Our Torture Is Legal AND We Don't Do It
CIA Head Defends Interrogation Practices
By SOPHIA TAREEN, AP
CHICAGO (AP) — CIA Director Michael Hayden defended his agency's interrogation practices Tuesday as political pressure mounted on President Bush's attorney general nominee to reject a technique that allegedly was part of the CIA's interrogation program.
"Our programs are as lawful as they are valuable," Hayden said to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. "The best sources of information on terrorists and their plans are the terrorists themselves."
Hayden said "the irreplaceable nature of that intelligence is the sole reason we have rendition, detention and interrogation programs."
Several senior Senate Democrats had vowed to vote against the president's nominee for attorney general, Michael Mukasey, unless he stated unequivocally that the practice of "waterboarding" is torture. That would render the practice illegal. The U.S. military already forbids it.
In September ABC News reported that Hayden had banned waterboarding in CIA interrogations in 2006. Agency officials have neither confirmed nor denied waterboarding prisoners in the past, and they would not confirm the reported ban.
After his remarks in Chicago, an audience member asked Hayden: "Is waterboarding torture and will you continue to waterboard? Yes or no."
In his answer, Hayden briefly discussed constitutional law, the United Nations Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Convention before ending: "Judge Mukasey cannot nor can I answer your question in the abstract. I need to understand the totality of the circumstances in which this question is being posed before I can give you an answer."
It is believed that fewer than five high-value detainees have been subjected to waterboarding, and the technique has not been used since 2003.
Waterboarding simulates drowning by immobilizing a prisoner with his head lower than his feet and pouring water over his face. Hayden said harsher interrogation techniques are used in "small, carefully run operations" that have been applied to fewer than 35 prisoners since 2002.
In a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats late Tuesday, Mukasey called waterboarding "repugnant" but said he didn't know if it is illegal because he hasn't been cleared to receive a classified briefing on it. If after further study he finds that it is, he would rescind any federal legal opinion that allows its use, he wrote.
Associated Press writer Pamela Hess in Washington contributed to this report.
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www.VelvetRevolution.us
they keep talking - but it's not them that gets tortured
for what it's worth...
i was in London for the 50th anniversary of VJ day, victory japan day, when the allies won the 2nd world war against the Axis powers.
i had missed VE Day by i think a few weeks, but somehow i went into town and it was a full on parade, even the Palace was out. It was really VJ Day to my surprise.
Now, at one point in the parade were strolling the British prisoners of Japan, and they hobbled and one could see that they were in the prisoner of war camps all across the pacific. Bridge Over the River Kwai stuff.
There were a lot of them, and all i could think was, 50 years and it was still with them. That's a long time to carry anything.
I felt so proud that the side i believed in didn't commit atrocity, didn't commit torture, didn't annihilate millions of people,and essentially represented everything in opposite to what Hitler and Tojo stood for.
Well, my god, that was then.
Do not believe for one split second what these politicians are saying. I would take any of the hobbled, confused, debilitated war veterans over any of these grossly conceited politicos any day of the week.
If you believe that torture is ok under certain conditions, i will hand you a mirror. And when you put it down, you will find yourself woefully alone.
Torture is something that is one of the most horrific things that can occur in the history and culture of the West.
The Spanish Inquisition is nothing but Torture, Murder and Mayhem, false confessions to send prisoners to Hades, and was routed out of Europe. The Religious orders were confronted, as even much later on Napoleon was finally dealt with. He had a brutal reputation. Have you seen the paintings about his war in Spain. Unspeakable.
Torture is in fact what Jesus went thru when they killed him. It is anathema for a Christian.
How can anyone unless they were utterly confused, misguided, or sniffing glue could confuse winning any kind of confrontation with of all things Torture. Well, i've gotten into peoples faces and had the talk. Construction sites and building crews is where this corruptable thinking breeds.
I remind everyone, that the U-Boats that wolf patrolled the Atlantic ocean sinking any vessel that floated on the water were told that ALL of them were hostile. Many passenger boats with woman and children went to the bottom of the ocean. Then went down right at the edge of the New Jersey shore.
It's like that now. Everyone is being told by the Hitlarian Bush adminstration that Terrorists are everywhere. How many are dead?
By the good name of generations that came before.
This administration will face the times.
Impeachent is an imperative. Federalization will only mean more abject fascism.
Shall i go on and relate what Japanese torture to torture in Viet Nam.
This is utterly unbearable. It is unconsciounable. It is War Crimes in our faces.
It will not continue anymore.
To hold on to the notion of Torture is like holding on to the notion of Slavery.
The times have changed.
The White House shall reflect that.
Gen Hayden NOT QUALIFIED to make this judgement
based on his answers that reflected 'total ignorance' about the core of the U.S. Constitution, back during his confirmation, this man has no business giving speeches in public about what is 'right' and what is 'illegal' anywhere in this country, or anywhere else.
as a matter of fact, as facilitator of TORTURE and ILLEGAL WIRETAPPING and other criminality, he should be tried IN THE HAGUE next to the rest of these war criminals, mass murderers, torturers, and blights upon humanity. he has shown disregard for the Nuremburg Trials where nazi german's were 'executed' for 'waterboarding' and other forms of banality and torture, and if it was good enough for german's to HANG FOR, then it's good enough for american fascist bastards to HANG FOR AS WELL.
when did this nation of ours cease to be a nation that was predominantly populated by a majority of reasonable and 'sane' men and women who objected to mass murder, criminal invasions of sovereign countries who posed no threats to us, and illegal occupations and mass murders of the inhabitants of those nations?
when?