Patterico's Pontifications

11/7/2007

I Completely Forgot About Dolpermann’s Broadcast Fabrications Concerning Waterboarding and Torture

Filed under: General — WLS @ 9:26 pm



Posted by WLS

I got completely sidetracked in my last blast at Dolpermann, so I’m going to try again.

Ok, this DOJ Policy MEMO on torture was written by Daniel Levin, who took over as Acting Assistant Attorney General For the Office of Legal Counsel, following the resignation of Jack Goldsmith in June 2004. 

Dolpermann made a big deal of the fact that while drafting this policy, Levin decided to have the military subject him to waterboarding so that he might better understand the procedure and the sensation of the person undergoing the technique during interrogation.  Doplermann then had this to say about Levin:

Water boarding is torture, Daniel Levin was to write.    Daniel Levin was an astonishingly patriotic American and a brave man.  Brave not just with words or with stances, even in a dark time when that kind of bravery can usually be scared or bought off.  Charged, as you heard in a story from ABC News last Friday, with assessing the relative legality … Mr Levin decided that the simplest and the most honest way to evaluate them was to have them enacted upon himself. 

Daniel Levin took himself to a military base and let himself be water boarded…  Daniel Levin should have a statue in his honor in Washington right now.  Instead, he was forced out as acting assistant attorney general nearly three years ago…. 

Water boarding, he said, is torture.  Legally it is torture.  Practically it is torture.  Ethically it is torture.  And he wrote it down.  Wrote it down somewhere where it could be contrasted with the words of this country‘s 43rd president.  The United States of America does not torture.  Made you into a liar, Mr. Bush.  Made you into, if anybody had the guts to pursue it, a criminal, Mr. Bush.  Water boarding had already been used on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and a couple of other men none of us really care about, except, sir for the one detail you had forgotten, that there are rules.    

The only problem with this is that almost none of it is true.  About the only true part is that Levin had himself subject to waterboarding.   But, the same report from ABC News that Doplermann relied upon — written by Jan Crawford Greenberg and Ariane de Vogue — cited the same sources who described Levin’s effort has saying that Levin told the White House:

“waterboarding could be illegal torture unless performed in a highly limited way and with close supervision. And, sources told ABC News, he believed the Bush Administration had failed to offer clear guidelines for its use.”  

So, I guess maybe Levin didn’t write down anywhere that waterboarding is legally, morally, and ethically torture. 

Oh well — minor drafting error on Keith’s part while banging away on his keyboard.  

There is another issue involved here having to do with a footnote that is said to have been insisted upon by Gonzalez in the new Policy Memo issued by OLC under Levin.  I haven’t nailed that one down yet, but I think Dolpermann might have added 2+2 and come up with 22 again. 

More to follow.

I’ll try to clear that up later.

 

14 Responses to “I Completely Forgot About Dolpermann’s Broadcast Fabrications Concerning Waterboarding and Torture”

  1. Does it really surprise you that Olberdouche would blatantly lie on his show?

    JD (49efd3)

  2. Talk about missing the forest for the trees.

    In case you haven’t figured it out, Levin was trying to find a teeny wiggle room to keep from putting in writing the obvious conclusion that our interrogation methods are criminal. Like: there just might, maybe be some way waterboarding is not torture. That wasn’t enough for Gonzo, who insisted on a footnote that the previous work of John Testicle-Crusher Yoo was not totally insane. Then they fired Levin.

    Is this site starting a campaign to pardon the Japanese guards we convicted of waterboarding? Until then, I think you ought to lay low.

    Andrew J. Lazarus (b8bc95)

  3. AJL – You are now mind reading for Levin? Regardless of what you say, Olbermann flat out made shit up. Maybe he had John Edwards come channel Levin for him.

    JD (49efd3)

  4. All the lefties have got that 1947 talking point about Yukio Asano down –

    Defendant: Asano, Yukio

    Docket Date: 53/ May 1 – 28, 1947, Yokohama, Japan

    Charge: Violation of the Laws and Customs of War: 1. Did willfully and unlawfully mistreat and torture PWs. 2. Did unlawfully take and convert to his own use Red Cross packages and supplies intended for PWs.

    Specifications:beating using hands, fists, club; kicking; water torture; burning using cigarettes; strapping on a stretcher head downward

    Verdict: 15 years CHL

    Has anyone seen a transcript?

    daleyrocks (906622)

  5. AJL — now go read my follow up post, and you’ll note that Yoo wrote two memos that specifically authorized waterboarding on the basis that it was not “torture” as defined in his August 2002 memo.

    Also note that Jack Goldsmith, who withdrew Yoo’s Aug. 2002 memo, never withdrew the two Yoo memos that authorized waterboarding, because he concluded that it was not “torture” as defined in the statute.

    Now note that Levin was in the process of rewriting at least one of these two memos, to more closely rely on his replacement for the August 2002 Yoo memo, and he concluded that if done in a certain fashion, waterboarding would not be torture.

    So, it looks like a clean sweep for the Admin. Waterboarding is not torture.

    But we have some nice parting gifts for you.

    WLS (bafbcb)

  6. WLS – Piffle. Their objections have nothing to do with the law, or facts. It is about feelings, and emotion.

    JD (49efd3)

  7. JD wrote: WLS – Piffle. Their objections have nothing to do with the law, or facts. It is about feelings, and emotion.

    It’s more than that. It’s about hatred for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney so intense, so vehement, so blinding, they would rather see thousands of Americans burn than live with the knowledge that a person plotting mass killing of civilians was made uncomfortable.

    I have yet to hear anyone who objects to waterboarding answer as to what they would do in the “ticking time bomb” scenario a la 24. Without fail, they change the subject, or say “it doesn’t work,” ignoring Michael Schauer’s admission of successful use of the tactic against KSM. They do everything but put their hands over their ears and sing “Lalalalalala I can’t hear youuuuu!”

    L.N. Smithee (bbb6cc)

  8. Fake but accurate, Andrew J?

    Pablo (99243e)

  9. I’m still waiting for someone to tell me that they think the guys who waterboarded Khalid Sheik Mohammed should be prosecuted.

    Come on, guys! If it’s a crime, if they tortured him, they should be prosecuted, right? Let’s all get on the record here.

    Pablo (99243e)

  10. KSM’s confessions included false confessions, such as his claim to have personally beheaded Daniel Pearl.

    I don’t see how filling someone’s lungs with water to the point that they feel they are about to drown could fail to be torture. Evan Wallach’s recounting of U.S. Court cases on the subject seems to confirm that it is:

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/02/AR2007110201170_pf.html

    Jim Lippard (027860)

  11. Jim, you are misrepresenting waterboarding. The subjects’ lungs are not filled with water. That’s a fabrication on your part.

    SPQR (6c18fd)

  12. As I understand it, when waterboarding is done incorrectly it can result in water in the lungs. That’s why the revised memos/orders supposedly require more precision on how waterboarding done. I think it would be torture to fill someone’s lungs with water but that’s not the way waterboarding is designed to work.

    By analogy, it would be like claiming that getting an IV is torture because sometimes the IV needle withdraws from or perforates the vein, causing the area around the IV to balloon with fluid. In that instance, IVs hurt but that’s not how the technique is designed to work so it would be unfair to judge it by that standard.

    DRJ (5c60fb)

  13. Jim Lippard – I was going to be mean, but SPQR and DRJ already responded in nice, measured tones. Yes, there were false confessions. Even if we concede that point, it is utterly irrelevant. The point is to extract information. You have to be naive to think that they just take them at their word. They verify, and in general, they are rewarded/punished for telling the truth/lies.

    JD (49efd3)

  14. Jim.
    Gravity.
    Physics.
    Principles of fluids and gases.
    Decline.
    Water falls
    Oxygen gas rises.

    Sensation of drowning is not drowning.
    A wet dream about Jessica Simpson is a sensation regardless to whether the laundry needs to be done the next day.

    “I felt like I was drowning” says the Code Pink guy.
    OK
    So I know the left is all about validating feelings they agree we should have and then speaking the truth as they experience it to the power they do not currently hold…

    Jim, I’d gladly exchange a terrorist “feeling” he was drowning for the GPS coordinates of bin Laden… would you?

    SteveG (4e16fc)


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