Cheney under attack for backing 'drowning' torture

It is, indeed, a "no brainer".

If you think "a dunk in the water" does not constitute torture then you can safely be assumed to be the Vice President for Torture.

Cheney's remarks to the latest plump rabid right winger that he has agreed to be interviewed by - is this Vice President ever interviewed by anyone who might actually put him on the spot? - has set the cat amongst the pigeons.

Speaking with a talk show host at Tuesday's "open day" on the White House lawn, Mr Cheney - long an advocate of unfettered interrogation techniques by the CIA - agreed that "a dunk in water" for terrorist suspects was a "no-brainer" if it could save lives.

The proposition was put to him by Scott Hennen, who hosts a show in Fargo, North Dakota. "Well, it's a no-brainer for me," Mr Cheney replied. "But for a while, there I was being criticized as being the Vice-President for torture. We don't torture, that's not what we're involved in."

This is the nearest any member of the administration has ever come to admitting that the US is torturing suspects it is holding. Of course, in the same interview, the Vice President made clear that the US doesn't torture people. However, anyone who has read Gonzales' definition of what constitutes torture in the eyes of this administration realises that the US currently view as legal many acts that the rest of the civilised world clearly define as torture. Waterboarding being one of the prime examples.

And now we have the Vice President almost playfully referring to this disgraceful technique as "a dunk in the water".

The President joined the debate yesterday to state, again, that the US does not torture suspects; but we also know that the President refuses to say what interrogation techniques are used or to even state whether or not he considers waterboarding to be torture.

With his comments, Mr Cheney "has issued the Bush administration's first clear endorsement of a form of torture", said Human Rights Watch. They "contradict the views of the US Congress and the US Defence Department, as well as fundamental principles of international law".

In September the Pentagon issued a new field manual on intelligence interrogation that explicitly forbids the use of water boarding. On that occasion General Jeff Kimmons, the US Army's top intelligence officer, said that "no good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices. I think history tells us that".

The manual states that "torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment is never a morally permissible option, even in situations where lives depend on gaining information". Those who do use them, "lose moral legitimacy".

Cheney went on to describe the torture debate as "a little silly".

He cited the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the senior al-Qa'ida figure captured in Pakistan in 2003, who provided "enormously valuable information". Mr Cheney said: "you can have a fairly robust interrogation programme without torture. We've got that now".

There are too many innocent people who have been released who say they have been subjected to torture for us to take the Vice President's words - and those of the President - as anything other than the most cynical employment of semantics.

Neither can expect to be taken remotely seriously on this subject as long as they refuse to define what they mean by "torture".

As long as they refuse to define this we are perfectly justified in thinking that there must be a reason for this dreadful coyness. After all, this is a President who smirked when he told us that he was engaging in extrajudicial killings, and Cheney has fought to have torture techniques legalised.

Indeed, as I reported on 23 June, Bush asked, "Does torture work?" shortly before Abu Zubaydah was tortured. Of course, what happened to him was waterboarding, threats of death, the withholding of medication and many other techniques that, as far as I know, Bush might not consider torture at all.

Have two crueller men ever occupied the Oval office?

Certainly their protestations that they don't do torture whilst playfully discussing various illegal acts leads one to doubt it.

tag: Bush, Dick, Cheney, torture,