Finley to a room that they called “Calcutta,” about 50 yards away from the nearest prisoners. It was 6 feet by 2 feet with no ventilation in it, and it was very, very hot. During the summer I suffered from heat prostration a couple or three times, and dysentery. I was very ill. Washing facilities were nonexistent. My food was cut down to about half rations. Sometimes I’d go for a day or so without eating.

McCain, about what happened in March 1971 after prisoners attempted to hold a church service:

Later in March they came in and took three or four of us out of every one of the seven rooms until they got 36 of us out. We were put in a camp we called “Skid Row,” a punishment camp. We stayed there from March until August, when we came back for about four weeks because of flooding conditions around Hanoi, and then we went back out again until November.

They didn’t treat us badly there. The guards had permission to knock us around if we were unruly. However, they did not have permission to start torturing us for propaganda statements. The rooms were very small, about 6 feet by 4 feet, and we were in solitary again.

Now let’s turn once more to Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side.  The following account is what Abu Zubayda, a self-professed member of Al Qaeda, told the International Committee of the Red Cross.  As Mayer herself notes, he “clearly had political and self-serving reasons to exaggerate his mistreatment.”  But also keep in mind that much of Zubayda’s story  — particularly the timetable he provided and the terminology he said his captors used — fits into the larger narrative Mayer contructs of events elsewhere, particularly decisions made back in Washington.

While the ICRC would neither confirm nor deny the details [of their report], other sources familiar with the report say that Abu Zubayda described being kept for prolonged spans of time in a cage that he called “a tiny coffin.” . . .[His] “hard time” began when he was locked into the “tiny coffy” for hours on end, which he described as excruciatingly painful.  It was too small for him to stand or stretch out, so small he said he had to double up his limbs in a fetal positoin. . .[which] caused his wounds to reopen.  he described the box as black, both inside and out, and said that it was covered in towels, which he thought was an effort to constrict the flow of air inside. . . .A source familiar with Zubayda’s account described the tiny coffin box as “unbearable, most terrible.”

. . .Zubayda told the ICRC that the cell in which he was isolated during this period looked out directly at the “tiny coffin” and another slightly larger cage.  These two boxes loomed large in his imagination, even when he was not confined in them, blocking his line of sight as an omnipresent threat.  One unconfirmed account desribed teh CIA interrogation team as building a coffin in which they reportedly threatened to bury Zubayda alive. . . .They reportedly took his clothing as punishment, and reduced his human interaction to a single daily visit in which they would say simply, “You know what I want,” and then leave.

This is only one of a number of such accounts.  And as Mayer and others have noted, this particular “treatment” was meted out to someone who was subsequently discovered not to be a major player in al Qaeda, and mentally ill.

Here’s what Article 21 of the Third Geneva Convention (to which the United States is a party) has to say about the question of “close confinement”:

The Detaining Power may subject prisoners of war to internment. It may impose on them the obligation of not leaving, beyond certain limits, the camp where they are interned, or if the said camp is fenced in, of not going outside its perimeter. Subject to the provisions of the present Convention relative to penal and disciplinary sanctions, prisoners of war may not be held in close confinement except where necessary to safeguard their health and then only during the continuation of the circumstances which make such confinement necessary.

Draw your own conclusions.

Two more questions for John McCain:

Are those detained by the United States in Guantanamo, Afghanistan and elsewhere — those whom President Bush has declared “unlawful combatants” — protected by the Geneva Conventions?  If not, why?

Given that Vietnam refused to abide by the Conventions, leading to their mistreatment and abuse of you and others, why should individuals detained by the United States not receive the very protections you were denied?

Part Two — McCain v. Bush on torture — will follow tomorrow.

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Set aside Andrew Sullivan’s obsession with the cross in the dirt story.**  He hits on a much more important point today:

[What the Vietnamese] deployed against McCain emerges in all the various accounts. It involved sleep deprivation, the withholding of medical treatment, stress positions, long-time standing, and beating. Sound familiar?

According to the Bush administration’s definition of torture, McCain was therefore not tortured.  Cheney denies that McCain was tortured; as does Bush. So do John Yoo and David Addington and George Tenet. . . .McCain talks of the agony of long-time standing. A quarter century later, Don Rumsfeld was putting his signature to memos lengthening the agony of “long-time standing” that victims of Bush’s torture regime would have to endure.  These torture techniques are, according to the president of the United States, merely “enhanced interrogation.”

. . .[T]he techniques used are, according to the president, tools to extract accurate information. And so the false confessions that McCain was forced to make were, according to the logic of the Bush administration, as accurate as the “intelligence” we have procured from “interrogating” terror suspects. Feel safer?

Here’s what Jane Meyer says in The Dark Side about the decision to define torture downward:

Shortly after Zubayda’s capture, John Yoo was summoned to the White House. . . .[Addington, Yoo, and others] tossed around ideas about exactly what sorts of pain could be inflicted on Zubayda.  The CIA had sent a wish list of “stress techniques” it wanted to use. . . .

To blur [the] bright legal line [in the Convention against Torture's definition of torture as "severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental"] the White House lawyers turned not to law but to language.  The soft spot in the CAT as they saw it, was the definition of torture. . . .[W]hat if the Bush Administration decribed the psychic stress and physical duress they hoped to exert on captives as something else? . . .The redefinition. . .enabled Cheney to describe waterboarding. . .as “a no-brainer for me,” while at the same time insisting “We don’t torture.”

[snip]

The Bush Administration’s corruption of language had a curiously corrupting impact on the public debate, as well.  It was all but impossible to have a national conversation about torture if top administration officials denied they were engaged in it. . . .

On August 1, 2002, in an infamous memo written largely by Yoo. . .the [Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel] defined the crime of torture [so as] to make it all but impossible to commit.  They argued that torture required the intent to inflict suffering “equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodly function, or even death.”  Mental suffering, they wrote, had to “result in significant psychological harm” and “be of significant duration, e.g., lasting for months or years.”  This. . .stretched a [U.S.} reservation to the CAT that the Senate added in 1988 at the urging of the first President Bush, requiring mental pain to be "prolonged" to qualify as torture. . . .[I]t was tailor-made to decriminalize waterboarding.

So I think we have the answer to Sullivan’s question.

Wouldn’t it be great, though if a White House correspondent were to ask Dana Perino the question?  Or even better, ask Dubya?

Helen Thomas, white courtesy phone please.

**Sorry, folks, but questioning a story that by its very nature cannot be either verified or disproved — and involves McCain’s time as a POW and his faith –  is a no-win for Obama, his surrogates, or the blogosphere.  If I were McCain, I’d be saying “bring it on.”

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