“You give me a waterboard, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I’ll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders.”

You tell ‘em, Jesse! Former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura is hitting the nationwide media circuit and waterboarding proponents on the right. As Jesse knows from his SEAL training, a trained interrogator can, through coercive methods and torture like waterboarding, get anyone to say anything, true or not.

First, there’s this from The Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s blog (and, oh yes, there’s more from other great sources below):

Jesse Ventura body slams waterboarding proponents

Former professional wrestler and Minnesota Gov. Jesse “The Body” Ventura is taking on all challengers in the debate over waterboarding. Ventura, who was waterboarded as part of his military training, has been hitting the talk show circuit to denounce waterboarding.

Benjamin Sarlin at The Daily Beast writes about Ventura’s recent smackdown of Elizabeth Hasselbeck on “The View”:

“If waterboarding’s OK, why don’t we let our police do it to suspects so we can learn what they know?” (Ventura) asked. “We only seem to waterboard Muslims. … Have we waterboarded anyone else?”

Can you believe Jesse said that? WOW!!!

Well, I had to go looking for mo’ from Jesse, and found this YouTube:

“Jesse Ventura: You Give Me a Water Board, Dick Cheney and One Hour”

::::::::

The top quote is from the blog of Grant Lawrence.

If you want to read what all the bloggers are saying about the experiment by WLS radio host Erich “Mancow” Muller, go here. It is VITAL to note that this man was in a controlled setting and knew that he could stop the torture at any time. Now try to imagine that you’re being held under the control of others, having no rights, and being subject to their every whim — dependent on them not just for sustenance, but for one’s very next breath, and never knowing when or if the waterboarding will stop. Don’t you think you’d say ANYTHING to get it to stop? Of course you would.

Mancow is the latest in a string of media personalities taking the plunge, so to speak, in getting first hand experience with torture. Not a one has come out of the experience pooh poohing waterboarding as just a little water being splashed on one’s face.

So, what has Dick Cheney –who is constantly touting himself as the pro-torture expert — really been up to? Fighting the GOOD fight? Or, perhaps …

AHA! So is this why Dick Cheney has been on your television screens for weeks now?

Cheney Seeks Book Deal on Bush Years and More

WASHINGTON — With his sustained blitz of television appearances and speeches, former Vice President Dick Cheney has established himself as perhaps the leading Republican voice against President Obama.

Not a bad time, then, to be in the market for a multimillion-dollar book contract.

Mr. Cheney is actively shopping a memoir about his life in politics and service in four presidential administrations, a work that would add to what is already an unusually dense collection of post-Bush-presidency memoirs that will offer a collective rebuttal to the many harshly critical works released while the writers were in office and beyond.

What’s this worth? And, just for your entertainment, here’s what the other Bushies are angling to get:

the money isn’t bad, either.

A person familiar with discussions Mr. Cheney has had with publishers said he was seeking more than $2 million for his advance. That sum may prove hard to get in this economic climate, especially given his generally low approval ratings, which publishers view as a potential — but not certain — harbinger for sales.

While Mr. Bush got an advance estimated to be well into the millions for a look into 12 of his most important decisions, his payout is not believed to be as large as that of former President Bill Clinton for his memoirs, which drew a $15 million advance.

Mr. Rumsfeld was not paid an advance by his publisher, Sentinel, of Penguin Group USA, and has committed to donating his share of any proceeds to his nonprofit foundation. (Mr. Bush, Mr. Clinton, Mr. Cheney, Mr. Rumsfeld, and Mr. Obama, for that matter, were represented in their contract talks by the Washington lawyer Robert B. Barnett.)

Mr. Cheney’s friends say he does not need the money and has made clear in his talks that he is eager to give a full accounting of his life in politics that will debunk his many critics.

According to a person familiar with a meeting that Mr. Cheney had with a publisher, the former vice president is proposing a memoir that would function not only as the story of his role in four Republican administrations but also as a history of “the entire Republican ascendancy going back to Nixon.” This person did not want to be named because of the confidentiality of the talks.

Mr. Cheney has talked with houses including HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster, where Mary Matalin, his close friend and adviser, is editor in chief of Threshold, the conservative imprint that is also publishing Mr. Rove’s book. Marji Ross, president and publisher of the conservative publisher Regnery, said she and others at the house had talked informally to Mr. Cheney and Mr. Barnett. But Ms. Matalin’s long history with Mr. Cheney has made her imprint a logical home for his book.

John Hannah, a senior adviser to Mr. Cheney at the White House, said that when he spoke to Mr. Cheney a few weeks ago the former vice president was trying to figure out how to strike a balance between his life story and his hotly debated tenure serving with Mr. Bush. “The question was, Do you do the 40 years in Washington, given all his experiences in different jobs and perspectives?” Mr. Hannah said. “Or do you need to do something fairly quickly to answer and to discuss the last eight years?”

As the talks continue, Mr. Cheney is writing out his thoughts longhand in an office above his garage in Virginia and is in frequent contact with the other newly minted Bush administration authors, right on up to Mr. Bush.

A report by U.S. News & World Report about a visit by Mr. Cheney to Mr. Rumsfeld’s Washington office in March prompted speculation that they were trying to match up their stories, which a Rumsfeld spokesman, Keith Urbahn, denied. He said there was likely to be a greater divergence of views in the coming books than some might expect.

Mr. Rumsfeld, who is working almost full time on his book, feeding dictation to aides culling his personal papers, often differed with counterweights in other departments, like Ms. Rice. “There’s a great deal of truth to the adage of where you stand is where you sit,” Mr. Urbahn said.

Ms. Rice has a three-book deal with Crown, Mr. Bush’s publisher. Douglas Brinkley, the historian, said she indicated to him late last year that she deemed it appropriate to wait for the president to publish his book, scheduled for 2010, before she published hers on the White House.

So, if you’re not ordering torture, why not merchandise it?

Editor: Reprinted in full with Col. Wilkerson’s and Steve Clemons’ express permission from The Washington Note.

This is a guest post exclusive to The Washington Note by Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson, who is former chief of staff of the Department of State during the term of Secretary of State Colin Powell. Lawrence Wilkerson is also Pamela Harriman Visiting Professor at the College of William & Mary.

Last night I was on Rachel Maddow’s show on MSNBC at the top of the hour. But before I came on, through the earpiece I listened to the five minutes that Rachel sketched as a lead-in. Most of it was videotape from the last few days of former Vice President Dick Cheney extolling the virtues of harsh interrogation, torture, and his leadership. I had heard some of it earlier of course but not all of it and not in such a tightly-packed package.

Let’s just say that five minutes of the Sith Lord was stunningly inaccurate.

So, when I got home last night, I thought long and hard about what I knew at this point in my investigations with respect to the former VP’s office. Here it is.

First, more Americans were killed by terrorists on Cheney’s watch than on any other leader’s watch in US history. So his constant claim that no Americans were killed in the “seven and a half years” after 9/11 of his vice presidency takes on a new texture when one considers that fact. And it is a fact.

There was absolutely no policy priority attributed to al-Qa’ida by the Cheney-Bush administration in the months before 9/11. Counterterrorism czar Dick Clarke’s position was downgraded, al-Qa’ida was put in the background so as to emphasize Iraq, and the policy priorities were lowering taxes, abrogating the ABM Treaty and building ballistic missile defenses.

Second, the fact no attack has occurred on U.S. soil since 9/11–much touted by Cheney–is due almost entirely to the nation’s having deployed over 200,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and not to “the Cheney method of interrogation.”

Those troops have kept al-Qa’ida at bay, killed many of them, and certainly “fixed” them, as we say in military jargon. Plus, sadly enough, those 200,000 troops present a far more lucrative and close proximity target for al-Qa’ida than the United States homeland. Testimony to that fact is clear: almost 5,000 American troops have died, more Americans than died on 9/11. Of course, they are the type of Americans for whom Cheney hasn’t much use as he declared rather dramatically when he achieved no less than five draft deferments during the Vietnam War.

Third–and here comes the blistering fact–when Cheney claims that if President Obama stops “the Cheney method of interrogation and torture”, the nation will be in danger, he is perverting the facts once again. But in a very ironic way.

My investigations have revealed to me–vividly and clearly–that once the Abu Ghraib photographs were made public in the Spring of 2004, the CIA, its contractors, and everyone else involved in administering “the Cheney methods of interrogation”, simply shut down. Nada. Nothing. No torture or harsh techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator. Period. People were too frightened by what might happen to them if they continued.

What I am saying is that no torture or harsh interrogation techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator for the entire second term of Cheney-Bush, 2005-2009. So, if we are to believe the protestations of Dick Cheney, that Obama’s having shut down the “Cheney interrogation methods” will endanger the nation, what are we to say to Dick Cheney for having endangered the nation for the last four years of his vice presidency?

Likewise, what I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002–well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion–its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa’ida.

So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney’s office that their detainee “was compliant” (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP’s office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods. The detainee had not revealed any al-Qa’ida-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, “revealed” such contacts. Of course later we learned that al-Libi revealed these contacts only to get the torture to stop.

There in fact were no such contacts. (Incidentally, al-Libi just “committed suicide” in Libya. Interestingly, several U.S. lawyers working with tortured detainees were attempting to get the Libyan government to allow them to interview al-Libi….)

Less important but still busting my chops as a Republican, is the damage that the Sith Lord Cheney is doing to my political party.

He and Rush Limbaugh seem to be its leaders now. Lindsay Graham, John McCain, John Boehner, and all other Republicans of note seem to be either so enamored of Cheney-Limbaugh (or fearful of them?) or, on the other hand, so appalled by them, that the cat has their tongues. And meanwhile fewer Americans identify as Republicans than at any time since WWII. We’re at 21% and falling–right in line with the number of cranks, reprobates, and loonies in the country.

When will we hear from those in my party who give a damn about their country and about the party of Lincoln?

When will someone of stature tell Dick Cheney that enough is enough? Go home. Spend your 70 million. Luxuriate in your Eastern Shore mansion. Shoot quail with your friends–and your friends.

Stay out of our way as we try to repair the extensive damage you’ve done–to the country and to its Republican Party.

– Lawrence Wilkerson

These techniques [enhanced interrogation], from an operational perspective, are ineffective, slow and unreliable, and as a result harmful to our efforts to defeat al Qaeda. (This is aside from the important additional considerations that they are un-American and harmful to our reputation and cause.)

How critical was Soufan’s testimony today — particularly about Abu Zubaydah’s interrogation? Writes Mark Benjamin for Salon:

The testimony of a key witness at a Senate hearing Wednesday raised serious questions about the truthfulness of former President George W. Bush’s own personal defense of the CIA’s brutal interrogation program. Former FBI agent Ali Soufan also indicated that the harsh interrogation techniques may actually have hindered the collection of intelligence, causing a high-value prisoner to stop cooperating.

An Atlanta Journal Constitution reporter/blogger hit the nail on the head with the title of his post on Soufan’s testimony: “It ain’t “24.” it ain’t Jack Bauer. It’s just real.“

First, here’s the MSNBC report on Soufan’s testimony:

Now, here is the AJC blog report, “It ain’t “24.” it ain’t Jack Bauer. It’s just real.“

Ali Soufan, a former FBI investigator and interrogator who at one point in his career went undercover as an al Qaida operative, testifies to the Senate Judiciary Committee today from behind a screen, where he cannot be seen or photographed.

The subject is torture.

In his prepared testimony, Soufan lays out an impressive list of accomplishments:

“In my capacity as a FBI Agent, I investigated and supervised highly sensitive and complex international terrorism cases, including the East Africa bombings, the USS Cole bombing, and the events surrounding the attacks of 9/11. I also coordinated both domestic and international counter-terrorism operations on the Joint Terrorist Task Force, FBI New York Office.

I personally interrogated many terrorists we have in our custody and elsewhere, and gained confessions, identified terror operatives, their funding, details of potential plots, and information on how al Qaeda operates, along with other actionable intelligence. Because of these successes, I was the government’s main witness in both of the trials we have had so far in Guantanamo Bay – the trial of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a driver and bodyguard for Osama Bin Laden, and Ali Hamza Al Bahlul, Bin Laden’s propagandist. In addition I am currently helping the prosecution prepare for upcoming trials of other detainees held in Guantanamo Bay.”

More importantly, Soufan led the initial interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, al Qaida’s “fixer.” In his prepared remarks, he describes what he was able to achieve, what information he was able to draw from Zubaydah very quickly, and what happened when high-level officials in Washington — officials untrained and inexperienced in interrogation — overrode Soufan’s recommendations and insisted that more brutal methods, up to and including waterboarding, be applied to Zubaydah.

“The new techniques did not produce results as Abu Zubaydah shut down and stopped talking. At that time nudity and low-level sleep deprivation (between 24 and 48 hours) was being used. After a few days of getting no information, and after repeated inquiries from DC asking why all of sudden no information was being transmitted (when before there had been a steady stream), we again were given control of the interrogation.

We then returned to using the Informed Interrogation Approach. Within a few hours, Abu Zubaydah again started talking and gave us important actionable intelligence.

This included the details of Jose Padilla, the so-called “dirty bomber.” To remind you of how important this information was viewed at the time, the then-Attorney General, John Ashcroft, held a press conference from Moscow to discuss the news. Other important actionable intelligence was also gained that remains classified.

After a few days, the contractor attempted to once again try his untested theory and he started to re-implementing the harsh techniques. He moved this time further along the force continuum, introducing loud noise and then temperature manipulation.

Throughout this time, my fellow FBI agent and I, along with a top CIA interrogator who was working with us, protested, but we were overruled. I should also note that another colleague, an operational psychologist for the CIA, had left the location because he objected to what was being done.

Again, however, the technique wasn’t working and Abu Zubaydah wasn’t revealing any information, so we were once again brought back in to interrogate him. We found it harder to reengage him this time, because of how the techniques had affected him, but eventually, we succeeded, and he re-engaged again.

Once again the contractor insisted on stepping up the notches of his experiment, and this time he requested the authorization to place Abu Zubaydah in a confinement box, as the next stage in the force continuum. While everything I saw to this point were nowhere near the severity later listed in the memos, the evolution of the contractor’s theory, along with what I had seen till then, struck me as “borderline torture.”

As the Department of Justice IG report released last year states, I protested to my superiors in the FBI and refused to be a part of what was happening. The Director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, a man I deeply respect, agreed passing the message that “we don’t do that,” and I was pulled out.

As you can see from this timeline, many of the claims made in the memos about the success of the enhanced techniques are inaccurate. For example, it is untrue to claim Abu Zubaydah wasn’t cooperating before August 1, 2002. The truth is that we got actionable intelligence from him in the first hour of interrogating him.

In addition, simply by putting together dates cited in the memos with claims made, falsehoods are obvious. For example, it has been claimed that waterboarding got Abu Zubaydah to give up information leading to the capture of Jose Padilla. But that doesn’t add up: Waterboarding wasn’t approved until 1 August 2002 (verbally it was authorized around mid July 2002), and Padilla was arrested in May 2002.

The same goes for KSM’s involvement in 9/11: That was discovered in April 2002, while waterboarding was not introduced until almost three months later. It speaks volumes that the quoted instances of harsh interrogation methods being a success are false.”

Every American interested in the question of torture should read Soufan’s testimony. This is not the macho bluster of a talk show host, or the tortuous rhetoric of an unethical lawyer trying to make the law say something it does not. It is not the self-justifying preening of a former vice president. This is a somber, first-hand, eyewitness account by a man who put his life on the line for his country, a man who knows his business, and a man who was deeply offended as a professional and as an American by what took place. Here is how he closes his remarks:

“In summary, the Informed Interrogation Approach outlined in the Army Field Manual is the most effective, reliable, and speedy approach we have for interrogating terrorists. It is legal and has worked time and again.

It was a mistake to abandon it in favor of harsh interrogation methods that are harmful, shameful, slower, unreliable, ineffective, and play directly into the enemy’s handbook. It was a mistake to abandon an approach that was working and naively replace it with an untested method. It was a mistake to abandon an approach that is based on the cumulative wisdom and successful tradition of our military, intelligence, and law enforcement community, in favor of techniques advocated by contractors with no relevant experience.

The mistake was so costly precisely because the situation was, and remains, too risky to allow someone to experiment with amateurish, Hollywood style interrogation methods- that in reality- taints sources, risks outcomes, ignores the end game, and diminishes our moral high ground in a battle that is impossible to win without first capturing the hearts and minds around the world. It was one of the worst and most harmful decisions made in our efforts against al Qaeda.

For the last seven years, it was not easy objecting to these methods when they had powerful backers. I stood up then for the same reason I’m willing to take on critics now, because I took an oath swearing to protect this great nation. I could not stand by quietly while our country’s safety was endangered and our moral standing damaged.”

Go read it. It ain’t “24;” it ain’t Jack Bauer. This is real life.

You can read Soufan’s full statement to the Senate panel: “Statement Of FBI Agent Ali Soufan At Torture Hearings.”

And be sure to check Larry Johnson’s posts — several of them — that refer to Soufan’s critically important op-ed in the New York Times.

Here’s another video, via Al Jazeera, on today’s testimony:

First, you said you that the intelligence sources didn’t state clearly that they were actually waterboarding, only that they were mentioning the methods theoretically. Over the weekend, you claimed that your aide who attended the meeting didn’t give you the full story. And now you’re saying, according to Politico, that you held back on criticism out of deference for “appropriate legislative channels” — whatever in the hell that means:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi learned in early 2003 that the Bush administration was waterboarding terror detainees but didn’t protest directly out of respect for “appropriate” legislative channels, a person familiar with the situation said Monday.

The Pelosi camp’s version of events is intended to answer two key questions posed by her critics: When, precisely, did she first learn about waterboarding? And why didn’t she do more to stop it? …

As Larry Johnson would say, if the hole is getting deeper, QUIT DIGGING! Perhaps you should have done what your “bitter rival,” Rep. Jane Harman had the guts to do:

Pelosi has disputed a CIA document, released last week, that shows she was briefed in September 2002 on the “particular” interrogation techniques the United States had used on Al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah. Pelosi has said she was told then only that the Bush administration was considering using certain techniques in the future — and that it had the legal authority to do so.

But there’s no dispute that on Feb. 4, 2003 — five months after Pelosi’s September meeting — CIA officials briefed Pelosi aide Michael Sheehy and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), then the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, on the specific techniques that had been used on Zubaydah — including waterboarding.

Harman was so alarmed by what she had heard, she drafted a short letter to the CIA’s general counsel to express “profound” concerns with the tactic — going so far as to ask if waterboarding had been personally “approved by the president.”

According to the Pelosi confidant, Sheehy told Pelosi about the briefing — and later informed Pelosi, the newly elected minority leader, that Harman was drafting a protest letter. Pelosi told Sheehy to tell Harman that she agreed with the letter, the Pelosi insider said. But she did not ask to be listed as a signatory on the letter, the source said, and there is no reference to her in it. …

In other words, you had a great opportunity to TAKE A STAND against torture, but — for you — going along to get along always takes precedence over taking a moral stand.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra hits the nail on the head, per usual:

Republicans aren’t buying it.

“If Nancy was so concerned about the waterboarding, why did she let someone else write the letter?” asked Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), the ranking Republican on the intelligence committee. “If she was so upset, why did she let someone else raise objections?”

Read all: “Pelosi: Torture protest improper in ‘03.”

VIDEO UPDATE: In the last half of his commentary, Brit Hume picks up the Nancy Pelosi story and hits it out of the park:

And, about Wanda Sykes: You’re right, Brit. Please consider also that, if a conservative had said that about a black politician, Janeane Garofalo would call him a “racist.”

Joseph Margulies in the Los Angeles Times offers anyone who wants to defend the Bush administration’s embrace of torture a chilling retort.

His bottom line: the administration sold out the values Americans cherish most to torture not a kingpin in the al Qaeda network, but a clerk.

Margulies writes:

First, they beat him. As authorized by the Justice Department and confirmed by the Red Cross, they wrapped a collar around his neck and smashed him over and over against a wall. They forced his body into a tiny, pitch-dark box and left him for hours. They stripped him naked and suspended him from hooks in the ceiling. They kept him awake for days.

And they strapped him to an inverted board and poured water over his covered nose and mouth to “produce the sensation of suffocation and incipient panic.” Eighty-three times. I leave it to others to debate whether we should call this torture. I am content with the self-evident truth that it was wrong.

Second, his treatment was motivated by the bane of our post-9/11 world: rotten intel. The beat him because they believed he was evil. Not long after his arrest, President Bush described him as “one of the top three leaders” in Al Qaeda and “Al Qaeda’s chief of operations.” In fact, the CIA brass at Langley, Va., ordered his interrogators to keep at it long after the latter warned that he had been wrung dry.

But Abu Zubaydah, we now understand, was nothing like what the president believed. He was never Al Qaeda. The journalist Ron Suskind was the first to ask the right questions. In his 2006 book, “The One Percent Doctrine,” he described Abu Zubaydah as a minor logistics man, a travel agent.

Later and more detailed reporting in the Washington Post, quoting Justice Department officials, said he provided “above-ground support. … To make him the mastermind of anything is ridiculous.” More recently, the New York Times, relying on current and former intelligence officers, said the initial assessment was “highly inflated” and reflected “a profound misunderstanding” of Abu Zubaydah. Far from a leader, he was “a personnel clerk.”

– Steve Clemons

EDITOR’S NOTE: See also our LIVE CHAT and VIDEOS on the torture question.

“Church Goers Like Torture More!”

“The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists.”

“Support for terror suspect torture differs among the faithful.”

That’s what the headlines blare, based on a recent survey conducted by the research arm of the prestigious Pew Charitable Trust.

To briskly summarize, frequent churchgoers and White evangelicals, followed fairly closely by White non-Hispanic Catholics approve of the use of torture more than do mainstream Protestants, those unaffiliated with any religion, and non-churchgoers.

If we stop right here and try to figure out why these results are as they are (setting aside for the moment Eastan McNeal’s recent excellent post about the survey’s methodology), the mind runs happily amok with what feels like obvious reasons. My friends and I came up with a few:

“Maybe the Bible-thumping “torture-lovers” see certainty and intolerance as two sides of the same coin. It’s easier to dehumanize people who exhibit the attributes that are the object of the intolerance.”

“God and Country are one in the same to religious fundamentalists, so ‘not country’ is heathen and the welfare of such people is not any concern.”

“If you’re a fundamentalist of any religion (or ism) there is pure unadulterated and unquestioned Truth. Once you’ve got that on your side you no longer need to question things as much.”

“Anything designated as evil does not need to be treated as a human.”

“The more conservative active church goers are more likely to have a good/evil, black/white, us/them, heaven/hell, saved/damned mindset. Compassion can then be eliminated towards those on the wrong side of the comparisons.”

But, I dared to look a little deeper at some other Pew survey work. It turns out that almost 50% of Americans believe that torture is acceptable “often” or “sometimes,” and that view has not changed significantly over the last couple of years. Republicans and Independents approve of torture more than do Democrats. Differences among men and women are small, as are differences regarding age and educational level. However a greater number of older people (33%) than younger people (23%) say torture should never be used. (Go seniors!)

But here is the bottom line. In the Pew survey, plenty of Democrats, mainstream Protestants, infrequent churchgoers, and religiously unaffiliated people DO believe torture is acceptable, and plenty of Evangelical Christians, non-Hispanic Catholics and frequent churchgoers are NOT in favor of torture. See the data for yourselves:

So, there is statistical significance and there is practical significance. In very practical terms, that means that if you meet up with an Evangelical Christian who attends church frequently or a Unitarian who attends services once a year, you might go with the probabilities and guess their view on torture correctly. And you will also be wrong often enough.

Your take?

But Guardian US editor at large Michael Tomasky found a pretty significant error in Obama’s commentary last night. It’s always sort of exciting to be able to correct a President.

I had this chance when listening to Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address and heard:

Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath.

Well, because Grover Cleveland gave the oath twice, there were really just 43 Americans. It interests me that this historical inaccuracy will live forever in Obama’s inaugural text — and there seems like there is nothing one can do about it.

But Tomasky’s catch is far more significant.

Obama recounted how he had read that even at the height of the blitz, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill refused to allow German prisoners to be tortured.

Well, Tomasky counters with the facts. Regrettably and sadly, even the Brits tortured.

When reality punctures the myths we hope are true, it’s not really something to be too glad about — particularly in this case.

– Steve Clemons

Posted at The Washington Note

To: The President of the United States
Fm: Melvin A. Goodman
Date: April 25, 2009
Subj: Recommendations for Dealing with the CIA on Issues of Torture and Abuse

President Obama is displaying ambivalence in handling the issue of torture and abuse. He clearly wants to do the right thing and, as a result, has put a stop to torture and closed down the CIA’s secret prisons where the worst abuses occurred. As a political leader with an extensive policy agenda, however, he wants to limit the investigation of the crimes that were committed in order to avoid a fractious political fight that could compromise his agenda.

The fact is that U.S. and international laws were broken and immoral actions were conducted. Moral and legal issues, unlike political ones, should not be compromised. Pursuing the proper moral course, as opposed to the political course, is central to the identity of President Obama as a leader and to the United States as a nation.

As a result, he must deal decisively with the Bush administration’s use of torture, secret prisons, and extraordinary renditions. The citizens of the United States, indeed the entire international community, know that war crimes were committed and that domestic and international laws were broken. Acts of sadism were committed—not only against those responsible for terrorist activities, but also against innocent victims. We need to establish that these activities were wrong and will never be repeated.

Only a serious high-level investigation can achieve these objectives. The investigation must focus on the senior officials of the Bush administration who were responsible for this descent into depravity, but there are individuals serving in high-level positions at the CIA, including the deputy director and the acting general counsel, who must be replaced if there is to be a convincing repudiation of the abuses of the past eight years. CIA officials sought protection from the Justice Department because they knew their actions violated international law (the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture); US law (which treats any breach of Geneva as a crime); and the 8th amendment to the Constitution.

President Obama has given senior CIA officials too much say with respect to releasing documents and limiting both congressional inquiry and the appointment of a special prosecutor. Senior CIA officials, past and present, are making a case that is patently false. They have told the president that an investigation will harm the CIA and that operations officers will be less willing to take risks in the future if some of them are held accountable now.

President Obama must understand that very few CIA officers were involved in these crimes; that the overwhelming majority of National Clandestine Service officers are professionals who understand the need to combat terrorism and are committed to supporting their president and defending their nation’s security. The overwhelming majority of NCS officers were not involved in the illegal activities and did not support them.

The current CIA leadership has argued falsely that foreign intelligence services will be less willing to share secrets with the United States if we pursue an investigation of these criminal activities. In fact, it was the Bush administration’s resort to torture, abuse, and secret prisons that led many nations to withhold information from the United States. CIA leaders believe that past investigations of CIA scandals, such as attempts to conduct political assassinations, had a chilling effect on CIA morale.

This is also untrue! CIA director William Colby’s cooperation in the 1970s with a Senate investigation of CIA assassination plots brought an end to these counterproductive actions, and CIA director John Deutch’s limits in the 1990s on the recruitment of Central American agents linked to death squads in their countries led to more effective recruitment.

Unfortunately, President Obama has made the journey toward an investigation more difficult by appointing former CIA veteran John Brennan as an intelligence adviser. Brennan was a major player in the era of cover-up at the CIA, serving as an executive assistant to CIA director George Tenet when the practices of detention and torture were introduced. He was a cheerleader in selling renditions and secret prisons to the media, and he lobbied against release of any torture memoranda. He has a personal interest in perpetuating the cover up of CIA’s rendition and detention practices.

Leon Panetta’s appointment as Director of Central Intelligence has proved a major disappointment. He has accepted the position being advanced by those Agency officers seeking to cover up the abuses of the past eight years. He has retained Steven Kappes as CIA deputy director, although Kappes was one of the ideological drivers for these practices. He has retained John Rizzo as acting general counsel, although Rizzo was a key figure in the Agency’s lobbying for Justice Department protection for its policies for nearly a decade; the Senate intelligence committee refused to confirm Rizzo as general counsel for that reason.

Panetta also has not named a new Inspector General for the CIA, raising the question of whether he shares the preference of former DCI Hayden and Deputy DCI Kappes for a weakened Office of Inspector General. Presumably, Hayden and Kappes prefer a weak OIG because that office is the only institution to have conducted a critical investigation of the Agency’s torture practices (2004); they surely seek to prevent any further such investigations by the IG. President Obama and Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) should be deeply concerned that there is not a statutory and independent individual serving as Inspector General of the CIA at this delicate juncture.

What Needs to Be Done?

The Obama administration must stop coddling those CIA leaders who continue to try to cover up Agency actions against the best interests of the Agency itself. It is time to uncover, understand, and reject the painful truths about CIA’s use of torture and abuse.

The release of the memoranda by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel has begun the process of open disclosure, but President Obama must continue that process. He cannot expect the Senate and House intelligence committees to do a rigorous investigation because too many congressional leaders, including Jay Rockefeller, Nancy Pelosi, Peter Hoekstra, and Richard Shelby, knew about the practices of torture and abuse and did nothing to challenge, let alone prevent, them.

He must appoint a special prosecutor, perhaps John Dunlop, who has been investigating for months the CIA’s destruction of the torture tapes, which now appears to have a blatant act of obstructed justice. President Obama has ruled out the type of commission that investigated 9/11, but Pandora’s box has been opened and he will have to create or turn to some institution to confront the truths that have been unleashed. There is no perfect institution, but he must choose one—congressional, blue-ribbon, special investigator, Inspector General. Otherwise the president will continue to be hung up by an inability to confront the very real moral challenges posed by this country’s use of torture and abuse.

It is time to recognize that the policy of torture and abuse was only one of many steps taken by President Bush and Vice President Cheney to expand and abuse presidential powers. The Bush administration was responsible for warrantless eavesdropping in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978; the Terrorist Surveillance Program in violation of the National Security Act of 1947; more presidential signing statements than all previous presidents signed in order to undermine the will of the people; and the outing of CIA clandestine operative Valerie Plame in violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. The Obama administration may not have the time and energy to address all of these abuses, but the program of torture and abuse was by far the worst of these; it must be repudiated.

My next article will address the role of the Washington Post in helping the CIA spread these false views that are held by a small group within the National Clandestine Service and their spokesmen at the senior levels of the Agency.

Melvin A. Goodman, a regular contributor to The Public Record, is senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and adjunct professor of government at Johns Hopkins University. He spent more than 42 years in the U.S. Army, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Department of Defense. His most recent book is “Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA.”

Originally published at PubRecord.org.

HOT UPDATE: John Boehner is taking it right to Nancy, proving that “what goes around comes around,” and that Obama just did NOT think through the torture memo “blowback.”

Politico’s Glenn Thrush reports that Rep. Boehner is “asking the Obama administration to release CIA notes taken during a 2002 briefing session with Pelosi and other Congressional leaders.”

Even “Dear Abby” could have given PBO the advice he needed: “THINK!. And make a careful list of the pros and cons, including the possibility you’ll throw your own party leaders under the bus (!). Your MoveOn and Kossack rabblerousers are NOT deep thinkers! Seek the counsel of savvy, experienced men and women.”

Obama’s increasingly heavy reliance on D.C. novice David Axelrod is folly. All Axe envisioned was Republican blood in the water. But Axelrod has NO background — none, zippo! — in Capitol Hill politics warfare. Rahm? Does he think with his gonads or his brain? Methinks that, like Obama, he’s more politician than legislator, and he probably didn’t recall that both Democrats and Republicans attended those intel meetings in 2002. But now it’s too late, the water is bloodied by Democrats and Republicans alike, and here we go:

Boehner is backing efforts by Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), the ranking member on the House intelligence committee, to release agency’s records of meetings with Congressional members from both parties.

The GOP is hoping to spotlight the fact that Pelosi and other Democrats raised few objections when told about details of the Bush administration “enhanced interrogations” of terror suspects.

“Congress and the American people deserve a full and complete set of facts about what information was yielded by CIA’s interrogation program, and they deserve to know which of their representatives in Congress were briefed about these techniques and the extent of those briefings,” says Boehner, backing Hoekstra’s letter to DNI Dennis Blair.

He adds: “To date, the administration has fallen short in providing this information.

Mr. Hoekstra’s request to Director Blair is straightforward, and the information he is seeking is essential. The American people have been provided an incomplete picture of exactly what intelligence was made available by the interrogation program. It is now the Administration’s responsibility to ensure they are given the full picture — including which members of Congress were briefed on the methods and how extensive those briefings were.”

EARLIER POST:

When one attempts to obsure, deflect, and outright prevaricate as much as Speaker Nancy Pelosi, one can expect critics galore. And that’s just what’s happened. Politico’s Glenn Thrush has been hammering Nancy hard. This article was published less than an hour ago:

“Pelosi playing defense on torture“:

Nancy Pelosi didn’t cry foul when the Bush administration briefed her on “enhanced interrogation” of terror suspects in 2002, but her team was locked and loaded to counter hypocrisy charges when the “torture” memos were released last week.

Many Republicans obliged, led by former CIA chief Porter Goss, who is accusing Democrats like Pelosi of “amnesia” for demanding investigations in 2009 after failing to raise objections seven years ago when she first learned of the legal basis for the program.

Had President Obama and team THOUGHT through the blowback from their we’ll-have-it-both-ways approach to the torture memos, they’d have immediately realized the can of worms they were opening for members of their own party. Furthermore, Obama’s failure to look at the entire chessboard is endangering his other programs:

Pelosi finds herself on the defensive at a time when she needs to be on the offensive, pushing through a record-breaking budget, health care reform, a controversial cap-and-trade proposal and a supplemental funding bill for Iraq and Afghanistan.

Someone on Pelosi’s staff spoke anonymously to Thrush:

“As soon as the president made the decision to release [the memos], I was telling people that the Republicans were going to come after us, saying she knew about it and did nothing,” said an adviser to Pelosi (D-Calif.), speaking on condition of anonymity. “And I’m sure we’re going to get hammered again when they release all those new torture photos,” the person said.

Republicans are grateful for the gift:

But Pelosi’s allies were less prepared to confront the fallout from her convoluted answers during three sessions with reporters last week — answers that raised new questions and handed Republicans a fresh line of attack on a speaker at the height of her power.

“I’m puzzled, I don’t understand what she’s trying to say,” said Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), former chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and currently the committee’s ranking minority member.

“I don’t have any sympathy for her — she’s the speaker of the House; there should be some accountability. She shouldn’t be given a pass,” added Hoekstra.

Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) promised to keep up the heat, telling reporters last week, “She and other leaders were fully briefed on all of these interrogation techniques. There’s nothing here that should surprise her.”

This next quote left me both flabbergasted and infuriated — because the Dems’ main concern seems to be how they appear in the media, not whether what Pelosi did and said are right or wrong:

“The Republicans may have won a news cycle, but we’re doing what we want to do,” said Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly, pointing to Pelosi’s legislative successes during President Barack Obama’s first 100 days in office.

Check Memeorandum.com for blog posts related to Thrush’s article.

For more on Nancy Pelosi’s modus operandi, see “On Pelosi’s Duplicity and Apparent Sandbagging of Elizabeth Warren.”

This attack piece proves how Pelosi and other Democratic leaders let Bush have his way with TARP and ceded ENORMOUS control to the Treasury Department. Now that Elizabeth Warren is analyzing and describing the real problems with TARP, Pelosi is maneuvering to cut her off at the knees. It’s quite a read.

In my earlier post, holder: obama does not decide who will be prosecuted, I wrote,
“It appears Obama opened a whole can of worms with the release of these memos. Not only does he lack the authority to decide whether there will be prosecutions or not, I assume he also put members of his own party at risk. (Feinstein and Pelosi, members of the Intel Committee…)”

This appears to be just the tip of the iceberg. As reported in the Washington Post a newly released report from the Senate Intelligence Committee showed that Condi Rice played a greater role than she has previously acknowledged in the CIA’s harsh interrogation program, and approved the use of water boarding. The report finds that Rice approved the CIA’s request to water board a captured al-Qaeda member in 2002, making her the first known Bush administration official to do so.

Condoleezza Rice, John D. Ashcroft and other top Bush administration officials approved as early as the summer of 2002 the CIA’s use at secret prisons of harsh interrogation methods, including water boarding, a technique that new Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has described as illegal torture, according to a chronology prepared by the Senate intelligence committee and declassified by Holder.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld were made aware of the program in September 2003. “Strikingly, unless there is a further story in records not yet shown to us, the secretary of state and the secretary of defense were not involved in the decision-making process, despite the high stakes for U.S. foreign policy and for the treatment of the U.S. military,” said Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.).

In the fall of 2002, four senior members of Congress, including Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), now speaker of the House, were secretly briefed on interrogation techniques, including water boarding, according to U.S. officials. Pelosi has confirmed that she was then “briefed on interrogation techniques the administration was considering using in the future. The administration advised that legal counsel for both the CIA and the Justice Department had concluded that the techniques were legal.”

Peter Hoekstra wrote in the Wall Street Journal, Congress Knew About the Interrogations – Obama should release the memo on the attacks prevented:

…Yet last week Mr. Obama overruled the advice of his CIA director, Leon Panetta, and four prior CIA directors by releasing the details of the enhanced interrogation program. Former CIA director Michael Hayden has stated clearly that declassifying the memos will make it more difficult for the CIA to defend the nation.

It was not necessary to release details of the enhanced interrogation techniques, because members of Congress from both parties have been fully aware of them since the program began in 2002. We believed it was something that had to be done in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks to keep our nation safe. After many long and contentious debates, Congress repeatedly approved and funded this program on a bipartisan basis in both Republican and Democratic Congresses.

Members of Congress calling for an investigation of the enhanced interrogation program should remember that such an investigation can’t be a selective review of information, or solely focus on the lawyers who wrote the memos, or the low-level employees who carried out this program. I have asked Mr. Blair to provide me with a list of the dates, locations and names of all members of Congress who attended briefings on enhanced interrogation techniques.

Any investigation must include this information as part of a review of those in Congress and the Bush administration who reviewed and supported this program.

So, it would seem to me that not only could the lawyers who drafted these recommendations be subject to prosecution, but also Bush, Cheney, Condi Rice, Colin Powell, Nancy Pelosi and members of Congress.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday said she had no recourse to stop the use of enhanced interrogation techniques such as waterboarding after receiving a classified briefing from the CIA in 2002 – an explanation the top Republican on the House intelligence committee called “the lamest of lame excuses.”

Mrs. Pelosi is one of several prominent Democrats, including Mrs. Feinstein, who is open to the possible prosecution of Bush administration officials who signed off on the use of the techniques, which Mr. Obama has deemed torture.

There was a good discussion on Morning Joe about this whole affair.

Also appearing in the WSJ today was this article, Presidential Poison – His invitation to indict Bush officials will haunt Obama’s Presidency:

Mark down the date. Tuesday, April 21, 2009, is the moment that any chance of a new era of bipartisan respect in Washington ended. By inviting the prosecution of Bush officials for their anti-terror legal advice, President Obama has injected a poison into our politics that he and the country will live to regret.

Policy disputes, often bitter, are the stuff of democratic politics. Elections settle those battles, at least for a time, and Mr. Obama’s victory in November has given him the right to change policies on interrogations, Guantanamo, or anything on which he can muster enough support. But at least until now, the U.S. political system has avoided the spectacle of a new Administration prosecuting its predecessor for policy disagreements. This is what happens in Argentina, Malaysia or Peru, countries where the law is treated merely as an extension of political power.

snip

Those officials won’t be the only ones who suffer if all of this goes forward. Congress will face questions about what the Members knew and when, especially Nancy Pelosi when she was on the House Intelligence Committee in 2002. The Speaker now says she remembers hearing about water boarding, though not that it would actually be used. Does anyone believe that? Porter Goss, her GOP counterpart at the time, says he knew exactly what he was hearing and that, if anything, Ms. Pelosi worried the CIA wasn’t doing enough to stop another attack. By all means, put her under oath.

Obama said that only the legal advisers who are no longer in government should be investigated. I really don’t understand how you can prosecute legal advisors, but not members of the government who actually ordered these actions be carried out.

I don’t think Obama thought this all the way through, do you? Should he have checked with Eric Holder first? Do you think he really wants Pelosi, Powell and Rice brought down?

Politico has a story up titled Obama muddles torture message:

“President Barack Obama’s attempt to project legal and moral clarity on coercive CIA interrogation methods has instead done the opposite — creating confusion and political vulnerability over an issue that has inflamed both the left and right.”

The WSJ Presidential Poison article finishes:

Above all, the exercise will only embitter Republicans, including the moderates and national-security hawks Mr. Obama may need in the next four years. As patriotic officials who acted in good faith are indicted, smeared, impeached from judgeships or stripped of their academic tenure, the partisan anger and backlash will grow. And speaking of which, when will the GOP Members of Congress begin to denounce this partisan scapegoating? Senior Republicans like Mitch McConnell, Richard Lugar, John McCain, Orrin Hatch, Pat Roberts and Arlen Specter have hardly been profiles in courage.

Mr. Obama is more popular than his policies, due in part to his personal charm and his seeming goodwill. By indulging his party’s desire to criminalize policy advice, he has unleashed furies that will haunt his Presidency.

When you have pundits like Tingles beating the drums for the take down of Bush and Cheney, it doesn’t help the case for Pelosi, Congress and all those involved, does it?

“Well if it turns out that those who drew the lines and said it was okay to use waterboarding and other coercive techniques, violated the law, and those people who did so include the Vice President and the President what do we do? You say we might consider prosecuting them. But how do we do it? Under what law do we go after them? Under international law? Under U.S. law what do we hit ‘em for? If we do it?” ~Chris Matthews

Although Keith Olbermann has become something of an insufferable boor, he is finally on to something that I would pay money to watch but under specific conditions. First, check out Keith’s challenge:

But here’s where I differ with Olbermann’s challenge. Sean Hannity should not have a choice of when or where.

If Sean has a choice or voice it cannot be torture. If he gets to choose how long to last it is really nothing more than a form of sadomasochism. Once he speaks the safe word the madan stops whipping his ass with her black leather whip.

Let’s review the definition of torture from the international treaty:

the term “torture” means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions. . .

It is more than the mere act of “inflicting” pain or suffering. People like me who received training in interrogation resistance program at a U.S. Government military or intelligence facility have experienced some of the methods of torture firsthand. We have been waterboarded, forced into stress positions, crammed into claustrophobic inducing cabinets and deprived of sleep. However, just because you have gone thru a SERE (i.e., Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape) program does not therefore qualify you as an expert to decide that waterboarding is not torture.

Why? Because the people who participate in these programs do so willingly and their release from captivity is not dependent on divulging specific information the interrogators/torturers want. You have a choice. You can even choose to drop out. The training is for a fixed period. Why? Because the physicians who oversee the training know that sustained exposure can inflict physical and psychological damage that can render a soldier or spy unable to do their job.

None of the suspected terrorists snatched up by U.S. authorities and subsequently strapped down and waterboarded had a choice. They were under the full and complete control of their captors. When you are under the physical control of someone else who can do what they want when they want to you then you have the sufficient and necessary condition for what transforms an exercise involving sleep deprivation from a training event into torture.

And let’s put to bed once and for all the lie that the only way to protect America from the threat of terrorism is to rely on torture. Did you read the extraordinary op-ed by former FBI Agent Ali Soufan? Agent Soufan actually did interrogate several of the radical Islamists. We must hear him and pay attention to what he knows from experience. This appeared in the Thursday edition of the New York Times:

FOR seven years I have remained silent about the false claims magnifying the effectiveness of the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding. I have spoken only in closed government hearings, as these matters were classified. But the release last week of four Justice Department memos on interrogations allows me to shed light on the story, and on some of the lessons to be learned.

One of the most striking parts of the memos is the false premises on which they are based. The first, dated August 2002, grants authorization to use harsh interrogation techniques on a high-ranking terrorist, Abu Zubaydah, on the grounds that previous methods hadn’t been working. The next three memos cite the successes of those methods as a justification for their continued use.

It is inaccurate, however, to say that Abu Zubaydah had been uncooperative. Along with another F.B.I. agent, and with several C.I.A. officers present, I questioned him from March to June 2002, before the harsh techniques were introduced later in August. Under traditional interrogation methods, he provided us with important actionable intelligence.

We discovered, for example, that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Abu Zubaydah also told us about Jose Padilla, the so-called dirty bomber. This experience fit what I had found throughout my counterterrorism career: traditional interrogation techniques are successful in identifying operatives, uncovering plots and saving lives.

There was no actionable intelligence gained from using enhanced interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah that wasn’t, or couldn’t have been, gained from regular tactics. In addition, I saw that using these alternative methods on other terrorists backfired on more than a few occasions — all of which are still classified. The short sightedness behind the use of these techniques ignored the unreliability of the methods, the nature of the threat, the mentality and modus operandi of the terrorists, and due process. . . .

One of the worst consequences of the use of these harsh techniques was that it reintroduced the so-called Chinese wall between the C.I.A. and F.B.I., similar to the communications obstacles that prevented us from working together to stop the 9/11 attacks. Because the bureau would not employ these problematic techniques, our agents who knew the most about the terrorists could have no part in the investigation. An F.B.I. colleague of mine who knew more about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed than anyone in the government was not allowed to speak to him. . . .

The debate after the release of these memos has centered on whether C.I.A. officials should be prosecuted for their role in harsh interrogation techniques. That would be a mistake. Almost all the agency officials I worked with on these issues were good people who felt as I did about the use of enhanced techniques: it is un-American, ineffective and harmful to our national security.

Fortunately for me, after I objected to the enhanced techniques, the message came through from Pat D’Amuro, an F.B.I. assistant director, that “we don’t do that,” and I was pulled out of the interrogations by the F.B.I. director, Robert Mueller (this was documented in the report released last year by the Justice Department’s inspector general).

My C.I.A. colleagues who balked at the techniques, on the other hand, were instructed to continue. (It’s worth noting that when reading between the lines of the newly released memos, it seems clear that it was contractors, not C.I.A. officers, who requested the use of these techniques.)

As we move forward, it’s important to not allow the torture issue to harm the reputation, and thus the effectiveness, of the C.I.A. The agency is essential to our national security. We must ensure that the mistakes behind the use of these techniques are never repeated. We’re making a good start: President Obama has limited interrogation techniques to the guidelines set in the Army Field Manual, and Leon Panetta, the C.I.A. director, says he has banned the use of contractors and secret overseas prisons for terrorism suspects (the so-called black sites). Just as important, we need to ensure that no new mistakes are made in the process of moving forward — a real danger right now.

I suppose the crazies like Cheney, Limbaugh and Hannity will continue to delude themselves into believing that torture is okay and that it is the only solution. Far be it from them to actually have any first hand experience or trust the words of people who have actually been on the frontlines.

But isn’t that typical of Cheney? The coward avoiding serving in Vietnam. He preferred that others go in his stead. But as an arm chair warrior he is one ferocious motherfucker.

I would really like to see folks like Cheney or Hannity picked up against their will and taken to an undisclosed location. Once there they would be waterboarded, sleep-deprived, smacked around, shoved into cramped spaces and forced to cohabitate with an insect of my choice. But they won’t get to choose when to call it a halt. I will decide that. It will all be my decision.

At that point do you think they might reconsider their views on what constitutes torture?

Okay, I am VERY curious. I want to ask all of you something:

Were you surprised? I’m not because I happen to know that Newt Gingrich is a great advocate for animals and against animal cruelty. So his stance on torture, in my mind, is congruent with his attitude towards the treatment of any animal helpless in human control. (MY NEXT POST WILL BE ABOUT THE ADVOCATES FOR THE HUMANE TREATMENT OF ANIMALS — and you may be surprised by who some of them are.)

And it was good of him to mention George Washington’s views and practices re torture.

I just wish that Greta had asked him what he would have done and said had he been briefed on the torture practices as were Nancy Pelosi, John Boehner, Pete Hoekstra, and other representatives and senators.

Here, from a remarkable essay by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., in 2005, we learn more about the remarkable history of this nation in leading the way against mistreatment of detainees and prisoners of war:

Every schoolchild knows that Gen. George Washington made extraordinary efforts to protect America’s civilian population from the ravages of war. Fewer Americans know that Revolutionary War leaders, including Washington and the Continental Congress, considered the decent treatment of enemy combatants to be one of the principal strategic preoccupations of the American Revolution.

“In 1776,” wrote historian David Hackett Fischer in “Washington’s Crossing,” “American leaders believed it was not enough to win the war. They also had to win in a way that was consistent with the values of their society and the principles of their cause. One of their greatest achievements … was to manage the war in a manner that was true to the expanding humanitarian ideals of the American Revolution.”

The fact that the patriots refused to abandon these principles, even in the dark times when the war seemed lost, when the enemy controlled our cities and our ragged army was barefoot and starving, credits the character of Washington and the founding fathers and puts to shame the conduct of America’s present leadership.

Fischer writes that leaders in both the Continental Congress and the Continental Army resolved that the War of Independence would be conducted with a respect for human rights. This was all the more extraordinary because these courtesies were not reciprocated by King George’s armies. Indeed, the British conducted a deliberate campaign of atrocities against American soldiers and civilians. While Americans extended quarter to combatants as a matter of right and treated their prisoners with humanity, British regulars and German mercenaries were threatened by their own officers with severe punishment if they showed mercy to a surrendering American soldier. Captured Americans were tortured, starved and cruelly maltreated aboard prison ships.

Washington decided to behave differently. After capturing 1,000 Hessians in the Battle of Trenton, he ordered that enemy prisoners be treated with the same rights for which our young nation was fighting. In an order covering prisoners taken in the Battle of Princeton, Washington wrote: “Treat them with humanity, and let them have no reason to Complain of our Copying the brutal example of the British Army in their treatment of our unfortunate brethren…. Provide everything necessary for them on the road.”

John Adams argued that humane treatment of prisoners and deep concern for civilian populations not only reflected the American Revolution’s highest ideals, they were a moral and strategic requirement. His thoughts on the subject, expressed in a 1777 letter to his wife, might make a profitable read for Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld as we endeavor to win hearts and minds in Iraq. Adams wrote: “I know of no policy, God is my witness, but this — Piety, Humanity and Honesty are the best Policy. Blasphemy, Cruelty and Villainy have prevailed and may again. But they won’t prevail against America, in this Contest, because I find the more of them are employed, the less they succeed.”

Even British military leaders involved in the atrocities recognized their negative effects on the overall war effort. In 1778, Col. Charles Stuart wrote to his father, the Earl of Bute: “Wherever our armies have marched, wherever they have encamped, every species of barbarity has been executed. We planted an irrevocable hatred wherever we went, which neither time nor measure will be able to eradicate.”

In the end, our founding fathers not only protected our national values, they defeated a militarily superior enemy. Indeed, it was their disciplined adherence to those values that helped them win a hopeless struggle against the best soldiers in Europe.

In accordance with this proud American tradition, President Lincoln instituted the first formal code of conduct for the humane treatment of prisoners of war in 1863. Lincoln’s order forbade any form of torture or cruelty, and it became the model for the 1929 Geneva Convention. Dwight Eisenhower made a point to guarantee exemplary treatment to German POWs in World War II, and Gen. Douglas McArthur ordered application of the Geneva Convention during the Korean War, even though the U.S. was not yet a signatory. In the Vietnam War, the United States extended the convention’s protection to Viet Cong prisoners even though the law did not technically require it.

Today, our president is again challenged to align the conduct of a war with the values of our nation. America’s treatment of its prisoners is a test of our faith in our country and the character of our leaders.