CIA Banned Water-boarding Last Year
[Guest post by DRJ]
Sometime last year, CIA Director Michael Hayden banned the use of water-boarding in interrogations despite new legislation that reportedly gave the CIA authority to use the technique:
“The controversial interrogation technique known as water-boarding, in which a suspect has water poured over his mouth and nose to stimulate a drowning reflex, has been banned by CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden, current and former CIA officials tell ABCNews.com.
The officials say Hayden made the decision at the recommendation of his deputy, Steve Kappes, and received approval from the White House to remove water-boarding from the list of approved interrogation techniques first authorized by a presidential finding in 2002.
The officials say the decision was made sometime last year but has never been publicly disclosed.
***
While new legislation reportedly gave the CIA the leeway to use water-boarding, current and former CIA officials said Gen. Hayden decided to take it off the list of about six “enhanced interrogation techniques.”
I assume this an administrative decision that can be changed by future CIA directors and/or presidential administrations, although it’s unlikely the rule will be changed absent extraordinary circumstances.
The information was disclosed to ABC News by “current and former CIA officials” who, if history is any indication, will not be prosecuted for the leak.
— DRJ
OT: I’m using the new beta Bloglines. A weird post showed up at about 8:27 PM Chicago time. It starts like this:
It ends like this:
Jim C. (a6819b) — 9/14/2007 @ 5:33 pmWeird. A draft version must have made it into Bloglines somehow. The final version is up.
Patterico (489e59) — 9/14/2007 @ 5:41 pmI think current and former CIA officials did it.
DRJ (4725f3) — 9/14/2007 @ 6:03 pmI think the CIA should have held out until Al-Queda banned decapitation, or at least required sharp blades so it would go quickly.
Our enemies laugh.
MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 9/14/2007 @ 6:23 pmDidn’t the very same Brian Ross tell us these “enhanced techniques” induced Khalid-Sheik Mohammed to spill his guts about an AQ plot in LA? That the CIA was unable to break KSM until he was waterboarded?
DubiousD (816a46) — 9/14/2007 @ 7:16 pmActually, this is good, for it left room on the list for the 9mm lobotomy.
Another Drew (8018ee) — 9/14/2007 @ 7:31 pmDubiousD,
Here’s the ABC News link that says KSM started talking only after being waterboarded, but some argue he would have talked anyway … with time.
DRJ (4725f3) — 9/14/2007 @ 7:47 pmBy the way, note that the ABC News link was updated yesterday with this information from an intelligence source:
How do those current and former intelligence sources find the time to work and also provide journalists with such juicy information?
DRJ (4725f3) — 9/14/2007 @ 7:51 pmHow do those current and former intelligence sources find the time to work and also provide journalists with such juicy information?
Another Drew (8018ee) — 9/14/2007 @ 7:56 pmWell, from the accuracy of the intel over the last decade or two, the answer is obvious, isn’t it?
DRJ, thanks for the link.
DubiousD (08930a) — 9/14/2007 @ 9:23 pmI never get tired of those folks who argue that torture reduces us to the levels of those we oppose. When during WWII did Americans start shoving people in ovens or have special troops to massacre civilians?
No wonder WWII was the last war we won. People still knew what was required to win.
Thomas Jackson (bf83e0) — 9/14/2007 @ 9:26 pmWell, Thomas, my Grandfather fought in WWII.
In Okinawa among other places. He was a Marine.
One of his more lovely jobs was a flamethrower man (life expectancy in minutes, a miracle he survived).
He’d rappel down cliffs to blast caves. Sometimes Japanese soldiers were there waiting to kill US troops and Marines. The Japanese were great for booby trapping bodies, themselves, Americans, etc. They fought to the last.
And sometimes the caves were filled with women and kids. There was no way to know.
THAT was WWII. Along with Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and 50,000 dead in the Norman Hedgerows in the months of June-July 1944.
I’ve been “tortured” more during all-nighters at a server-farm (noisy, cold, uncomfortable).
Prisoners now know they are basically exempt from any rough treatment, and will be literally treated with kid gloves. No hangings like FDR did with German infiltrators (out of uniform). Meanwhile OUR guys get beheaded after torture.
Real torture. Disemboweling. Cutting off genitals. Cutting of other body parts. Then beheading.
Pouring water over someone? Who CARES?
We are not serious.
Mark my words, this infantile and fantasy-world attitude will bite us in the ass when we lose cities. And Joe Average realizes he is on his own — that the Law and Government exist ONLY to protect terrorists and NOT him.
You won’t like it much when Joe Average acts like the Korean shopkeepers during the King Riots.
Jim Rockford (e09923) — 9/14/2007 @ 9:38 pmI’m frankly disgusted…
In my eyes, if hooking up a guy to a car battery via his balls gets us info that saves even one life, I have just two things to tell you…
Red is positive, black is negative.
Scott Jacobs (a1de9d) — 9/14/2007 @ 10:52 pmAren’t you forgetting our win in the Gulf War, Thomas?
alphie (99bc18) — 9/14/2007 @ 10:52 pmAlphie,
We’re still fighting the gulf war.
Gerald A (077277) — 9/15/2007 @ 2:08 amHaha, Gerald,
What a wonderful idea.
Why don’t we declare war on Japan and Germany again and see if can’t move another win into the loss column?
alphie (99bc18) — 9/15/2007 @ 2:47 amWhy don’t we declare war on Japan and Germany again and see if can’t move another win into the loss column?
How come you didn’t suggest Korea and Vietnam, Staunch Brayer, since those wars were messed up by your heroes?
Paul (5efd01) — 9/15/2007 @ 3:37 amJim Rockford, what we need is more people who act like the Korean shopkeepers during the King riots – and people who have it planned out aheady of time so they don’t wait a day responding before they’re prepared to defend themselves in time of crisis.
luagha (2c3950) — 9/15/2007 @ 4:32 amIf you want to see what waterboardling looks like ge ahold of a copy of Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le Fou. In the climactic scene Jean-Paul Belmondo, captured by a group of freelance terrorists, is waterboarded. This film was made in 1965.
Godard featured waterboarding in his 1960 film Le Petit Soldat as well, but I’m not sure if that’s available in Region 1 format as yet.
David Ehrenstein (070665) — 9/15/2007 @ 5:10 amPaul:
Alphie is still trying out for the role of Hildabeast understudy after he lost his job as Michael Moore stand in. He’s just some zit faced 17 year old who knows nada.
Thomas Jackson (bf83e0) — 9/15/2007 @ 9:18 amHa, ha, all the Jack Bauer wannabes talking about how tough their Fathers were before they started fluoridating the water. They sell special kinds of p0rn for your types, no need to kill a million Iraqi civilians for that BDSM jones. With such great excuses: “If hooking up one Jew-bolshevik to a car battery…” I think we’ve heard it all before.
Just for the record, besides morality, the problem with torture is that it gets everybody to talk, including “information” that isn’t true. I suppose if you want to keep everyone in a state of fear based on imaginary plots “revealed” under torture, that’s a feature, not a bug. If you need accurate intelligence, it’s a loser plan. (Even the Nazis knew that.)
Andrew J. Lazarus (126965) — 9/15/2007 @ 11:15 amThe way the dhimmi minds spin ….
Waterboarding is not torture. We are not Nazis. We are not making war on anyone the way the Nazis did. We have not killed one million Iraqi civilians. Can’t you get DailyKos to give you some sane talking points?
nk (474afa) — 9/15/2007 @ 12:22 pmWe thought waterboarding was torture when it was done to us. I forgot that torture was now based on who-does-it distinctions.
When the facts disagree with our (especially Bush’s) knowledge that we are always pure and always in the right, well, the facts have to be ignored.
Incidentally, I don’t believe anyone has claimed that we have killed one million Iraqis. The overwhelming number of casualties were inflicted by other Iraqis. For an explanation of why it is incredible that the total number of such deaths has reached one million, I refer you to the previous paragraph.
Andrew J. Lazarus (126965) — 9/15/2007 @ 3:07 pmFor an explanation of why it is incredible that the total number of such deaths has reached one million
It is incredible because it is not worthy of belief. It is based on a poll, with a sample of roughly 1700 Iraqis, asked how many relatives they had lost, and probability theory applied to extrapolate one million. As methodology to determine death rate it is as relevant as using a desk ruler to measure weight.
In any event, I am sorry that I used “dhimmis” in referring to the Left. I gave them too much credit for sincerity. They care as much about Iraqi dead and waterboarded prisoners as Osama bin Laden cares about sub-prime mortgages and the Kyoto Protocol. They are simply rhetorical clubs they use against those they hate — the President, Republicans,conservatives, America.
nk (474afa) — 9/15/2007 @ 3:29 pmnk, I know it’s dangerous to play Internet Liar’s Dice, but do you have some training on which to base your belief that the 1MM dead Iraqis survey’s methodology is worthless? It made sense to me, although I can see reasons it might be hard to get a truly random sample. Your argument would work better if there were US government figures—but we don’t collect that particular metric. Incidentally, if you have a metal desk ruler and a reference object of known weight, you can measure weight by tying the objects to the end, measuring the bend when placed partly over the desk edge, and comparing. Physics is a long time ago, but I believe until the ruler snaps, the relationship is theoretically linear (Hooke’s Law??).
That’s also a pretty good example of projection, that you call liberals “dhimmis” and then say they hate conservatives and America. I’d say there’s evidence that you hate liberals and America, there’s a plausible argument of 1MM Iraqi dead, and there’s very little evidence of anything you claim.
Andrew J. Lazarus (126965) — 9/15/2007 @ 5:27 pmWe thought waterboarding was torture when it was done to us
I thought it was done to some of our troops by our troops, as part of training in case of capture.
Beheading never made it into the list of things to practice and prepare for.
MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 9/15/2007 @ 7:06 pmdo you have some training on which to base your belief that the 1MM dead Iraqis survey’s methodology is worthless?
I had dinner with a statistician a week ago? 😉
Dana Pico says it just fine for me:
[Y]ou can produce all kinds of studies, but a study counting deaths in Iraq would be a study which would enumerate something with physical evidence.
Iraq had a population of about 25,000,000 before the war; for Iraq to have lost a million souls would be to have lost 4% of their population. That would be roughly half of what Germany lost in World War II, and more than Japan lost, percentagewise, after years of arial bombardment (including the firebombiongs of Kobe, Tokyo, Dresden and Cologne, along with two nuclear attacks, and combat by massed armies, and almost all of it due, in Iraq, to small arms fire, car bombs and small explosives.
Of course, then comes the next problem: where are the bodies? Cremation is very rare in Muslim societies, so a millon Iraqi deaths should result in a million bodies and a million graves. Where are they? With all of the people and organizations and governments which would like to see the Islamists triumph, that would like to see the US defeated, surely someone would have engaged in teh relatively simple process of counting the graves, to confirm such a hideous number — yet no one has.
Finally, we see in our newspapers, virtually every day, the stories about how terrible a day it was in Iraq, with 134 people killed in attacks, or 97 people dead, yet not once, not one single day, have we ever seen a report which would meet the average number of deaths per day required to reach a million in the sime since March of 2003.
A survey of something which should have physical evidence, yet has no physical evidence, is bogus.
Incidentally, if you have a metal desk ruler and a reference object of known weight, you can measure weight by tying the objects to the end, measuring the bend when placed partly over the desk edge, and comparing. Physics is a long time ago, but I believe until the ruler snaps, the relationship is theoretically linear (Hooke’s Law??).
I tried to weigh myself with your method but I just couldn’t hang to the ruler and keep it attached to the table at the same time. In the end I used the bathroom scale which uses Hooke’s Law on a commpression spring. Really, Andrew, just because census takers and poll takers use the digits 0 through 9 does not mean that they are doing the exact same thing.
nk (474afa) — 9/16/2007 @ 5:11 amnk, I know it’s dangerous to play Internet Liar’s Dice, but do you have some training on which to base your belief that the 1MM dead Iraqis survey’s methodology is worthless? It made sense to me, although I can see reasons it might be hard to get a truly random sample
It’s called simple math? Take the number of days since the war started, 1641 by my quick count, divide 1 million by 1641, and voila you get 609 and change. So in order for a million Iraqis to have died since the start of the war you’d have to average 609 deaths a day. If you can find any sane individual who actually thinks there are over 600 Iraqis dying every day in Iraq and no one noticing, I’ll give you a cookie.
Taltos (c99804) — 9/16/2007 @ 8:01 amMD in Philly: You’re saying “If we train our own elite troops to withstand this torture technique, then it isn’t torture.” Hunh?
NK and Taltos: I find reports that over two million Iraqis have left the country and another two million are internally displaced. Sucks for them, eh? And it’s easier to die than to move. I don’t see why 600 Iraqis can’t die every day by ones and two, living in the wrong neighborhood, or victims of robbery and rape in the many law-free zones. Maybe the number is high, but you can’t refute numbers by mere assertion. Do you really think that the dozens who do die are getting the hearse ride from the funeral home to the cemetery, and there aren’t that many hearses? The US has a deliberate practice of not estimating civilian casualties (much less other forms of violent death). The Iraqi Government doesn’t seem careful about collecting statistics either.
Nothing about this study’s design is obviously faulty. There could be errors: for example, they may have mis-estimated how many times the same death would be reported to them in the survey. But no one seems to be really looking at issues like that to do a recalibration. Instead you sound like the mayor in Jaws assuring everyone there’s no shark.
Andrew J. Lazarus (126965) — 9/16/2007 @ 11:29 amIf anywhere near 600 iraqis were dying every day, the streets would be awash in bodies even if they were spread around the country. Dead people don’t evaporate and the terrorists tend to like it when bodies are found. I’m not a statistician(thank god) so I don’t really care if the methodology is plausible, I want the answer to be correct.
Taltos (c99804) — 9/16/2007 @ 1:54 pmDavid Kane of IQSS at Harvard has been going over the methodology of the Lancet/Johns Hopkins group’s work and finds that it cannot exclude the null hypothesis.
Note that the Lancet originally published the work without any peer review at all.
Robin Roberts (6c18fd) — 9/16/2007 @ 1:59 pmTaltos,
A super-secret branch of the Food Services Division of Halliburton has flying squads which pick up the bodies within minutes of death. It then processes them into MREs and air drops them into remote areas of Afghanistan. It charges the U.S. government $1,325.00 per MRE, 50% of which is deposited into Dick Cheney’s offshore bank account.
nk (474afa) — 9/16/2007 @ 2:47 pmMr Lazarus, perhaps you think that all of those Iraqis were raised from the dead, as was your namesake, because without such, there remains the obvious question: where are the bodies?
For a million Iraqis to have been killed by the war (meaning: over the normal death rate for the population), there would have to be about a million excess graves. That is something which is physically countable, and would constitute absolute corroboration, yet, for some reason, no one seems interested in actually doing that job.
We ought to be absolutely tripping over the new graves, because parts of the country would be an absolute charnal house. Since some areas of Iraq are pretty much peaceful (think of the Kurdish areas), virtually all of the supposed 1,000,000 war-related deaths would have occurred in a much smaller area than the country as a whole.
But where are the graves? Why aren’t Dan Rather and Anderson Cooper out there, with teams of professionals, showing us these fields of the dead? Where are the French news services, from a country which opposed the war from day one? Why aren’t they out there, exposing that American perfidy and the brutal slaughter of the innocents?
There are studies about all kinds of things, and many don’t have an obviously checkable physical result, something which can be easily measured; this one does, yet, for some unknown reason, no one has bothered to actually measure it.
Of course, you’ve now added two million Iraqis who have up and left; now that’s 12% of the pre-war population, gone, a greater population rediction than Germany had in World War II. Heck, according to you, if we can continue this war for another twenty years or so, the whole country will be empty, and we can just walk in and take the oil.
Dana (556f76) — 9/16/2007 @ 4:36 pmDana,
Don’t waste your time. You can explain it to them but you can’t understand it for them. A willingness to believe the worst bullshit about America is the litmus test for the Left.
nk (474afa) — 9/16/2007 @ 6:15 pmMD in Philly: You’re saying “If we train our own elite troops to withstand this torture technique, then it isn’t torture.” Hunh?
I’m not necessarily saying it isn’t torture, if torture is defined as something uncomfortable which one would want to have stopped, but it is not quite the same as being a subject in Dr. Mengele’s lab or a prisoner held by Al Qaeda terrorists who plan to behead you.
I would have loved for someone to make it illegal in the United States to force an employee to routinely work sleep deprived and on one’s feet for 8 or more hours at a time.
MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 9/16/2007 @ 8:10 pmHello everybody, my name is Damion, and I’m glad to join your conmunity,
DamionKutaeff (d1cfe1) — 3/22/2008 @ 12:19 pmand wish to assit as far as possible.